Estebon_Duarte wrote: interesting book, thanks for the review.
I actually enjoyed the research and conclusions brought forth. The chart proposed is also interesting in its information regarding the <i>Hillaj</i> and <i>Kadukhudhah</i>.

No problem!

Which method do you use for finding the Hillaj and the Kadukhudhah?

Chris Brennan wrote:
No problem!

Which method do you use for finding the Hillaj and the Kadukhudhah?

I was taught the doctrine of the Hilaj and Kadukhudhah from R.Zoller, who related both Bonatti and Ptolemy's methods. Since then I have found the most success in the methods of the Persian Medieval Astrologers.
With the chart proposed I would choose the Sun as Hiliaj and Mercury as Kadukhedhah. The Sun is within 25 degrees of the Asc (and has Authority there) and is conjunct the ruler of its sign. Mercury is in Domicile and angular by division.
I give Mercury its major years (76) even though combust (reception mitigates the combustion).
Through its conjunction with Mars and the Square from Saturn these years are reduced to 31.
Normally I would add the testimony of Jupiter and Venus (who are conjunct the Ascendant), but they are the rulers of the eighth domicile.
If you examine other hillaj methods the resulting years are similar.

I wasn't able to put any time into this thread after starting it last year. However, I think this may be a good time to revive it!

As Tom noted earlier some believers might consider the whole phenomena supernatural and therefore not subject to the laws of nature. Equally, some sceptics have suggested the phenomena was a myth perpetuated in the Gospel of Mathew. Even some theologians have suggested the Star of Bethlehem is a 'midrash', that is a story made up to satisfy an Old Testament prophecy. If either of these views is correct we have nothing further to discuss.

The third possibility is that the star of Bethlehem relates to an astronomical event and as noted above there are a variety of theories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_Bethlehem

From an astronomical point of view I think the Star of Bethlehem described in the Gospel of Mathew fits the nature of a comet much better than anything else. This was also the view of early Christian writers such as Eusebius and Origen.
This article by Colin Humphreys sets out the case for the Star of Bethlehem being a comet.

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Astronom ... hreys.html

Mark

steven wrote:Re-awakening at Christmas

In fact if you follow the time line of this triple conjunction it would have appeared to stationed in the Midheaven when they went rx. But I have in fact seen a very convincing re-inactiment animation of what these magi would have seen.

I am puzzled as to how the Venus / Jupiter / Saturn triple conjunction could possibly be visible at the midheaven at night.

Re-awakening at Christmas

I thought Skyscript needed someone to put up the Christmas decorations. Plus the mundane forum is pretty heavy just now with all the discussion of economic austerity and war.

Of course I have read just about every theory out there and so any further comment is pure speculation.

Thats the fun of it!

In fact if you follow the time line of this triple conjunction it would have appeared to stationed in the Midheaven when they went rx. But I have in fact seen a very convincing re-inactiment animation of what these magi would have seen.

If you examine the historical records time and again its comets that are perceived as stationed above a particular location. For example, Josephus, the Jewish historian describes a comet above the city of Jerusalem for a whole year in AD 66.

It also "fits" the astrology of the times to be very concerned with the risings of Saturn and Jupiter from the Sun (heliacal rising) at the revolution of the world year. This was the case at the beginning of the world year in 7 BC. But that doesn't mean they left then and there. In fact I lean to the following year and the last conjunction when both were retrograde for a good while and would have "appeared" to stand still in the midheaven every night as they traveled to the west.

What do we know of the astrological beliefs in this period though? We are not discussing the astrology of Greece or Ptolemaic Egypt. Equally, the astrology of medieval Persian astrology is no help either. The question is what was going on in the Parthian empire? This is where the Magi undoubtably originated from.

It does appear that in the Parthian Empire and adjacent lands comets did not necessarily have the malefic reputation found in Greek and Roman astrology. They were also linked to the birth of great men. A famous example from antiquity is the eastern King Mithradates the Great, who had coins cast commemorating his birth and coronation which were marked by the appearance of bright comets. Even to this day the great comet of 135BC is called by astronomers Mithradates's comet. Of course its always a two edged sword. To the Romans this comet was malefic as it marked the birth of one of their greatest enemies while for many eastern peoples this may have symbolized a symbol of liberation.

In her book The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy Adrienne Mayor suggests the Magi could well have been motivated by similar beliefs a few decades later at the birth of Jesus.

I have the animation of this conjunction in a file somewhere, I just need to find it.

You do Steven. You really do. Christmas is coming. We deserve a treat.

But it is always fun to speculate - and people I would NOT look for some glorious heavenly chart for Jesus.

I doubt its a very useful exercise myself but that hasn't stopped astrologers having a go! Didn't Giordano Bruno get burnt at the stake for this amongst numerous other heretical beliefs? I have read somewhere that Cardano also cast a chart for Jesus.

Mark

zoidsoft wrote: I am puzzled as to how the Venus / Jupiter / Saturn triple conjunction could possibly be visible at the midheaven at night.

Presumably it would be above the eastern horizon, not very high in the sky?? So they used it for direction but didn't, literally, follow it all night.

But Venus on MC in middle of night would certainly be a indication of a major earth changing event though wouldn't it ..................

I think another possibility is that a man named Jesus (or Jeshua, a variant of Joshua) of Nazareth actually lived and preached a kind of radical ethical Reform Judaism platform in Roman times, but that the texts that came down to us as the Bible underwent all kinds of changes by authors who were not eye-witnesses and who were writing-in new material to make Jesus more godlike to residents of the Roman empire who were ready for religious change.

There are no contemporary reliable sources on Jesus beyond the NT: the passages in Josephus were apparently added by a later author. The classical contemporary and Jewish authors do not mention Jesus.

What happens, however, in the very early years of Christianity, is a split between the early Christian Gnostics--for whom scholar Elaine Pagels is such a super source--and the Christians who founded what became the Roman Catholic church. Many, many, early Christians of the Gnostic persuasion viewed Bible stories as metaphorical only; and with each believer capable of developing new gospels out of a sincere "going within" type of process.

In contrast, the fledgling Catholic church insisted that the scriptures included in the canon be interpreted literally. I think this made the NT more believable to people living in a place and time when gods like Jupiter reportedly had intercourse with females who bore godlike men; when Roman subjects could get tortured for not believing in the divinity of men such as emperors or their deceased favourites, when portents in the sky seemingly heralded miraculous events, and when nobody would have otherwise paid the slightest attention to a Jewish carpenter's son who died an inglorious death via crucifixion.

Indeed, one of the foremost pagan criticisms of the new Christianity in late antiquity was that there was nothing new in it--it was full of beliefs and narratives borrowed from the other mystery cults of the day.

Moreover, we do have historical accounts that the Romans did their census-taking in summer (presumably when roads were dry and travel was facilitated) not right around the winter solstice, during the Mediterranean rainy season.

So to me, the more interesting question is about the star-lore or cultural astronomy that the Gospel stories--including some of the Gnostic gospels like the Gospel of Judas--tell us about what people believed about the heavens at the time.

There is a lot of star-lore in the NT, in which the Gospel stories can be read as a huge debate between proponents of keeping the spring Equinox in Aries or moving it into Pisces. (Cf. tropes of the good shepherd or lamb of God vs. a charismatic preacher who walks on water, befriends fishermen, and multiplies loaves and fishes.) This gets resolved in favour of Aries in the book of Revelation.

Also, the nativity scene--as Marghareta noted-- can be read against a zodiac and a few additional constellations/asterisms--for the winter solstice. Virgo rises on her side (as she is depicted post-partum in some older paintings); Leo symbolizes the House of David (Joseph); Cancer on the zenith has an asterism called "the manger" (Praesepe), followed by Gemini, Jesus' brothers (cf. the figure of Thomas); Taurus; and Aries (the ox and lamb); with the constellations of "the sea" below the horizon.) Cf. also the Platonic belief that souls entered and departed the earth via the Cancer/Capricorn axis.

Anyway, there's more, and on the Star of Bethlehem, but I gotta run now!

The trail of the Star of Bethlehem gets interesting, indeed. To fellow Sherlockians interested in whether the magi could have been astrologers, kings, or Medeans (a region of Persia) as often assumed:

The earliest known extant versions of the Gospels are in Greek. The Greek word for the 3 wise men translates to us as "magi", with the same root as "magic." It doesn't make sense to think of them as kings, because in Matthew 2:7, the magi do Herod's bidding to discover the house of Mary and Joseph (a carpenter); which wouldn't make sense if these magi were royal potentates.

There are real problems with interpreting the Matthew account of the magi as astrologers out of Medea.

According to S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth, eds., The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd. ed. (Oxford University Press, 1996, p.913):

"Only Herodotus calls the Magi a Median [region of Persia] tribe. In the pre-Hellenistic Greek tradition they are reciters of theogonies, explainers of dreams, royal educators and advisers. Magi are experts in the oral tradition rather than a class of priests, although they partake in sacrifices. In the Persepolis administrative texts and in other cuneiform documents magi often occur without a religious context. The Avesta [sacred Zoroastrian texts of Persia/Media] does not mention magi. In the later Greek tradition the term frequently refers to specialists in exotic wisdom, astrology, and sorcery."

This suggests to me that the idea of the magi as astrologers from Medea comes from late antiquity, by someone who was not an eye-witness to the actual nativity events.

For the sake of discussion, we might assume that regardless of whether the Magi were real people or fictional characters, the author of Matthew had to portray them in ways that would seem credible to his audience. Noting, of course, that the Roman empire comprised more supernaturally-oriented societies than our own.

One really interesting article is: Tony T. Malouf, "Where the Magi from Persia or Arabia?" Bibliotheca Sacra (1996) 123-42. At the time of pulication, the author was a professor in an evangelical Christian theological seminary in Jordan, where I imagine he picked up an interest in Near Eastern topography.

Basically the author draws upon several different lines of biblical, classical, and early church history evidence to argue that the Magi must have come from Saudi Arabia, not Persia or Medea as commonly assumed. For example, frankincense and myrrh were produced in the Arabian peninsula, but not in Medea/Persia. Also, to get from Persia to Bethlehem by the known overland travel routes, you would have to go mostly west as well as north some of the time, not merely following a star "at its rising" (Mat.2:2), which would have been in the East. (We could throw in a southeast location on the horizon near the winter solstice.)

But we are still left with a navigation problem: how does one head west from Persia to Israel/Palestine following a star rising in the East? I think you could follow the star at its setting in the West, but this isn't what Matthew 2:2 says.

Malouf underlines that a number of people in the ancient world were called Magi, not just people from Persia. He's got some fascinating material working out the route the Magi would have had to take to get to Bethlehem, based upon ancient itineraries and known travel routes.

This article doesn't quite answer the question of whether Arab magi could have been astrologers. People knew about astrology throughout the ancient world, but the heyday of Arab astrology came later.

Then if you construct a horoscope for someone born around the year 0 CE in Bethlehem on Dec. 25, Julian calendar, there just aren't any conjunctions that would explain a conjunction of planets as appearing extra bright in the sky.

This isn't to say that there couldn't have been a comet (I've not checked any), a fixed star, or that a historical Jesus could not have been born at some other time when there was a planetary conjunction of note.

Good point, Steven, about the possibility of retrogradation. Which is to say, I thought of this myself!

But then, can you suggest a date when both planets would have been closely conjunct as well as retrograde, and visible in the east near the horizon at a time when they would have been visible (at night) and during the reign of Herod?

But if we think of traveling via donkey- or camel-back 200 years ago, it gets awfully hard to follow a star much above the horizon, regardless of whether it is in the east or the west. Possibly one could navigate by keeping the star at one's back, but good luck with this. The magi would have had to travel on existing roads, not cross-lots. Matthew 2:9-11 is problematic, as well. How do you measure whether a star is above sombody's house within a village--or above the next-door neighbour's?

There is no documentation that Christ was born on December 25 (or any other day). We are not even sure why December 25 was selected as the Feast Day of the Nativity. Theories abound, some better than others. Therefore trying to find a cosmic event that would have been visible on or about December 25 near the beginning of a new millennium is being a little too precious. Yes it could have been December 25 or any of 364 other days.

The event, if we believe it happened at all, that resulted in the Magi saddling up their camels and heading east to Judea can be explained in two ways: it was either a supernatural event or it was a natural event. If we believe it was supernatural, then the discussion is over. Every objection raised can be answered with a supernatural explanation, including the time and distance problem. It's been estimated that, depending on time of year, particular route, and actual distance, a journey by camel from Persia to Bethlehem would take between 3 and 12 months.

If we prefer a natural explanation, all of the existing attempts have problems, not to mention the problems presented in the Gospel itself. A cosmic event visible to all would not have escaped Herod's attention, and the attention of Roman astrologers, much less the attention of written history. If the event were so ho-hum, then why would anyone travel for months to pay homage to the newborn child, particularly since they would have been travelling since before his physical birth?

This is the problem with a Jupiter Saturn conjunction. They occur every 20 years. Why this one? Why not the one before or the one after? There would have to be something truly spectacular, natural or supernatural to get these guys going in the first place. This event is said to have heralded the incarnation of God on earth. Surely we can do better than a once every 20 years event.

A comet is a problem due to the time and distance issue. They see the comet, saddle up and by the time they get to Bethlehem the Holy Family is long gone. They only came for a census, right?

If we are looking for something truly spectacular that is visible for a long time and fulfills all or nearly all of the Gospel requirements (and that Herod does not see), we run into some serious problems. But there is spectacular and there is spectacular. What if (those magic words), the cosmic events were spectacular to an accomplished astrologer, and not necessarily spectacularly visible in the sky? Might that not fulfill the Gospel's requirements?

Michael Molnar, professor of the History of Astronomy at Rutgers University (retired) proposed such an explanation. He noted that on April 17 6 BC such a set of astrological events occurred that would have aroused the interest of competent astrologers and resulted in their belief that a great King was to be born in Judea. Having access to reasonable tables and math skills they could have seen this coming well in advance and left long enough in advance to arrive at a propitious time. They would have believed they were going to visit a Royal Family, not a humble family temporarily far from home. There would be nothing in their tradition that would have led them to believe they were present at the birth of the incarnation of God. But they would have seen the signs in the heavens that something of unusual importance was taking place.

I cannot present all of Molnar's work on a post. I'll cite the book below. But briefly at the time he suggests, the three rulers of the fire triplicity, Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn, were all in Aries, the exaltation of the Sun, while Venus (women) was in the sign of her exaltation. Furthermore Jupiter and Saturn were spear bearers for the Sun at that time. There is more. It is, to say the least, a very impressive horoscope. Cast it for a time when everything is on the midheaven and the power of the chart is impressive.

This explains why Herod and no one else seems to have seen the "star." It explains why the Magi went to Judea (Judea was said to be ruled by Aries), it allows an explanation for the time needed for the trip. They could have timed their journey so that they arrived near the time of greatest effect of the alignment. And in my opinion anyway, it is far more satisfying than Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions, comets, etc. It is something an astrologer would have noted.

The explanation is not, I'm sure, foolproof. And nothing will ever satisfy everyone. But it is a real feather in the cap for our art, something we should always be looking for.

The Star of Bethlehem, The Legacy of the Magi
Michael R. Molnar
Rutgers University Press, 1999

Tom, your reasoning makes a lot of sense.

This is a really intriguing exercise. I just don't think the astronomical reasoning is going to get at "the truth." We can also take a look at some of the historical and archaeological evidence, and try to interpolate.

For one thing, some of the more sophisticated astrological arguments assume that the author of Matthew 2:1-12 had a fairly sophisticated knowledge of astrology, which seems improbable.

April? Maybe. Someone could go back through the Jewish calendar, and see whether Jesus' hypothesized April birth occurred at the time of the Passover (a floating holiday, in the Jewish soli-lunar calendar) which was a pilgrimage festival in Jerusalem, so nobody would have gone to his birthplace for a census then. This was also around the time of the winter barley harvest, which was the food of the poor people in ancient times. Again, not a super time for peasants to travel.

Moreover, if we want to do some cross-tabs within the book of Matthew it is the principal book really to show how Jesus fulfilled the prescriptions and prophecies of the OT. Given the OT's mistrust of divination, an astrologically sophisticated astrology in Matthew 2:1-12 seems even more curious.

Unfortunately, there is so much disagreement among biblical scholars (some with demonstrably sectarian, doctrinaire views) as to who wrote Matthew that it is hard for a non-expert to make a strong case.

But here's the thing: if the Gospel according to Matthew was written by a Jewish tax collector (i.e., by Matthew the disciple/apostle) then it is doubtful that he would have had much knowledge of astrology or been in touch with foreign magi.

Again, the earliest extant versions of the NT are in Greek, not Hebrew. So if this gospel were written by a native Greek-speaker some decades (perhaps over a century) after the crucifixion of Jesus, which seems plausible given its apparent heavily reliance on the Gospel According to Mark, then he might well have scripted-in non-eye wtness narratives designed to strengthen the significance of Jesus' birth to a public seriously swayed by recourse to the supernatural.

I've seen this sort of reasoning today, where some devout Christians refer to Jesus' miracles as hard evidence of his divinity. Not as evidence that these events couldn't have happened.

And then where does one draw the line? Devout Catholics today, for example, believe in the immaculate conception and virgin birth as real and literal events. I am not suggesting for a minute that Catholics shouldn't believe this; but then if a secular astrologer doesn't believe these events happened, then how does one determine which miraculous narrative to believe in, and which one to deny? Why should the Star of Bethlehem be any more real than narratives of Jesus walking on water or multiplying loaves and fishes?

So there is a fourth position, beyond: (1) There was a real "star of Bethlehem", that can be deduced astronomically; (2) There was a real star of Bethlehem, but it was supernatural so no further discussion is possible; and (3) the NT is mere fable. And that position is:

(4) This is all a very interesting exercise in cultural astronomy. My view is that Matthew 2:1-12 is in the NT because the author thought it lended credence to Jesus' candidacy for Messiah. The author of Matthew seems strongly concerned to bolster this particular argument.

BTW, the lore surrounding Jesus stresses his role as a solar and agricultural divinity, similar to Tammuz/Dimmuzi, Bacchus/Dionysos, Ceres/Demeter, Prosperpina/Persephone, and many others.

If you have ever visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the legendary stable is in a cave-like sub-basement well below the main church edifice. A baby depicted with a halo emerging from a cave seems very much like the new rising sun, just after the winter solstice. Many cultures had this "wheel of the year." The dying god who is reborn was common to many pagan agricultural societies.

The date of December 25 is highly salient to a solar deity, because within about 3 days after the solstice, ordinary people can detect that either (a) the daylight is getting slightly longer; or that in hilly country where you can see the sun's rising and setting along a ridge line, the sun perceptably moves slightly to the north.

This is not to argue that a carpenter's son from Nazareth who preached a very powerful and radical ethical message never existed. I think he did, but that much of the NT was added on by authors writing for the audience of the ancient world, who demanded miracles and divinity as "proof" that a Jewish working-class preacher was worth revolutionizing their pagan beliefs.