The Star of Bethlehem

This is either a late Christmas post, a way early Christmas post, or just a post that happens to be about the Christmas story, mainly the star that led the wise men to Jesus.

There are many theories about what the star actually was. Was it the conjunction of two planets, three planets, a comet, a supernova, or something else? What if it wasn't a natural phenomena? Would that really matter? In other words, if all the "natural" explanations failed to provide a satisfactory reconciliation with Babylonian sky charts and the story in the Bible would that mean the event recorded in the Bible was made-up?

Not necessarily.

We could, as some would, say that the entire story is pure imagination. No Jesus, no Mary, No Wise Men, and of course no Star. But to make that conclusion one would also have to ignore Bethlehem as a real place. If the story was pure imagination the author would had to have known about the place, Bethlehem. To know about Bethlehem it makes sense he would had to have live relatively close to there. (Unless the Wise Men from Babylonia wrote the story. haha). So, if the story is made-up, it is based at least in some reality. Otherwise, Jesus would have been born in Huierty and had three eyes.

The Star of Bethlehem is connected exclusively with the guidance of the Wise Men. They were star gazers. God wanted them to come see Jesus, so he spoke to them in their language, stars. Whatever they saw or however they interpreted what they saw, it prompted them to travel to Jerusalem and then onto Bethlehem seeking out the king of the Jews. God speaks to us in our language. We can explain the voice away by attributing the sound to natural events or we can accept that when we read the Bible, a book about God, we will find supernatural events beyond and outside the scope of our small natural "world."