The night time sky can be re-visualised
In the news this last week or two has been the rare conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter only being separated by half a degree in the night sky which shows them almost being together. This appears as a brighter star to the naked eye leading some to speculate whether this was the Christmas or Bethlehem star seen at Christmas time at the birth of Christ. With the advent of modern technology and using Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, the night time sky can now be re-visualised back in the time of Christ’s birth so that we can actually determine such things as whether the Christmas star seen by the three wise men was actually a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter like we are seeing now.
The Christmas story has been greatly syncretised
There are a few problems with the Christmas story including what the sky looked like at that time. The Christmas story with the three wise men or magi has been greatly syncretised. Perhaps the greatest syncretisation is adding Santa Claus into the mix but that is another blog. Syncretisation is never a good thing because at its essence it is a joining of truth with myth to get some mixed up story. It is error and error leads to deception and deception is after all the devil’s handiwork. I can hear you saying now, “Steve, don’t be a party-pooper, I love Christmas and all the decorations and celebrations!” Fair enough, I don’t want to be the scrooge and ruin your Christmas joy but I believe never before has it been so important to not be deceived. I think my desire to get at the truth of what the Bible is saying has come about from my Bible Translation background and in the wise men story we have a couple of issues to explore…
There could have been more than three magi
Firstly you will notice in my blog title that I have a question mark (?) after the number 3. That’s because during my PNG New Testament translation process into the Asengseng language I found that their pronouns can be either singular, dual, trial or plural depending on how many people are talking or are being talked about. This presents an issue because you have to be sure that you are using the right pronoun in the translation. So for example in Matt. 2:1-12, third person pronouns (they) and first person plural pronouns (we) are used several times but in Asengseng different words are used. So in essence one has to make sure they are using the right word depending on how many wise men there actually were. If there were actually three wise men then “hiluk” and “piyuk” would be used but if there were many more then “po” and “pim” would be used. The problem is that the Greek does not specify the number which is not a problem in English or Greek because there are only two possibilities: singular and plural pronouns. So one has to get it from context or just guess. The context suggests that there were three wise men because there were three gifts: gold; frankincense; and myrrh. But what if there was a whole group of wise men travelling in a caravan from the Iran/Persian direction? That is quite likely and highly possible. In that case you would need to use the pronoun meaning a multitude. In the end I used the pronoun meaning anywhere from 3-5 men but the pronoun meaning a whole group is equally valid too.
A second problem with the story
A second problem with the three(?) wise men coming at the birth of Christ is that they actually came at the Winter Solstice in 2 BC some 15 months after Jesus was born on Tishri 1, 3 BC (September 11th). They came at the Hanukkah celebrations which was a Jewish gift giving time celebrating the re-dedication of the Jewish second temple. They arrived at Bethlehem following the ‘Christmas star’ around 25th December (Winter Solstice) so that part of the story has some partial truth to it. It’s just that Jesus was a toddler and not a baby in the manger. The confusing part is that Joseph and Mary were still in Bethlehem at that time and didn’t escape to Egypt until after the magi had visited because of Herod’s edict to have all children murdered up to the age of two. The very word used for “child” in Matthew’s account1 when the magi visited was not the same word used for “baby” in Luke’s gospel2 some 15 months before they had arrived so they cannot be the same event. The word used in Matthew’s gospel is paidiou meaning a small child. The word used in Luke’s gospel is brephos meaning an infant or newborn baby.
Jupiter was actually the star of Bethlehem
A third problem is that the Star of Bethlehem that the magi saw was not a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. Jupiter was the king planet and in 2 BC as viewed from Jerusalem, Jupiter came to its stationary position directly over Bethlehem on December 25th. It was in the constellation of Virgo. The fact that the star appeared to stop is not an unusual thing when considering that the star was actually a planet. In fact the word “planet” means a wandering star because planets almost had a mind of their own so to speak. They could retrograde meaning that they could appear to go backwards but it was only an illusion due to the fact that the planets have different speeds that they go around our sun. This is similar to when you go past a slower moving car in another lane in that it appears to go backwards. Over a period of 18 months from May 3 BC to December 2 BC when the magi arrived at Bethlehem to give their gifts to the young toddler Jesus there were around nine major conjunctions in the sky where planets and stars came together in various configurations. In September 2 BC the magi saw a conjunction of the male king planet Jupiter and the female goddess planet of Venus in the constellation of Virgo with the nearby Regulus star meaning “prince” in Latin. This of course signified the birth of the princely Lord Jesus. This is what inspired them to follow the king planet Jupiter westward leading. In short the Christmas Star was not a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter like what we are seeing at the moment, as amazing and rare as that sight is but in fact involved the ‘wandering star’ Jupiter itself.
The Christmas story
So I guess my overall point is that our picture of even the nativity scene is not quite correct. There are more questions like, where did Mary actually give birth? It definitely wasn’t an English style wooden barn as often depicted on Christmas cards but more likely the family room in the house of a relative or friend in which animals had access to. People lived with their animals and so it would be reasonable to expect that they just went where they could—the Bible never mentions a barn. That is extrapolation and interpretation which, to be fair, is what Bible translators often have to do like what I did with the three(?) wise men in the Asengseng translation.
So finally, here is the Christmas story as I see it to the best of my knowledge and study…
"Joseph and the pregnant Mary arrived in Bethlehem as a legitimately married couple to register for the census. They went to the house of a friend or a relative but there was no room for them in the guest room probably because of the crowd of people there for the census. So they were invited to stay in their family room where Mary gave birth between 6-7 pm on the 11th Sep 3 BC on Rosh Hashanah, in the Autumn on the Jewish New Year's Day in a feeding trough. The shepherds came who had been alerted by the angels.
Fifteen months later at the Winter Solstice 25th Dec 2 BC the wise men, having followed the Wandering Star westward, which was the King Planet Jupiter, came to the little town of Bethlehem where the star appeared to be stationary. They came bearing gifts at the very time of the Jewish festival of Hanukah that year where it was custom to give gifts to children including gold coins. They bowed down to the Sun of Righteousness, the Lord Himself."
Only the truth will save us
And what is the lesson with regards to the end-times and Jesus coming back soon? Watch out for the details. The syncretisation of the Christmas story leads me to trying to separate commonly held cultural beliefs from the absolute truth. I believe there are so many errors in what people believe with regards to when Jesus will return. Some erroneously believe He won’t be returning for a very long time after the millennial kingdom and before that the world will slowly and surely be Christianised and everything is going to get better. Some believe, in error, that the events described in the book of Revelation have already occurred in the 1st century AD. And still others wrongly spiritualize the kingdom of God and say that there is no future millennial kingdom where Christ will establish His kingdom on the throne of King David as promised.3
The details are important and the truth is important—only the truth will save us in these end times. Deception abounds.
4 Responses
Great blog, Steve. I just love it when the Truth is revealed. Unfortunately the world is intruding more and more into the Churches today, so yes, we really need to be vigilant and not get caught up in the things of the world.
As a good Baptist boy Steve, I was taught to never have anything to do with the stars because they were portrayed as a spiritual force other than God. But God the creator of stars and planets uses them as well. Question-will the planets align before the second coming of Christ? Merry Christmas, Steve and Cathi, may 2021 be a great year for you both?
Hi Dave, Merry Christmas to you and your family as well Dave. As far as having nothing to do with making predictions by the stars which is astrology, I agree. Have nothing to do with it. But the zodiac and the constellations are in the Bible. It is the word “Mazzaroth” in Hebrew. (Job 38:31-32) Where astrology goes wrong is that it believes that the stars have influence on human activity and that it can make predictions in our own personal lives. That is wrong. The stars and constellations do not have a mystical meaning but Gen. 1:14 says that the stars were created to mark time for us in the sense of seasons and being a navigational aid as well.
As with regards to the planets aligning before the second coming of Christ, I don’t see that in the Bible. The only celestial signs seem to be the sun and moon being darkened just before the end and the stars falling to the earth. Another important one is that a large asteroid will hit the earth during the tribulation period devastating 1/3 of the earth (Rev. 8:8-12).
Great article Steve, so many people don’t even question the narrative we are fed, and audit our own beliefs. I do like your birth narrative, and hold it to be accurate.
I’ll put my hand up to be the party pooper on celebrating Christmas in general though. I also agree Christmas is not the time of Jesus’ birth, and also hold it to be at Rosh Hashanna. Some questions I’ve asked myself lately are; who decided we will celebrate his birthday on a day that is not even his birthday? Why was almost every pagan god’s birthday also celebrated at this time?, why is there no mention of the celebration of his birthday in the Bible but it’s the biggest celebration of him in our world today…even atheists celebrate it, and the list goes on and on and on and on…you get the idea
I find no theme in the Bible to suggest that looking at and then taking the practices of the nations of worshiping false gods, (all practiced sun god worship) and to then mix those practices (OR replace them) with the worship of our Father or Jesus. One simply cannot put the head in the sand and deny the satanic roots of what is now known today as Christmas and passed off as celebrating the birth of the Messiah by believers and unbelievers alike. One really doesn’t need to do to much research to find out what the nations were celebrating at the winter solstice, and also the fact that is was MAN who decided to place the celebration of Jesus on that same celebration.
What I do see however is clear instructions that we are NOT to worship our Lord in the same manner/practices as the ‘nations’ that were worshiping false gods in the Bible. Jer. 10:1-5, Deut. 1:29-32 come to mind, but I’m sure there is more.
We may say “but that’s not what it means to me!” but from my understanding of Scripture this practice of mixture was declared an abomination by the one we serve. Is it now called good because man decreed it to be so? See Isaiah 5:20
The other thing I don’t understand is, if all this was ‘nailed to the cross’, and not relevant for today because we are under ‘grace’….wouldn’t that contradict God’s own Word?
He did say after all that he is UNCHANGING.
How can this go from unacceptable to acceptable in HIS eyes by man putting HIS name on it? It can’t.
Does it REALLY matter what our worship of Him looks like from our eyes…or rather from HIS eyes?
We are instructed clearly to observe HIS feasts. Some may argue “oh, that was just to the Jews though”. I would always come back with Jer. 31:31,33.
This would make us ‘Israel.’ Nowhere does it say to my knowledge that He established a renewed or new covenant with a Gentile church.