On December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will intersect in the night sky and, for a brief moment, appear to shine together as one body. While planetary conjunctions like this are not everyday events, they are not particularly rare either.
This year’s conjunction is different for at least two reasons. The first is the degree of alignment of the two planets. Experts predict that they will appear closer during this conjunction than in about eight centuries and also brighter.
But the second factor, and what has driven this event, is that it will occur at the winter solstice, just before the Christmas holidays. The timing has led to speculation as to whether this could be the same astronomical event that Bible reports led the sages to Joseph, Mary, and the newborn Jesus, the star of Bethlehem.
As a scholar of early Christian literature writing a book on the three sages, I argue that the next planetary conjunction is probably not the famous star of Bethlehem. The biblical history of the star seeks to convey theological truths rather than historical or astronomical ones.
Photographic illustration of Saturn 🪐 and Jupiter (each step is seen at 17:30 local time, 48 ° north latitude). On December 21, the first “Christmas Star” will appear in almost 800 years.# granconjunction #saturn # Jupiter #christmasstar #alps #mountains https://t.co/vn6OctwEEQ pic.twitter.com/DTjLyyX473
– Dr. Sebastian Voltmer (@SeVoSpace) December 9, 2020
Main light
The history of the star has long fascinated readers, both ancient and modern. Within the New Testament, it is found only in the Gospel of Matthew, a first-century account of the life of Jesus that begins with the story of his birth.
In this account, the sages arrive in Jerusalem and say to Herod, the king of Judea, “Where is the child who was born king of the Jews? The star leads them to Bethlehem and stops at the house of Jesus and his family.
Many have read this story with the assumption that Matthew must have been referring to a real astronomical fact that occurred around the time of Jesus ’birth. Astronomer Michael R. Molnar, for example, has argued that the star of Bethlehem was an eclipse of Jupiter within the constellation of Ares.
There are at least two issues related to associating a specific event with Matthew’s star. The first is that scholars do not know exactly when Jesus was born. The traditional date of his birth can be up to six years.
The second is that measurable and predictable astronomical events occur with relative frequency. Therefore, the search to find out what event Matthew would have considered, is complicated.
Beliefs about the star
The theory that the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn may be the star of Bethlehem is not new. It was proposed in the early 17th century by Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer and mathematician. Kepler argued that this same planetary conjunction around the year 6 BC could have served as inspiration for the story of the star of Matthew.
Kepler was not the first to suggest that the star of Bethlehem might have been a recognizable astronomical event. Four hundred years before Kepler, between 1303 and 1305, the Italian artist Giotto painted the star as a comet on the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy.
Scholars have suggested that Giotto did this as a tribute to Halley’s Comet, which astronomers determined was visible in 1301, on one of its regular flights past Earth. Astronomers have also determined that Halley’s Comet passed through Earth around 12 BC or so, between five and ten years before most scholars argued that Jesus was born. It is possible that Giotto believed that Matthew was referring to Halley’s comet in his star story.
Attempts to discover the identity of the Matthew star are often creative and insightful, but I would say they are also wrong.
The star of Matthew’s story may not be a “normal” natural phenomenon, and Matthew suggests so much in the way he describes it. Matthew says that the sages come to Jerusalem “from the East.” The star leads them to Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem. The star then makes a sharp turn to the left. And astronomers will agree that stars do not make sharp turns.
Also, when the sages arrive in Bethlehem, the star is low enough in the sky to lead them to a specific home. As physicist Aaron Adair says, “the star is said to stop at the site and hover over a particular accommodation, acting as an ancient GPS unit.”
He noted that the “description of the movements of the Star” was beyond what is physically possible for any observable astronomical object. “
Theological foundation
In short, there seems to be nothing “normal” or “natural” about the phenomenon Matthew describes. Maybe the point Matthew is trying to make is another.
Matthew’s star story is based on a body of tradition in which the stars are connected to the rulers. The appearance of a star means that a ruler has come to power.
In the Bible book of Numbers, for example, which dates from the 5th century BC, the prophet Balaam foretells the arrival of a ruler who will defeat the enemies of Israel. “A star will come out of Jacob, [meaning Israel]… it will crush the borders of Moab. “
One of the best known examples of this tradition since antiquity is the so-called “Sidus Iulium” or “Julian Star”, a comet that appeared a few months after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. Roman authors Suetonius and Pliny the Elder report that the comet was so bright that it was visible in the late afternoon, and that many Romans interpreted the spectacle as proof that Julius Caesar was now a god.
In light of these traditions, I believe that the story of the Star of Matthew does not exist to inform readers about a particular astronomical event, but to support the claims it makes about the character of Jesus.
In other words, I argue that Matthew’s goal in telling this story is more theological than historical.
So the next conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn is probably not a return of the star of Bethlehem, but Matthew would probably be satisfied with the fear that inspires those who anticipate it.
Eric M. Vanden Eykel, Associate Professor of Religion, Ferrum College.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.