This time of year, you’ll no doubt be seeing commentaries about the Star of Bethlehem, many of which will explain away the “star” as a conjunction of two planets, or as a comet, or even as a bolide (very bright meteor). Looking over my past writing, I realize I’ve been guilty of this in this column (“Christmas Star – in Spring?” Dec. 24, 2009), making the case for two close planetary conjunctions.
The idea of the exercise is to explain away three verses in the Biblical gospel of Matthew, written in Greek (not Aramaic, the lingua franca of Judea) nearly 100 years after the events referred to in book two: “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east … and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.”
That’s a lot to explain away, and Biblical scholars, astronomers and astrologers have spent much ink on the effort. First was probably the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, who, in 1614, calculated that three conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn occurred in 7 BC, although calling them conjunctions is a bit of a hyperbole — the closest they came was nearly a degree, or two moon-diameters, so nothing to get too excited about. Better were two later conjunctions of Venus and Jupiter. The first, on Aug. 12, 3 BC, was 1/5 of the diameter of the full moon apart. Then, on the following June 17, 2 BC, these two brightest of the planets came so close — less than a minute of arc apart (the full moon subtends about 30 minutes), they would have almost appeared as one object. Such a “great conjunction” is rare; it happened in 2020 for the first time in 800 years.
If you want to get literal (ignoring the near certainty that King Herod died in 4 BC, putting Jesus’ presumed birth somewhere between 6 and 4 BC), you could make a case for planetary conjunctions: The Magi first saw something special in the night sky in 3 BC and arrived in Judea a year later. Or was it a comet (none were recorded around then)? Or a nova (ditto)? Or should we just give up trying to shoehorn the Biblical “star” tale (only recounted in Matthew) to fit astronomical data? Especially since the trope of “guiding stars” would have been familiar in those days. Aeneas, for instance, was guided by a star from the ruins of Troy to Italy, while a star led the Corinthian statesman (and killer of his despotic brother) Timoleon to Sicily.
Then there’s Ignatius’ Letter to the Ephesians which has this to say about Jesus’ birth: “A star shone forth in heaven above all the other stars, the light of which was inexpressible, while its novelty struck men with astonishment. And all the rest of the stars, with the sun and moon, formed a chorus to this star, and its light was exceedingly great above them all … when God appeared in human form.” Ignatius, Patriarch of Antioch, was an early Christian writer and martyr, and is best known for seven (probably authentic) letters. His Letter to the Ephesians seems to have been written shortly before his martyrdom, around 100 AD, or perhaps as late as 140 AD. In any case, his account of a really, really bright star sure isn’t referring to the comparatively tame star in Matthew’s gospel.
I’ll leave it up to the reader to untangle it all.
Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9@yahoo.com, planethumboldt.substack.com) wishes you all a peaceful holiday season.
This article appears in Through Mark Larson’s Lens 2025.