Convincing Evidence That The Star of Bethlehem Is A Pious Fraud

[R_Collins]

The birth of Jesus Christ cannot be confirmed historically, but apologists correctly point out that almost no ancient births can be confirmed historically. It was just too long ago. 

Are there events that the Bible reports are associated with Christ's birth, and are big enough to be reported by the surviving writings of ancient authors? The Star of Bethlehem (also called the "Christmas Star") is such an event. If it indeed happened, it should be widely reported by even secular astronomers (astrologers) and historians, such as Pliny and Josephus, who do report other astronomical events. 

The Star of Bethlehem also had huge apologetic and evangelistic value to First Century Christians, because surviving eyewitnesses would have been able to confirm it. We should expect it to figure prominently in the evangelistic sermons that are reported in the New Testament, and in the Epistles that argue in favor of Christ's divinity. 

Disprove the Star of Bethlehem, and you have powerful evidence against the reliability of the entire nativity story in the Gospel of Matthew. 

I've created a video that discusses the Star of Bethlehem, and the fact that the evidence for it is so completely lacking that I have not been able to find a single Christian apologist who even tries to defend it. 

 

Why Won't Christian Apologists Defend Matthew's Christmas Star of Bethlehem?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNxT--N60-U

 

[RachelSkates]

On 12/20/2017 at 11:18 AM, R_Collins said:

The birth of Jesus Christ cannot be confirmed historically, but apologists correctly point out that almost no ancient births can be confirmed historically. It was just too long ago. 

Are there events that the Bible reports are associated with Christ's birth, and are big enough to be reported by the surviving writings of ancient authors? The Star of Bethlehem (also called the "Christmas Star") is such an event. If it indeed happened, it should be widely reported by even secular astronomers (astrologers) and historians, such as Pliny and Josephus, who do report other astronomical events. 

The Star of Bethlehem also had huge apologetic and evangelistic value to First Century Christians, because surviving eyewitnesses would have been able to confirm it. We should expect it to figure prominently in the evangelistic sermons that are reported in the New Testament, and in the Epistles that argue in favor of Christ's divinity. 

Disprove the Star of Bethlehem, and you have powerful evidence against the reliability of the entire nativity story in the Gospel of Matthew. 

I've created a video that discusses the Star of Bethlehem, and the fact that the evidence for it is so completely lacking that I have not been able to find a single Christian apologist who even tries to defend it. 

 

Why Won't Christian Apologists Defend Matthew's Christmas Star of Bethlehem?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNxT--N60-U

 

 A comet is in Suetonius. It is portending the birth of a King and all the Senate decides to kill the little babies, but the gather together reason and say, "Hmmmm could be MY kid!" so they don't. Check that out! it was swiped by xers. Lots in ancient lit that Xers swiped

[mymistake]

I like the Freethinkers Books videos.  If I could make a suggestion though, it is really helpful when the videos are under 10 minutes long.  I just checked again and see the newest videos are short.  I really appreciate this.  I'm afraid that attention spans are not what they use to be.  I'm going to check out the new videos now.

 

Good coverage on the Star of Bethlehem.  Clearly it was made up.  The claims are founded on nothing and the authors who wrote it down must have known they were making it up.

[R_Collins]

RachelSkates, thank you for the info about Suetonius. I had done a lot of searching in preparation for my video, but I had missed that one. I'll be sure to look it up. 

 

mymistake, thank you for the feedback on my videos. Some topics are very complex and require long videos. But I'm discovering that, on YouTube, the vast majority of viewers prefer shorter videos. So I am going to try to pick more narrowly defined subjects for most of my future videos.