Danda 1995 - Suhotra Maharaja Archives

that the appearance of a star guinding the magies seem to settle the year ofbirth for the year 7 B.C.Edmund Halley discoversed 79 years later the comet of the same name. It wascalculated that one of its periodic fly-pasts would have occured in 12 BC. Thereis an interesting statement in the Protoevangelium of James , 21 "...And he(Herod) examined the Magi, saying to them:" What sign have you seen in referenceto the king the has been born?" And the Magi said: "We have seen a star of greatsize shining among these stars and obscuring their light, so that the stars didnot appear. And we thus knew that a king has been born to Israel and we havecome to worship him. Protoevangelium of James , 21 ante nic Vol VIII, page 366This statement could well support the opinion of David Clark of the RoyalGreenwich Observatory, John Parkinson of Dorkin's Mullard Space ScienceLaboratory and Richard Stephenson of Newcastle University who have offered aninteresting theory: That the star of Betlehem was actually a Nova, visisble tothe Chinese Astronomers of the Han dynasty for more then seventy days in 5 BC.The acceptance of these accounts would all place the birth of Jesus between 7and 5 BC, that means 5 - 7 years off traget of the present calculation!!!That the Gospels in no way are historically reliable can be shown easily asfollows:Take for example the events preceding the birth of Jesus: The only evidence wederive is based on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke in accounts, which areimpossible to reconcile and in fact mutually excluding each other. In MatthewJoseph is visited by an angle and NOT Mary while in Luke Mary is visited and NOTJoseph. In Luke the divinity of Jesus is announced to shepherds by angels whilein Matthew a star appears in the sky, an event which is entirely omitted by allother Gospels. In Luke the shepherds of the fields of Bethlehem appear to adorethe new-born child while in Matthew the Magi appear to worship Jesus. Accordingto Matthew it appears that Joseph's home is to be Bethlehem. From there he andhis family flee to Egypt, based on a warning in a dream to Joseph while Herod,the Great, based on the evidence of the Magi is engaging himself in anextraordinary massacre of children, an atrocity which would not possibly haveevaded the attention of the famous Historian Josephus, who reported on events ofmuch lesser importance in Israel and of the ongoings at the court of Herod. Wedo know however from Josephus that Herod was cruel (Antiquities XIV:11-16) andthat killing of innocent children to destroy a possible pretender to the thronecould not be considered out of character.From Egypt then, a voyage according to Matthew predicted in the Old Testament(2:15), "Out of Egypt I called my son." (Hosea 11:1), Joseph and his family,being "afraid to return" again due to another warning in a dream (2:22)"withrew to Nazareth" in fulfiment of the prophecy that "he would be called aNazarene" (2:23), a prophecy impossible to substantiate from the Old Testament.Opposite to the tremendous disturbances accompanying the birth of Jesus inMatthew, in Luke the home of the holy family is Nazareth. From here Mary andJoseph set out to Bethlehem, to abide to a census of Augustus which is notmentioned in any of the other Gospels nor possible to corrobarate bycontemporary sources (see p....).They continue to journey to Jerusalem which would be according to thedescribtion in Matthew would have meant to enter the lions (Herod's) den,presented there the child in the temple and returned to Nazareth (2:39) wherethey lived in peace. Hence scholars in generally and since long have suggestedthat the events described above might not be taken to be actually historical butrather to serve as embelishments or as constructions to fulfil predictions fromthe Old Testament and to substantiate the Messianic claims of Christianity inparticular.Further idications of contradictions:The Genealogy accounts of Jesus' descent: If Jesus was to be the Messiah hewould appear in Betlehem. He needed to be a descendent of the house of David. In