The Star of Bethlehem
Dec 21st, 2007 by Micah Tillman | Start the Discussion |
It’s Christmas, and that means it’s time for my yearly, “The Wise Men Didn’t Follow the Star of Bethlehem to Israel” post.
They saw the Star once, and it disappeared. It didn’t reappear until after they had gone to Israel to ask where the king (whose birth the Star announced) was (Matthew 2:9-10).
That was why the Magi were excited to see the Star again (Matthew 2:10. Notice that the translators of the NRSV miss the fact that the star had only just then reappeared, and so they insert words ["had stopped"] into 2:10 to fix a problem that doesn’t exist).
There you go. I only post this because so many depictions of the Christmas Story include the Wise Men following the Star to Israel, deciding that it was going the wrong way, heading off to Jerusalem in defiance, only to repent and return to following it.
If people would only read their Bibles.
