Dec 27: The Star of Bethlehem
Despite the lack of any contemporary corroborating evidence for this astounding phenomena, they start - unscientifically - with a preconception that the Bible story is true.
Then they usually attribute the "star" to a comet, planetary conjunction or supernova, because they know that it could not possibly be a normal star.
Think about it:
The bible says it was a star. S_T_A_R, star. Calling it anything other than a star is calling the Bible - God's word - as W_R_O_N_G, wrong. So why not save a step and just accept that the whole story is a fit up?
If it was a star that came so close to hang over a barn, you would not only see it coming for months but everybody and everything else would be fried to a crisp. If it was a star, there would have been no night!
The people of ancient times were familiar with comets and they were familiar with planetary conjunctions (even if they did not understand them). They are not rare and in those days of no light polluted skies, they would have been easily recognised by many people. These events do not just suddenly appear one night, they evolve over several weeks. You see them coming.
Whatever it was - star, supernova, planet or comet - it would rise in the East and set in the West. Follow such an object all night and you will probably end up back at your starting point.
If it was already setting in the West during the evening, there would be nothing to follow for most of the night and it could not hang over a single barn.
Whatever astronomical object it was, it could not hover over one place, nor could a single building be identified from it. Earth rotates in 24 hours, so the celestial sphere appears to rotate at 15° per hour. A star passing vertically overhead traces a ground velocity of about 400 metres per second. Less than three minutes after passing vertically over Bethlehem, the 'star' would have been sixty kilometres away, vertically above the Mediterranean Sea.
Just three hours later and it would be overhead in Morocco.
This would hardly be a marker for one spot on the planet. If the object were truly suspended over Bethlehem, that would imply that the Earth suddenly stopped turning, a truly impossible but immense and catastrophic global event with disastrous tidal waves and other shocking consequences.
There is no independent historical record to indicate that anything out of the ordinary occurred, either to the Earth or to the celestial sky. All we have are the conflicting Biblical references, which were written decades later, long enough for any truth to be embellished with fantasy.
The preconceived "evidence" for this fantastic tale is nothing more than a few sentences in a book written by people who had no concept of the science behind their claims. Yet still, grown up adults try to justify it!
