Was the Star of Bethlehem The Planet Venus Or the North Star Polaris?
Hi Paul! This question has been argued up and down. The accounts mentioned in the Gospels would be astronomically impossible, and Venus could not be the Star of Bethlehem as described in the Bible. According to Matthew, “… and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.” Anyone who watches the skies know that stars and planets don’t move like that, coming to rest over a certain place. They do not come to rest at all. If the Star of Bethlehem were an astronomical object, it could not move to the zenith at Bethlehem and then stop, to mark the place. The star would stay with a constellation if it were, say, a super nova, following the same orbit night after night. (No supernova was reported by astronomers anywhere in the world at that time, and certainly not with the remarkable start-stop properties of the Star of Bethlehem.) For a star at astronomical distances to stop while the rest of the constellations mo
