Part 2

I just started reading one of the books I received for Christmas, titled, Chasing the Sun: The Epic Story of the Star That Gives Us Life, by Richard Cohen (Random House, 2010).  As might be expected, early on Cohen deals with the various ancient beliefs about the sun and the solar cycles, and in particular the two annual solstices.

Two sentences grabbed my attention: “On the year’s longest day, it [the Sun] rises closest to that hemisphere’s pole.  On both occasions it seems to stop in its path before beginning to double back” (p. 15).  Stop in its path?  A couple of sentences later, Cohen states, “…for two or three days, the Sun seems to linger for several minutes–hence the word ‘solstice,’ from sol (sun) and stitium (from sistere, to stand still: ‘armistice’ translates as ‘weapon standstill’) (p. 15).”

If you do what I do when I suddenly make a connection between a seemingly everyday event and a biblical miracle/event, I grabbed my Bible and looked up Joshua 10, the narrative where Moses’ successor, Joshua, petitions the Lord to make the Sun and the Moon stop high overhead so he can have the daylight he needs to complete defeating the Amorite Coalition led by Jerusalem King Adoni-zedek who have had the Gibeonites (an ally of the Israelites) under siege.

Adoni-zedek is important for another reason.  At least six letters he almost certainly wrote are part of the Amarna Letters dated circa 1388 BCE-1333 BCE, dispatches he sent to the Egyptian Pharoah complaining about “raids by the Habiru.”  If this reference is an authentic reference to the Hebrews’ invasion of Canaan, the historicity of Joshua 10 is significantly enhanced, regardless of the other details the biblical author wrote into his account.

There are two other relevant issues in this account the writer of Joshua chose to include as something the reader should know about the battle.  First, though, a bit of geography to set the scene.

The geographical distances involved in this narrative are quite small by modern standards.  The ancient site of Gibeon has been well established, located on one edge of the current Palestinian town of Jib.  It sits less than 20 miles NE from Jerusalem, but it is over on the north side of the mountain ridge that separates Jerusalem from the Kidron Valley.  Keep that in mind.

Gilgal is a bigger problem.  Its exact location is still up for debate, but the consensus site at this time places it about a mile NE of Jericho deep in the Dead Sea Valley.  In one respect, if the text is historically reliable and Joshua took and then destroyed Jericho it is plausible that he might have settled the Israelites there temporarily, but stategically it is a less than ideal site  and creates another problem as I’ll describe below.

Returning to the text: First, to move his army from Gilgal deep in the Dead Sea Valley, all the way up and over the southern slopes of Mt. Ephraim to Gibeon, whom Joshua was bound by treaty to defend (9:14), he had to quick march his troops overnight to the city.  Jericho is 846 feet below sea level, so the entire army had to first climb to sea level and then over the Central Mountains, a total increase in elevation of about 3500 feet! However there appears to have been a well established trade route from Jericho to Michmash near the summit, after which it was downhill, for the most part, to Gibeon.  Clearly these were the Israelites’ “special forces,” for as the text says, they were “the best fighting men” (10:7). This specially trained unit alone could have made such a physically grueling march. Regardless, Joshua’s tactic was effective despite whatever fatigue his army was feeling. They arrived early in the morning at the encampment outside of Gibeon. This time of day undoubtedly was the least expected  moment the Jerusalem-led forces would have anticipated an army to  appear out of gloom of dawn.  The Israelites were in full battle array.  The other guys were most likely sitting around their campfires eating breakfast.

Second, the Amorite soldiers, quickly sizing up the situation, knew their only chance to survive was to beat a hasty retreat, having no time to put on their armor.  And to their great misfortune, in their rush to escape the ranks of the Israelites already engaged in battle at the far edge of camp, they ran right into a massive hail storm.  The text attributes the storm to God.  But as is not that uncommon in Tornado Alley here in the U.S., hail measuring the size of golf balls all the way up to grapefruit is not impossible nor that uncommon when the conditions are right.  Caught out in the middle of this meteorological bombardment, being driven by Joshua’s troops bearing down on them from the rear, the writer, clearly speaking from experience, makes a very matter-of-fact statement:  “…and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites” (10:11). A careful look at a topographic map of ancient Israel shows Gibeon sits on the north slope of one spur of the Ephraim Mountain range and is exposed to any tropical moisture that would come spiraling out of the NW Mediterranean Sea.  Thunderstorms with significant hail probably were not that uncommon.  Particularly if given a little nudge by God.

Joshua, however, is not a “leave half the job unfinished” kind of commander.  God had promised all the Amorites would be delivered to Joshua’s army so they could kill every one of them (See: herem), and he was going to make that happen.

Joshua in the midst of the battle asks the Lord to stop the Sun and the Moon over different valleys, that are identified, interestingly enough.  Since we know where Gibeon was located,  the Sun would be high directly over the city.   We also know the location of the Valley of Aijalon where the Moon was commanded to stop.  The problem is that Aijalon is just over the hill from Gibeon, a small valley that opens out onto the broad Plain of Shephela.  In terms of line of sight, that would seem to have the Sun and the Moon right next to each other, with the Moon being slightly to the observer’s right.  And that’s a problem that will be discussed below.  This Sun/Moon configuration may just have to be left as a supernatural act by the God.  On the other hand, we have at our disposal some powerful tools to examine a hypothesis of what might have happened.

We considered above the possibility the Battle of Gibeon perhaps had an astronomical component to it that could be identified by looking at the history of solar eclipses in that region. We have also examined the route that Joshua and his army of select warriors had to take to get from Gilgal, located adjacent to Jericho deep in the valley of the Dead Sea at a below sea level elevation of 846 feet (one of the deepest land canyons on the globe), over the Central Mountains of the Mt Ephraim Range, a vertical rise of 3500 feet and then down to Gibeon, which sat less than 20 miles north-east over the hill  from Jerusalem.

According to the text, this forced quick-march was accomplished in a single night. The distances, however, teeter on the edge of credulity. According to Google Maps, the walking distance from Jericho to the modern town of Jib, the known site of Gibeon, is 61.5 km (38.3 miles) assuming the army roughly followed the known trade routes fanning out from Jericho at the time and would take approximately between 13 and 14 hours.

This modern route however assumes walking on the sides of well developed motorways, and not an expeditionary force of soldiers in full battle armor, in the Bronze Age, in the dark to avoid detection, and very possibly avoiding the trade route between Jericho and the town of Michmash (modern Mukhmas) at the summit. Nevertheless, if the author assumed that the army left early enough the previous day so the march only took one night, then it is possible.

Another issue is the dating of the Book of Joshua itself. Although many scholars today date the work sometime during the era of the Babylonian Exile, circa 7th Century BCE, the core events may be attributable to the Second Millennium BCE. If the Egyptian Mernepthah stele is dated accurately circa 1209 BCE, and is, in fact, also an authentic historical mention of the Hebrews then the assertion can be made that that the conquest of ancient Canaan perhaps took place sometime between 1500 and 1300 BCE as Gerhard von Rad suggested.

Taking those assumptions, I entered the dates and set Jerusalem as the primary viewing site into my astronomy software (TheSky6 Serious Astronomer Edition by Software Bisque) and launched the Eclipse Finder. In ten year increments I was able to examine the date, time and track of every eclipse reasonably visible to an observer in Jerusalem for those two hundred years. I excluded those eclipses that just grazed a tiny percentage of the sun or were so close to sunrise that they were likely to go unnoticed and therefore did not fit the description of a major midday event that could have been to Joshua’s advantage. I included total, annular and partial eclipses.

The Eclipse Finder generated 30 events for that two century period. It is, of course, impossible to know which of those events were observed, or what the weather conditions made possible viewing any particular eclipse. Additionally, as any student of the Bible can tell you, the ancient Hebrews were not great observers of the sky, or at least they didn’t appear interested in communicating astronomical events in much detail in the text of their (and our) scriptures. There is an interesting irony to this apparent reality. The ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and Egypt both were doing sophisticated astronomical observations in this period of time (White, 2008, Babylonian Star Lore London: Solaria).  I’ll come back to that below.

First, some modern geography. Jerusalem sits at 31°47”N; 35°13” E. For comparison, the 32nd parallel enters the United States at El Paso, TX, located on the far western tip of the state and creates the state line between Texas and New Mexico. Continuing east, it bisects the rest of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and reaches the Atlantic Ocean right at the southern-most tip of South Carolina. On the opposite side of the Atlantic it makes landfall in Morocco, crosses the Central Sahara Desert through Algeria and Tunisia, and then enters the Mediterranean Sea just slightly south of Tripoli, Libya. Clipping the northern peninsula of Libya, it is then drawn across the southeast Mediterranean Sea just north of Egypt, until it connects with Israel and Jerusalem.

At this latitude, Jerusalem sits only about 9° north of the Tropic of Cancer, which is the northernmost latitude (23°N) that the Sun will appear directly overhead at the Summer Solstice (approx. June 21st). Because the city is located close to the Equator, the Earth’s axial tilt (also 23°) and the Moon’s orbit (on what is called the ecliptic) will naturally generate more visible eclipses than can be observed from more northern locations. Thirty eclipses, therefore, over a two hundred year period are a natural consequence of the concurrent synchronicity of the Earth’s daily rotation and orbit around the Sun, as well as the Moon’s orbit around the Earth. Nevertheless, only just over a third of these events were total eclipses (13 of the 30).

My Big Guess

I have to be honest with the text as presented. It does not mention an eclipse, and as I have said before the author ascribes God’s direct influence on both the Sun and Moon rendering them stationary and soon after causing the catastrophic hail storm. But as we have learned from the research regarding the Star of Bethlehem, it is reasonable to explore what natural events might have influenced the author, or those who were present at the event, to interpret these two phenomenon as clearly and literally an act of God.

The historicity of the narrative in Joshua is enhanced if astronomically-validated events can be identified at the time this battle is to have taken place. It would also mean that, assuming the date of the Book of Joshua is somewhere in the time span between 700-500 BCE, the author(s) had access to extant historical material from which this account was written. If it was during the Babylonian exile, and knowing the Mesopotamians’ extensive study and writings about the sky (North, J, 2008, Cosmos: An illustrated history of astronomy and cosmology), it can be conjectured that the Israelite scholars, might possibly have had a calendar or sky description source from which they based their narrative. Therefore, I am going to hypothesize that they did.

The thirty eclipses between 1500 and 1300 BCE can quickly be narrowed down to a handful if we follow two assumptions.

First, as Cohen in Chasing the Sun pointed out in Part One, the Sun particularly at the time of the summer solstice seems to linger at its highest point in the sky for a few days on either side of the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. The text also implies the Sun was high overhead. If the battle took place during the vernal or autumnal equinoxes, the angle of the Sun in elevation from an observer on Earth would not meet the physical description of the Sun’s location that day. So we can look for eclipses that occurred in that general time frame of the solstice over that two hundred year period.

The second assumption is that perhaps the eclipse began at sunrise, or was in totality at sunrise, giving the day the appearance of starting very late, and by the time the eclipse was over, the Sun would have seemed to have appeared not at dawn but close to noon. This might be interpreted as the Sun having stopped in the sky, and near the longest day of the year, it naturally would provide a longer period of daylight.

A dawn extended by an eclipse would also potentially lend authenticity to the claim regarding making the march from Gilgal to Gibeon in one night. If the sun was totally blacked out by the moon at the time of sunrise, Joshua and his forces would have been given a rare gift to approach the Amorite camp under the cover of darkness and dusk, allowing for the possibility of a surprise attack, as I said before, right when the Amorites were eating breakfast. Caught unawares, likely not having donned their armor, they were at their most vulnerable, especially as the Israelite forces seemingly came out of nowhere and began to cut them down. Under the mandate of cherem, if God had commanded them to kill every person and beast in the camp, they were obligated to do just that.

Here, then, are the best candidates for producing the right kind of eclipse at the right time of the year that may have been the underlying natural event of a very divinely guided military campaign in Joshua, chapter 10:

Date	Type	Begin³	Maximum	End
June 23, -1442	Total¹	4:27	5:26	8:07
June 24, -1396	Annular	4:48	7:38	11:08
June 3, -1348	Total²	xx:xx	4:43	6:53
June 5, -1302	Total	7:34	10:34	13:54

Note 1: Eclipse was 95% full at sunrise.
Note 2: Eclipse was at totality at sunrise.
Note 3: All times Jerusalem Local in 24-hour format.

These four eclipses come closest to meeting the assumptions described above, from the description in the biblical text, the scholarly hypotheses regarding Joshua’s lifespan, and the estimated centuries in which the Israelites could have been moving into Canaan and conquering the cities and peoples who were already there.
But which eclipse is the best choice? Not knowing the date except in the scope of the broadest historical theories is a major hindrance. Each event has its pros and cons.

1. The 1442 BCE eclipse took place on June 23, which is very close to the summer solstice, was 95% full at sunrise, so it would have extended the perception of darkness, or at least a very deep dusk, giving Joshua’s forces an unexpected cover of darkness as they approached the Amorite camp. Its drawback it that it was not a very long event, reaching totality at 05:25, after  which the light would begin to increase and it would have been fully sunny just after 8:00 a.m.
2. The 1396 BCE eclipse was annular. In this type, the moon covers only part of the sun, which at totality produces a bright ring of sunlight around the circumference of the disk. For Joshua, the darkness would not have been as deep, although it creates duskiness that some find odd, even to the point of feeling a bit spooky. An eclipse of this sort, although strikingly beautiful to our modern eye, might have been very disconcerting to the Amorite forces. Joshua’s warriors, too, may have been unsettled by the eclipse’s unusual visual characteristic, but keep in mind they were on a mission to save an ally and they firmly believed God was on their side. Whatever the event was, the Author was convinced this was an act of the LORD, and so it is possible to theorize they were able to put aside their discomfort and continue the march toward Gibeon. This eclipse has the advantage of taking place on June 24, again very close to the longest day of the year, as well as its duration of around six hours, returning to full sunlight an hour before noon. Put together the attributes of this eclipse make it a viable candidate for the Joshua narrative.
3. The 1348 BCE eclipse rose in totality at about a quarter to 5 a.m. The sun was fully visible at 6:21, making it a very short event, and in my assessment a less viable candidate than the one in 1442 BCE. Also, it occurred on June 3, well over two weeks before the Summer Solstice. Its one advantage might have been a very dark sunrise allowing Joshua and his men to get much closer to the Amorites before they launched their attack on the camp.
4. The last eclipse in 1302 BCE was also in early June but unlike the 1348 event, it began at 7:38, plunging a seemingly normal late spring morning into a spectacular and dark solar event, creating a total eclipse that lasted from start to finish six and a half hours. The end of the eclipse at nearly 2:00 p.m., is important to note because at 12:00, a significant percentage of the sun would already be visible, and it is possible to speculate that the perception of the sun and moon together at high noon, with the moon slowly pulling away from it could have looked like both of the heavenly bodies were standing still.
5. The Moon problem. The narrative is explicit that the Moon stopped to the right of the Sun high over the valley of Aijalon (10:12), which is southwest and on the south side of the hill from Gibeon. This creates a problem. The astronomy simulations in all cases clearly show that the Sun, not the Moon, moves to the right and that since the Moon is so much closer to the Earth, it is not visible in the daylight. The physics of this is straightforward. The Sun appears to move because the Earth is rotating on its axis. The Moon actually moves because it is in orbit around the Earth. The result is the Sun visually moves to the west faster than the moon.

In the end, my preferred choices are the eclipses in 1396 BCE and 1302 BCE. Both seem to have attributes that would provide Joshua’s army with a strategic advantage as they approached the Amorite’s camp. I acknowledge that I can’t prove that either one of these events answer the question about the Sun and the Moon standing still asserted in 10:12-13. What is not in doubt is that the author believed the events in the sky, both the astronomical and the meteorological were a direct result of the LORD fighting on behalf the Israelites:

There was no day like that before it or after it, when the LORD listened to the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel (v. 14, NASB).

Several final questions remain: Did Joshua know in advance what was going to happen? We know from the history of astronomy that predicting eclipses was one of the major efforts of the astronomer/astrologers of the ancient Near East. As I mentioned above, did the author of Joshua have access to Babylonian astronomical texts to guide him? Did the author have access to manuscripts saved when Jerusalem was sacked and the Israelites taken to Babylon? I again can only speculate, but the combination of these two possibilities raise interesting questions for further research on this fascinating narrative.

The alternative that I find very dissatisfying at best, although it cannot be ruled out, is that Joshua (and the Pentateuch) were written solely based on oral tradition or were essentially works of sacramental fiction. Granted, for a people in exile, far from their beloved homeland, knowing from stories by the elders that their holiest city, Jerusalem, was left in ruins, these books, even if largely constructed as mythology, because of their elegance and genius as narratives of faith, would have been read with great reverence. As such it is understandable how  in a matter of a few generations they might be regarded as historical accounts, even if the foundation came from an oral tradition of uncertain veracity.

I prefer the hypothesis that if the actual date of the authorship falls within the time of the Babylonian Exile (7th Century BCE), that the Israelite scholars were introduced to the treasure trove of information in the libraries that have been found in Babylon (and many other Mesopotamian cities). North (2008, Ibid.) makes two relevant points.  First, he describes the high level of astronomy being done during the Hammurabi Dynasty, ca. 1800 BCE- 1500 BCE, with the quest for predicting eclipses being exceedingly important, and second, the resurgence of Babylonian astronomy in the so-called “period of independence” from 612 BCE-539 BCE.  The proximity in the first case to the dating of Joshua and the Israelite conquest of Canaan, and a thousand years later the Babylonian Exile simply cannot be ignored as creating the potential for reliable astronomical information Joshua as well as his chronicler may have had.

A Stellar Event…Strangely, Not So Unexpected.

Star of Wonder-- Myth or Astronomical Event?

In Part 1, I suggested that the story of the Star of Bethlehem is one that starts in the wrong place and the wrong time. I see that as an asset, for perhaps that contradiction contributed to both its lasting power and to its veracity. In the previous post, we looked at the creation myths from the Aztecs of Mesoamerica and from the Sumerians of Mesopotamia. These narratives were created by peoples on opposite sides of the Earth who never had contact with each other. Despite that, their creation stories have unmistakable and remarkable similarities that suggest that there is an archetypal human story, following the models about which Joseph Campbell wrote extensively.

The Star of Bethlehem, which appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, is an anomaly. One of the unsolved mysteries of the Nativity narratives is that the star is not mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Other than the opening passages of Genesis the writers of the Bible simply seem to have no interest in the sky, except metaphorically. Stars are lights in the night sky that are compared to something earthly or are evidence of God’s creative power. The Hebrews, however, did have an organized cosmology:

Hebrew Cosmology Illustrated. Photo source: unknown

 

The remarkable contrast of the above Hebrew model of the universe is clearly evident when compared to those of the Aztec’s and the Sumerian’s: In Genesis, there is a complete lack of violence in the act of creation. Few other religions have a similar cosmology in which an Earth Mother-goddess does not have to be destroyed and her various body parts used to make the earth, sky and humans. The ancient Hebrews had knowledge of these various stories from Mesopotamia and from Egypt, but in the Genesis account, those elements do not appear. For example, this Egyptian version (one of many Egyptian origin myths) demonstrates the more common world view of the Beginning:

 

Egyptian Creation Myth Illustrated--This Picture is based on the "Heliopolis Cosmogony," one of several dominant myths in the Egyptian Pantheon.

The Problem of “The Sky.”

I also suggested that humans began to differentiate the sky being distinct from the land and the oceans perhaps around circa 4300 years ago. Gavin White (2008), in his book Babylonian Star-Lore, maintains that “Babylonian astrologers started to export to their neighbors as early as the 13th century BCE” (p. 7). He goes on to contend that the development of natal horoscopes required a level of mathematics that was compiled in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, with the first modern equivalents finally appearing in the 5th century, or 2500 years ago. It is this assertion that raises the prospect of historically credible ties to planetary observations by Matthew’s Magi, and the possibility that the Star of Bethlehem’s discovery, or rather interpretation of a sky-based observation, was based on their millennial old texts and maps of the constellations.

These particular Magi were likely among the most highly educated individuals from any civilization, and familiar with astronomy from the known regions of the world. That would include Greece, where we must take a brief trip to meet the man who changed the sky and the universe four hundred years before the birth of Jesus.

To set the stage, I return to the question, “What is the sky?” White shares my view that these ancient cosmologies are neither crude nor primitive:

Today this “flat-earth” cosmology is generally belittled as being rather “primitive” and as far as it is given any attention it is relegated to the kindergarten of metaphysical speculation. This is unfortunate, as the model is actually a rather elegant presentation of archaic man’s view of himself and the universe in which he acted and had his being. It is a complex view of the world, one full of awe that utilizes the mysterious language of symbolism, where every element is a part of an interrelated network of forces. This model also underpins the rationale of celestial divination and magic, mankind’s first attempts to foretell and forestall the shape of things to come. (p. 21)

The tools of those attempts included defining the constellations, plotting the motion of the planets, phases of the moon, vital because they were tied to the seasons, but of course eclipses: lunar, more common than solar, the unexpected darkening of the day often believed to be a portent of evil or disasters. To many in the ancient world only comets might inspire a greater fear.

From China to India, Persia to the Mediterranean, Egypt across the great Sahara of North Africa, Asia Minor, Greece, the expanse of the Roman Empire all the way to Britannia, the great celestial scroll of the night sky unrolled from horizon to horizon, open to be examined, its mysteries to be plumbed, and the fate of humans read in its aetherial language.

Sometime around the 7th century BCE, in Greece, the question of the sky rose once more, and a startlingly new answer was ventured. What if, these renegade philosophers dared to suggest, using their emerging expertise in mathematics and geometry, the sky was not the abode of the gods? What if the sky was a place, just like the earth, that the Sun, Moon and stars, even the ones which wander, were places? And if that were even possible, how far away were these places? What caused them to move around the earth? And if they moved, what if the Earth moved, too? The intellectual battle raged for over 400 years, but no one could seem to find that one all-important key to prove whether it was right or wrong.

 

The Greek Geocentric Cosmos. Photo: Source Courtesy, A.H., 1996.

These were dangerous questions, on the level of heresy, but we’ll come back to that in a moment.

The Sky Problem Solved–But 1700 Years Too Soon!

Aristarchus of Samos

Those willing to think about daring questions at times come up with extraordinary answers. One such radical was Aristarchus of Samos, a mathematician and astronomer who lived circa 310-230 BCE. Samos, a volcanic island in the Aegean Sea, lies in the archipelago that separates modern Greece from Turkey. An older contemporary of Archimedes, he was known among his generation as “the Mathematician.”

According to Sir Thomas Heath, who published Aristarchus’ full text of “On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon” into English (1913, 2004), “There is not the slightest doubt that Aristarchus was the first to put forward the heliocentric hypothesis. Ancient testimony is unanimous on the point and the first witness is Archimedes, who was a younger contemporary of Aristarchus, so that there is no possibility of a mistake. Copernicus, himself admitted that the theory was attributed to Aristarchus, though this does not seem to be generally known” (p. 301).

Archimedes, to his discredit, did not accept Aristarchus’ heliocentric theory and campaigned against it. Aristarchus’ idea was not theologically popular either in some circles. One Cleanthes attempted to indict the Mathematician “on the charge of impiety for putting into motion the Hearth of the Universe… ” (Heath, p. 304). What enraged Cleanthes was Aristarchus used geometry to prove his hypotheses: “by supposing the heaven to remain at rest and the earth to revolve around an oblique circle, while it rotates, at the same time, about its own axis” (Ibid.). No one knew how prescient this hypothesis really was, until seventeen hundred years later another mathematician named Copernicus reached the same conclusion after studying Aristarchus’ text , and a second, 150 years after him, one named Galileo.

The Magi: The Hubble, Sagan, and Hammel of Their Age

What is the connection to our Christmas Star? Aristarchus used star charts and calculations developed by the Babylonians centuries earlier. Sir Thomas presents a number of examples where Aristarchus used, what he called “Chaldean lunations,” basically books of tables that all mathematicians of the era would have as a standard in their libraries (p. 314).

The Magi, it is reasonable to infer, would have read Aristarchus. Mathematically he was an “Einstein” of his age, his texts were in circulation, and even though they likely would not have accepted his heliocentric hypothesis, just like modern astronomers who still read Copernicus’ and Galileo’s works, they would have studied his math proofs and geometry to predict lunar and solar eclipses, and to calculate “The Great Year,” “which is completed by the sun, the moon, and the five planets when they return together to the same sign in which they were once before simultaneously found” (quote from Censorinus AD 238; Ibid, p. 316).

That very high level of geometric expertise would have been invaluable in calculating planetary conjunctions with a high degree of accuracy. Furthermore, the ability to correctly forecast the birth of a king was the Gold Medal of astrology/astronomy. Whoever they were, the Magi were convinced they had gotten this one right, and with a level of confidence so strong they were willing to travel from their homes somewhere east of Jerusalem, command an audience with King Herod and tell him right to his face!

Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We have seen his star in the east and have come to worship him. (Mt 2:2, NIV)

Saying that to a reigning monarch is the kind of thing that could get you beheaded in short order. What stayed Herod’s hand? Perhaps the sight of this from an east-facing palace balcony:

Bethlehem Star 12Aug -03 Jerusalem 0210hrs. Star Chart by TheSky6 Serious Astronomer Edition. The proof, as they say is in the pudding. This is a natural sky view of the proposed Star of Bethlehem. See if you can spot it without scrolling down to the annotated version.

A Historical Event Reconstructed out of a Myth: The Power of Good Science and an Astronomy Software Program

Michael Bakich, a Senior Editor of Astronomy Magazine writes in the January 2010 issue:

The biblical account says that the wise men spoke to Herod about the star. Neither Herod nor his scholars knew what they were talking about. No other Bible verse or secular writing mentions the star. What was it? Could it be Matthew, the only gospel writer who mentions the star, wanted to prove to his readers what he knew from reading the Old Testament? I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh; there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel… (Num. 24:17). Did the writer of Matthew invent a story to fulfill this prophecy from Moses? Most historians don’t think so (p. 37).

The solution is most likely a planetary conjunction. It is not, in the end, the definitive answer, nor does it subtract the mystery and miracle of that night.

It was the Star of Wonder. And if this particular conjunction or cycle of conjunctions that occured in 3 BCE signaled the birth of the Savior, how we can rejoice what a clever God we worship!

Bethlehem Star 12Aug -03 Jerusalem 0210hrs with Annotations. Star Chart by TheSky6 Serious Astronomer Edition

One can only imagine what was going through the minds of the Magi as they pointed this astronomical event out to Herod and his astrologers, going over their data and calculations. We know what was going through Herod’s mind.

The conjunction would have been very bright. Jupiter was shining at a magnitude of -1.8 and was at 99.98% phase full (think full Moon), and Venus was at a shadow-producing magnitude by itself of -3.9 and 93.38% full phase! Regulus by contrast would have almost seemed dim at its very bright -1.38 magnitude, and Sirius, the brightest star in the northern sky at -1.44 magnitude was glowing high in the SW sky.

Star of Bethlehem with Magi Card

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. Matt 2:9.

Merry Christmas and may the Blessings of the Christ Child Come to You and Your Loved Ones.

Image Courtesy of http://www.christmasgifts.com

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Star of Wonder–Transformed from Myth to Astronomical Event?

 

The Star of Bethlehem? No, it's Canopus, 2nd Brightest Star in the Sky and a Specular Stand-in. 310 Light Years Distant. Image by D. Pettit taken from the ISS. Photo: NASA

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Prologue

This is a story that starts in the wrong place. They’re my favorite kind. And the wrong time. That’s even better. A story that starts in the wrong place and the wrong time has to be interesting. There’s something to be said for predictability, but it rarely makes for a good plot or an intriguing ending.

This story does not have those disadvantages. Some people have believed it was true. Others believed it was false. Others, still, believed it was myth, of uncertain veracity, but a beautiful, even elegant narrative. For two millennia, Christians have believed it was part of a miracle. Others, of different faiths, may have acknowledged it as a lovely story, but of no spiritual significance. For the past four hundred years, as men and women have studied nature in new and innovative ways, and expanded our understanding of the Earth and the sky into a cosmos unimaginably large and old, the story’s credibility declined, seemingly moving toward the status of a fairy tale.

All of this, while true, is not the start to which I was alluding.

The Bethlehem Star? No, but Another Beautiful Candidate. It is Procyon, 3rd Brightest Star. And It's a Double Star; Its Companion is a White Dwarf. 11 Light Years Distant. Photo: NASA.

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First, Some Historical Background

The Babylonian Cosmos. Image Courtesy: Gavin White. From: Babylonian Star-Lore, 2008. Click on the image for a larger version.

Around nine to ten thousand years ago, the human race, Homo sapiens sapiens discovered a problem. It might have been earlier, but the record left by humans before that is very hard to read. White (2008) in his book Babylonian Star-Lore, suggests that Babylonian astrology began as early as 15,000 years ago, although he states that the practice of astrology was quite different than the modern version. It relied on mathematical calculations written on clay tablets and the earliest tablets have been dated to the 7th or 8th Century, BCE. So, I’ll suggest ten thousand years, with the caveat that date might need to be adjusted with the next archaeological blockbuster discovery. The problem was the Earth. More specifically, the ground.

At this point I need to dispel one very important misconception: the fallacy of modernity. The individuals I to whom I am referring are modern humans. Same body, same brain, same capacity for intelligence, problem solving, or IQ. Just like Albert Einstein, your neighbor Justin, who wears only faded NASCAR t-shirts, your eccentric Aunt Lizzy, or that beauty Angelica or hunk Chad (depending on your hormonal drivings) who in high school you never had the nerve to ask out.

This is the paradigm I want you to remember: ancient ≠ primitive. Got that?

Back to our discovery. At some point in the ancient past, one of our ancestors had the revolutionary thought that the ground was substantively different from the sky. This was not a “well, duh,” moment. It was a paradigm shift, perhaps capable only due to the superior huge frontal cerebral cortex of the Homo sapiens. The shift was beyond the observation of a day/night cycle, although that would have been part of it. This shift, like the differentiation between the sense of the boundary between my body and not-my-body, changed the human perception between earth and sky.

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The Sky is a Problem, a Big Problem

If This was the Bethlehem Star, it Would Have Really Gotten Everyone's Attention. It isn't. This is Wolf-Rayet 104, a Totally Strange Double Star, But This Time, Both Stars are Massive. 8000 Light Years. Photo: NASA/Keck Telescope, Hawaii

Stuff comes out of the sky. Rain, snow, hail, clouds, wind, fog, as well as birds and bugs. Some of those things are good, even edible. Bad things like volcanic or range fire smoke and ash, dangerous wind blowing debris and biting things can come out of the sky, too.

Some things, most things actually, in the sky are beyond reach. The Sun, the Moon, the stars, and the wandering stars. Some stars appeared to streak across the sky; others appeared mysteriously out of nowhere glowing with a dim head and a long tail. And rarely, a flash of a new star in the night that soon disappeared. Or every once in a while there was an unexplainable event in which the Sun seemed to be consumed by a black disk, turning the day to dusk and all the birds stopped singing. The same thing happened to the Moon, its regular phases interrupted, a dark shadow crossing its face, then glowing a blood red before being released from its captivity.

The regular cycles of those things in sky that are out of reach is what we are interested in. We live on the ground. We can’t fly like the bugs or the birds. We can’t live under water, either, but that is not the focus of this discovery. Living on the ground, as we do, we know a lot about the ground. Most of what lives on the ground keeps us alive. Some of the other things that live on the ground can also kill us, but that, too, is secondary to our discussion.

On that day that one very bright modern human looked at the ground, maybe sifting a handful of dirt through his or her fingers, and then looking up at the sky, squinting at the sun or gazing at the bright swath of starlight of the Milky Way, and said the equivalent of “Huh, now that’s interesting,” and human understanding shifted forever.

From that moment, the science of astronomy was born, as well as those of geology and biology. The problem was, earth and life were tangible. The sky, however, was a complete mystery.

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What was the sky?

Supernova AD 1054. Chaco Canyon Petroglyph. Photo: Richard Goode, Porterville College, Calif.

Yes, that was the question: What was the sky? What were the lights in the sky? The daytime sky and the nighttime sky were so different. Why was that? Why did all the lights in the sky appear in the East, move in an arc reaching a highest point that changed with the season and then always set in the West? But what about the stars in the Northern sky that never rose nor set? For some of our observers, however, not knowing they lived below that line we now call the equator, the lights in the sky looked quite different, still rising and setting East to West, but those stars that never rose nor set were to the south. Of course, there were to main players in the diurnal cycle.

The Sun, the greater light to rule the day, its brightness so intense to dare a glance of more than a fleeting moment brought pain, even blindness. At the same time, it brought the warmth of the day, its risings and settings regular, though half of the time, the days would grow longer and half of the time shorter, and with it the corresponding warmth and seasons. The earth tuned itself to this great annular cycle, of living and dying, growing and seeding, warming and cooling. Our ancestors had figured out that part even before the start of our story.

The Moon, the lesser light to rule the night, possessed a soft glow that one could study without risk; its phases regular following the seasons decreed by its daytime master, its face never changing. Yet at intervals beyond comprehension, it, like the Sun, would be covered with a shadow, at times in part, at others completely. Still the phases of the moon was so reliable that as humans began to cultivate their food, not just gather it, the Moon’s monthly journey and phases became an essential resource for the planting, growing and harvesting the crops.

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The Dilemma of the Wandering Stars

Of the night, though, what of the Wandering Stars? The first a fleeting spark always near the Sun’s rise or setting. Next, brighter than the others, one of the mornings and one of the evenings, at times so bright it cast a light that caused shadows. Another with a glow of angry red, appearing out of nowhere and growing into a dominant light every two annual cycles. A fourth, a great golden giant stately moving through the heavens night after night. Also a fifth, whose trek seemed like that of an old one slowly working its way through the constellations. And some, it is said, saw a sixth, dim grey-blue phantom only on the rarest of nights. Against the apparent immutable backdrop of the other lights at night, why did these few shine but not twinkle like the others, and how, against all reason, did they change their direction in the sky and track back toward the East, then inexplicably again reverse and march toward the West?

Milky Way Band. Photo Courtesy of John Gleason/NASA

What was the sky? Why did some of the lights form patterns against the black velvet backdrop of night? What was the swath of light that cut across the sky from horizon to horizon? What was the force or cause of their motion? What were the faintest clouds of light, while others seemed to cluster into groups distinct from the random spread of most of the stars?

One might say the ancients had plenty of time to work this all out. Day after day and night after night, if they chose to pay attention, they could discover patterns and recurring risings and settngs as the year progressed from the shortest days to the longest. On every continent where humans collected, they in fact did pay attention, and observed the patterns and motions. What they decided those observations meant and what caused them, was another thing altogether.

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The First Astronomers

Sunburst Petroglyph, Chemehuevi People, near Lanfair, CA. Photo Courtesy: Donald Austin & NASA

To explain the sky, both day and night, these earliest of astonomers drew upon the source of information they understood the best: the ground and the sea, and the abundant life that inhabited both. Those were the things they would touch. They made the very logical assumption that the sky was made from the same things the earth and oceans were. They couldn’t have been more wrong. At the same time they couldn’t have been more right.

I must again remind you of our one rule: ancient ≠ primitive. The observers devised theories about how the earth, sea, and sky came into being, using the “materials” to which they had access. We call these descriptions of the creation of the world, myths. That is, if we are honest, modernocentric, even arrogant. It can result in our overlooking key facts and observations, assigning to them to the status of fable rather than seeing myths for what they were: descriptions of the origin and forces of nature and life.

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The Aztec Creation Story: Mother Sun Dismembered

The Aztecs provide a perfect example of a creation account that follows their observations of the natural world:

Quetzalcoatl: Aztec Lord of Morning Star & Wind

The dualistic gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca, lightness and darkness, looked down from their dwelling in the sky at the water below. Floating on top of the water was an enormous Earth Monster goddess who devoured all things with her many mouths, for the goddess had gaping mouths at the knees, elbows and other joints.

Everything the twins created, the enormous, floating, terrible, insatiable goddess ate. The twin gods, normally implacable enemies, agreed she had to be stopped. They transformed themselves into two enormous, slithering snakes, and slid silently into the dark, cool water, their cold eyes and flicking tongues seeking her body.

One of the snakes wrapped itself around the goddess’s arms and the other snake coiled itself around her legs and together they tore the immense Earth Monster goddess in two. Her head and shoulders became the earth and her belly and legs became the sky. Some say Tezcatlipoca fought the Earth Monster goddess in his human form and the goddess ate one of his feet, therefore his one-legged appearance. Angered by what the dual gods had done, and to compensate for her dismemberment, the other gods decided to allow her to provide the people with the provisions they needed to survive.

Tezcatlipoca: Aztec Lord of Death, Creator of Fire, Night Sky, & Warriors

From her hair were created the trees, the grass and flowers; from her eyes, caves, springs and wells; rivers flowed from her mouth; and hills and mountains grew from her nose and shoulders.

The goddess, however, was unhappy, and after the sun sank into the earth the people would often hear her crying. Her thirst for human blood made her weep, and the people knew the earth would not bear fruit until she drank. This is the reason she is given the gift of human hearts. In exchange for providing food for human lives, the goddess demanded human lives. Source: James W. Salterio Torres.

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The Sumerian Creation Myth: The Mother Goddess Gets Dismembered

Though the price of human sacrifice causes us to shudder, the battle with the Earth Monster goddess, with her defeat and dismemberment is hauntingly similar to the Sumerian story of the defeat of Tiamat:

Tiamat possessed the Tablets of Destiny and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the god she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host. The deities gathered in terror, but Anu, (replaced later, first by Enlil and, in the late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon, by Marduk, the son of Ea), first extracting a promise that he would be revered as “king of the gods”, overcame her, armed with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear.

And the lord stood upon Tiamat’s hinder parts,

And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.

He cut through the channels of her blood,

And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.

Markuk slaying Tiamat. Bas relief on stone.

Slicing Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the source of the Tigris and the Euphrates. With the approval of the elder deities, he took from Kingu the Tablets of Destiny, installing himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Kingu was captured and later was slain: his red blood mixed with the red clay of the Earth would make the body of humankind, created to act as the servant of the younger Igigi deities.

Source: Wikipedia–Tiamat

Two creation stories, having so many parallels even though those who devised them lived on opposite sides of a planet they did not know as such, and who never had had contact with one another.

The ground, the sea, the sky were all the world. Thousands of years would pass before the problem of the sky would again be addressed. The untouchableness of the sky would create a new question, without which, this story could not continue in Part 2.

 

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