bwerb
Hoser/English Translator, eh
H2Andy:
Andy, seriously, please don't throw a clot over this, I understood what your response was the first time and what your point was is, it was very clear. As UP outlined above, the magi as astonomers looking for signs were watching for MONTHS the starfields seeing strange things occurring. This is clear from the entire chapter of Matthew and from some historical research.
Who were the Magi?
What did they do?
Where did they come from?
Who was Herod?
If he is asking them when the first saw the "star"...they didn't jump on a plane.
These are just a few questions you can look at and find further information to explain greater detail about the account beyond what is written in the text. If you are trying to understand any document or account, you have to ask and research more than what was just written on the page.
If you then look at the software we have available to track star tracks at any point in time from any area and you see what happened...wow...something DID occur which would add further detail to the story. The more you look at what happened...the more interesting the motion is...and it appears to give a logical, well thought out and demonstrable explanation of what was described.
So I'll ask you again...
please responded to the problems with the historicity or the astronomical phenomena described in the article.
You say that all he says is "mush" and point to "the star stopping" as being impossible and all he has done is "wanting" to come up with a "scientific" and "logical" way to describe what in your words is "impossible".
So I'll ask again...
Forgetting your hang-up with "the star stopping"...what is wrong with the historical details and/or the actual physical astronomical phenomena described in the article which occured at the time? Where is the "science" off? I don't understand why you'd hold the translated description contained in one line as being authorotatative in complete isolation when you can actually look at what DID happen in the skies at the time...how does it NOT describe what was written with much greater clarity?
You seem to be taking the avenue that everything you could possibly know is somehow contained within the direct text. It has been a halmark of Biblical scholarship that you must come to terms with context, audience, language and history to "color" what is written and come to a much fuller understanding. I don't understand why suddenly you would toss-out the research of someone who actually checked to see what happened because on the surface it doesn't appear to align with your preconception of what Matthew was describing.
I don't see a miracle in this as something which "broke" the laws of the universe, I see an amazing series of coincidences in the natural world which when aligned with the astrological beliefs of the time would tend to show "signs in the heavens".
As an astronomer/astrologer looking at the skies for "signs" and knowing what the beliefs were of the various groups...wouldn't YOU have to admit that what actually DID happen would have aligned with something very significant happening?
