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Messiah's Star: Morning stars together proclaim your holy birth
Natural law meets faith in Messiah's Star, telling the story of the birth of Christ through celestial events occurring at that time. Grounded in science and told as it may have been seen through the eyes of Biblical figures, Messiah's Star shows how people of the day would have interpreted an amazing series of visible planetary conjunctions, the like of which has not happened at any other time in the history of mankind. The timing and symbolic meaning of these extraordinary happenings correspond with the timing of Biblical events. They may very well have heralded the birth of Christ. Michael Dourson demonstrates how certain Biblical passages are literal descriptions of these events, easily understood by the people of the time.
61 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 10, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 5, 2023
This story now has a second edition at Amazon.com with some new information that is highly relevant to the overall support on the date of Jesus' birth. This edition also has several closely related ideas on His birth that are well worth considering.
August 5, 2016
Messiah's Star uses modern astronomy and information available from astronomy computer programs that enable us to rewind the solar system and see how the skies looked millennia in the past. That sounds boring, but it's really not, especially if you're one of those people (like me) who knows darn good and well that Jesus was not born in December. It is a rather short book, but if you find the topic interesting, the author provides other sources to which you can turn if you want a deeper look into this "biblio-astronomy."
The things I liked about this book: the specific details on the positions of planets and stars as they correlate to specific events in the biblical narrative surrounding Jesus's birth. The western idea of a particular "star of Bethlehem" that appeared really doesn't make sense, as the author demonstrates by detailing the eastern idea of "seeing his star in the east." It goes much beyond just a flare popping in the sky over a stable in Bethlehem. The skies in 3 BC declared that something significant was about to happen months before it occurred. If you read this book, do not ignore the endnotes; they have as much information in them as the book itself.
Things I didn't like:
The author's confusion of the term "rotation" with "revolution." The planets rotate on their axes; they revolve around the sun.
The author breaks up the information with fictionalized accounts of the Babylonian magi evaluating the stellar events, of Mary and Joseph, Zachariah and Elizabeth, and the shepherd witnesses of the nativity. It just doesn't work, for me at least. The stories really only serve as exposition of the astronomical data, and as such they fall short of being stories. Personally, I would prefer the book be 100% non-fiction. It may very well be my ignorance on the subject, but things like a first-century Babylonian magus being aware that the sun and the star Regulus have had a conjunction below the horizon just stretches it beyond credulity for me. If it is possible for the Babylonians to have known this without the benefit of Stellarium software, I would much rather it be told to me in plain language. As it is, it seems unbelievable, as do the thoughts and rather stilted conversations about "conjunctions" that everybody seems to be having. Maybe your average Judean yocal was intimately aware of the conjunctions of planets and major stellar bodies as well as their meaning, but these stories don't make me believe it. Again, I'd rather just have the bare information, or at least a paragraph or two explaining how they knew it. Also, the whole Zachariah and Elizabeth-getting-pregnant made me cringe a little, as did the Mary having a "sensual" dream during conception. Maybe I'm a prude, but as marginal as these references were (they were in no way over-the-top or inappropriate), they made me uncomfortable. But as I said, maybe it's just me.
Overall, it gets a four-star rating (better than a lot of the hotels I've stayed in). The gripes above are what keeps it from a five-star rating. But it has done a great service for me in introducing me to this whole field of astronomy in relation to scripture, and I intend to follow up with the sources given in this book. ****
SPOILER ALERT
According to this book, Jesus's real birthday is June 17, 3 BC.
The things I liked about this book: the specific details on the positions of planets and stars as they correlate to specific events in the biblical narrative surrounding Jesus's birth. The western idea of a particular "star of Bethlehem" that appeared really doesn't make sense, as the author demonstrates by detailing the eastern idea of "seeing his star in the east." It goes much beyond just a flare popping in the sky over a stable in Bethlehem. The skies in 3 BC declared that something significant was about to happen months before it occurred. If you read this book, do not ignore the endnotes; they have as much information in them as the book itself.
Things I didn't like:
The author's confusion of the term "rotation" with "revolution." The planets rotate on their axes; they revolve around the sun.
The author breaks up the information with fictionalized accounts of the Babylonian magi evaluating the stellar events, of Mary and Joseph, Zachariah and Elizabeth, and the shepherd witnesses of the nativity. It just doesn't work, for me at least. The stories really only serve as exposition of the astronomical data, and as such they fall short of being stories. Personally, I would prefer the book be 100% non-fiction. It may very well be my ignorance on the subject, but things like a first-century Babylonian magus being aware that the sun and the star Regulus have had a conjunction below the horizon just stretches it beyond credulity for me. If it is possible for the Babylonians to have known this without the benefit of Stellarium software, I would much rather it be told to me in plain language. As it is, it seems unbelievable, as do the thoughts and rather stilted conversations about "conjunctions" that everybody seems to be having. Maybe your average Judean yocal was intimately aware of the conjunctions of planets and major stellar bodies as well as their meaning, but these stories don't make me believe it. Again, I'd rather just have the bare information, or at least a paragraph or two explaining how they knew it. Also, the whole Zachariah and Elizabeth-getting-pregnant made me cringe a little, as did the Mary having a "sensual" dream during conception. Maybe I'm a prude, but as marginal as these references were (they were in no way over-the-top or inappropriate), they made me uncomfortable. But as I said, maybe it's just me.
Overall, it gets a four-star rating (better than a lot of the hotels I've stayed in). The gripes above are what keeps it from a five-star rating. But it has done a great service for me in introducing me to this whole field of astronomy in relation to scripture, and I intend to follow up with the sources given in this book. ****
SPOILER ALERT
According to this book, Jesus's real birthday is June 17, 3 BC.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews