Star of Bethlem - Great Video

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Let me say first that I have no affiliation with this website.

http://thestarofbethlehemmovie.com/

I watched this video that a friend (Protestant) lent me the other night. It is quite
fascinating, concerning some planetary and star alignments that happened around the birth of Christ.
And one also at the crusifixion. Now I have heard theories about the star of Bethlehem before and none
seemed very good. While I do like to go at things like this with a reasonable amount of skepticism,
this one is really cool and has some merit. I highly recommend this movie. Now stop reading if plan on buying it and you don’t want
it ruined. I will try not to give too much away. But come back to this thread after you get the video.

I watched it again last night with my son who is interested in astronomy. I caught it a bit the first time I watched it but also on the second night. He describes three alignments that explain things spoken of in scripture. The first is at the birth with alignment of Venus and Jupiter. Jupiter is the King Planet and Venus is the Virgin planet as I understand. Then Regal, the King Star, and Jupiter align 9 months later. This all in around 1 BC. They actually have software available that can prove this.

But he also descibes a third event with the alignment of venus, the moon, and the sun that happens at the crusifixion and he relates to Revelation 12. He even asks the question, who is venus? The audience does not have a mike and he does not repeat the answer. But I am pretty sure they said “Mary”. You see Mary was at the foot of the cross at the crusifixion.

Now I am sitting here saying to myself for years I have tried to get protestants to admit that the woman in Rev 12 was Mary, but quite honestly I can see why they had a hard time with it, even though I see it. I have also wondered about the Trimumph of the Immaculate Heart and how protestantism and Catholicism is going to come together. It has always been my feeling that Mary is key along with Fatima for the Muslims. But then trying to convince them through discusssions about the Ark of the Covenant and some of the fascinating things between 2 Sam 6 and Luke 1 never seemed to go anywhere.

Well this movie sounds like it is spreading like wildfire in Protestantism. I even emailed it to the hosts that I did my debate with back in September and they are going to try to have this guy on the program. To me this video raises some questions that their theology does not deal with well, including the admission of Rev 12 pointing to Mary as queen of heaven. Ill leave it at that but I hope some of you get the video and then comment on this. See if you see what I see.

God bless

Gerald
 
Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich says that the Christmas Star was a comet, and so not an alignment of planets.

Also, neither Jewish nor Christian thought would view the planet venus as symbolizing either virginity or the Virgin Mary, nor would view Jupiter as representing a king.

1 BC is too late a date for the Birth of Christ, since Herod was still alive and seeking the death of the Christ-child at a point in time months or even a couple of years after His Birth. Scholars place Herod’s death no later than 1 BC, with numerous scholars placing his death years earlier.

The Crucifixion occurred on Nisan 14, the preparation day of the Passover, which in the Jewish calendar is always the middle of the lunar month. Therefore, the sun and the moon are then on approx. opposite sides of the earth. So there was certainly no ‘alignment’ of the sun and moon at that time.
 
I mean 1 AD. He actually shows in the video when Herod died. I would have to check your statement on the sun and the moon but he is not using his personal opinion to back that up. He is running some software that is readily available. I would need to go back to the video regarding venus/virgo but I think you need to see the video to see the significance. The moon is not said to be above the horizon in the video. But it is right under venus when Christ dies according to this software the guy uses that he had nothing to do with creating.

Again I do want to see criticism of this Video so I hope you will watch it. Catherine Emmerick may have said it was a comet. Did she have special revelation in that regard? I think I may have heard it but though she is a caonized saint, that does not make everything she said Gospel. So while that can be considered the video makes some very good points, dealing with the comet theory (which I never liked) as to why it is not very viable.

Again thanks for your comments.
 
Oh by the way I did not claim the sun and the moon were aligned. The video only claims that the moon was under venus (virgo). Rev 12 says that the moon was at her feet. There was a lunar eclipse at the time of Christ’s death, a blood red moon. That is the point made on the video.
 
I did not see the movie but maybe you could answer something for me.

Bethlehem is South of Jerusalem and stars/planetary alignments don’t move from North to South in the night sky nor do they come to rest over anything; does this movie address either of those?
 
Chesster said:
I did not see the movie but maybe you could answer something for me.

Bethlehem is South of Jerusalem and stars/planetary alignments don’t move from North to South in the night sky nor do they come to rest over anything; does this movie address either of those?
Click to expand...
Yes he does. He uses the paralax effect of the planets to explain the star stopping over Bethlehem. It actually does because of this effect to turn and go in the opposite direction. I am not good in the details of the move yet but he handles this issue.
 
I believe I made a mistake. It was the constelation virgo that was over the moon at the crusifixion in the video. Virgo is the virgin.
 
Jesus could not have been born in 1 A.D. There is no support at all for a date for the death of Herod after 1 A.D. There is plenty of archaeological and historical evidence to place Herod’s death no later than 1 B.C. See Finegan’s summary of the scholarship on this topic in Handbook of Biblical chronology.

These ideas about constellations are not part of Catholic tradition at all. The constellation virgo does not represent the Virgin Mary. This is a new age type idea, not a Catholic idea.

What is the date given in this video for the Crucifixion?
 
Ron_Conte said:
Jesus could not have been born in 1 A.D. There is no support at all for a date for the death of Herod after 1 A.D. There is plenty of archaeological and historical evidence to place Herod’s death no later than 1 B.C. See Finegan’s summary of the scholarship on this topic in Handbook of Biblical chronology.

These ideas about constellations are not part of Catholic tradition at all. The constellation virgo does not represent the Virgin Mary. This is a new age type idea, not a Catholic idea.

What is the date given in this video for the Crucifixion?
Click to expand...
Ron, I’m not defending the video per sey. Your date problem is one he addresses. I don’t know who Finegan is and that something isn’t straight out of the Catholic Church is not a show stopper for me as long as it is not about doctrine. This is not. It’s simply a theory about what the Star of Bethlehem was. Now if you think it’s a bunch of hooey, that’s fine. But there is nothing in Church teaching that says we can’t consider these events and nothing definite from the Church on exactly when they happened. So if you want to debate this you’ll have to find someone else. To call it new age is ridiculous. There is nothing new age about this guy. I guess Paul was new age for using the altar to the unknown God in Acts 17 to explain Christianity to the athenians.
 
Hold on a minute but, doesn’t the Bible talk about a star???

This movie is telling you that it wasn’t a star, just a planetary alignment. Not a miracle, just a natural phenomenon.

Were the Magi ignorant, not knowing the difference between a planet and a star. The Arabs had, at that time, known the Earth was round and had calculated its circumference.

This is from the website itself
But the story of the Star is a series of events, and this affects statistical probabilities. Any one of the events might well recur – some more frequently, but some only once in hundreds of years. When we stack all of the events together,** the probability** of them all recurring in just the right order to match events of 2 and 3 B.C.** drops to near zero**
Click to expand...
.
Hardly a ringing endorsement of their own arguments.
 
Ron, here is what he says on his website and in the video about your 4 bc date. Certainly this should be scrutinized as well.

thestarofbethlehemmovie.com/resources_chap1.php

The Bible recounts that Herod learned of the Messiah’s birth from astronomers who had seen the Star of Bethlehem. He tried to kill the child, so, obviously, the Bible records that Herod was alive at Jesus’ birth. Remember that this mattered to Kepler, because historians of his time apparently inferred from Josephus’ history that Herod died in 4 BC (9). Necessarily, Kepler assumed Christ was born before that date, perhaps 5 BC or earlier. So, those are the years for which he scanned the skies for the Star. Even with the power of his newly discovered laws of planetary motion, he didn’t find the phenomena we will examine here. He searched the skies of the wrong years.

But modern scholarship has deepened our understanding of Josephus’ manuscripts. A recent study was made of the earliest manuscripts of Josephus’ writings held by the British Library in London, and the American Library of Congress. It revealed a surprise that allows us to target our mathematical telescopes better than could Kepler (10). It turns out that a copying error was a primary cause of the confusion about the date of Herod’s death. A printer typesetting the manuscript of Josephus’ Antiquities messed up in the year 1544. Every single Josephus manuscript in these libraries dating from before 1544 supports the inference that Herod passed in 1 BC. Excellent scholarship confirms that date (11). Knowing this, and since Herod died shortly after Christ’s birth, our investigation turns to the skies of 3 and 2 BC.
 
feargalmac said:
Hold on a minute but, doesn’t the Bible talk about a star???

This movie is telling you that it wasn’t a star, just a planetary alignment. Not a miracle, just a natural phenomenon.

Were the Magi ignorant, not knowing the difference between a planet and a star. The Arabs had, at that time, known the Earth was round and had calculated its circumference.

This is from the website itself
.
Hardly a ringing endorsement of their own arguments.
Click to expand...
First of all it’s a theory. Second of all even up to Keplar’s time planets were considered to be wandering stars, and thirdly regal was aligned with Jupiter. Regal is a star.
 
The website you refer to places Christ’s birth in 3/2 B.C. (i.e. the winter of late 3 B.C. to early 2 B.C.), and Herod’s death in 1 B.C., and the crucifixion in 33 A.D. You have misrepresented what he is saying.

None of these dates are unusual. There are numerous Biblical chronologists which give similar dates. However, experts in Biblical chronology do not agree on the year of Christ’s birth, the year of Herod’s death, or the year of Christ’s Crucifixion. I’ve read and studied Biblical chronology for many years (and written a book on the topic). The author of that video and website is greatly over-simplifying and even misrepresenting the information and the scholarship that is available on the topic.

Also, he places excessive weight on his theory of a new moon under the constellation. The magi would have known nothing about a virgin birth of the Jewish Messiah. And they were not Roman or Greek, so they did not name the constellation in question ‘virgo’ the virgin. It is baseless to claim that the magi would have understood a new moon next to the virgo constellation as a virgin birth of a jewish king.
 
Ron,

While I appreciate your criticisms and they should be considered when you say things like the bottom paragraph that misrepresent what the video said you show that you are just looking to shoot holes in something because it’s not Catholic. The Magi didn’t write the story. They would not have had to have known about the constellation at all as that was not a part of what was directing them to Bethlehem. They would not have had to know the names of the constelations. When you make arguements like this it shows that you are not rational and I’m guessing that if I looked at other posts I would see more evidence of that. I’ve been around the apologetics circles for a while myself. My guess is longer than you.

I was going by memory when I wrote things earlier. Forgive me for not getting everything exactly right. I linked to the video and it had plenty of info for you to check out what I posted. If I made a mistake or two I am sorry. I am not a scholar but from what I can tell neither are you.

Again thanks for the info.

Gerald
 
feargalmac,

"Not a miracle, just a natural phenomenon. "

I don’t know that the Bible said the star was a “miracle” in terms of rising from the dead or healing somebody or a star just poping up in the sky. It simply says they followed a star to Bethlehem. Now I would contend that this being a “naturally” occuring event makes it no less awe inspiring, much like the birth of my 5 children inspired awe in me for the creator or the intricacies of the eye or the order of nature. In fact that is what is really so cool. The video to me opened my eyes to the order of the movement of the stars and it makes total sense that God set the timing for when events would happen in the stars that point to the glory of events on earth. That’s what the scriptures say “the heavens declare the glory of God”. He sites dome other passages in this regard as well.
 
The author claims that the Magi, seeing a new moon (a monthly event) occurring under the constellation virgo, would have interpreted this as the birth of a son to a virgin. But the Magi were not Roman or Greek, so they would not have considered that set of stars to represent a virgin. Also, none of the Romans or Greeks, who call that constellation virgo, interpreted a new moon near virgo as indicating the birth of a son to a virgin. Therefore, the magi who did not think of any set of stars as representing a virgin would not have draw that conclusion.

The same reasoning applies to the claim that the proximity of Jupiter would have meant that this son was a king. The Magi were not Roman or Greek, so they would not have known that the planet Jupiter is named after a Roman king of the gods. Therefore, again, they would not have concluded that proximity of Jupiter meant that a king was born.

The author’s claims are neither scholarly, nor reasonable. And he seems to have only a passing familiarity with the work of real Biblical chronologists.

Basically, the author is saying that God chose the date for the Birth of His Son so that it conincided with cellestial events whose meaning (supposedly) is based on Greek and Roman mythology (Jupiter as king of the gods; the constellation virgo) and that the constellation virgo represents the Virgin Mary. He claims that the Book of Revelation is referring to the constellation virgo when it describes Mary as having a crown of stars. So he makes truths of Divine Revelation depend upon Greek and Roman mythology.
 
“The author claims that the Magi, seeing a new moon (a monthly event) occurring under the constellation virgo, would have interpreted this as the birth of a son to a virgin.”

Your going to have tho show me where he said that the magi recognized the part about the new moon and the constelation virgo. They were following the star. Quote him please on that.

Neither does it matter that the Magi were Roman or Greek. He does claim they new the names of these stars that I recall. I will look some more. We don’t know why they had reason to follow them and he doesn’t claim as far as I recall why they were. But even if he did claim it, his claim could be wrong and it wouldn’t destroy the theory. This isn’t the Bible and he can miss a point or two and still be right on the gist of the theory. You seem to want to prove it wrong if he makes 1 mistake. Your logic is bad here. He does somwhere say the magi may have been jews and I find that unlikely but don’t think it throws the whole thing out.

They were following a star and something gave them
I haven’t read the whole thing and probably should but I read the part about rev 12 and don’t see where he said that the Magi recognized or new anything about the moon under virgo. All I see is that he just stated that it was.
 
The paragraph below somewhat implies it but it also says that the babylonians had a name for regulus which means king. Also there is no reason to believe that the Magi, though they weren’t greek or roman didn’t know of the greek name for Jupiter or hav a name of their own that implied kingship. I don’t think he mentions this. The magi likely would have known the babylonian name for Regulus. Again, while your comments are to be considered, even if you were all right I don’t think it destroys the theory. The Magi would not have had to know all these things and the names of the constelations, though I have to think that because people of the time were much more in tune with the stars and traveled by them, the names crossed cultural and national boundaries.

“A magus watching Jupiter that September saw two objects moving so close that they appeared to touch. This close approach of celestial bodies is sometimes called a ‘conjunction.’ Our Middle Eastern viewer saw Jupiter coming into a close conjunction with the star, Regulus. Regulus takes its name from the word root which yields our word ‘regal.’ The Babylonians called Regulus Sharu, which means ‘king.’ The Romans called Regulus Rex, which means ‘king.’ So to start things, at the beginning of the new Jewish year, the Planet of Kings met the Star of Kings. This conjunction may have indicated kingship in a forceful way to a Babylonian magus (satisfying one qualification for the Star), but would it have startled him?”
 
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