The Bethlehem Star (Part 2)

How should modern scientific understanding affect interpretation of stars and heavenly signs in the Bible? For most of the ancient world, stars were heavenly beings - gods, angels, signs, omens. But for modern science stars are suns, with predictable orbits, and offer no such portents for life here on earth. How does this affect things Christianity has depended on for validation, such as the star of Bethlehem?

Many pastors and Christians have felt this tension and felt forced to interpret the Bethlehem star (and its strange behavior) as a supernatural phenomena. Something that looked like a star that appeared in the sky, or that they mistook for a star. I don't think that does the facts justice though, for two reasons.

First, the reason foreign magi came was because the star they observed fit into the horoscopes they understood. If it was an extra aberration in the sky, then it would not have fit into their complex and set models of what signaled the birth of a ruler (of which they had many), or what country it represented.

Second, Michael Molnar's analysis of ancient coins, astrology, and modern astronomy suggest that there is a natural event that would have indicated to the entire Greco-Roman world that a super king was born in Judea on April 17th, 6 BC. We have texts that show us what zodiac constellation was associated with Judea. We know what they looked for. We know this event would have been significant for them.

Two interpretive possibilities are left to us. Either the ancient astrology of the Greco-Roman Empire was at least partially correct, or that God timed Jesus' birth at just the time that the larger empire would be primed to recognize it. Sure, one might say that early Christians profiteered from the superstitious interpretations of natural circumstances and applied them to Jesus. That is the easy way out, a self serving interpretation, conveniently allowing us to ignore what we want to ignore. In fact, we know that later Roman rulers appropriated this occultation of Jupiter in Aries on coins in the Near East in an attempt to claim power over the region. And yet these Roman emperors weren't born in Judea at that time. But Jesus was.

I feel constrained by these facts, and by the Hebraic understanding of "the starry hosts" as angel armies, messengers, warriors, agents of God, toward a simple understanding of the presence of a star in the birth narratives to be interpreted as messages from angels. God used natural phenomena, combined with the culture of the time (and several extra spiritual encounters with angels too) to validate Jesus as the rightful emperor for all people of all time. Does this mean we have to adopt an angelic understanding stars, and import them into our science of suns?

Almost coincidently, at least some angels are consistent with what we think of as balls of nuclear fusion. Psalms 104:4 and again in Hebrews 1:7 says, "he makes his angels winds, his ministers a flaming fire". Even the angelic creatures called "seraphim" literally translate as "burning ones". So the ancient mythology is at least congruent with modern conceptions.

Second, modern science doesn't understand what life and consciousness is, and has no tools to measure it. We may not think of suns and stars as living things, but we really don't know. Suns produce elements, have births and deaths, consume resources, and the materials they disperse coalesce to reproduce new stars. One could be forgiven for describing the life cycle of a sun as curiously similar to what we know of as life.

Third, if the function of "angels" is to be messengers and agents, what better description is there of a star which casts out photons that travel billions of light years at give us information about the history of the universe. Even in a modern sense, stars are sending messages through time and space to us.

The danger is that a naturalistic understanding of the cosmos robs us of the ability to interpret the intent behind ancient writings. What were ancient authors asserting about the stars by asserting that they were messengers and messages from God?

1) That stars (and the sun and moon) are not Gods and should not be worshipped. While the ancient world venerated and even worshipped the celestial bodies as gods, Hebrew scripture attempted to thwart this, as does science. Stars are just creations of the true God who has give shape and purpose to everything. This God should be worshipped, not cosmological objects. 

2) That God has a vast army, and cannot hope to be vanquished. The science of the Bible is a descriptive cosmology of observation, not a detailed anatomy of molecules and processes. Even if stars are not angelic beings (or contain angelic beings), the lesson remains that the "God of Hosts" which should be compared to the phrase "hosts of heavens", or "starry hosts", literally means "God of Armies" or "God of angel armies". Seeing the innumerable stars above was a constant reminder that God is powerful, and will be victorious.