Star of Bethlehem

Often this time of year, the American media runs a story about an astronomer trying to prove what the Star of Bethlehem actually was, or could have been. The usual suspects are a comet, a supernova, or a grouping of planets that had special astrological meaning. At the time, there were several cultures on Earth that had sophisticated understandings of the night sky, from the Chinese to the emerging civilizations in Mexico and South America. The people of that time were skywatchers.

None of those cultures seem to have recorded any remarkable stellar event around the time of Jesus' birth. Indeed, only one of the Gospels mentions the Star of Bethlehem. So, where does that leave the Christmas Story? There was a literary tradition in the cultures mixing in what is now called the Middle East at that time that the births of great men were marked by some event in the natural world. A new star sitting over a particular town would fit that tradition. The Gospels are not history in the way we understand history. They do seek to tell the story of a remarkable life, but they are also intent on making sure they convey just how remarkable that life was.

Does that mean there was no Star of Bethlehem? Certainly not. There are three basic options. There may have been a star noted around the world, but the passage of two thousand years has at least hidden the evidence. We might someday find that evidence, or we might not. Or, the Star may have been a beautiful, poetic, wholly legitimate literary device used to herald the beginning of a life that would change the world. Or, maybe the Star was exactly what the Christmas Story says it was, a sign from God that an extraordinary event had taken place. Perhaps it was not visible around the world because the initial Christian drama would play out only in Judea, on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, and the power of Christianity was to rest on faith, not evidence.

Whatever the truth, astronomers probably shouldn't be looked to as the group to figure it out just because a story involves a star.