In the story of Matthew the evangelist the Star does not just shine. It moves, precedes the Magi along the way and then, having reached their destination, “stops”. It is precisely this detail, apparently marginal, that made the difference the Star of Bethlehem one of the most discussed passages and problems of the Gospel story. No celestial body, according to modern astronomy, seems to behave like this. But perhaps, research suggests today, the question to ask is another.
«When we return to talking about the Star of Bethlehem we realize that the sky never stops communicating with history», he observes Enrico Bonfante, amateur astronomer and president of the Empiricamente association. «It is a silent dialogue made of data, hypotheses and a hint of wonder». For Bonfante the point is clear: the Magi were not astronomers in the modern sense of the term. They were astrologers, interpreters of signs. They were looking for meaning, not physical explanations. It is in this perspective that the study by Mark Matney, planetary scientist at NASA, published in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, fits.
Matney leaves again from an ancient source well known to scholars: the Chinese astronomical chronicles which describe, in the spring of 5 BC., the appearance of a “broom star”, the term used to indicate comets. A real, documented object, visible for over seventy days in the constellation of Capricorn. An anomalous figure for an ordinary comet. By reanalyzing those observations with new numerical models, Matney reconstructed a possible very rare orbit, almost directed towards Earth.
In a configuration of this type, the apparent motion of the object in the sky could have slowed down drastically, until it seems almost stationary for a few hours. A behavior that closely recalls the Gospel passage (Mt 2, 1-16) in which the star “went before them and stopped”. “It’s a plausible hypothesis, not proof,” Bonfante underlines, “but the phenomenon is one of the most interesting candidates.” Because it shows that Matthew’s account is not necessarily contradictory to the real heaven. However, the trail does not exhaust the picture.
«Alongside this hypothesis», recalls Bonfante«there is another equally credible interpretation from the point of view of ancient astrology: the triple conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn in 7 BC, which occurred in the constellation of Pisces.” In that symbolic language, Jupiter was the royal planet, Saturn represented justice and order, while Pisces was associated with the land of Israel. «For an astrologer of the time», he explains, «the reading would have been immediate». The value of the most recent research, Bonfante insists, lies not in providing a definitive answer to a thousand-year-old enigma, but in clarifying the context.
«Comets, conjunctions, perhaps even “novae“. No definitive answer, but an increasingly coherent picture”. The Star of Bethlehem remains an open terrain, where science, history and culture continue to meet. Perhaps we will never know what the Magi really saw. But today it is more difficult to maintain that that Star was only a symbolic invention: the sky of two thousand years ago, at least once, could really have behaved like this.
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