As physicist Aaron Adair puts it: “the Star is said to stop in place and hover over a particular lodging, acting as an ancient GPS unit.” The “description of the movements of the Star,” he noted, was “outside what is physically possible for any observable astronomical object.” Theological underpinning Moreover, when the wise men arrive in Bethlehem, the star is low enough in the sky to lead them to a specific house. And astronomers will agree that stars do not make sharp turns. The star therefore makes a sharp left turn. Matthew says that the wise men come to Jerusalem “from the East.” The star then leads them to Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem. The star in Matthew’s story may not be a “normal” natural phenomenon, and Matthew suggests as much in the way that he describes it. It is possible that Giotto believed Matthew was referencing Halley’s Comet in his story of the star.Īttempts to discover the identity of Matthew’s star are often creative and insightful, but I would argue that they are also misguided. Astronomers have also determined that Halley’s Comet passed by the Earth in or around 12 B.C., between five and 10 years before most scholars argue that Jesus was born. Scholars have suggested that Giotto did this as an homage to Halley’s Comet, which astronomers have determined was visible in 1301, on one of its regular flights past the Earth. Four hundred years prior to Kepler, between 13, the Italian artist Giotto painted the star as a comet on the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Italy. Kepler was not the first to suggest that the Star of Bethlehem may have been a recognizable astronomical event. could have served as inspiration for Matthew’s story of the star. Kepler argued that this same planetary conjunction in or around 6 B.C. It was proposed in the early 17th century by Johannes Kepler, a German astronomer and mathematician. The theory that the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn may be the Star of Bethlehem is not new. 'Christmas star' of 2020: Fun facts for the Jupiter-Saturn great conjunction Beliefs about the star The quest to discover which event, if any, Matthew might have had in mind is therefore a complicated one. The second is that measurable, predictable astronomical events occur with relative frequency. The traditional date of his birth may be off by as many as six years. The first is that scholars are not certain exactly when Jesus was born. There are at least two issues involved in associating a specific event with Matthew’s star. Molnar, for example, has argued that the Star of Bethlehem was an eclipse of Jupiter within the constellation Ares. Many have read this story with the presupposition that Matthew must have been referencing an actual astronomical event that occurred around the time of Jesus’ birth. In this account, wise men arrive in Jerusalem and say to Herod, the king of Judea: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.” The star then leads them to Bethlehem and stops over the house of Jesus and his family. Within the New Testament, it is found only in the Gospel of Matthew, a first-century account of Jesus’ life that begins with the story of his birth. The story of the star has long fascinated readers, both ancient and modern. 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will appear just one-tenth of a degree apart, in an event known as a "great conjunction." The planets will be visible to the naked eye when looking toward the southwest about an hour after sunset.
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