'Jesus was born in June', astronomers claim

[emad]

Astronomers have calculated that Christmas should be in June, by charting the appearance of the 'Christmas star' which the Bible says led the three Wise Men to Jesus.

09 Dec 2008



They found that a bright star which appeared over Bethlehem 2,000 years ago pinpointed the date of Christ's birth as June 17 rather than December 25.

The researchers claim the 'Christmas star' was most likely a magnificent conjunction of the planets Venus and Jupiter, which were so close together they would have shone unusually brightly as a single "beacon of light" which appeared suddenly.

If the team is correct, it would mean Jesus was a Gemini, not a Capricorn as previously believed.

Australian astronomer Dave Reneke used complex computer software to chart the exact positions of all celestial bodies and map the night sky as it would have appeared over the Holy Land more than 2,000 years ago.

It revealed a spectacular astronomical event around the time of Jesus's birth.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/3687843/Jesus-was-born-in-June-astronomers-claim.html

[boobooday]

1. Thank God we at least know for sure that Santa was born on Christmas

Although we haven't yet seen the official birth certificate. He could be Kenyan.

[saltpoint]

2. June's a good month. Why not? Next, I want to know the

3 Wise Men's camels' names.

[cosmik debris]

3. Oh, C'mon now!

Religion is the truth and science is just myth.

Or is it the other way around, I forget.

:)

[saltpoint]

5. LOL! After 8 years of Bush, the whole field's a little blurry!

[Sinistrous]

4. If true, that would explain the

"...shepherds watching their flocks by night" line in the Bible.

[rateyes]

9. Except that the shepherds and the magi didn't arrive at the same time.

The creches are, biblically speaking, inaccurate.

[Cassandra]

6. Does that mean that the Christmas sales will start...

right after Tax Day? "Spend while you still have your refund".

[emad]

7. "a magnificent conjunction of the planets Venus and Jupiter"

Saw this magnificent conjunction last Monday, close to a beautiful crescent moon.

Certainly a stunning sight in the London sunset skyline.

However this conjunction can never be so close as to resemble on huge bright, shining object.

[struggle4progress]

23. Mutual Planetary Occultations Past and Future

Their Observation Circumstances
by Larry Bogan
Cambridge Station, NS

... Venus and Jupiter Occultations

The unusually long gap in mutual occultations during our time spans nearly 250 years from 1818 and the next one is in 2065. Both of these occultations are Jupiter- Venus events and the most spectacular type.

What of the next one in 2065 which a few young people have a chance of seeing? This will be an occultation of Jupiter by Venus but it is only 8o from the Sun and will be essentially unobservable. It surely would have been a beautiful occultation with two bright planets covering each other. Similar occultations occured between these two planets in 1570 and 1818 which surely would have been noticed by observers but no historical records have surfaced yet. There is one more predicted in 2123 and will take place at an elongation of 16o from the Sun ...

http://www.go.ednet.ns.ca/~larry/planets/occltlst.htm

See table at link: these rare occultations are typically visible only from some part of the earth, which is likely to be ocean, and they often occur visually too close to the sun to be observable. The 2 BC occultation is remarkable because it should have been visible from the Middle East, and the 28" visual separation of Venus and Jupiter would have been close to visual diameters (26" and 32") of the planets. My quick search for the resolving ability of the human eye yielded numbers in the range 40" - 60", though some tests for specific discriminations will yield smaller numbers in the 5" range. The right conclusion might be that a typical casual observer would have considered the 2 BC event to represent a single "star," although a more attentive person with good eyesight could perhaps have discerned a very close conjunction

[rateyes]

8. One problem with that. If the Biblical text is accurate as to when

the magi arrived, they didn't show up for a couple of years after Jesus' birth. From the time they "saw the star" to the time they arrived from Babylon (Iraq) into Jerusalem, Venus and Jupiter would have long been separated from each other in the sky.

I've been watching Venus and Jupiter in the sky for the last month in the Southwestern part of the sky--it's been beautiful to watch their movements---getting closer to each other, and now further from each other.

[TechBear_Seattle]

10. Did they explain how the reported movements of the star violated the laws of physics?

:shrug: Just askin'.

[Bill McBlueState]

11. a more likely scenario

The author of Matthew was writing several decades after Jesus died. He probably didn't know Jesus, and he almost certainly didn't interview any eyewitnesses to his birth. Isn't it most likely that the Christmas star was an embellishment added to make a point about the significance of Jesus's life to his followers?

I would hope that Christians could recognize this without it adversely affecting their faith.

[sam sarrha]

14. i would like it to wake them up.. we are controlled by cults, religious and Political, the ReThugs

are nothing but a CULT, their ideology is actually DOGMA

http://www.theocracywatch.org/taking_over.htm
"snip...WITH GOD AS THEIR CO-PILOT" by Joe Conason, Playboy, March, 1993

The rich Republicans of San Antonio's Bexar County consider themselves very conservative. And they are. But the politics of this new crowd gave them a bad scare. Not long after the Christian rightists staged their coup, the president of the Alamo City Republican Women's club just gave up and quit.
"The so-called Christian activists have finally gained control," she explained in her resignation letter, "and the Grand Old Party is more religious cult than political organization

http://doggo.tripod.com/doggchrisdomin.html
"snip...Leo Strauss was born in 1899 and died in 1973. ... He is most famous for resuscitating Machiavelli and introducing his principles as the guiding philosophy of the neo-conservative movement. ... More than any other man, Strauss breathed upon conservatism, inspiring it to rise from its atrophied condition and its natural dislike of change and to embrace an unbounded new political ideology that rides on the back of a revolutionary steed, hailing even radical change; hence the name Neo-Conservatives.

Significantly, Dominionism is a form of Social Darwinism.<48> It inherently includes the religious belief that wealth-power is a sign of God’s election. That is, out of the masses of people and the multitude of nations, wealth, in and of itself, is thought to indicate God’s approval on men and nations whereas poverty and sickness reflect God’s disapproval.

(It was not until I read this article that I realized that this is a fundamental tenet of Dominionists.

Worldly wealth and power are signs of God's favor -- to attempt to limit or decrease one's wealth and power is to disrespect God.

On the contrary, God's elect on Earth are called upon to increase their wealth and power.

It is not sufficient for a man to be a millionaire, or for a country to have sovereignty within its borders -- a man must strive to increase his wealth as much as possible, and a Dominionist government's behavior toward its neighbors must be "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity".

Furthermore, any attempt to decrease a person's or a country's wealth and power -- to take from the rich to give to the poor, to reduce military spending and power -- is a direct attack on God.)

If “Secular Humanists are the greatest threat to Christianity the world has ever known,” as theologian Francis Schaeffer claimed, then who are the Humanists? According to Dominionists, humanists are the folks who allow or encourage licentious behavior in America. They are the undisciplined revelers.

Put all the enemies of the Dominionists together, boil them down to liquid and bake them into the one single most highly derided and contaminated individual known to man, and you will have before you an image of the quintessential “liberal” -- one of those folks who wants to give liberally to the poor and needy -- who desires the welfare and happiness of all Americans -- who insists on safety regulations for your protection and who desires the preservation of your values -- those damnable people are the folks that must be reduced to powerlessness -- or worse: extinction...snip"


http://republicanpartyandcults.blogspot.com/2006/01/pinellas-commissioner-susan-latvala.html

[TechBear_Seattle]

17. But... but... the Bible cannot be wrong!

The Protestant Reformation was based on the doctrine that the Bible is totally accurate in all things. Many Protestant denominations go so far as to say that it is literally and inerrantly correct. If Matthew got this wrong, well, then... wow.

:wow:

Never mind that the Christmas story is already demonstrably wrong, just by what is in the New Testament. Luke says that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem because of "the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria" (Luke 2:2.) Matthew says that the family had to flee because Herod the Great wanted to murder the prophesied king (Matthew 2:1-16.) The first census of Quirinius occured from the autumn of 7 CE to the spring of 8 CE. Herod the Great died in 4 BCE, almost ten years earlier.

[sam sarrha]

12. the 3 Wise Men were Astroligers.. looking for the birth place of Mithra, >Links>>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithra

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen048.html
"SNIP...The Vatican was built upon the grounds previously devoted to the worship of Mithra (600 B.C.). The Orthodox Christian hierarchy is nearly identical to the Mithraic version. Virtually all of the elements of Orthodox Christian rituals, from miter, wafer, water baptism, alter, and doxology, were adopted from the Mithra and earlier pagan mystery religions. The religion of Mithra preceded Christianity by roughly six hundred years. Mithraic worship at one time covered a large portion of the ancient world. It flourished as late as the second century. The Messianic idea originated in ancient Persia and this is where the Jewish and Christian concepts of a Savior came from. Mithra, as the sun god of ancient Persia, had the following karmic similarities with Jesus ...snip"

http://www.carm.org/evidence/mithra.htm

:rofl: :popcorn:

[uberllama42]

13. "Jesus was a Gemini, rather than a Capricorn as previously believed'

Anyone who still believes that Jesus was born on December 25 is pretty backward. It's well known that the date of Christmas was chosen to overlap the pagan Winter Solstice holidays.

Just because there are Christmas carols that say "Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day" doesn't make it so.

[emad]

25. That explains it all.

never bought the 'Capricorn' stuff myself...

[moggie]

15. Does that mean he was Australian?

I mean, I heard they have Christmas in summer, and they do have all those sheep.

[Nihil]

20. Bloody good swimmers those camels!

Mind you, it would allow for "we saw his star in the East" as the original
supposition would have resulted in equally soggy hooves were Bethlehem to
be involved ...
:shrug:

On the other hand, what self-respecting Aussie shepherd would have left
his lovers .. umm .. "flock" behind just to go to party with no beer?

:wow:

[dmallind]

16. This at least is consistent.

I mean forgetting the mishmash of syncretic handed down tales and the lack of accurate historical backdroppings involved, at lease June 17 is when shepherds might have been out on the hills with their flocks in 1st century Judaea. December? Not a chance.

[Goblinmonger]

18. Yes, by all means

let's try and find something scientific that somehow coincides with some mythology so that the mythology looks a little more true. I mean, talk about circular reasoning.

[elshiva]

22. Yes, indeed! It's not like there is anything else for scientists to do.

:evilgrin:

BTW: I love this:

[Goblinmonger]

24. It was a gift

in honor of my username. I think it's pretty damn cool, too.

[knitter4democracy]

19. We already knew that.

We already knew that he wasn't born in December. Heck, it was in my Sunday School book a couple of weeks back. The Church deliberately moved the feast, just as they've done for other feasts and holy days, so that they wouldn't be celebrating His birth around Easter or Pentecost. The early church leaders decided, since most Christians couldn't read at the time, to make the life of Christ and the important events in the NT last a year, metaphorically speaking. So, in summer, we have Common Time ending with a couple of fasts and feasts, in fall we have a couple of big holy days ending with the Little Lent to prepare for Christmas, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and then we start all over again. When you take into account that we read the Bible in one year that way and cover all the important events of the faith that way, as well as that most Christians couldn't read for the first 1900 years of the faith or more, it makes sense.

[raccoon]

21. June 20, same birthday as Brian Wilson. nt