Star of Bethlehem

In article bwDmf.277$z21.225@fed1read04, Mij Adyaw wrote:
bm "Paul Schlyter" wrote in message
...
In article QSamf.136$z21.131@fed1read04, Mij Adyaw wrote:

So the Star of Bethlehem was..... a made-up story, to try to make the
birth of Jesus seem Really Important. Sorry.

The birth of Jesus was extremely important. Some day, you will realize
that importance.

Nah - the important event here wasn't the birth of Jesus. The
important event was the decision by the Roman Empire to make
Christianity its State Religion. Without that, Christianity would
probably have been an extinct religion today, and some other religion
(islam?) would have become the dominant religion in the western world.
Or perhaps Christianity would have been one among the many branches of
"New Age" - these people enjoy trying to revive extinct religions...

Paul,

It seems to me that you may have had a bad experience with Christianity.
You should try to find a good Christian Church. Hopefully, one day you
will understand the importance of the birth of Jesus and what he has
done and is currently doing for the world.

You might as well say: "It seems to me that you may have had a bad
experience with Islam. You should try to find a good Moslem Mosque.
Hopefully, one day you will understand the importance of the
revelation of Mohammed and what he has done and is currently doing
for the world."

Or: "It seems to me that you may have had a bad experience with
Buddhism. You should try to find a good Buddhist Temple. Hopefully,
one day you will understand the importance of the enlightedment of
the Buddha and what he has done and is currently doing for the world."

Merry Christmas and Best Regards,

-mij

Happy Holidays to you too.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/

To Mj

I am a Christian and I know that a person who cannot appreciate the
tenets of Christ and Christianity also cannot appreciate celestial
phenomena.The intutive faculty which appreciates both comes as a gift
rather than a choice.

Any person can be a cataloguer,buy a telescope and a tracking device(
to negate the Earth's motions ) but not all cataloguers are astronomers
and especially in this dour era.If they were astronomers who had a feel
and love for the material they would neither do what they do or say
what they say,by imposing nonsense on our astronomical/priestly
ancestors just so they can make themselves look good.To be an
astronomer is not a choice but a gift in the same way there is a
difference between the denominational Christian (and I am one) and that
moment in time when Christianity through inheritance transforms to an
entirely intimate form of Christianity.*

Miserable people like Schlyter imagine faith is a political game and
indeed denominational Christianity more than helps this fool come to
that conclusion however even in times like this where denominational
Christianity has disgraced itself,the core community still carries that
Spirit that binds the community to each other .We act as individuals
sometimes for the creative instincts emerge that way and Christianity
allied to Western civilisation for so long complimented each other by
facilitating the ground for creative and investigative endeavors but
ultimately the whole civilisation relies on that balance between
individual creative instincts and the civilisation which contains it.

That balance was lost to empiricism,it now shows up in the anonymous
consensus which no longer can produce a figurehead or a hero.It now
announces its presence as 'scientists say' or 'modern science says' and
in the absense of anything worthwhile from this mediocre breed,humanity
looks for its heroes elsewhere in sport or music.That they condemn
themselves to mediocrity is fine but their pretension in being
astronomers while ruining the great astronomical insights that come
under their supervision is horrible and that they condemn the rest of
humanity to following after their tepid astronomical leaning which do
not rise above an exercise in optics is even worse.

Real Christians celebrate their faith,I can do it by showing that these
festering corpses such as Schlyter never really represented astronomy
or astronomers,not because they are wrong but because they are as
mediocre and the tenets they follow.










* "But to those who did accept him he gave power to become children of
God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not by natural
generation nor by human choice nor by a man's decision but of God"

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/john/john1.htm

Robert Sheaffer wrote:
The problem with all of this "Star of Bethlehem' stuff is that it
assumes factual content of the Birth Narratives, which most serious New
Testament scholars don't.

Stop and consider: the "Decree of Augustus" in Luke, and the "Massacre
of the Innocents" in Matthew, are both considered fictional events by
non-religious historians. So how likely is either account to be true?

Plus, the two Birth Narratives (in Luke and in Matthew) are mutually
contradictory. (Read them carefully and critically). At least one must
be false. Non-fundamentalist scholars assume that both are probably
mostly (if not entirely) fiction.

************************************************** **

Well, you are 100% right regarding the literal words used in the
writings.
The purpose of my posting this Star of Bethlehem item in
sci.astro.amateur
is because I have found (research) that much of Matthew's account can
also be interpreted as an astronomical/astrological allegory dealing
with the beginning of the Piscean Age. (a star 'stopping' is a solstice
-sun stationary - point).
Presently there is no consensus about precisely when the current age
began. There are variances, among commentators, of 300 to 500 years.
This seems to me to be an astronomical issue dealing with precession
(measurement of ages) and the calendar. Astronomers for over hundreds
of years have attempted to find the star that Mathew references. If the
star can be located, rather than, initially, dismissed as fiction, then
astronomers (keepers of the calendar) could propose any necessary
tweaks to get the calendar in alignment with precession and exactly
where we are within the present age.

Every degree (day) that the calendar was adjusted (+ or - ) either adds
or subtracts 72 years of precessional movement (one degree of
precession = 72 years). Plus no year "0" presents another precessional
problem for calendar accuracy. Additionally, when all of the primary
calendar adjustments were made the speed of light was not even
contemplated. So, the early astronomers were looking at the sun not
realizing that light speed issues had them seeing the sun's location 8
minutes earlier or 2 degrees 'off' of the earth's axis rotation,
throwing off the zodiac (Vernal Equinox March 21st) an additional 2
degrees (which is 144 years of precessional movement).

Finding the 'star', in my thinking, will help to align the zodiac and
the calendar. Both of these issues are completely within the realm of
astronomers, the keepers of the calendar.

All of it is quite fascinating.

Robert Sheaffer wrote:
The problem with all of this "Star of Bethlehem' stuff is that it
assumes factual content of the Birth Narratives, which most serious New
Testament scholars don't.

Stop and consider: the "Decree of Augustus" in Luke, and the "Massacre
of the Innocents" in Matthew, are both considered fictional events by
non-religious historians. So how likely is either account to be true?

Plus, the two Birth Narratives (in Luke and in Matthew) are mutually
contradictory. (Read them carefully and critically). At least one must
be false. Non-fundamentalist scholars assume that both are probably
mostly (if not entirely) fiction.

************************************************** **

Well, you are 100% right regarding the literal words used in the
writings.
The purpose of my posting this Star of Bethlehem item in
sci.astro.amateur
is because I have found (research) that much of Matthew's account can
also be interpreted as an astronomical/astrological allegory dealing
with the beginning of the Piscean Age. (a star 'stopping' is a solstice
-sun stationary - point).
Presently there is no consensus about precisely when the current age
began. There are variances, among commentators, of 300 to 500 years.
This seems to me to be an astronomical issue dealing with precession
(measurement of ages) and the calendar. Astronomers for over hundreds
of years have attempted to find the star that Mathew references. If the
star can be located, rather than, initially, dismissed as fiction, then
astronomers (keepers of the calendar) could propose any necessary
tweaks to get the calendar in alignment with precession and exactly
where we are within the present age.

Every degree (day) that the calendar was adjusted (+ or - ) either adds
or subtracts 72 years of precessional movement (one degree of
precession = 72 years). Plus no year "0" presents another precessional
problem for calendar accuracy. Additionally, when all of the primary
calendar adjustments were made the speed of light was not even
contemplated. So, the early astronomers were looking at the sun not
realizing that light speed issues had them seeing the sun's location 8
minutes earlier or 2 degrees 'off' of the earth's axis rotation,
throwing off the zodiac (Vernal Equinox March 21st) an additional 2
degrees (which is 144 years of precessional movement).

Finding the 'star', in my thinking, will help to align the zodiac and
the calendar. Both of these issues are completely within the realm of
astronomers, the keepers of the calendar.

All of it is quite fascinating.

wrote in
oups.com:

Any celestial event that is assigned a 'meaning' (beyond physics) is
within the realm of ancient astrology. Astronomy is 'observation' and
astrology is 'interpretation'.

The myth of the Magi and the Star of Bethlehem is just that. Reading the
account reveals that the Magi did not follow a "star" to Bethlehem to see
the baby Jesus, but that the event happened at least two years later, and
that they were led to Nazareth. The Magi were not wise men led by some
heavenly spectre, but were pagan astronomers who were led by some sort of
apparition. They were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, for he was
seeking to kill all the Jewish males born in the last 2 years. The so
called Christians of today can't even get the account right by reading
their own Bibles. In fact, they can't even get Jesus' skin color right.

Jesus was not born on December 25. He was born while the shepherds were
still in the fields, which leaves early November as the latest posssible
date. Such is still the case in that part of the world.

There are plenty of accounts of apparitions in our own modern times.
Science can't explain them, but there is little doubt that they exist. They
may exist only in the minds of those who claim to see and feel them, or
they may be the work of powers that many don't understand. However, there
are too many eyewitness accounts of these kinds of events events to totally
discount them.