imardmd1:
. . . who the Magoi were descendants of, exactly where they came from, and what star they were referring to. (Post #14)
To continue:
At one time, all the humans except a very few (eight persond to be exact) had sinned as Adam and Eve, failed to repent (like Cain), and were either ignoring The Creator had begun to worship other gods of their own creation. Therefore God, being disappointed and disobeyed, saw that He could not win them back, and washed the world clean of them, exccept for Noah, his sons, and all their wives.
Coming down off snowy Moount Ararat, they and all the animals sought awarmer arable, farmable land in which to settle and expand. I believe that thet began to repopulate the earth, starting from the region near Lake Van, namely from thst area later to be called Anatolia.
But as they spread, and beginning to depend on some of the animals for sustenance and/or as laboring beasts. And also, they began to re-institute astronomy to know when to plant and when to harvest. I believe that as generations were born, faithfulness to the Creator again began to wane, and be supplanted with the worship of those holding the keys to the positions of heavenly bodies as well as to the exotic animals.
We know now, from archaeology, that in that area a site grew up that existed solely for religious worship, a place that was highly developed in structures, a place now called Gobekli Tepe (in Turcic meaning "Pot-belly Hill") only a few miles northwest of Abraham's birthplace, which was "Ur of the Chaldean mountains," now called Sanliurfa. Here is a picture of Gobekli Tepe, the center of worship:
Worship Center at Gobekli Tepe E
In the other direction, about twenty-five miles to the southwest of Sanliurfa, lies Haran, which the archaeologist have also discovered. That is where Terah and his son Abraham, his grandson Lot settled, not going any further toward Canaan until after Terah died, whence Abraham set off under Gd's guidance, taking lot with him, and leaving Nahor behind in Ur of the Chaldees, the north Syrian land called Padan or Padan-aram (Gen.25:29). This area is also located in what was, in Jesus' time, called Anatolia.
I am going to suppose, without straining the truth, that the people of Padanaram were heavily involved in wotshiping false gods, consistent with being near the huge worship center near them, that Terah's predecessors were involved in it, and that is why God directed Abraham to move far away from his family there, to separate him from that culture and start a new one.
But I also believe that this worship center was also the place where the wisdom of prognosticators of times to plant and harvest inherently claimed the attention of humans over a very broad area, and that this cult controlling the intellectual property of the Aramaic culture persisted from long before Abraham's time right down to that of Jesus.
So that is who the Magoi were, and where they came from. When y'all have digested that, I will go on to my suppositions regarding the star sign of the Messiah of the Jews,
The star sign that brought the Magoi from Anatolia, The Southern Cross constellation.
Genesis 1:14-16 (AV):
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
The four main stars of the famous Southern Cross constellation are
Acrux (Alpha Crucis), bottom; Becrux (Beta Crucis), left;
Gacrux (Gamma Crucis), top; and Delta Crucis, right.<
Excerpt:
Crux was plainly visible everywhere in the United States some 5,000 years ago, as well as in ancient Greece and Babylonia.
According to the writings of Richard Hinckley Allen (1838-1908), an expert in stellar nomenclature, the Southern Cross was last seen on the horizon of Jerusalem around the time that Christ was crucified. But thanks to precession — an oscillating motion of the Earth's axis — the Cross ended up getting shifted out of view well to the south over the ensuing centuries.
========
In order to understand the yearly travels of the Magoi from Anatolia southerly toward Jerusalem and back, one first has to remember that they were effective scrutinizers of the shifts of the heavenly lights, and their interest in determining ways to determine the "true" north pointed to by the extension of an imaginary line defined by the axis about which the earth rotates. That could be done if one could find a star that always appears in the same place in the night sky (the imaginary line passes close to or through it), and to the left (the north) of the direction which one faces (the east) to see the sun rise. Such a star in the north would seem to stay pretty much in one place, while during the night the other stars would travel circularly about it. In our day, that star is Polaris, the bright star at the end of the handle of the Little Dipper.
But what about finding south for navigation? Well, if God had made it so, there would be a star in that direction also; but then, would people north of the Equator be able to see it? Of course not, so God has provided another way to find the south by the stars, and that is by using the Southern Cross.
But before discussing that, one needs to take account of another factor, the moving of the place on the horizon, and the variability of the length of days that tells us of the seasons of the solar year. Even the ancient humans were aware of this, and accounted for it using permanent structures to give reference points for these celestial indicators. One such edifice is Stonehenge, built in Moses' time, the chief feature of which was to mark the longest day, and hence the number of night/day cylces that define a solar year. This seasonal variability of daylight is by consequence of the precession (click here) of the earth's axis, which is tilted with respect to the plane defined by its orbit about our star, the Sun.
The earth's precession
In this image, the edge of the shadow on the earth's surface is perpendicular to the plane defined by its orbit about the Sun.
The tilt of the earth's axis of rotation from the direction perpendicular to the ecliptic plane is constantly but very slowly changing, making the Souhern Cross since before the Magoi were putatively observing that it was moving further and further south over the horizon, decade by decade.
In Abraham's time, the Southern Cross constellation was easily observable in his town (Sanli = "glorious")-Urfa, Ur of the Chaldean mountains/people. Doubtless the astronomical observers recorded its vagaries, but when many years had passed they must have noted that its height in the night sky became less and less, when finally--long before Jesus' time--at Ur's latitude, it failed to rise above the horizon. However, to overcome this problem, they nerely traveled south enough to be able to see it again rise briefly low on the horizon. So this led them further and further south, generation by generation of scientists, until they recognized that they were being drawn to the Golan Heights above Israel. But when they descended to the Jordan Valley floor, they found that the had to again climb up the hills further south leading up to Jerusalem to see it again. And this they did, showing up in Herod's city when Jesus was about two years old.
Also along the way, they (being wise in astrology as well as in astronomy), because of the spreading of the Jewish prophetic writings of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Daniel throughout the Mideast because of the synagogues, were also able to see and hear from the Jews that Daniel's 69th week ("week"=a heptad of years; see Gen. 29:27) was steadily approaching, and because of knowing from the very precise chronicles of the Babylonian/Median kings, they could ascertain the dates of the destruction of the Jewish temple, the command to rebuild it (Dan. 9:25), amd the times when it began (Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai 1:8). And now that Herod the Great had finished his outstanding renovation of the Second Temple, everyone saw in it a sign that the Messiah's appearance was nigh, even upon them.
It seems clear that, though the quadrilateral form of the four stars had no significance formwise, still because of the talk of Jewish scholars about the arrival of Messiah for years before, the sign of a star leading them south from Padanaram (language=Aramic) to Israel might indeed be the sign of Messiah the King's arrival as a human child. They wouldn't need a prophet to suggest that portentious idea to them.
But God the Creator, Himself knowing from before the foundation of the Earth, before His dispersion of the Heavenly illumination, surely knew that in the proper dispensation, when cast in the light of a Risen Messiah, the shape of this ever-lasting sign of Jesus, Lord and Messiah, ought to bring the reminder of the Cross of Calvary, of Golgotha, to mind forever, as we who believe in the Babe of Bethlehem enjoy eternal life.
And that is my Christmas story.
Take time to humbly worship the Mighty King, the Prince of Peace, Who is soon to institute His Global Kingdom of Righteousness and Peace on Earth.
Have a blessed Christmas, all y'all!