re: #6 KingKenrod

Biblical authors rarely just made things up. Their audience at the time would remember or record odd celestial events, so they would know if the teller of the story was just making up the new star’s appearance circa 0BC.

The event (whatever it was) was probably real, just connected to Jesus’s birth after the fact.

But the books of the New Testament were not written during Jesus’s lifetime or even during the entire next two generations. Biblical scholars put the date of the earliest written New Testament verses somewhere around 60 A.D.

The majority of New Testament scriptures were written between then and around 150 A.D although many scholars claim that at least two of the supposed letters of Paul/Saul are latter day forgeries and were not written until sometime considerably after 300 A.D.

So just like anyone reading the story today, the written account of the “Gospel” was written after anyone who might have actually witnessed it was already dead. (don’t forget the average lifespan then was considerably shorter).

There was no one still alive to cry foul and say “Hey, that never happened, there never was a star of the East that outshone all the other heavenly bodies, at least not when they say it did.”

Besides all of which the story of the “Three Magi” and the “Star of Bethlehem” only appears once in the bible, in the gospel of Matthew. Matthew was written between 70-110 A.D. based on earlier oral gospel stories and the gospel of Mark which scholars now believe was actually the first gospel to be written.

Many after-the-fact tales in the “gospels” were apparently written in order to fulfill (or appear to fulfill) earlier prophecies regarding the Jewish messiah. In this case the prophecy comes from the old testament book of Numbers…

I see Him, but not now;
I behold Him, but not near;
A Star shall come out of Jacob;
A Scepter shall rise out of Israel,
And batter the brow of Moab,
And destroy all the sons of tumult.

The kingdom of Moab had long since ceased to exist by the time of Jesus, but the prophecy of the star arising had become an accepted and anticipated sign of the messiah amongst Jewish theologians.

Therefore when someone got around to writing up the gospel of Matthew 80-90 years (scholarly best estimate) after the death of Jesus they included the story of the “Magi” and the “Star of Bethlehem.”

I have to rate the probability of the story of the Magi and the Eastern star being factual as exceedingly low given what we know about the formation of the written account.