What was the Magi’s star?

Probably the most fascinating detail of the account of the magi’s visit to Bethlehem is the star that started them out on their journey and could be seen over the place where Jesus was at the conclusion of their journey.

Perhaps some of you have always imagined it like the star so often portrayed on Christmas cards or in the picture above – large, bright, especially twinkly, standing out from all the other stars in the night sky. I think that these sort of idealized, fairy tale portrayals can have an unfortunate effect, especially in our modern skeptical society. Such portrayals can cause us to forget that this is a real account that took place on the same earth that we live on, in the same air that we breathe, and in the same sky that we gaze upon every night.

In this post, the second of a two-part series on the visit of the magi, we will investigate the real star of the magi. If you haven’t already, be sure to read part 1.

The Biblical Details

Let us first proceed through the biblical account and gather as many details about the star as we can.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, magi from the East came to Jerusalem… (Mt 2:1)

This passage tells us that the star appeared around the time Jesus was born but before the death of King Herod. We will discuss this more below under “When Did the Star Appear?”

“We saw his star in the east [or when it rose] and have come to worship him.” (Mt 2:2)

Some people mistakenly interpret the magi’s words here this way: “While we were in the East, we saw this amazing star and so we followed it here.” But the Greek phrase used here in verse 2 for “the east” is different from that used in verse 1 for “the East.” The NIV footnote helps us to interpret the Greek phrase in verse 2 more correctly. The star the Magi saw was one that rose in the night sky; that is, it rose in the east just like most other stars. (We are of course speaking from our perspective on a rotating and orbiting Earth.) This tells us that, for example, the magi’s star was not a pole star, a type of star that remains virtually fixed in the sky and does not rise.

This detail also seems to suggest that, if the Magi’s star rose in the east just like most other stars, then it was probably a naturally occurring phenomenon in the sky, not a special, miraculous star appearing only to the magi. We will also see other details in the account that hint at this.

This detail also tells us that the magi did not necessarily follow the star all the way to Judea. Both the Greek text and the context of the entire story suggest that they were already looking for a sign that the King of the Jews had been born so that they could go find him in Judea. (See part 1.) When they saw the sign they were looking for rising in the night sky, they headed out. They may not have seen the star again until they reached Jerusalem. (See especially Matthew 2:9-10.)

Then Herod called the magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. (Mt 2:7)

Put yourself into this time period. There is no electricity. The night sky, even in the cities, is much more visible than in cities today. When strange phenomena appear in the sky, people notice. Not only that, but people are more superstitious. When strange phenomena appear in the sky, they take it as a sign that something significant has happened or will happen.

For example, Josephus reports that a Matthias, son of Margalothus, incited his fellow Jews to pull down and cut up a large golden eagle that King Herod the Great had erected over the great gate of the temple in Jerusalem. As a result, Herod deposed the high priest, also named Matthias, and had the Matthias who incited the sedition burned alive. And Josephus notes that there was an eclipse of the moon on the very night Herod did these things (Antiquities of the Jews 17, 6, 2-4).

So the fact that Herod had to find out from the magi the exact time the star appeared tells us that this star was not a super-extraordinary phenomenon, such as a large comet, or a special, miraculous star placed in the night sky for everyone to see, as the depictions in Christmas cards and at the head of this post seem to imply. If it were, not only Herod, but all the people would surely have noticed it, and it would doubtless have made it onto the pages of the histories from this time period.

We cannot entirely exclude the possibility that God had a special star miraculously revealed to the magi and no one else. However, this is unlikely for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is that Herod probably would not have taken the magi’s inquiry so seriously or allowed himself to get so worked up over their findings if what the magi were describing was something that only they themselves could see. It seems much more likely that the star the Magi saw was something occurring naturally that everyone could see, but which only had special significance when the Magi explained it.

When combined with Matthew 2:16, we can also conclude from this passage that the appearance of the star in some way not only indicated that the Messiah had been born but also when he was born.

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east [or when it rose] went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. (Mt 2:9)

This passage tells us that the same star that they had seen back in their homeland endured over time, which excludes shooting stars from the realm of possibility.

It also tells us that at the time when the magi headed south from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, the star was ahead of them, so in the southern part of the sky.

It also tells us that the star “was leading their way until it went and stood over where the little child was.” The NIV interprets this standing as stopping, which is a legitimate interpretation, although only one of several possible interpretations. “Until it went and stood over” could simply mean that at some point in its movement it was located above the place where Jesus was, not necessarily that it stopped there. Until just tells us what happened at the point of time in question; it does not tell us anything about what happened after that point. (For example, “Martha was cleaning the house until midnight” could mean that Martha stopped cleaning at midnight, but it does not exclude the possibility that Martha continued cleaning after midnight. Perhaps the speaker is simply using midnight as a point of reference to show that Martha stayed up very late cleaning.)

Did the star “stand” over Bethlehem in general? Did it “stand” directly over the particular house where Mary and Joseph were staying, from the Magi’s perspective? If it was a miraculous star, did it “stand” even closer – directly above the house (as in just a few feet above) – or did it even go inside the house and stand over Jesus’ cradle, as portrayed in some artwork? These are questions we cannot answer with certainty.

When Did the Star Appear?

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), a Lutheran astronomer who articulated the laws of planetary motion, actually published works dealing with the star of Bethlehem in 1604 and 1613. He assumed it was a naturally occurring phenomenon and not a miraculous one, though he certainly believed that it occurred as part of God’s plan and under God’s all-powerful control.

But Kepler had two limitations. First, using his laws and math, he could draw a snapshot of the sky from any perspective and any moment in time he wanted, but each one of these snapshots took time. Today we have software that employs his laws and math and allows us to rewind and fast forward through the clock of space smoothly in a matter of moments. Kepler had no such software at his disposal.

Secondly, Kepler and his contemporaries assumed that Jesus was born before the spring of 4 BC, which is also the consensus of modern scholarship because the end of the reign of Herod the Great is commonly dated to that time. So Kepler was looking for the star in the years 7-5 BC.

However, a number of conservative Christian scholars, including Lutheran Andrew Steinmann, author of From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology, make an excellent case “that Herod died in early 1 BC after January 10 but before Passover (April 8)” (p. 238) and that consequently “the date of Jesus’ birth must have been sometime in late 3 BC or early 2 BC” (p. 249; rf. p. 219-249). In other words, the ancient church fathers and the chronographers who developed the BC-AD dating system were not as far off as subsequent historians have made them out to be. (Go figure!)

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Probably the most obvious biblical proof for this is in Luke 3. Luke tells us that John the Baptist began his ministry of preaching and baptizing “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” (Lk 3:1). He also tells us that Jesus was baptized by John “when all the people were being baptized” (Lk 3:21), and that “Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry” after his baptism (Lk 3:23). Thus we could count backward 30 years from the fifteenth year of Tiberius’ rule to obtain the approximate year of Jesus’ birth. Tiberius’ fifteenth year would have been September 17, 28 AD-September 16, 29 AD. “Since it was most likely summer when John began to preach in the wilderness and Jesus came to be baptized, the summer of 29 AD is the likely date of Jesus’ baptism. Jesus, therefore, would have been born sometime from the summer of 3 BC to the summer of 1 BC if he were ‘about 30’—between 29 and 31 years old at his baptism” (Steinmann, p. 219-220).

To those who would say that “about 30” could mean that Jesus was as old as 33 or 34, as he would have to be if he was born before the spring of 4 BC, consider that Luke says that the daughter of Jairus whom Jesus raised from the dead was “about twelve” (Lk 8:42). “Since Luke did not use a more general description to indicate merely that the girl was a young adolescent, he must have been indicating her age as accurately as was known—within a year or so of twelve. Certainly, he did not mean that she could have been as old as fifteen or sixteen or as young as eight or nine” (Steinmann, p. 220, fn. 331). So too, Luke certainly did not mean that Jesus was as young as 26 or 27 or as old as 33 or 34.

If Jesus was born sometime in the latter half of 3 BC or in 2 BC, and if the appearance of the Magi’s star indicated when Jesus was born, then we might expect it to have appeared sometime between 4-2 BC (as early as 4 BC if, for example, the star first appeared when Mary became pregnant and if Mary became pregnant that early).

Furthermore, we know that the magi had to have arrived in Bethlehem at least 40 days after Jesus was born, because that was when Mary and Joseph went to the temple to redeem Mary’s firstborn son and to offer a sacrifice for Mary’s purification (Lk 2:22-24; Num 3:39-51; Lev 12:1-8). When they did so, they offered the sacrifice that God had reserved for the poorest people (Lk 2:24; Lev 12:8) – something which they certainly could not have done in good conscience if the magi had already given them their expensive gifts of gold, incense, and myrrh (Mt 2:11).

We might thus take an educated guess that the Magi paid their visit to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in 2 BC, perhaps in the middle or toward the end of the year. The star, therefore, would have stood over the place where the little child was at that same time.

Wait, Is This Astrology?

We are talking an awful lot about the stars and their possible relationship to Jesus’ birth. The magi came to find the Christ who had been born because they saw a star, even though nowhere in the Bible does it say that a star would mark Christ’s birth. (Numbers 24:17 comes closest, but is nowhere near explicit in this regard.)

If that makes you uncomfortable, then I am glad in a way. In part 1 of this post, I quoted Deuteronomy 18:10-12a:

Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.

Certainly some astrology falls under the category of practicing divination or sorcery – attempting to learn God’s will or the truth or predict the future through self-invented means (e.g. horoscopes) – or interpreting omens – attempting to learn God’s will or the truth or predict the future on the basis of abnormal phenomena (e.g. predictions connected with Halley’s Comet).

But not all astrology falls into these categories. It is God who created the sun, moon, and stars, put them in place, and set them in motion. He even says that he put them there “for signs” (Gen 1:14 KJV). It is God who organized them into constellations and has them each appear in a certain place in the sky at certain times (Job 9:9; 38:31-33). It is David who testifies: “The heavens are recounting the glory of God; the sky is proclaiming the work of his hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night displays knowledge” (Ps 19:1-2).

Just as snow and hail can be God-given signs in nature of wartime on earth (Job 38:22-23), just as miracles can be signs from God confirming his word (Mk 16:20), so phenomena in the sky can be signs from God confirming his word and marking important stages in world history and his plan of salvation (Lk 21:25-28). The sky is like a clock; God is the one who made it and runs it, and he already knows and controls everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen. It therefore stands to reason (and it is not contradictory to Scripture) that when he set that clock in motion, he made it so that it would reflect the special happenings on earth in his beautiful plan of redemption. We might imagine world histories like a slideshow and the special heavenly phenomena like a presenter pausing to draw special attention to certain slides.

The warning is that we do not replace the Creator with the created, or the source with the sign. The stars do not run our lives. The stars do not hold our future. The stars should not be worshipped (Dt 4:19). Nor should the stars be studied as sources of the truth, but only as signs confirming the truth of God’s word. (Notice that, as beautifully as David describes the heavens in the first part of Psalm 19, he spends the rest of the psalm describing the even greater beauty and usefulness of the Scriptures.) The stars do not provide us with the ultimate assurance of our salvation or of the truth of our religion; God’s word does. (If the stars are like a clock, they are predictable to an extent, and so Satan also knows how to use them to try to mislead us.)

Thus it would be best for us to assume that the Magi were looking for signs in the sky marking the Messiah’s birth at that particular time because of God’s word, especially passed down from Daniel (e.g. Dan 9:24-25). They did not seek out the Messiah simply because of everything they were seeing in the sky. They sought out the Messiah because what they were seeing in the sky confirmed for them what they were already expecting because of God’s word.

It might be of interest that some famous Lutherans, such as Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) and Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586), dabbled in astrology. Martin Chemnitz ultimately forsook it because it was an uncertain field of study compared to theology.

One Interesting Theory

Probably the most interesting theory about the Magi’s star at present – a theory which fits all of our criteria above – is that of Frederick A. Larson, a Christian lawyer. You can read all his research, which has been critically acclaimed by a number of scientists and astronomers, on his website. (With the cautions mentioned below, his DVD is definitely worth the price. And no, he’s not paying me to say that.)

To sum up Larson’s theory: In September of 3 BC, at the time of the Jewish New Year, Jupiter, the King Planet, came into close conjunction with Regulus, the King Star. Toward the end of 3 BC and entering into 2 BC, after moving on, Jupiter entered retrograde motion and headed back to Regulus for a second conjunction. (The planets are sometimes called “wandering stars” because from our perspective they can have irregular movements and reverse course due to the orbital path of the earth in relation to the other planet’s orbital path.) Then Jupiter reversed course again and came into conjunction with Regulus a third time – what Larson calls “the Planet of Kings danc[ing] out a halo above the Star of Kings. A coronation” (source).

Furthermore, this triple conjunction occurred within the constellation of Leo, the Lion, the symbol for Judah (Gen 49:9-10). In addition, as Jupiter was beginning the coronation of Regulus, the constellation Virgo, the Virgin, rose behind Leo with the new moon at her feet, so to speak. The magi, as those who studied the stars, would have noted this with interest.

Larson thinks these events marked the conception of the Messiah in the womb of Mary. Nine months later, in June of 2 BC, having moved on from Regulus through the field of stars, Jupiter came into conjunction with Venus, the Mother Planet.

This conjunction was so close and so bright that it is today displayed in hundreds of planetaria around the world by scientists who may know nothing of Messiah. … Jupiter appeared to join Venus. The planets could not be distinguished with the naked eye. … Each contributed its full brightness to what became the most brilliant star our man had ever seen. … No one alive had ever seen such a conjunction. (source)

Larson thinks that this conjunction marked the birth of the Messiah and caused the magi to set out from the land of Persia.

Furthermore, in December of 2 BC, if the magi looked south in the midnight hours, Jupiter was hanging over Bethlehem. As the final piece in Larson’s theory, on December 25 (coincidence?) of 2 BC, Jupiter again entered retrograde motion, reaching a full stop in the sky. “Magi viewing from Jerusalem would have seen it stopped in the sky above the little town of Bethlehem” (source). Of course, the magi would not see it stopping with the naked eye; they would have to have been paying very close attention to this planet and doing their planetary motion-math along the way.

Larson’s theory is interesting, but we must be careful with such theories. For instance, Larson comes up with nine biblical qualifications for the star, not all of which are airtight. For instance, he thinks that the star had to signify both birth and kingship and be connected with the Jewish nation in order for the magi to have asked the question, “Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews?” As we already considered in part 1, the magi likely knew that the Messiah was the King of the Jews from other sources. Larson also very specifically takes the “standing” of the star over the place where the child was as “coming to a stop” over Bethlehem, which is just one possible interpretation. There are also a number of other places in the course of Larson’s presentation where he seems – surely unintentionally – to be playing somewhat fast and loose with some passages of Scripture in order to lend strength to his theory.

When we put too much stock in such theories that attempt to answer questions that Scripture has not answered decisively, God has a way of upsetting the apple cart and inevitably some new piece of knowledge comes along that throws a wrench into the theory. When that happens, if we have too much stock in that theory, we will be left gravely disappointed and possibly disillusioned about our faith.

If Larson’s theory were to be convincingly disproved tomorrow, the fact would remain that the magi still saw a star that led them to come and worship the Christ-child. “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Ro 3:4). Was the star a planet? Was it a supernova? Was it a miraculous star? Was it something else? We will never know with absolute certainty, but we will continue to know with the absolute certainty of faith that the events described in Matthew 2 are completely and historically true.

Having said all that, I and many other Christians definitely owe Frederick Larson a debt of thanks for getting us to think more seriously about the star, for helping us to think more clearly about the relationship between Christianity and astrology, and for giving us one working theory about the Magi’s star. (He is also partially responsible for the way I organized this post and a lot of its content.) It is comforting to know that the Scriptures can be pressed as hard as you like and held up to the greatest scrutiny, and they will not bend, break, or melt under the pressure. A small Christian child can comprehend the Bible’s stories in simple faith, and the wisest Christian scholar can spend his entire life, with great satisfaction, researching just one Scriptural detail – and neither will be confounded if they anchor their faith in the truth of God’s word and their free salvation in Christ Jesus.

Postscript – The Number of Magi and Their Gifts

We have no idea how many Magi there were. The popular Western tradition numbers them at three simply because they gave the Messiah three gifts – gold, incense, and myrrh (Mt 2:11). There are twelve in some Eastern traditions.

And speaking of those gifts, what good timing on God’s part! Not long after the magi’s visit – perhaps the same night they departed – an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him to take Jesus and Mary to Egypt immediately because Herod was going to search for the child to kill him (Mt 2:13). How would such poor parents afford such a trip and stay in a foreign country?

Through gold, incense, and myrrh – that’s how. “The gifts were such as could be exchanged at a high price in Egypt to provide for their sustenance while there and for their living expenses afterward. The gifts were also the kind that could easily be [kept hidden] by refugees” (Steinmann, p. 253). Jesus not only accepts the gifts of these Gentiles whose practices were associated with the occult, but he also puts them to good use – as he continues to do with all our gifts today.