🚀 go-pugleaf

Anonymous wrote:

> 4) Jesus was visited by the Magi on the eve of 16 Tammuz
> 3759[Mat 2:1-12], which was Tuesday evening, June 17, 2 BC;
> Jesus was ten and a half months old at the time.
> (NOTE: this near-perfect Jupiter-Venus conjunction in Leo was
> six arcseconds from concentricity. When Venus is sufficiently
> elongated from the Sun, and the sky is crystal-clear, Venus
> can barely be seen with the naked eye in broad daylight. This
> dazzling conjunction was significantly brighter than Venus
> alone, thus was certainly visible in broad daylight in a
> clear sky--and we know that the sky was clear by the Magi's
> own testimony! Extant historical and astronomical evidences
> have further proven incontrovertibly that Herod "the Great"
> died within 3 weeks after the "blood red" total lunar eclipse
> of Saturday, January 10, 1 BC.)

To the best of my knowledge, all of this post is pretty much nonsense,
but although I know that the matching of ancient calendars is not the
exact science that the poster seems to imagine it is, I do not have the
information to hand to refute him point by point; it's not my field. 
However, I do know that there are two gross errors in the quoted
paragraph.

First, no known astronomical phenomenon, recorded or theoretical, can
account for the reported behavior of the "Star of Bethlehem;" a
planetary conjunction, in particular, would have been well understood by
the Magi, and they would not even have attempted to "follow" it, a
meaningless and impossible task.  Either there was no such thing, or it
was a miraculous event (perhaps visible only to the Magi, if Almighty
God chose to make it so).  (Just to be absolutely complete in covering
the theoretical possibilities, I suppose it could also have been a UFO
hovering over Bethlehem.)

Second, Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.  He was a major political figure,
and lived within the Roman empire; there is no reasonable doubt of this
date.

-- 
-John W. Kennedy
-rri0189@ibm.net
Compact is becoming contract
Man only earns and pays.  -- Charles Williams