Some events and people have made significant impacts on world history.
Much of the Bible was not written until decades, centuries, or even millennia after the events supposedly happened. Does this discount all of the events?
Not necessarily.
Before written languages and prior to people becoming more literate, groups gave storytellers the responsibility for keeping oral histories of their society. These people tried to maintain an accurate record of historical events.
But problems like human memory failure, embellishments, misinterpretation, and other issues probably got in the way.
Behind many of these stories there is likely some basis of fact or reality.
We consider here some aspects of the birth and early circumstances of the man called Jesus.
Based on what limited historical records exist, Jesus was a real person. We accept that as a given. He apparently demonstrated certain things (or, in other terminology, performed certain miracles) which led to major religious followings.
These things included what we might call today as healing, telepathy, precognition, and various types of what might be called controlling nature (weather control, transmutation or metamorphosis, providing food and drink, survival of death, and others).
For such a significant event as Jesus’ birth, an announcement to the world seems appropriate. How was his arrival announced to the world? One way could have been that reported in a biblical sequence in Matthew, which indicates a “star” appeared in the sky.
Jesus birth date is in question, both from a year perspective as well as a day within a year perspective.
From the day perspective, it was not likely December 25th, which many people celebrate. Based on Biblical descriptions of associated events, it was probably sometime from spring to fall. With the ambiguity and calendar differences, we can’t pinpoint it any closer than this with certainty.
Some astronomers and others have tried to find a match using the star concept for the year in which Jesus might have been born. They have searched for known natural or scientifically-admissible celestial events and developed two primary hypotheses: A conjunction of planets and a comet.
A planetary conjunction occurs when multiple planets appear very close to each other in our earth-viewing sky. This closeness is only a perception from our point of view. In reality they are many tens or hundreds of millions of miles apart. Typically these planets are Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and they can occur two, or rarely three, at a time. Some of you may have seen the December, 2020, conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
Those in the east called the Magi who saw this star were reportedly learned individuals. Being astrologers, they knew star patterns and that some things moved around in the sky in certain ways. They would not have mistaken a conjunction for a single star or point of light. We dismiss this hypothesis for that reason.
What about a comet? Comets are objects composed of frozen water and gases in a rock and dust structure orbiting the sun. When a comet approaches the sun, the sun’s heat warms the solid volatile materials and its radiation ionizes materials. These materials convert to a gaseous or ionic form and are expelled from the comet, likely with dust and rock, to form the bright head and tail(s) we can see.
The Chinese have records of various events in the heavens for millennia. Colin Humphreys studied these records and wrote a very interesting article The Star of Bethlehem proposing that, in 5 BC, the “star” was a visible comet.
For the same reason as we rejected the conjunction hypothesis, however, we must reject Humphreys’ comet concept. The Magi would have distinguished a star from a comet because of the tail. In addition, his concept of a comet standing over or hovering over a location on earth isn’t possible. The comet would have to be within the earth’s atmosphere or the earth’s rotation would soon take it away from that location.
So what might this star and any associated phenomena have been?
It had to be bright and/or low enough to attract the Magi’s attention.
It had to indicate for the Magi to follow it.
It had to motivate the Magi to follow it on a long journey.
What could have caused all this to occur?
Based on current knowledge and beliefs, we are seemingly left with two options. One is God. The other extraterrestrials.
Both of these are possibilities.
There may be many possibilities from God. He could have created some type of light in the sky to attract their attention. He could have spoken to the Magi auditorily as had been reported elsewhere in the Bible. He could have put in their thoughts that they needed to follow the “star.” He could have instructed them in dreams.
Extraterrestrial vehicles have shown up as lights in the sky for at least decades—probably much, much longer. They have demonstrated telepathic communication to humans on many occasions. A strange, apparently supernatural, source telling the Magi to follow the light would have caused them to comply.
Following the “star,” the Magi went to Jerusalem, then Bethlehem to discover Jesus’ location. Some translations of the Bible state that the light “stood over” the house in Bethlehem where Jesus was at the time. Others state that the light “came to rest” over It.
Such an event could not be explained by anything outside the earth’s atmosphere.
Or maybe there could be a third possibility: A combination of these two.
God could have directed the extraterrestrials to carry out this sequence.