Factors Involved In Evaluating Star Of Bethlehem Theories

We get media stories on the star of Bethlehem at this time of year, especially about the claims of people who advocate astronomical views of the star. Here's a post I put up on Facebook last year that briefly outlines four of the factors we should take into account when evaluating theories about the star.

Daniel's flat earth

The Shape of the Earth

Disregarding the dome, the essential flatness of the earth's surface is required by verses like Daniel 4:10-11. In Daniel, the king “saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth...reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds.” If the earth were flat, a sufficiently tall tree would be visible to “the earth's farthest bounds,” but this is impossible on a spherical earth. 

https://lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/febible.htm

That's a fallacious inference for two reasons:

i) Human distance acuity is limited. 

ii) It fails to consider how the prooftext is introduced: 

I saw a dream that made me afraid. As I lay in bed the fancies and the visions of my head alarmed me (Dan 4:5).

But dreamscapes are notoriously surreal. Because dreams are imaginary, they aren't bound by what's physically realistic or possible. 

Is Christian opposition to science artificially selective?

Other 19C Bible readers, while comfortable with the general idea "that the Bible was written in terms accommodated to human understanding" and while generally seeking "to reconcile apparent discrepancies between science and Scripture by careful reinterpretation of one or the other," were nevertheless uncomfortable with recourse to the idea of divine accommodation in Scripture when it came to the new biology. Scholars like Edward Pusey (1800-1882), Charles Hodge (1797-1878), and John Dawson (1820-1899) accepted the reinterpretations of Scripture that had arisen as a result of Copernicus' work on cosmology and even the more recent discoveries of the new geology–at least insofar as these established an ancient age for the earth…With respect to Darwinian biology, however, these same scholars were generally opposed to making a similar move–at least given the present state of scientific knowledge.

…there do remain in the modern world not only young-earthers who regard old-earthers as "unbiblical," but also geocentrists and flat-earthers who regard everyone to their "left" (including both old- and young-earthers) the same way–as dangerously liberal in their approach to Scripture. The Bible, these Christians insist, must trump in all cases what unbelieving scientists says; we cannot pick and choose. Those who no longer believe in geocentrism (or flat-earthism), they allege, have capitulated to science even while pretending that they have not. They no longer adhere to what the Bible clearly teaches–in passages like Joshua, for example, where the sun indisputably stands still. I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017), 408, 434.

1. This raises a legitimate issue that deserves to be met head-on. Theologically, evolution raises the stakes in a way that antiquity of the universe does not. Human anthropology is central to Christian theology in a way that geology or geocentrism is not. So it may well be that some Christians are inconsistent on this point. 

2. However, even if where they draw the line is driven by theological motives, and to that degree, arbitrary, it doesn't follow that such distinctions are necessarily arbitrary. Indeed, it begs the question to treat all cases alike unless they are alike. That's not something we an settle in advance, apart from exegetical scrutiny. So there's nothing intrinsically ad hoc about treating these issues on a case-by-case basis, because we don't know if they're all of a kind unless and until we examine them. Even if theological motives sometimes exert undue influence, it's logically fallacious to invalidate a position for that reason alone. We must still evaluate the interpretation on the merits, whether or not impure motives played a role in the conclusion. 

3. The theory of evolution remains scientifically–and not just theologically–controversial in a way that astronomy and geology do not. So at that level alone, the comparison is inapt. It's very difficult to turn evolution into a workable theory. You don't have to be a Christian fundamentalist to say that or see that. 

4. As I've often detailed, questioning flat-earth cosmography doesn't require any knowledge of modern science. The endlessly reproduced three-story mockup wouldn't jive for attentive observers in the ancient Near East. 

5. Modern readers don't come to the geocentric prooftexs as a blank slate. We're inclined to consciously or unconsciously filter that through Ptolemaic astronomy and the Galileo affair. But the OT wasn't using that paradigm. There's precious little evidence that OT writers shared the Hellenistic Greek theoretical interest in celestial mechanics. 

6. The meaning of Joshua's Long Day is far from straightforward. 

i) Joshua's statement is poetic. Notice the parallelism. 

ii) In addition, the narrator is summarizing a description from a book that no longer exists. So we can't compare his summary with the full text of the primary source. We lack the larger context. 

iii) The miracle is describe from the phenomenological standpoint of an earthbound observer: the position of the sun at Gibeon, and the position of the moon in the Valley of Aijalon. That's a perceptual, local frame of reference. 

At the very least it describes a supernatural or preternatural optical astronomical illusion. Maybe something more. But the details can't be reconstructed from the poetry or the summary of primary source that no longer exists. 

A flat earth

https://historyforatheists.com/2016/06/the-great-myths-1-the-medieval-flat-earth/

Apollo 11 mission patch

Neil deGrasse Tyson thinking he's dropping more wisdom than Solomon:

The Apollo 11 mission patch:
No American flag.
No space hardware.
No Astronaut names.
In that regard, unique among space emblems.

Affirmation that walking on the Moon was an achievement of the human species, to be shared by all. pic.twitter.com/Fw7Y7EWR1m

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) July 20, 2019

1. Sure, except for the blindingly obvious bald eagle which almost everyone knows is America's national symbol.

2. If NdGT wanted to convey the idea that Apollo 11 was "an achievement of the human species, to be shared by all", he could simply have quoted what Neil Armstrong said. You know, the whole "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" thing?

Or the Apollo 11 lunar plaque that was left on the surface of the moon:

3. On the one hand, the fact that it was the U.S. that was able to put a man on the moon and come back home safely is primarily a testament to the U.S. and the U.S. space program (NASA). After all, American leaders promoted the space program. American voters supported the space program. American taxpayers paid for the space program. American scientists and engineers drove the space program. American astronauts manned the missions. And so on.

On the other hand, just because the U.S. shouldered the weight and achieved what it achieved doesn't necessarily imply others made zero contributions. Nor does it imply that Americans didn't do it on behalf of "mankind".

NdGT could have pointed out the U.S. space program had help from other scientists around the world (e.g. The Dish, Canada's contributions). He could have likewise pointed out that NASA had European scientists and engineers (among others) who fled wartorn Europe and/or Soviet communism come and work on Apollo 11.

4. There's something to be said for a nation that is able to attract the brainpower, cultivate the native talent, foster the industriousness, etc. to send a man to the moon and back. In this respect, the United States in the 1960s was like fertile soil that allowed an amazing plant (Apollo 11) to grow and thrive. The question is what made the U.S. such fertile soil?

At the same time, there's a reason the Soviets didn't send a man to the moon and back despite some other impressive achievements.

Black holes

https://stream.org/astronomers-release-first-image-black-hole/

Me, myself, and I

i) A stock objection which unitarians raise to Trinitarian theology is that in the Gospels, Jesus talks to the Father or prays to the Father. Unitarians point to that and exclaim: "Ah ha! Jesus and the Father must be different! How silly to think God is talking to himself!"

ii) Now, at one level, that's a brainless objection because Trinitarian theology requires the Father and the Son to be different in a fundamental respect. So that's hardly inconsistent with Trinitarian theology. To the contrary, that's what we'd expect if it's true.

iii) But here's another point: there's nothing necessarily incongruous about the same individual addressing himself or talking to himself. Suppose a time-traveler in the future writes a letter to himself in the past. In contains important information. Reading the letter will avert a disaster. Based on his advance knowledge of how the past will eventuate, he plants the letter at a time and place where his younger self is sure to find it.  

Whether or not time travel is incoherent, there is nothing incoherent in principle about sending a message to yourself. There's nothing contradictory about the idea of doing that. This is just a graphic way to illustrate that principle. 

iv) Or, to take a more prosaic example, suppose you keep a diary because you don't want to forget what happened to you, from day to day. Even though daily incidents might seem to be insignificant at the time, some might prove to be highly significant in retrospect. 

Every so often you review earlier entries in your diary. The diary was written by the writer to the writer. The diarist is both writer and reader. Although it's possible for someone else to read your diary, the reason you kept a diary was to remind yourself of things that happened to you. The diarist is the intended reader of his own diary. 

v) Or take a two-way correspondence between you and your counterpart in a parallel universe. Suppose the multiverse is real, and it's possible to communicate with yourself in the alternate timeline. So you and your counterpart in the parallel universe exchange messages, back and forth. 

Even if there is no multiverse, or even if, assuming there is a multiverse, communication between you and your counterpart is technically impossible, there's nothing contradictory about the idea of doing so. Once again, this is just a graphic way to illustrate that principle. 

vi) I'd add that (v) raises tricky issues about personal identity. Yet that's no different in principle from counterfactual scenarios generally. Many philosophers, unless they are diehard reductionists, make allowance for a certain amount of give in personal identity to accommodate the truth-value of counterfactuals. The price for denying that is extremely high. 

Astronomy and the date of the crucifixion

We have to be cautious about these correlations. It is, however, an interesting example of how extrabiblical data might illuminate the text. That would be obvious to the observer, but not to a reader who wasn't there:

https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1985/JASA3-85Humphreys.html

Global warming in the cosmic simulation

https://news.abs-cbn.com/business/02/01/19/billionaire-musk-releases-all-tesla-patents-to-help-save-the-earth

Isn't this the same guy who thinks the universe is a cosmic simulation? How do we combat global warming in a cosmic video game? If humans are just artificially intelligent virtual characters, we can't rewrite the program from the inside. Is that up to the aliens who designed the video game we inhabit? 

Clock management

I'll comment on this:

https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/10-questions-to-ask-a-young-earth-creationist

Here are 10 questions I’d like to ask of young earthers:

1. Can we start by agreeing that the Gospel is more about the Rock of Ages than the ages of rocks?

The centre of the Gospel is the crucified and risen Christ, and everything in the Old Testament leads up to that. Jesus, and not the age of my rock collection, is the heart of the Christian faith. 

Cutesy but disingenuous–as is clear from the next question (#2). 

Infinite regress

Is an infinite regress incoherent? This crops up in debates over the cosmological argument. But it depends on what the cosmological argument is used to prove. Did the universe begin to exist? Is the universe contingent? Even if (ex hypothesi) the universe is eternal, it may still be contingent.

That said, suppose I'm standing in a hallway with an infinite row of dominos left and right. The dominos on my left have fallen. The dominoes on my right are standing, but about to fall, as the chain reaction continues apace.

But if an infinite number of dominoes has already fallen, why haven't all the dominos fallen? Why are any dominoes left standing? Given an infinite domino effect, why isn't the effect complete by now? Does it take more time? But an infinite amount of time already elapsed. Does it take more time than infinite time for the chain reaction to terminate? Why the break between past and future? Why is it not all in the past? 

The argument from scale

I'd like to consider a couple of objections to God's existence. In terms of how they are conventionally expressed, it's not clear if these are two separate objections or one overall objection:

1. The argument from scale

The vast size and vast antiquity of the universe renders human existence insignificant by comparison. Humans occupy such an infinitesimal fraction of the universe, in time and space. 

2. The universe is overwhelmingly hostile to life

Despite the vastness of the universe, intelligent life may only exist on earth. 

These two objections are individually problematic:

Regarding (1):

i) Advocates of mature creation don't think the universe preexisted humans for billions of years.

ii) The theological value of human life is irrelevant to the physical size of the universe in relation to the human population or the position of the earth in relation to the universe. That's a category mistake. To take a comparison, if a son is drafted to fight a war overseas, is he less precious to his parents when he's thousands of miles away compared to when he's living at home or living in the same town? Spatial separation is beside the point.

Is a parent who died 40 years ago less precious to their child than a parent who died last week? Temporal separation is beside the point. 

God is a discarnate being, so the value he places on creatures has nothing to do with physical proximity. 

Suppose, for argument's sake, that humans were able to colonize the universe. We had space stations scattered across the universe. Would that enhance our significance in the sight of God? The objection is theologically obtuse.

Regarding (2), astronomers are conflicted on that issue. Some think earth might be the only planet where life exists while others think the odds are that life must exist elsewhere in the universe. 

But another problem is how these two objections cancel each other out. Supposing that intelligent life only exists on earth, doesn't that make humans extra special? Don't rare things tend to be more precious than ordinary things? Isn't an oasis valuable in relation to the surrounding wasteland? 

The strange star of Bethlehem

Commentators remark on the unnatural motion of the "star". But presumably that's what caught the attention of the Magi. In general, the motion of the sun, moon, and stars is uniform. Sun, moon, and stars always rise in the east and set in West. There's seasonal variation, but that's uniform, too.

To get the attention of the Magi, we'd expect the "star" to do something highly irregular. And that's explicable if it's a supernatural phenomenon. Some people think the motion of the "star" is unrealistic, but that misses the point. It has to be unrealistic to be sign. If it wasn't something extraordinary, the Magi wouldn't be puzzled by its erratic behavior. 

Why God Cares About Us in Such a Huge, ‘Empty’ Universe

https://stream.org/answering-god-cares-huge-empty-universe/

Star of wonder

Was the Star of Bethlehem a natural astronomical object? If it was supernatural or preternatural, why does Scripture call it a star? Two observations:

i) Sometimes the word "star" is used metaphorically, to stand for something else (e.g. Num 24:17; Judges 5:20; Isa 14:12; 2 Pet 1:19; Rev 1:16).

ii) Perhaps more to the point, in Matthew's account the object is called a "star" four times (2:2,7,9,10). The first time the object is introduced to the reader, it is the Magi rather than the narrator who uses that designation. It's initially called a star because it appears to be a star-like object to the Magi, when they saw it for the first time. That's their phenomenological impression. 

The narrator then picks up on their designation. The probable reason he calls it a "star" is not because he regards the object as a natural astronomical phenomenon, but in consistency with the Magi's usage. Because they classify the object as a star, because the phenomenon is introduced to the reader by quoting the Magi's description, the narrator simply continues with that designation. It would be confusing to the reader if the narrator suddenly used a different descriptor. His usage conforms to the usage of the Magi, because it has the same referent. He and the Magi are talking about the same thing–whatever that is. To shift from one designation to a different designation in the middle of the story would obscure the reference. 

Celestial portents

Remarking on Joshua's Long Day in his recent commentary, Kenneth Mathews says:

The traditional view is that the sun stopped (i.e., the earth's rotation ceased), thus prolonging the sunlight of the day. The overthrow of the fleeing Amorites can be thoroughly complete if they cannot escape into the night…[But] the text itself does not support this view. Depiction of the sun "over Gibeon" and the moon "over the Valley of Aijalon" shows that the time of day must have been in the morning (10:12), not at midday, as this view assumes ("middle of the sky," 10:13). Gibeon and the Valley of Aijalon are on an east-west plane, meaning that with the naked eye the sun is seen in the eastern sky and the moon in the western sky. In astronomy this relationship is called "opposition." That two celestial bodies appear in the sky at the same time indicates that the time of day is morning.

The background to understanding the Joshua passage is the Assyro-Babylonian celestial omen texts…by studying the positions and movements of celestial bodies, diviners discerned messages from the gods regarding human events…For example, the celestial signs portended either good or ill for the king and the nation in battle. A propitious sign was when the first day of the full moon fell on the fourteenth of the monthly, at which time "opposition" of the moon and sun briefly occurred in the morning…On the other hand, if the opposition…appeared on another day (e.g. fifteenth day), the omen indicated disaster. 

Although the practice of celestial divination was widespread in the Late Bronze Age (a notable exception is Egypt), there is uncertainty about the extent to which Joshua and the Canaanites knew the technical art of celestial divination as conducted by trained scholars. Assyriologists are divided as to when and to what degree celestial omen calculation was current in Canaan during the Late Bronze Age. K. Mathews, Joshua (Baker Books 2016), 92-94.

That's a very intriguing interpretation. Mathews is not the first scholar to propose it. 

i) In its favor, it explains the significance of the implied celestial opposition. That's something a modern reader is apt to miss, which an ancient reader might pick up on. Although that identification depends on knowing the local geography. 

ii) However, I have reservations about that interpretation as stated. One difficulty, which commentators remark on, is whether the same sign would be viewed as a propitious omen for the Israelites but an unpropitious omen for the Canaanites. Perhaps, though, the idea is that this is polemical theology, which exploits the superstition of the pagan army–a view not shared by Joshua. 

iii) There's nothing extraordinary about that phenomenon. Doesn't opposition of sun and moon occur twice a month (once after dawn and once before dusk)? So how would that be an unparalleled day (v14)? 

iv) Likewise, the shifting position between sun and moon is periodic and predictable. Since the Canaanite army could presumably anticipate that phenomenon, why would they even engage the Israelite army if they regarded that, ahead of time, as a portent of disaster? 

v) Perhaps, though, what they saw was surprising and shocking. Maybe God produced an optical illusion, like a sundog, which defied their expectations. The perceived celestial opposition was not supposed to happen on that calendar day. And that happened in answer to prayer by the enemy. Their God caused it. If so, one can see how that would have a demoralizing effect on the Canaanite troops, leaving them in disarray. It would be like the "counterclockwise" effect of Ahab's sundial. They weren't just arrayed agains the Israelite army, but against the God of the Israelite army, who displays his terrifying power, in contrast to the impotent gods of Canaan. And that's in addition to the targeted hailstorm (v11). A God who can manipulated the forces of nature to shield his people and rout their adversaries. 

Blowing up the flat earth

http://bedejournal.blogspot.com/2017/08/blowing-up-flat-earth.html

Apoceclipse

When reading the creation account, I often try to appreciate the significance of celestial luminaries to people who lived before the advent of electrical lighting. One category would be celestial portents and prodigies, viz. supernova, comets, meteors, eclipses. In Scripture, these figure in stock apocalyptic imagery.

But even in the scientific age, when such phenomena are natural explicable, they still evoke popular fascination. Take today's solar eclipse, which I just witnessed. I went to an abandoned parking lot to have an unobstructed view. Other people had the same idea. Although the parking lot is right beside a busy arterial, the arterial was nearly deserted in anticipation of the eclipse. Despite secularization, striking celestial phenomena retain numinous connotations in the popular imagination. Psychologically, we aren't that far removed from our prescientific forebears.

Due to overcast skies, the sunlight was filtered through fine cloud cover, which gave the corona ringing the moon an ethereal bluish tint. It was very pretty. And, of course, the lighting in general was unusual.

What did the Wise Men see?

I'm going to quote an anecdote from Nabeel Qureshi to draw a comparison. Before doing so, I'd like to make a preliminary observation: I allow for the possibility that Nabeel is regaling readers with tall tales. It's possible that he's cashing in on his conversion. 

However, I don't find that the most plausible explanation. He's a psychiatrist by training. He could make a comfortable living that way. It would make for a less stressful, eventful life. 

Certainly I don't think he converted with the intention of cashing in. He had no advance knowledge that his conversion would be marketable. And he had so much to lose. Why detonate his relationship with his family, which means so much to him? 

It was my first time back in Britain since we had moved to Connecticut eight years prior…Tens of thousands of Ahmadis attended the United Kingdom jalsa…The people I most longed for were my friends from Scotland, the Maliks. Apart from one letter that I received from the youngest brother while I was in seventh grade, I had not heard from any of them. Public email was still in its nascent phase, and international phone calls were too expensive to justify. 

But when I arrived at the jalsa, I realized I did not know if my friends would even be there…It would be nearly impossible to look for them by walking through the jalsa too. Apart from the sheer number of people to search through, we had all grown up over the previous seven  years, and I was not sure I would recognize them even if I saw them. I sorely wanted to reunite with them, but I did not know where to start. So I turned to God. I just prayed from my heart, bowing my head and closing my eyes. "God, can you please help me find my friends?" 

When I opened my eyes, what I saw stunned me stock-still. In the air before me were two steaks of color, one gold and one silver, as if whimsically painted onto the sky by an ethereal brush. They trailed in the distance, obviously leading me somewhere.  

I still remember the words I spoke in shock: "You're kidding. I'm supposed to follow those, right?" 

What I intrinsically knew was that no one could see the stripes but me. They were not so much in the sky as they were in my perception of the sky. They were neither a mile away, nor a foot away, nor anywhere in-between They just were. And they were waiting for me.  

The jalsa was crowded, and everyone was outside the tents because there was no speech currently in session. I followed the streaks into swarms of people, sifting my way through the crowd as if in a Pakistani bazaar.  

And in fact, the streaks swirled over the jalsa marketplace…the streaks funneled downward, dissipating over a space next to a clothing tent. When I weeded my way to the clearing, I saw two men standing there, chatting and wearing skullcaps. It took a moment, but I recognized them: they were the older Malik brothers. Nabeel Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity (Zondervan, 2014), 103-105.

Here's the comparison: what if the Star of Bethlehem is like that? Not that exact phenomenon, but a supernatural phenomenon that's only discernible to those it was meant to guide. Something the intended observer perceives in his field of vision, even though it remains invisible to other observers, because wasn't for their benefit. 

How we construe the Star of Bethlehem is based on our conceptual resources. As a result, we may overlook alternative explanations. Because the identify of the star so often comes down to a debate between stereotypical options, that can foster tunnel vision. 

The lesser light to rule the night

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day (Gen 1:14-19). 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? (Ps 8:3-4).

i) Before I get to my main point, I'd like to make a preliminary observation. Although Genesis is technically anonymous, that doesn't create any presumption against Mosaic authorship. The reason the name of Moses crops up so often in Exodus–Deuteronomy is because he's a contemporary, and, indeed, major participant, in the recorded events. So there's a natural reason for him to be named. But by the same token, it would be anachronistic to mention him in relation to Genesis, since that narrates events long before he was born. There's no occasion to name him within the narrative. Within the text. Genesis tells the backstory. And he's not a part of that story. 

In principle, he could be the named author in the title, but ironically, if he composed Genesis, I think it would be anachronistic to suppose the text originally contained a named author. It wasn't originally a book for publication. If he wrote it, it was composed in the Sinai desert, like a chronicle written by a traveler during his trek. It's not a book in the formal sense of a publication. It is, of course, written for posterity, but it's written on the run. It will only be published at a later date when the Israelites settle down.  

ii) As I've often said, when we interpret Genesis, I think we should initially bracket the relationship between Genesis and science. That often interferes with the interpretation. When we interpret Genesis, we should try to put ourselves in the shoes of the original audience. 

iii) Likewise, as I've often said, one thing I find striking about Gen 1 is the motif of light and dark, day and night, dawn and dusk. 

iv) Which brings us to the creation of the moon and stars. As commentators note, the narrator avoids naming the sun and moon. Presumably because the designations were names for pagan gods. The sun god and moon god. So the narrator uses circumlocutions to avoid their heathen associations.

v) Assuming that Genesis was composed in the Sinai desert in the 2nd millennium BC, imagine how impressive the night sky would be at that time and place. There was no light pollution from city lights to compete with the moonlight and starlight. Desert skies are typically crisp and clear. Likewise, the generally flat, treeless landscape makes it big sky country. That combined with the relative silence would make it an overwhelming experience to sit under the night sky in the Sinai desert, under that shimmering canopy. 

vi) In general, the starry heavens are impressive in different ways to ancient stargazers and modern urbanites or suburbanites. On the one hand, many people in modern cities and suburbs never see the night sky in its full splendor. Trees and buildings obstruct the view. There's light pollution from ubiquitous electrical lighting–as well as ubiquitous noise from cars, TVs, and so forth. So we don't see nature in the raw. There are so many distractions.

On the other hand, because we benefit from modern astronomy, observatories, and space telescopes, we can see vastly deeper into outer space, so we have a much better sense, not merely of the breadth, but the depth of outer space. The unimaginable scale of the cosmos, as well as the variety of formations that escape the naked eye.