Posted on 12/12/2020 1:33:20 PM PST by Texas Fossil
I was told elsewhere it would not be visible in North America.
Guess we will have to see it via video.
I find it interesting.
Have been told it will not be visible in North America.
We will have to rely on video captured elsewhere on the globe.
My pleasure.
Thanks for that.
What really was seen way back when.....
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke
https://sites.uni.edu/morgans/astro/course/TheStar.pdf
I’ll be looking but
California is in
Lockdown,the Warden is
Pissed,the Guards are
Heavily Armed and the
Snitches are Everywhere!
.
Merry Christmas!
Seems like a sick joke. Sorry.
Time to move?
OK, I’ll accept that. It is a subject I am not that informed about.
Certain wisemen attuned to the heavens and having access to records probably going back to Babylon would notice aberrations that most would miss. Say... a star or body that appears promptly at sunset in the western sky over Israel that does not move as the heavens move thru the night or with the seasonal constellations. It just sits there night after night and it might have looked rather ordinary at a distance and even the wisemen may not have noted it “at first”. (The real translation of the passage...”seen his star in the east” is really...”We of the East, have seen his star and have come to worship him...meaning they were looking westward over Israel.)
Yet over a period of days and weeks it still sat there and eventually somebody in that group of wise men took notice.... of an ordinary looking star that doesn’t move with the others thru the night nor did it move with the constellations nor with the seasons. They would have looked at the records and checked the legends. The wise men’s star, I think, astronomically was the same as Moses’ burning bush, to which Moses “turned aside to see such a great sight”. The wise men knowledgeable of the religions and customs of the region around them decided that something extraordinary was going on. The fact that the Star may have appeared to rise further overhead as they traveled westward toward Israel would have further excited their hopes and dreams. Perhaps God whispered into their hearts...”come worship your Saving King....”
One Freeper argues that it was the top most star of the Southern Cross that was slowly(by means of the thousands of years of processional changes that cause constellations and stars to slowly change their positions in our skies over time) moving out of view so that only the “top most” crowning star was visible to Israel at that time. He argues that this was what excited the wise men.
My argument was that the Wise men would have already known about the slow movement of the Southern Cross which would eventually take the constellation’s crowning star out of view of Israel and the Mediterranean. The Wise Men knew about the star already and would have figured the Southern Cross’s crowning star into their calculations. It would not have prompted them to take a hazardous journey for such a “ho hum event”.
No...they saw something so extra-ordinary and if the fixed star truly stayed fixed over Israel in their “west” as they traveled westward, it would have risen in apparent angular altitude the closer they traveled towards it until it was overhead where Jesus, Mary and Joseph was living. The Southern Cross crowning star(gamma crucis) would have always stayed distant and at the same relative position.
It would also move as the Earth spun on it’s axis at night though never quite disappear but swiveling slightly the way the ladle of the dipper does in the northwhile the two end stars stay lined up with polaris. The Spine stars of the Southern cross always point south but the top spinal star would swivel thru the night as the constellation is circumpolar. Being low in the sky Gamma Crucis would probably looked like it was bobbing upward then downward thru the night with the positions and timings changing as the Earth moved about its orbit.
We also know that the star was visible to the magi(,no one knows the number of them, probably would have been a protective caravan)for at least 2 years. It makes sense in terms of the need to time to observe and travel and make notes. We also know that Herod had all the 2 year male children and under killed in that region after the Magi, warned of God in their dreams, returned not to Herod but went home. Joseph also got warning and took his family to Egypt. Jesus was a toddler by the time the magi arrived.
I think the Christ star was no ordinary star. What it really was, we can only speculate. The Wise men might have known of the Moses’ prophecy of a ‘star that would arise out of Jacob(also called Israel)’. I believe they saw that star and worshipped Christ our King having followed that star to him. They knew the heavens and noted the passing of planets and comets and knew the seasonal positions and could calculate the regularity of them. They probably believed that the Earth was round as the learned Greeks did. Yet what they saw arising in the western sky over Israel excited them to the point of travel and exploration. It was a star that did not move with the time of night nor with the seasons...yet as they travelled toward it, it appeared more overhead as though “leading them” causing them to ‘rejoice” until at last they found Jesus!
See my post at 52!
God would not have been so unjust and Clarke distorts the Biblical record. Read Luke chapter 2. The “star” was a fairly local phenomena and not some nova that would have burned a noble civilization to a a crisp unjustly. We know need not mention what God can do to unjust and sin filled cities and towns should he choose as in Sodom!!
There were several “Herods” in a span of about a 100 years from about 30 bc to 40 ad or so depending on what sources you read and they were all fairly wicked men but the records on them especially the one in charge 2 years or so after one of the great “census’s” with accompanying per head taxes of Augustus is fragmentary; especially since Augustus decreed several such “taxings”some greater or some “minor” over his reign so the info in our contemporary records of the times is incomplete.
I read that story first as a teen-ager and it impacted me hard at first...tugging at my emotions and triggering my inner “Christian” born sense of injustice almost against the one who informs my conscience as to what constitutes injustice. I took a second look at the story and realized what a shyster Arthur C Clarke truly was. How he sets up the notion of a Godless or at best a remote agnostic notion of a material universe and of a man religiously trained being kindly joshed about his faith until they encounter a burned up race, by all accounts a noble human like race whose sun went supernova. The calculations suggested that this was the Nova that formed the star of Bethlehem that men in their fertile imaginations created the entire mythos of Christ from.
Clarke proceeds from a vicious antichristian Masonic prebiased animus and not from truly objective scientific reason in setting up the strawmen and then knocking them down. The Jesuit in the short story ends up with a broken faith having to deal with an even more hostile and atheistic crew all incensed at the injustice of a Godless universe and all of them incensed at the cruel irony of a falsely founded religious faith that will crumble on earth once Earth learned “the truth”!
Wow...what a way to attack impressionable minds who wish to reconcile faith with reason. Clarke attacks the faith while raping and pimping reason with prebiased antichristian animus, trying to goad the halfway convinced into one camp or the other...the faith of the living God or the golden calf of science!
It does show that Clarke does seem to reject the ‘2 or 3 planet conjunction theory and anyway planetary conjunctions don’t stay conjoined for 2 years.(the age that Herod chose as the cut off for the killing of males 2 years and under in that region)
For that matter Supernova don’t stay very bright for long but will slowly fade. They will also shift position in the skies as the Earth moves about in its orbit thru the seasons and will change positions (rising or setting) as the Earth spins on its access.
I’m convinced of the truth of the Bible and that the magi saw an apparently fixed object that stood in it’s position relative to where the magi were located. As and when the Magi finally decided to investigate it had already been in place for at least 2 years never moving thru the night and never changing its position relative to the Earth’s orbit. There’s your science and the Magi were probably very intelligent and spiritual men with access to astronomical records going back 20 centuries or so with the ability to do math and they probably believed as the the Learned Greeks did that the Earth was a sphere!
As the Magi moved toward Israel...the fixed object...perhaps 200 miles or so above Bethlehem would have appeared to slowly rise in apparent angular elevation until it was overhead. I don’t think it was very bright but it was visible if you knew where things should be and where they shouldn’t be as the magi would have known.
Exactly! The info at the link you posted makes total sense.
"Saints John Chrysostom and Theophilact affirm that it was not an ordinary star, like those we see every night, but "a divine and angelic power that appeared in the form of a star." Other stars had their origin at the creation of the universe, but his star was revealed only at the end of the ages, when the Logos/Word became incarnate. Other stars are fixed in the heavens, but this one was visible lower in the skies. Other stars are visible only at night, but this one shone like the sun during the day, far surpassing every other star in size and brilliance. Other stars (like the planets, sun, and moon) moved constantly with the vault of heaven; but this one moved sometimes, and other times stood sill, as Saint Theophilact says: "It moved as the Magi moved, and stood still as they rested."
According to the Orthodox Christian Tradition the Star of Bethlehem which led the Magi was not an astronomical event, but it was rather a supernatural being-an angel. This Angel was sent by God to lead the Magi to the Christ Child and the world to the dawn of a new light of knowledge, as seen in the Troparion (Hymn) of the Holy Nativity:
I don’t know that it was an angel and the Bible doesn’t say, it just calls it a star and the Bible(with respect to the saints you mention) doesn’t mention that it shown by day.(like God’s pillar of cloud showed to the Israelites by day.
I do think that it was no ordinary heavenly body but that gifted Magi who would have known the heavens would have realized that it was not in a place that a known star would be and that it stood nightly at least in a fixed location. Perhaps when they got to Jerusalem and then left the King’s court to seek the Christ child they saw more of a sense of the movement in the ‘star’ as it was nearly overhead and at that point the object performed localized movements that the Magi could follow until they came to Jesus and the “star was right overhead. I don’t believe it was super bright but it could be seen unaided by those who knew the heavens. Yes I could believe that when the magi got close enough that whatever the object was would move as in winking at them and nudging them to their savior!
The bible doesn’t say it was visible by daylight unless it was only visible to the magi...which I doubt. I think if anyone had asked them on their journey the Magi would have shown that person it’s position and anyone could have seen that star. God doesn’t want to make his followers look like fools.
I don’t know that it was an angel and the Bible doesn’t say, it just calls it a star and the Bible(with respect to the saints you mention) doesn’t mention that it shown by day.(like God’s pillar of cloud showed to the Israelites by day.
I do think that it was no ordinary heavenly body but that gifted Magi who would have known the heavens would have realized that it was not in a place that a known star would be and that it stood nightly at least in a fixed location. Perhaps when they got to Jerusalem and then left the King’s court to seek the Christ child they saw more of a sense of the movement in the ‘star’ as it was nearly overhead and at that point the object performed localized movements that the Magi could follow until they came to Jesus and the “star was right overhead. I don’t believe it was super bright but it could be seen unaided by those who knew the heavens. Yes I could believe that when the magi got close enough that whatever the object was would move as if winking at them and nudging them to their savior!
Texas is on
My Short List
FRiend!
Except 800 years ago was not the "Christmas Star" that the wise men saw some 2,000+ years ago.
Still an impressive sight. I've been watching Saturn and Jupiter grow closer together for weeks now, with a bright Mars far off to the left. Don't forget Venus in the very early morning before sunrise. Also a bright planet.
If you come here, you will never regret it.
Welcome in advance.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.