Endnote 1 – The Magi and the Star

The American astronomer Michael Molnar recently presented a theory that the star of Bethlehem should be identified with two occultations of Jupiter by the moon in Aries in 6 B.C.E. (Molnar, The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi [New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1999]). This theory must be rejected, however, since in Babylonian astrology the occultation of Jupiter by the moon signified the death of a great king and famine in the West, that is, exactly the opposite of what a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn portended. See Hermann Hunger and Simo Parpola, “Bedeckungen des Planeten Jupiter durch den Mond,” Archiv für Orientforschung, 29/30 (1983/84), pp. 46–49.