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Authors: Thomas Quinn
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of Jupiter and Saturn in the constellation of Pisces—the constellation of the Jews. Something like this might have inspired the story. A lot of Discovery Channel airtime has been consumed with these attempts to reconcile science with faith. Unfortunately, they all fail, and for a couple of simple reasons.
First, there’s no astronomical phenomenon of any kind that could guide Wise Men for hundreds of miles to a pinpoint location on earth. Except for a meteor, which would have put a crimp in the whole evening, what happens in space stays in space. You can gallop towards a star all you want. It will never lead you to a particular city, much less a specific Motel VI in Bethlehem.
The only kind of “star” that could do this would be the thingy you see on a typical Christmas card: A glowing orb that looks like it’s hovering a few hundred yards above the sleepy suburbs of Bethlehem, beaming a spotlight down to where Jesus lay asleep in the hay.
Okay, fine then. It had to be a miracle star. Well, why not? It was a night when virgins were giving birth. Ah, but there’s another problem. If Wise Men could see it from another country, anyone living closer to Bethlehem would have seen it, too. By the time the three wise guys showed up, there’d be standing room only at the inn. Everyone would have flocked to the manger, including the Romans.
But the Gospels have nobody but the Magi seeing the star. Even shepherds tending their flocks nearby were told by an angel about the baby Jesus. Fact is, there’s no real object that would be visible to astrologers hundreds of miles away but not to shepherds down the street. Nor would so many people ignore something like that. It doesn’t add up. The Star of Bethlehem is a myth, just like the stars reported over the delivery rooms of other virgin born god-men.
Oh, and here’s a bit of trivia you can share over your next cup of eggnog: According to Matthew, by the time the Magi found Jesus, he was living in a house:
When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother… [Matt. 2:10–11]
Maybe the innkeeper came through after all.
The Slaughter of the Innocents
Then Herod…killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. [Matt. 2:16]
It would have been awfully sloppy of Herod to order the death of all males under two if the baby he was after was a newborn. Some think the passage suggests Jesus was two years old by the time the Wise Men found him. Whatever the case, this “slaughter of the innocents,” a phrase Matthew borrows from the prophet Jeremiah, had to be fictional. As a puppet king of Rome, Herod didn’t have the authority to order mass executions. While the Romans could be brutal in warfare, they did follow the rule of law. Given the manpower such a massacre would require, they’d need a really good reason to do this, and Jewish prophecies about a messiah wouldn’t cut it. Besides, if such an event had actually occurred, there would’ve been an insurrection. Judean Jews had rioted over far less egregious offenses than this, yet there’s no record outside the Bible of a mass infanticide, or of any reaction to it. Surely somebody would have written this down long before the author of Matthew did eighty years later.
To skeptics, the story is an echo of the Moses legend, where the pharaoh ordered Egyptian midwives to kill Hebrew babies at birth to control the growing population. It’s why the baby Moses ended up floating down the Nile. As it is, Jesus was saved when his parents retreated to another country—Egypt—until Herod died. Matthew is the only Gospel that mentions this major side trip. Because the writer is so set on linking Jesus to the Old Testament, it’s no surprise that he got the baby Jesus into the birth country of Moses.
Furthermore, the two
First, there’s no astronomical phenomenon of any kind that could guide Wise Men for hundreds of miles to a pinpoint location on earth. Except for a meteor, which would have put a crimp in the whole evening, what happens in space stays in space. You can gallop towards a star all you want. It will never lead you to a particular city, much less a specific Motel VI in Bethlehem.
The only kind of “star” that could do this would be the thingy you see on a typical Christmas card: A glowing orb that looks like it’s hovering a few hundred yards above the sleepy suburbs of Bethlehem, beaming a spotlight down to where Jesus lay asleep in the hay.
Okay, fine then. It had to be a miracle star. Well, why not? It was a night when virgins were giving birth. Ah, but there’s another problem. If Wise Men could see it from another country, anyone living closer to Bethlehem would have seen it, too. By the time the three wise guys showed up, there’d be standing room only at the inn. Everyone would have flocked to the manger, including the Romans.
But the Gospels have nobody but the Magi seeing the star. Even shepherds tending their flocks nearby were told by an angel about the baby Jesus. Fact is, there’s no real object that would be visible to astrologers hundreds of miles away but not to shepherds down the street. Nor would so many people ignore something like that. It doesn’t add up. The Star of Bethlehem is a myth, just like the stars reported over the delivery rooms of other virgin born god-men.
Oh, and here’s a bit of trivia you can share over your next cup of eggnog: According to Matthew, by the time the Magi found Jesus, he was living in a house:
When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy; and going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother… [Matt. 2:10–11]
Maybe the innkeeper came through after all.
The Slaughter of the Innocents
Then Herod…killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. [Matt. 2:16]
It would have been awfully sloppy of Herod to order the death of all males under two if the baby he was after was a newborn. Some think the passage suggests Jesus was two years old by the time the Wise Men found him. Whatever the case, this “slaughter of the innocents,” a phrase Matthew borrows from the prophet Jeremiah, had to be fictional. As a puppet king of Rome, Herod didn’t have the authority to order mass executions. While the Romans could be brutal in warfare, they did follow the rule of law. Given the manpower such a massacre would require, they’d need a really good reason to do this, and Jewish prophecies about a messiah wouldn’t cut it. Besides, if such an event had actually occurred, there would’ve been an insurrection. Judean Jews had rioted over far less egregious offenses than this, yet there’s no record outside the Bible of a mass infanticide, or of any reaction to it. Surely somebody would have written this down long before the author of Matthew did eighty years later.
To skeptics, the story is an echo of the Moses legend, where the pharaoh ordered Egyptian midwives to kill Hebrew babies at birth to control the growing population. It’s why the baby Moses ended up floating down the Nile. As it is, Jesus was saved when his parents retreated to another country—Egypt—until Herod died. Matthew is the only Gospel that mentions this major side trip. Because the writer is so set on linking Jesus to the Old Testament, it’s no surprise that he got the baby Jesus into the birth country of Moses.
Furthermore, the two
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