jmamos

I'm writing this as a Christian who is trying to have enough academic honesty to sincerely ask for the dissenting opinion. This is not an argument that I'm going to fully stand behind, but only an argument that I tentatively accept. This post meant to be an application of the "outsider test."

What was the star that the wise men followed to find Jesus? A paper has been posted at http://www.bethlehemstar.net/ which gives what I consider to compelling argument that the "star" was a real astronomical object. The argument does not assume the supernatural (or at least the majority of the argument works without it), so many of the claims should stand up to an agnostic/atheist's analysis, if true. The follow-up argument is that the chance of the existence of such a star is sufficiently small that it supports the idea that something more was going on with Jesus' birth and death than can be explained through naturalism. (Exactly what was going on supernaturally is an important question that I consider to be off-topic.)

So there are the two questions:
1. Are the paper's claims true?
2. If the claims are true, and it is a coincidence, how big of a coincidence was it?

Mageth

What claims? That site's a mess to try to sort through, IMO. So please summarize the claims you're asking about.

I really don't get this question. Is what a coincidence with what?

Mageth

That pretty much assumes the conclusion (that Jesus' birth is something special to be considered in the first place, and that therefore the "star", if an actual astronomical phenomenon occurred around that time, lends support to it being something special).

Mageth

I've looked into that site a bit more, and this page confuses me:

http://www.bethlehemstar.net/day/day.htm

On that page, the author seems to be arguing for a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse on the same day.

Toto

There's a lot of material there. A cursory glance shows that the case depends on redating Herod's death to 1 BC (link) . We recently had a long discussion on that, and the forum was not convinced.

Beyer is an amateur, and the case has been rejected.

His interpretation of the "star" is that it was Jupiter going retrograde, in conjunction with two other planets, which had some astrological significance that Herod did not recognize until the Magi - astrologers told him.

This is just slick multimedia apologetics. He thinks that the "star" was a natural phenomenon, which means that God programmed in into matter at the beginning, so God knew when Jesus would be born and died, and the stars are his message to us.

Insofar as his claims are true, they can be explained as coincidence.

jmamos

The site consists almost entirely of one long paper, starting with the link 1. Setting the Stage. The heart of the claims are in 2. The Starry Dance.

Look at as a sort of "scientific hypothesis." Assume Matthew is accurate. What predictions can be made about astronomy in 2-3 B.C. and 33 A.D.? If obscure predictions are accurately made, that supports (but does not prove) the hypothesis. The argument may or may not be based on true claims, but it is not circular.

jmamos

This is the only part of the argument that argues for the existence of the supernatural. The claim is that the lunar eclipse was natural, and the sun not giving its light was supernatural. Doubting the supporting evidence that there are historical reasons for thinking the sun did not give its light on that day, and evidence for a longer time period than eclipses last is a valid question. But I'm primarily asking about the non-supernatural claims.

Toto

Matthew is not accurate, but whether he is or is not, the same calculations give us the same planetary configurations in that time frame. Of course, the author here has to fudge some historical dates to make things come out the way he wants.

But what prediction are you talking about?

Mageth

Oh, and about solar eclipses around 33 CE:

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclips...Eatlas0021.GIF

(none that match the date)

About total lunar eclipses, I used this site, which identified the number of total lunar eclipses in the year 33 CE as - zero!

http://www.hermit.org/eclipse/when_search.shtml

jmamos

On which board did this earlier discussion take place? If it is true that historical details are being fudged, that would severely weaken the argument. I'll look into that.

But if they are not, calling it a coincidence doesn't work very well. We have the brightest "star" is history occurring around the time of the birth or Christ, a highly improbably "sign" of some sort nine months earlier, the "star" stopping on December 25, and a lunar eclipse the day, maybe even hour, of Christ's death.