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Originally Posted by lumberjim
Makes you think that they would be able to figure out the date of his birth based on evidence of some celestial event that would have been observed on earth around that time.
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Well, there are a few options to choose from. In 11 BCE, Halley's Comet rolled through, but that’s probably too early to be the indicator. In 7 BCE, there was a planetary conjunction of Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter. This seems a fairly likely dating for the actual birth. Chinese astrological records hold information about something that was probably either a nova or supernova around that time. It’s extremely difficult to align the dating of those records, but they probably place the event somewhere between 5 BCE and 20 CE. Unlike Comets and planetary orbits, Novas are obviously non-cyclical, so we can’t roll back the astrological clock and see what was going on at that time.
Then there’s always the possibility that they were referring to some non-natural, singular occurrence prepared by God to mark the coming of his son to the earth. It certainly wouldn’t be the most spectacular miracle in the book …
-sm