[David]

I agree with the tone of all three of you--God certainly had the power to provide any kind of celestial help He thought appropriate to guide the wise men. And I also see the clearest way to reconcile the birth naratives as assuming that the wise men showed up a year or so after the birth.

On the other hand, what is interesting about this story is that in my view, the actual birth date was in May of 6 BC.

[billbears]

Oh, I agree about the date. I understand the reason for having it at this time of year and the history behind that, but I always thought it was around 3 or 4 BC, so it is interesting to think it might have happened even a few years earlier

[xzins]

All of the dating is derived from events, assumptions, etc....even this one. It is far better to talk of a range.

[Hagrid]

Explain how a star would lead people to something; I've always been a little vague on that. If there was a star in the East, then the wise men must have been in the West. Isn't West of Bethlehem a hundred miles or so the Mediteranean Sea? And if the Star was over Bethlehem, it would be essentially in the same place just a few hundred miles away. How could someone tell if they were right under a star such that they could find a village? And stars appear to rotate in the heavens around the North Star every night, such that a star that was overhead one hour would be overhead a spot hundreds or thousands of miles away just an hour later.

This is not to suggest that it's any more impossible than any other story in the Bible, just that it's not coherently told. It's told in a mystical, faith-based way.

An eclipse of Jupiter would make a bright "star-like" planet disppear for a few minutes or hours; it wouldn't lead someone anywhere. This doesn't clear much up, does it?