The Magi followed the star all the way from their homeland (tradition says they were from Parthia, near the site of ancient Babylon, where Iraq stands today). They would have journeyed for months and travelled well over a thousand miles to and from the town where Jesus was staying. Who has ever heard of following a star around the world? If you are sceptical there’s something you might like to know. Every 804 years a rare triple-conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars occurs and it looks like a brilliant star. Modern astronomers, studying ancient records, have discovered that around 2000 years ago (right about the time Jesus was born) this rare conjunction strangely occurred three times in the same year. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying the Magi followed a conjunction (I believe that God, who created the heavens and the earth, created a special star to signal the arrival of his Son). But what I’m saying is if you’re sceptical about a star leading foreign ambassadors half-way across the world it’s worth suspending that scepticism, since we know for a fact there was a rare astronomical sight visible from that part of the world at just the right time.

Paul Barnett

Paul Bennett, Is the New Testament history?, 1994, Hodder and Stoughton, p.122 – cited by John Dickson in Stranger Than Fiction, p.29