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Two thousand years ago, wise men of this world weren’t lucky enough to have GPS. In the Christmas story, then, the wise men chose to follow a star to navigate their way to Bethlehem—but, scientifically speaking, would that really have worked?
Fortunately, Randall Munroe of XKCD has taken a look at the problem. As he explains, the main difficulty in working out whether those men were as wise as their name suggests is identifying exactly what they were following:
It’s tricky to figure out exactly what the wise men would have been following. There aren’t very many good astronomical candidates for the Star of Bethlehem (Chinese records don’t show a supernova at the right time, and none of the other obvious candidates check out) and, furthermore, there’s a lot of historical and theological debate over Jesus’s date of birth (“4 BC” seems to be the closest thing to a historical consensus date). These charts are all calculated for a somewhat arbitrary departure date from Jerusalem of December 25th, 1 AD; different departure days would lead to different paths, but the overall picture would be the same.
Particularly prominent in the night sky are planets. Hardly traditional, admittedly, but it’s likely they’d have provided good markers to follow. Munroe has sketched out the paths the men would have taken if they’d followed Venus (left) and Mars (right).
Neither look particularly promising. Instead, then, Munroe tried out a star. If the wise men had followed Sirius—the brightest star in the night sky—day and night, even when it was below the horizon, they’d have spiraled off south, eventually going in an endless circle, 30 kilometers in diameter, around the South Pole.
The other option—just jounreying by night to ensure travel was always in the direction of the star—would’ve taken them on a southerly path that just skirted Bethlehem but ultimately landed them in Botswana.
In other words, they could’ve ended up next to the manger—but it would have been as much through luck as judgment. [What If?]
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I didn’t realise they started from Jerusalem.
Just checked, they started somewhere not mentioned to the east of Jerusalem and finished their star filling in Jerusalem. So paths from there to Bethlehem are a bit irrelevant… Shame really
Good that it is a fictional story then with no proof other than word of mouth that it was ever based on factual events.
It might have been a US drone they wee following.
Where does it say there were ‘three’ wise men?
There were actually four of them.. One was just a cheap bastard and didn’t bring a gift
Stands to reason, one carried the gold and the other two had it easy
It is a common misconception that the wise men visited Jesus at the stable on the night of His birth. In fact, the wise men came days, months, or possibly even years later. That is why Matthew 2:11 says the wise men visited and worshiped Jesus in a house, not at the stable.
The Star of Bethlehem is associated with the visit of the magi (wise men) from the East as recorded in Matthew 2:1-12. The text implies the Star appeared only to the magi in the East (the “East” most likely being the area of Persia, or modern-day Iran). There is no biblical record of anyone else observing this phenomenon.
Speculation as to the time of Jesus’ birth dates back to the 3rd century, when Hyppolytus (ca. 170-236) claimed that Jesus was born on December 25. The earliest mention of some sort of observance on that date is in the Philoclian Calendar, representing Roman practice, of the year 336. Later, John Chrysostom favored the same date of birth. Cyril of Jerusalem (348-386) had access to the original Roman birth census, which also documented that Jesus was born on the 25th of December. The date eventually became the officially recognized date for Christmas in part because it coincided with the pagan festivals celebrating Saturnalia and the winter solstice. The church thereby offered people a Christian alternative to the pagan festivities and eventually reinterpreted many of their symbols and actions in ways acceptable to Christian faith and practice.
I was pretty sure his actual date of birth was around October…
People taking Pagan festivities as fact, and basing science around it, is always going to end badly.