The approach of the year's end has prompted me to read, for the third time, David Hughes's fascinating book entitled "The star of Bethlehem mystery" (Dent, 1979). The astronomer has revealed just how complicated and controversial are the arguments and counter-arguments over the precise dates clustering round the Nativity from which we have derived our Christian calendar system.
We can argue till the cows come home over when a millennium begins and when it ends, and reach no agreement. We can do considerably more speculation over dates when it comes to the Nativity of Christ in Bethlehem.
The Christmas celebrations which are now a part of our culture have been traced to the year 336, when December 25 was chosen as the birthday of Jesus. However, at that time the choice of date was probably influenced by pagan celebrations held at the year's end to honour the Roman harvest god Saturn and the god of light, Mithras. Just as with ourselves, special foods were prepared, homes were decorated with greenery, and there was much singing and giving of presents.
A vast amount of study has been devoted to working out the details concerning the recorded appearance of the Star of Bethlehem. For the astronomers of Babylon its first appearance seems to have been in the year 7BC, when there was a triple conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. At that time, there were prophecies abroad regarding the advent of a new king of Israel, which made Herod the Great nervous when the Magi, probably from Babylon, turned up on his doorstep saying that they has seen a star and were looking for a king. Herod, adopted by the Romans, was a man of atrocious cruelty, a psychopath then almost at the end of his tether. He died in 4BC at the age of 69.
This dating makes it likely, according to Hughes, that Jesus was born in 7BC, probably in September. Herod's notorious slaughter of the innocents was the reaction to the fancied threat to his supremacy, and fits into the time scale. The only gospel author who mentions the bright star is Matthew, and it is difficult to understand why Luke, who writes of the Nativity, fails to mention any star of wonder.
It has been a source of wonder why Herod himself seems never to have seen the portentous star for himself, but had accepted it at second-hand. Perhaps it is because the tyrant was seriously ill, in body and mind, having even threatened suicide on one occasion. An American astronomer, Michael Molnar, has reasoned that perhaps an occultation of Jupiter by the moon at that time prevented Herod from seeing it in Jerusalem, though it was visible elsewhere.
The more we delve into the available accounts, the more confusion over dates affects us. Perhaps we might do better to accept the spiritual and emotional realities of the Christmas story without worrying about settling the precise chronology of the celebrated star of wonder.