The star of Bethlehem

Here’s a recent email question (edited to ensure confidentiality):

Do you know of any good resources on extra-biblical confirmation of the events of the infancy narratives?  I’m thinking in particular of the Magi and the star.  A teenager was asking some questions about the historicity of the narratives.

Here’s my reply:

A problem with questions like that is that folks who raise them are rarely prepared to do the necessary reading, if you point them to specific titles.

1. There are entire monographs devoted to this issue. For instance:

i) Mark Kidger, The Star of Bethlehem:

http://books.google.com/books?id=_ISv1gPQJV4C&source=gbs_navlinks_s

ii) Michael Molnar, The Star of Bethlehem:

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Star_of_Bethlehem.html?id=GXUTibYxdDcC

iii) Ernest Martin, The Star That Astonished the World:

http://www.askelm.com/star/index.asp

2. There are chapters of books that discuss this issue. For instance:

i) Edwin Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, chap. 13.

ii) Paul Maier, In the Fullness of Time, chap. 7.

http://books.google.com/books/about/In_the_Fullness_of_Time.html?id=Hnb67CuoHugC

iii) D. C. Allison, Studies in Matthew: Interpretation Past and Present, 17-41.

http://books.google.com/books/about/Studies_in_Matthew.html?id=UokRAQAAIAAJ

iv) Edwin Yamauchi, “The Episode of the Magi”:

http://books.google.com/books/about/Chronos_Kairos_Christos.html?id=UCBBY_O88uYC

3. There’s also online material on ancient astronomy/astrology:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/astro/argr/index.htm

http://www.smoe.org/arcana/astrol1.html

As well as this analysis:

http://bylogos.blogspot.com/2010/12/star-of-bethlehem.html

4. Is he asking if there’s specific extrabiblical confirmation for the visit of the Magi? To my knowledge, there’s none. However, that’s an unreasonable expectation in the first place.

Is he asking if there’s general extrabiblical background material which is consistent with the Matthean account? Yes. See above.

5. Is he asking if we can correlate the star of Bethlehem with ancient astronomical notices? There are detailed, scholarly attempts to do so. See above.

6. However, it’s possible that that’s a false lead. We have to put ourselves in the situation of ancient readers. Ancient readers didn’t necessarily equate stars with natural objects. They sometimes viewed stars as supernatural objects.

There’s a danger that a modern reader projecting his astronomical preconceptions back onto the ancient text. But that’s not necessarily how the original readers would understand the text.

For instance, in ancient Jewish literature, stars are sometimes associated with angels. So a 1C reader of Matthew might construe the “star” as a luminous guiding angel. In that case it would be a local phenomenon. Not generally observable, and not something you could correlate with real stars or stellar conjunctions.

7. The behavior of the star of Bethlehem is erratic, and an ancient reader would surely have noticed that. Ancient stargazers were aware of the fact that stars behaved in regular, lawlike, cyclical patterns Even retrograde motion was regular. That predictability made ancient star charts possible. Made certain astronomical predictions possible.

Given the irregular, anomalous behavior (even by ancient standards) of the star of Bethlehem, I suspect ancient readers would have taken that to be a supernatural phenomenon and likely a personal agent.