December 13, 1995. Copyright, 1995, Graphic News. All rights reserved

THE ENDURING RIDDLE OF THE CHRISTMAS STAR
By Nicholas Booth, Science Editor

LONDON, December 13, Graphic News- This Christmas Day in Britain, look out towards the South West after the Sun has set and close to a crescent Moon you should see a bright star in the sky. Doubtless many people will be reminded of the Star of Bethlehem. This Christmas, the object in question is the planet Venus, so bright in fact, that it casts shadows.Venus is one of many astronomical objects cited in trying to understand this most enduring of enigmas, which has not yet been resolved to universal satisfaction.

Just about the only fact that can be stated with any degree of certainty is that Jesus was not born on December 25, in 1AD. Christians did not celebrate his birth until at least 350AD and then, fairly arbitrarily, chose a mid-winter celebration the Romans called Saturnalia. In the 6th century, a monk called Dionysius Exiguus decided to standardise the calendar, counting back to JesusÕs birth. He missed out four years in the rule of Octavian, and so, by our reckoning, Jesus was probably born sometime after 4BC.

The Wise Men were most likely Babylonian priests who derived much of their wisdom from astrology. They were particularly sensitive to heavenly portents, especially to what they called Ôwandering starsÕ and today we call planets. In 7BC, the planets Jupiter and Saturn made three close passes of each other Ð known, astronomically speaking, as a triple conjunction Ð in the constellation of Pisces. Pisces was associated with the Jews, Saturn represented both justice and Palestine, while Jupiter was the King of the gods.

The problem with this theory is that St Matthew refers specifically to a ÔstarÕ in the singular and Jupiter and Saturn were not that close together. As others have pointed out, a much closer conjunction 59 years earlier should have alerted the Babylonians. With this in mind, an American astronomer, Roger Sinnott, has checked out the positions of other planets and has found that on June 17 in 2BC the two brightest planets, Jupiter and Venus, approached so closely that they would have appeared to merge. The only problem is that, by this time, Herod was almost certainly dead. 

Others have suggested comets which appear as bright, elongated objects in the sky and give a sense of ÔpointingÕ towards the horizon. The mediaeval painter Giotto di Bondone depicted a comet above the Wise Men in his ÔAdoration of the MagiÕ. He had used artistic licence to ÔborrowÕ HalleyÕs Comet, which had appeared in the year he painted the work. However, HalleyÕs Comet had appeared in 12BC, far too early for ChristÕs birth.  

The ancient Chinese, who were assiduous observers of the heavens, recorded a reasonably bright comet in the spring of 5BC. According to Professor Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University, this may fit the bill, and the triple conjunction two years earlier may have alerted the Magi to be on the alert for heavenly portents. But there are no records from the Middle East of this comet. In 1992, Ivor Bulmer-Thomas suggested that the star may have been simply Jupiter, which appeared to stand still in the sky on September 23, 5BC. His evidence came from recently deciphered cuneiform texts from Babylon which prove that astrologers could predict these events quite accurately.

A similarly intriguing possibility emerges from analysis of coins from Antioch around this period. Michael Molnar of Rutgers University has found that coins depict astronomical events that would not have been seen but could have been calculated. He believes that when Jupiter emerged from behind the crescent Moon just after sunset on the evening of March 20, 6BC, it might not have been seen because both planets were engulfed in twilight. But the Babylonians might have been aware of its presence and this may have prompted their journey.

Sources: Astronomy Now, Sky & Telescope, New Scientist, Royal Astronomical Society