In the artwork, the Star of Bethlehem is pictured as some big can't-miss-it item. But if it was a dramatic star (planet/comet) then everyone would be talking about it, and Herod would be consulting his own astrologers. There might be word from Rome commanding everyone what to think about it. The Romans didn't like wild cards and unrest. You over there. Simmer down or I'll know what to do with you. It had to be something of a surprise, something that only specialists might notice. It might only be visible on the clearest of nights, far from even campfires. I can still only see it moving in and out. I'm taking your word for it here.
The star would be in the west for the Magi. We let the word order fool us on "we have seen his star in the east." The star wasn't in the east, they were in the east.* If you were in the east and you saw a star further east, you would not say "Hey, let's head west to find it." Nor would you know when to stop. Not that far past Bethlehem you would hit the Mediterranean - about 12 miles. What do we do if we get to the sea and the star is still out in front of us? Get on a boat? Wait? Whatever that little star did to "come to rest" would have been a relief to them.
No, Herod was taken by surprised and this idea of prophesied kings in the stars was unnerving. His wise men said the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, and the Magi jumped on that as the first place to check. Herod may have thought they were cranks who didn't really know anything and we looking for favors or influence. He didn't believe them enough to send them with escorts. But he wasn't going to let them wander over the countryside talking about heirs to the throne, either.
Mary and Joseph may never have heard anything about a star identifying their boy, either. Heck, there's no guarantee they heard the company of angels, either. That might have been for the shepherds alone. If everyone had seen them the last people they would have asked about it would be shepherds. They would have headed out to Bethlehem themselves, crowding the place up and making the Romans nervous in the middle of the night. The shepherds would not have gotten near it.
*And maybe not that much east. The East Road went SSE for long way before turning SE, then East. The Magi may not have come over days of desert. Roads are preferred. Due east would have been the Dead Sea, then days and days of desert.
4 comments:
I suspect that Q&A with Herod was pretty uncomfortable for the scribes and priests.
It struck me now that we often think of the shepherds as spreading the news of Christ's birth but I wonder if their visit was also a way to assure Mary and Joseph that things were going according to plan.
There is a documentary about the Star of Bethlehem that I am fond of. Here's the YouTube UR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJeLOuvJkoA
tl;dr —
A lawyer who is an amateur astronomer plays with software that projects planetary motions backward and forward, and finds that, at an appropriate time, there was a very tight conjunction between Jupiter and Venus, and this conjunction was The Star.
This fits as something very significant to nerdy academic magi but of only mild interest to your average tyrant, until the nerdy magi start making political noises about it.
It's also cute that the conjunction was in Virgo.
Take the Euphrates northeast, then cut over to a coastal road south.
I figure that the magi explained themselves to Joseph and Mary, who remembered the overall outline but didn't follow the technical details -- which weren't all that important anyhow.
If you try to interpret the Bethlehem star as an actual astronomic event it makes no sense. There never has been and never could be anything like an eastern star or western star. Stars rise in the east and set in the west, just like the sun and moon and planets do, because what's "really" happening is the earth is rotating. There are such things as "circumpolar" stars which do not set, but they still seem to rotate around the celestial poles.
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