They could have watched the first conjunction from Babylon in May of
They could have watched the first conjunction from Babylon in May of 7BC, but delayed travelling until the end of the long, hot summer. Pisces was the sign of the zodiac that represented the land of Israel. This conjunction, claims Hughes, signified a potent brew of divinity, kingship and righteousness involving the Jewish people and the Promised Land: “Putting it crudely, that is why the Wise Men went for Jerusalem.”The Magi could have figured out the details of the triple conjunction well in advance. The regal aspect came from Jupiter, while Saturn stood for both the principle of justice and the land of Palestine.
He is struck by the rival idea of a triple conjunction and argues that the Bethlehem triple conjunction was Jupiter, Saturn and the constellation of Pisces. David Hughes of Sheffield University, for one, believes that such occultations took place too regularly to be of great astrological significance. I believe that a horoscope of that day was incredibly ominous – truly messianic”.The mystery of the Star has been solved Perhaps not. The heavens on 17 April 6BC produced impressive astrological portents: “If we recreate a horoscopic chart for [this date],” writes Molnar, “we find unmistakable indications pointing to the birth of a king of Judaea.
Examining the likely time frame, Molar found only two that took place in Aries and thus in Judaea, occurring on 20 March 6BC and 17 April 6BC: “During the second occultation, Jupiter was precisely `in the east’, an astrological terminology that Matthew uses to describe the Magi’s star”. To identify an astrological portent involving Jupiter, he focused on lunar occultations. These are “bull’s-eye” conjunctions in which the Moon’s disc obscures the planet. He considers it likely that what he calls “the great portent” of 17 April 6BC was very much on their minds – the Romans were looking for proof that a Roman, not a Jew, had fulfilled the messianic prophecy.
Aries appeared on the coins because it was linked to Judaea in contemporary symbolism: Ptolemy mentions that Judaea is under the spell of Aries.Molnar’s argument needed another ingredient – the presence of a heavenly body to symbolise the birth of a king: “My initial search for a regal `star’ centred on the star of Zeus, namely the Planet Jupiter, which invariably played the central role in horoscopes that had regal implications”. Molnar now believes that the coins commemorate the annexation of Judaea by the Romans, which suggests that the Romans were aware of important astrological portents involving Judaea. Molnar’s studies have suggested that this event, though of little significance to a modern astronomer, was “brilliant” in an astrological sense.Michael Molnar notes that astrological signs appeared on ancient coinage, notably from Antioch, the capital of the Roman province of Syria On one side of each coin was a bust of Jupiter On the other, Aries the Ram gazed back at a star. His candidate for the Star of Bethlehem is an event that took place on 17 April 6BC: a double occultation of Jupiter by the Moon, when our closest neighbour moves in front of the giant planet. That Herod was unaware of the star until the Magi informed him of its significance adds weight to this argument.If we accept that many Bethlehem-star suggestions do not take into account the mindset of the Wise Men, what kind of astrology was practised in the Near East during the reign of King Herod? Michael Molnar from Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, has studied Greek astrology as used throughout the Roman world, including Mesopotamia and Babylonia, and drawn his own conclusions: “By my theory, Jesus would have been 2,000 years old on 17 April 1995″.
