What are the facts about the Star of Bethlehem?

I am a member if the clergy of the Anglican Church in the UK, I wonder of you could give me some factual and therefore historical information relating to the "star" (comet?) that is the focus of the Birth narratives in Matthew's Gospel. Could you point me in the direction of further information to verify and clarify it's existance or not?

As Christmas approaches you can imagine the focus on stars from all ages, and I would like for once to be better informed than rumours and half cocked stories allow.

With many thanks for this excellent website and learning facility.. I am fascinated. (Total novice!)

We seem to get this question every Christmas, which is understandable. I'm not an expert on this myself, but many people have studied it and there are a lot of good resources (as well as a lot of bad ones) on the web. There are also a lot of people with very strong opinions about this issue (as I'm sure you realise) so we have to read the websites with an eye to what the person who wrote it is getting across.

To get you started here are a few good sites:

Revealing the Star of Bethlehem (about a book recently written about the star)
Star of Bethlehem resources (a list of links)
What was the Star? A web page on the star which has some good reviews and tries to present the topic in a reasonable and level manner.

You can also try typing 'Star of Bethlehem' in a good search engine (eg. Google) and you'll find tons shows up.

Personally I take 'following the star' in the same way that people who believe in Astrology follow the stars. Someone pointed out that they came from the East and followed a star which was in the East - this puts them going away from Bethlehem if we are to take it literally! This person's conclusion is then that they cannot have been literally 'following a star,' but were following advice given to them by the stars. Although I guess evidence for Astrology in the Bible isn't too popular either!

December 2001, Karen Masters (more by Karen Masters) (Like this Answer)

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