The article, ‘The Star of Bethlehem’ in Science and Christian Belief written by Colin Humphreys was a great find. It supplies most of the facts upon which this article is based. He recommends that rather than thinking that the Bible is untrue, as many people think today, or surmising that the Biblical authors were using literary devices to make stories more exciting for their readers, we should start out with the premise that the Bible is true. If we knew enough about the phenomena described in the Bible, we might see that the Biblical description was accurate after all. Colin Humphreys believes that the Star of Bethlehem and other events that are part of the Bible refer to real, naturally occurring phenomena. Often the miracle is not in the phenomenon itself, but in the timing of its occurrence.
Colin Humphreys takes the stance that the report of a star appearing as part of the birth of Christ narrative in the gospel of Matthew is a correct description of events. He investigates whether any astronomical phenomena fit the description given in the Bible.
The Chinese kept careful records of comets. They labelled tailed comets ‘sui-hsing’ or ‘suibsing’ meaning broom. There is a Chinese catalogue of comets called Ho Peng-Yoke that records a bright comet for 5 BC under catalogue number 63. The Ho Peng-Yoke record relies on the Han shu record which was the official history of the Han dynasty.
The comet of 5 BC is described thus, “Second year of the Chien-p’ing reign period, second month (5 BC, March 9-April 6), a suibsing appeared at Ch’ien-niu for over 70 days.”
Ch’ien-nui is a part of the sky that would have been visible to the east in the early morning. Thus, a comet rose in the east. It appeared between the 9th March and 6th April 5 BC. It was visible for 70 days. This implies that it must have been very bright during some of that time, and so quite exceptional. It was labelled “sui” which means tailed comet.
Thus, Colin Humphreys in his article ‘The Star of Bethlehem’ in Science and Christian Belief Vol. 5 (1995) gives convincing evidence that the star was a comet that appeared in 5 BC.
Merry and True 