A sign of the times?

“TWINKLE, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you are.” So goes the old nursery rhyme. But maybe the modern version should read, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star. How I wonder what you were.” Not just because we don't see stars as they are, only as they were when their distant twinkle first set out to reach our eyes, but also because one great star-mystery revolves around where they were at the time when Christ was born.

The mystery begins with the Gospel according to St Matthew, and the story of the wise men led from 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.”

Astronomers, astrologers and Christians have long speculated about what this perambulating star might have been. None of the other gospels mentions it, yet few aspects of the Nativity have excited so much interest as this brief reference by Matthew. The latest theory comes from Sir Patrick Moore, Britain's most venerable astronomer, whose book “The Star of Bethlehem” was published in September 2001 by Canopus Publishing—yes, also the name of the second-brightest star in the firmament.

Sir Patrick takes a scientific approach to the issue. He considers a number of astronomical options—a conjunction of planets, a supernova and a comet, among others—and then plumps for the one that he thinks best fits the circumstances. Most probably, he thinks, it was a couple of meteors—so called “shooting stars”, nothing more than cometary debris streaking its way into our atmosphere. As an explanation for such a portentous mystery, this has to be too mundane.

The great Austrian astronomer Johannes Kepler, the man who showed that planets move round the sun in ellipses, not circles, thought that the Star of Bethlehem was probably a nova or a supernova, a star brilliantly blowing up. He was influenced by observing a spectacular one himself in 1604.

Jupiter, maybe?

Since Kepler, interest in the Star of Bethlehem has waxed and waned, a bit like a supernova itself. It has, however, been intensifying in recent years. Two books appeared just before Sir Patrick's, presenting contrary views. In “The Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomer's View” (Princeton University Press, 1999), Mark Kidger, a British astrophysicist, supports the nova theory. But he thinks that it was not just a nova, but a nova plus a series of planetary get-togethers that led the wise men to Bethlehem all those years ago. In particular, he points to a nova that occurred in the constellation of Aquila in 5 BC, and a couple of unusual planetary conjunctions that took place in 6 and 7 BC.

Mr Kidger's book was followed by “The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi” (Rutgers University Press, 1999), written by an American astronomer, Michael Molnar. Mr Molnar takes a different tack, arguing that it was not an astronomical event that guided the wise men on their journey, but an astrological one. He may not have the best theory, but he certainly has the best story.

In 1990 he bought an ancient Roman coin on which was depicted a ram looking over its shoulder at a star. Significantly, the ram is the symbol of Aries, one of the constellations of the zodiac—the zodiac being the “belt” of constellations through which the planets move. Astrologers read great human significance into the positions of the planets and the sun vis-à-vis the various constellations of the zodiac, particularly at the moment of a person's birth.

Mr Molnar, realising that Aries (the astrological sign for the period between March 21st and April 20th) was traditionally a sign of special significance for the Jews, then discovered that Jupiter, the planet of kings, was undergoing a lunar eclipse on April 17th in the year 6 BC, precisely at a time when it was “in the east”. Eureka! Any really wise man seeing this event at the time would have known that it signified that a king was (or was about to be) born among the Jews.

Sir Patrick scatters an ice-cold shower of meteorites on this theory by pointing out that the eclipse on April 17th 6 BC occurred in daylight, and would not have been visible to any man, no matter how wise. On one thing, though, the speculators all agree. Whatever it was that the three wise men saw in the east, they didn't see it on December 25th in the year zero. Because of some double-counting by subsequent calendar-makers trying to date time from the birth of Christ, Christ was actually born four or five years “Before Christ”. As for his actual birthday, Mr Molnar plumps for April 17th; Sir Patrick favours early February.

Planet power

It is not necessary to believe in astrology to accept that it had a great influence on the lives of the ancients. Even Sir Patrick, the strict scientist, acknowledges that “we must always bear in mind the purely astrological significance of the star, and we must accept that the wise men were astrologers first and foremost”.

Astrology and astronomy have been inextricably intermingled for the greater part of man's time on earth. Astrology before Christ concentrated on the movement of those planets identified at the time (Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn and Venus), plus the moon and the sun. Together, these made up the seven stellae errantes of the Romans, and it was the astronomers' observations of their relationship to the “fixed stars”, fixed, that is, vis-à-vis each other, that provided astrologers with their raw material.

Why, if God was in the heavens and controller of the universe, did he not give advance warning of sending his only son to earth?

The influential astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, who lived near Alexandria in the second century AD, was also the author of “Tetrabiblos”, a standard astrological text. He was so sure of the underpinnings of astrology that he wrote, “Should Venus be conjoined with Mars, and Jupiter also presents himself, Mars at the same time being under the rays of the sun, women will then mingle in intercourse with servants and persons meaner than themselves, or with aliens or vagabonds.” Beware the next such conjunction of these planets.

The Chinese also mixed their astronomy with astrology. Their astronomers observed Halley's comet in 240 BC, and 20 years later the emperor, Shih Huang, ordered all books to be destroyed except those which related to agriculture, medicine and astrology—the only sciences he thought useful to mankind. In all ancient civilisations, it was assumed that terrestrial events had astronomical causes. The Chinese believed that the rising of Arcturus, the fourth-brightest star in the sky, caused spring to burst forth, while the Egyptians thought that the appearance of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, brought about the annual flooding of the Nile.

Astrology played a big part in the life of the early Arabs too—for instance, in deciding on auspicious days to start new buildings or even new cities. When he set out to construct Baghdad in the middle of the eighth century AD, the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur consulted a Persian astrologer called Nawbakht to find a conjunction of the planets favourable to laying the foundation stone for a new capital.

He then designed Baghdad according to a cosmological plan, with his own celestially-domed palace located, as it were, at the centre of the then known universe. The dome there, as elsewhere in Muslim architecture, represents Homer's “vault of heaven”, the transparent hemisphere that ancient astronomers believed sat over the (flat) earth and through which the stars were viewed.

Even the invention and widespread use of the telescope in the first decade of the 17th century did not radically change man's view of the heavens. Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer and a contemporary of both Kepler and Galileo, wrote: “To deny the influence of the stars is to deny the wisdom and providence of God.” And in the early 19th century, Byron could still write:

For ye are a beauty and a mystery.And create in us such love and reverence from afarThat life, fame, power and fortuneHave named themselves a star.

Down to earth

It is not like that any more. As Peter Lum wrote in “The Stars in Our Heaven”, a fascinating compendium of mythology and fact surrounding man's perception of the stars: “There is no sense of nearness and of the stars' direct participation in human life, such as there once was.” And he was writing in 1932.

Today's astronomers do not even go to observatories, never mind look at the night sky with their naked eyes. They “watch” the sky from remote computers. As this paper's science section commented earlier this year: “The chances of finding an astronomer who knows what a particular star or constellation is called are distressingly low.” Astronomy is all about the theoretical physics of the outer reaches of space. It exists quite outside star-gazing. As for astrology, it is the province of magazines, and widely scorned.

There are certainly countless difficulties with astrology if you take it literally. Its scheme of things was laid down long before (in 1930) man discovered Pluto, a little planet on the outer reaches of the solar system which annoyingly moves well outside the zodiac. And the dates when the sun moves through the constellations do not correspond (as they were meant to) with the dates of the astrological houses. The sun, for example, is in the constellation Aries between April 18th and May 14th, yet the astrological sign Aries covers the period from March 21st to April 20th. It can be argued that Mr Molnar's lunar eclipse in 6 BC occurred while the sun was in Pisces, the constellation of the fishes, not a time of particular significance for the Jews.

Despite these difficulties, however, astrology is invaluable as a tool for helping us to understand how our ancestors perceived the world, and in particular what Matthew was referring to when he wrote about the Star of Bethlehem. So much so that it, rather than astronomy, should be the starting point for any explanation.

Matthew's dilemma

So imagine this: Matthew is trying to persuade the Jews, several decades after the death of Christ, that Christ was indeed the Messiah, the son of God. The first question that any half-intelligent member of his audience would have asked would have been why, if God was in the heavens and controller of the universe, he did not give advance warning of the fact that he was sending his only son to earth. Everything else on earth, from the tendency of women to mingle with vagabonds to the flooding of great rivers, could be foretold in the stars. Surely the greatest event in man's history, which is what you (Matthew) are telling us the birth of Jesus was, could also have been foretold in the stars? And by something far more significant than an everyday conjunction of Venus with Mars?

“Funny you should ask that,” Matthew would have been forced to reply. And he would have had to search around in his imagination for an astrological answer. Which could explain why only his Gospel tells the story (because only he was asked), and why astronomers ever since have found it so difficult to identify the event he was referring to. Of such yielding to temptation, maybe, are eternal mysteries made. Of course, for anyone who takes everything written in the Old and New Testaments literally, this explanation of the Star of Bethlehem is not acceptable. For the rest of us, though, it has to be a front-runner.