Nicholl Colin - The great Christ comet : revealing the true Star of Bethlehem

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Chapter 1: Star of Wonder

We Three Kings, by John Henry Hopkins (17921868).

Wikipedia, s.v. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, http:// en .wikipedia .org /wiki/Bethlehem ,_Pennsylvania #Christmas _star (last modified April 1, 2013).

See Star Light, Star Bright, Palmer Lake Historical Society, http:// palmerdividehistory .org /startale.html (last modified May 7, 2011).

Wikipedia, s.v. Christmas in Poland, http:// en .wikipedia .org /wiki/Christmas _in _Poland (last modified February 20, 2013).

Maria Hubert von Staufer, Christmas in Poland, http:// www .christmasarchives .com /wpoland.html (last modified October 25, 2010).

Ibid.; Barbara Rolek, Polish Christmas Traditions, http:// easteuropeanfood .about .com /od /christmaseve /a /Polishxmas.htm (last modified May 3, 2013).

Rebecca Luczycki, Starring in the Night, Alaska magazine, http:// www .alaskamagazine .com /article /77 /09/starring _in _the _night (accessed May 3, 2014).

Mike Rich, The Nativity Story , directed by Catherine Hardwicke, produced by Wyck Godfrey, cinematic release December 1, 2006 (Los Angeles: New Line Cinema, 2007), DVD.

Tony Jordan, The Nativity , television miniseries, directed by Coky Giedroyc, produced by Ruth Kenley-Letts, aired on the BBC, December 2010 (Ampthill, England: Red Planet Pictures, 2011), DVD.

Albert Ross, Mary, Mother of Jesus , television film, directed by Kevin Connor, produced by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, aired on NBC TV, November 14, 1999 (Universal City, CA: Universal Studios, 2010), DVD.

Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, The Bible , television miniseries, produced by Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, aired on the History Channel, March 331, 2013 (Beverly Hills, CA: Lightworkers Media, 2013), DVD.

Mark R. Kidger, The Star of Bethlehem: An Astronomers View (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), xi.

Ibid., ix.

Ibid., ixx.

One positive recent development on this front was the multidisciplinary colloquium on the Star of Bethlehem at the University of Groningen on October 2324, 2014; see http:// www .astro .rug .nl /~khan/bethlehem (accessed July 5, 2014). A collection of papers presented at the colloquium is due to be published by Brill.

R. A. Oriti, The Star of Bethlehem, The Griffith Observer 39.12 (December 1975): 9.

Kidger, Star of Bethlehem , viii.

Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke , 2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 612 (italics his). He goes on to state that Matthews nativity account might be deemed essentially or partly historically accurate if we allow for poetic license and the use of symbolism.

My translation.

I prefer magi (ESV footnote) to the rendering wise men (ESV text) and therefore will use that term (and the Magi) throughout.

My translation.

In deference to the preposition that follows (over or above), I have translated the phrase came and stood (cf. NASB) rather than came to rest (cf. ESV). See Josephus, J.W. 6.5.3 (289) for the expression stood over in an astronomical context.

In this context, double-crossed would probably be a preferable translation to tricked.

Matthews two years old or under actually means one year old or under, since the Jews reckoned that a baby in the first year of life was already one year old and in the second year of life was two years old. (See, for example, Robert H. Gundry, Matthew : A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church under Persecution , 2nd ed. [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994], 35). In their second year or under is a preferable, dynamic-equivalent translation of the Greek.

Cf. David W. Hughes, The Star of Bethlehem Mystery (London: J. M. Dent, 1979), 13.

Chapter 2: We Beheld (It Is No Fable)

For example, David E. Aune, The Gospel as Hellenistic Biography, Mosaic 20 (1987): 110; idem, The New Testament in Its Literary Environment (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1988). Cf. Charles H. Talbert, What Is a Gospel? The Genre of the Canonical Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977).

Richard A. Burridge, What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography , 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004).

Note the statement of Graham Stanton, Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 192: The gospels are now widely considered to be a sub-set of the broad ancient literary genre of biographies. Also Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 24; idem, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 7879; Richard A. Burridge, About People, by People, for People, in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences , ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 120121.

Burridge, What Are the Gospels? , 105232. Burridge notes that The genre of bios is flexible and diverse, with variation in the pattern of features from one bios to another. The gospels also diverge from the pattern in some aspects, but not to any greater degree than other bioi ; in other words, they have at least as much in common with Graeco-Roman bioi , as the bioi have with each other. Therefore, the gospels must belong to the genre of bioi (250).

Keener, Historical Jesus of the Gospels , 7881.

Ancient biographies and ancient histories were different in genre but they could be very similar in practiceit is striking that LukeActs is a two-volume work, the first volume of which is biographical and the second of which is historical (see ibid., 81).

See ibid., 84.

Ibid., 80.

David E. Aune, Greco-Roman Biography, in Greco-Roman Literature and the New Testament (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 125. As Keener ( Historical Jesus of the Gospels , 81) observes, where a biographer deliberately falsified events, he was departing from the conventions of ancient biographical writing.

Keener, Historical Jesus of the Gospels , 8384.

Cf. Martin Hengel, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity (London: SCM, 1979), 368.

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 5.

Ibid., 93182, 305357.

Ibid., 93113.

Ibid., 319357, building on Samuel Byrskog, Story as HistoryHistory as Story (Leiden: Brill, 2002).

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses , 331335, based on W. F. Brewer, What Is Recollective Memory?, in Remembering Our Past: Studies in Autobiographical Memory , ed. D. C. Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 3557; and Gillian Cohen, Memory in the Real World (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1989), 118125.

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses , 346.

Ibid., 490.

Ibid., 506. To change the legal analogy, the Gospels should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty rather than vice versa. See particularly Joachim Jeremias, New Testament Theology , trans. John Bowden (New York: Scribner, 1971), 37; R. T. France, The Authenticity of the Sayings of Jesus, in History, Criticism, and Faith , ed. Colin Brown (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1976), 107; I. H. Marshall, I Believe in the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), 199200; W. G. Kmmel, Heilsgeschehen und Geschichte , vol. 2 (Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 1978), 187190; Robert H. Stein, The Criteria for Authenticity, in Gospel Perspectives 1, ed. R. T. France and David Wenham (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1980), 225253; S. C. Goetz and C. L. Blomberg, The Burden of Proof, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 11 (1981): 3963; Donald A. Hagner, Interpreting the Gospels: The Landscape and the Quest, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 24 (1981): 3132; R. T. France, Jesus and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1982), chapter 1; Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 240243; Ben Witherington, The Christology of Jesus (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990), chapter 1; and Keener, Gospel of Matthew , 29, who observes that