The Great Christ Comet
Page 63
96 It should be noted, however, that the more one moves into December, the more the comet would struggle to guide a traveler in the right direction from Jerusalem to Bethlehem (since it was beginning each night farther to the west).
Chapter 11: “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning”
1 http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets (posted April 2007).
2 We are counting the 65 great comets concerning which Yeomans denominates a perihelion distance.
3 Comet ISON of 2013 had a perihelion distance of 0.0124 AU, although it disintegrated catastrophically before it reached perihelion on American Thanksgiving Day of that year.
4 David Seargent, The Greatest Comets in History: Broom Stars and Celestial Scimitars (Berlin: Springer, 2009), 122.
5 Of course, many other comets that made close passes by Earth are not regarded as “great,” such as comets Lexell in 1770 (perigee: 0.0151 AU) and Tempel-Tuttle in 1366 (perigee: 0.0229 AU). For lists of close approaches, see the Near Earth Object Program’s “Historic Comet Close Approaches,” http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/historic_comets.html (last modified October 27, 2009); Martin Mobberley, Hunting and Imaging Comets (Berlin: Springer, 2011), 36–37; and Gary W. Kronk, “The Closest Approaches of Comets to Earth,” http://cometography.com/nearcomet.html (last modified September 30, 2006).
6 Ecclesiastical History 11.7; translation by Edward Walford, Epitome of the Ecclesiastical History of Philostorgius (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1855), http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/philostorgius.htm (accessed March 26, 2014).
7 Ecclesiastical History 6.
8 Gary W. Kronk, Cometography: A Catalog of Comets, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–), 1:71.
9 Ecclesiastical History 8.4.
10 Translation by Edward Walford, The Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1885), 367–368. See Kronk, Cometography, 1:71–72.
11 Seargent, Greatest Comets, 80.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 82.
14 Kronk, Cometography, 1:72.
15 Seargent, Greatest Comets, 80. The Comet of AD 400 had an inclination of 32 degrees.
16 The period of naked-eye visibility obviously includes times when the comet was not observable due to its proximity to the Sun.
17 Only 7 of Yeomans’s select group of 73 great cometary apparitions in history up to 1996 (and hence before the peak of Hale-Bopp’s performance) (for the list, see appendix B in Fred Schaaf, Comet of the Century [New York: Springer, 1997], 335–338) were visible to the naked eye for 100+ days, and only 2 were visible to the naked eye for 120+ days—the Great September Comet of 1882 (135 days) and the Great Comet of 1811 (260 days) (ibid., 202–203).
18 It is worth recalling great ancient comets: for example, Josephus mentions a comet that remained visible for a year, apparently in AD 65–66 (Josephus, J.W. 6.5.3 [§289]), and Pliny mentions a comet that had lasted for 180 days (Natural History 2.22).
19 See Gary W. Kronk, “C/1995 O1 [Hale-Bopp],” http://cometography.com/lcomets/1995o1.html (last modified October 3, 2006).
20 The Chinese recorded comets with tail lengths of 200 and even 300 degrees, but none are regarded by Yeomans as among the great comets (http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets [posted April 2007]).
21 The “iron” color may suggest that the comet tail was not merely dusty but also gassy, like Hale-Bopp.
22 Gary W. Kronk, Comets: A Descriptive Catalog (Hillside, NJ: Enslow, 1984), 36.
23 This comet’s tail in outer space was longer than the distance from the Sun to Mars (Patrick Moore and Robin Rees, Patrick Moore’s Data Book of Astronomy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 257).
24 IRAS-Araki-Alcock grew to be a maximum of 2.0–2.5 degrees in size (Storm Dunlop and Will Tirion, Collins Night Sky and Starfinder [London: Collins, 2011], 123; Andreas Kammerer, personal email correspondence, October 30, 2012).
25 Patrick Moore, Comets: An Illustrated Introduction (New York: Scribner, 1973), 84; Mobberley, Hunting and Imaging Comets, 46.
26 Andreas Kammerer, personal email message to the author, October 30, 2012.
27 As Richard Schmude, Comets and How to Observe Them (New York: Springer, 2010), 35, has noted, generally speaking, the larger the nucleus, the larger the coma and the brighter the comet.
28 See Kronk, Cometography, 1:396.
29 Zdenek Sekanina, “Statistical Investigation and Modeling of Sungrazing Comets Discovered with the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory,” Astrophysical Journal 566.1 (2002): 582.
30 For December 1–3 and 4–8 the values for n=4 are lower than the stated value for December 10–17, 7 BC, by 0.2 and 0.1 respectively.
31 That is approximately when John the Baptist was conceived.
32 Personal email message to the author, September 26, 2012. Kronk’s comments were based on my orbit and the fact that the comet was first spotted between one and two Jewish years before Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.
33 Seargent, Greatest Comets, 82.
34 David Seargent stated back in 1982 that “we have no reason to suspect, from examination of the appearances and durations of historical comets, that any comet for which an orbit has not been calculated was of noticeably higher absolute magnitude [i.e., greater intrinsic brightness] than these [the comets of 1577, 1811 and 1882, among others]” (Comets: Vagabonds of Space [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982], 110–111). The year-long comet mentioned by Josephus may be an exception to this, as may be the progenitor of the sungrazer system of comets (reckoned to have had a nucleus of 120 km in diameter and an absolute magnitude of -5—see Schaaf, Comet of the Century, 73–74; cf. Brian G. Marsden, “The Sungrazing Comet Group,” Astronomical Journal 72 [1967]: 1170–1183; Peter Jenniskens¸ Meteor Showers and Their Parent Comets [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 424), and certainly the Christ Comet was an exception.
35 Personal email message to the author, January 9, 2013. Kronk’s comments were based on his calculations of the comet’s brightness, assuming my orbit and the fact that the comet was first sighted at least one Jewish year before the slaughter of the innocents.
36 Had the comet been visible on September 27, 6 BC, the apparent magnitude might have been as dramatic as -15.8 to -19.4 (if n=4).
37 Assuming n=4.
38 Assuming n=4.
39 Joseph N. Marcus, “Forward-Scattering Enhancement of Comet Brightness. I. Background and Model,” International Comet Quarterly 29 (2007): 61–62; idem, “Forward-Scattering Enhancement of Comet Brightness. II. The Light Curve of C/2006 P1 (McNaught),” International Comet Quarterly 29 (2007): 119. Marcus points out that, of the thirteen comets counted “great” by Bortle in his 1997 study of great comets (John E. Bortle, “Great Comets in History,” Sky and Telescope 93.1 [1997]: 44–50), nine passed between Earth and the Sun, producing good forward-scattering geometry, and eight had phase angles peaking at between 155 and 180 degrees, with six of them having phase angles peaking at between 166 and 180 degrees (“Background and Model,” 62).
40 Assuming n=4 and the latest possible date of first observation. If n=5 and the comet was spotted at the latest possible date, the comet would have had zero magnitude or greater from May 1, 6 BC, to February 14, 5 BC, or over 9 months.
41 See Seargent, Comets: Vagabonds of Space, 51, on the Great Comet of 1843.
42 Ibid., 109.
43 Ibid., 115.
44 This was one of the most frequently cited extracanonical texts in the history of the early church (Harry O. Maier, “Ignatius Ephesians 19.1–3,” in Prayer from Alexander: A Critical Anthology, ed. Mark Christopher Kiley [London: Routledge, 1997], 267; J. B. Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Pt. II. S. Ignatius. S. Polycarp. Revised texts, with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Translations [London: Macmillan, 1885], 76).
45 If vv. 2–3a are part of a hymn, v. 3b (“That which had been prepared by God began to come into effect. The
refore all things were perturbed, because the abolishing of Death was being worked out”) is best regarded as Ignatius’s own theological comment regarding the cited tradition.
46 For example, H. F. Stander, “The Starhymn in the Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians (19:2–3),” Vigiliae Christianae 43 (1989): 209–214; Maier, “Ignatius Ephesians 19.1–3,” 267–269; Matthew E. Gordley, Teaching through Song in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 353–354. The style and hymnic/poetic vocabulary are regarded as evidence that 19:2–3a were originally a hymn. Schoedel, however, maintains that Ignatius himself composed vv. 2–3, albeit heavily dependent on preexisting tradition (William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, Hermeneia [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985], 87–88).
47 Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 92.
48 William R. Schoedel, “Ignatius and the Reception of the Gospel of Matthew in Antioch,” in Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches, ed. David L. Balch (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), 156.
49 Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 89.
50 So ibid., 90n18.
51 Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, 80, nicely summarized Ignatius’s thought: “These mysteries . . . were foreordained and prepared in silence by God, that they might be proclaimed aloud to a startled world.”
52 Although Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 199, renders the text, “How, then, were they revealed to the ages?” (italics his), implying that Ignatius had in mind the conception, birth, and death of Jesus, this is most unlikely. After all, the death of Jesus is introduced with “likewise also,” underlining its parenthetical nature, and vv. 2–3 are exclusively focused on the birth of Jesus, as Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 90, points out. The apostolic father is referring to a single (note the singular: “How then was it revealed to the Aeons?”) complex mystery consisting of Mary’s virginal conception and her delivery of Jesus—hence our rendering “the virgin birth.” A surprising number of translations render the subject of the first verb in v. 2 “he,” namely Christ (e.g., Bart Ehrman, The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 328; Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 87). However, the contrast between v. 1 and v. 2 is between what was “hidden from the prince of this Age,” first and foremost Mary’s virginal status when she conceived and gave birth to Jesus (note 18:2 also), and the revealing of this to the Aeons (cosmic powers).
53 Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 91.
54 The theology, rites, and ceremonies of the Magi are probably in view. The word had also come to refer more generally to magic, but in this context, where the historical Star of the Magi is in view, it most likely retains at least something of its original sense.
55 We are translating the imperfects in v. 3a as inceptive (see ibid., 94). As the end of v. 3 makes clear, the victory that God won over the forces of evil began with the Star but will not be fully worked out until the eschaton.
Chapter 12: “The Light Everlasting That Fades Not Away”
1 Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Theodoto 69–75; Origen, Contra Celsum 1.60.
2 Josephus, Ant. 17.6.4 (§§164–167).
3 Herod’s main symptoms in the run-up to his death were fever, intense whole-body itching, severe intestinal inflammation and pain, voracious hunger, foul breath, edema of the feet and lower abdomen, painful and ulcerated bowels, genital gangrene (Fournier’s Disease), the production of worms, asthma, and convulsions. See Josephus, Ant. 17.6.5 §§168–173.
4 Of course, since December–March tends to be rainy in Israel and Babylon, it was presumably not always easy to see the comet. Assuming that the comet remained intact, when the clearer skies associated with spring came, it may well have been easily missed by an untrained eye.
5 As we saw above, the constellation Aries was sometimes associated with Israel (see Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos 2.3).
6 In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul declares that “When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son, born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4, my translation). On what ground is Paul able to claim that “the fullness of time” had come when Jesus was born? Ethelbert Stauffer comments, “Perhaps Paul, too, is thinking of the appearance of this star [i.e., the star seen by the Magi] in Gal. 4.3f.” (Ethelbert Stauffer, Jesus and His Story [New York: Knopf, 1960], 36. Stauffer goes on to write, “At any rate, Ignatius of Antioch [Eph. 19:2–3] understood [Paul] to mean this when he combined the themes of Matt. 2 and Gal. 4 quite naturally in an apocalyptic advent hymn to the star of Bethlehem”). Although Stauffer’s proposal regarding Gal. 4:3–4 has been largely ignored by subsequent scholarship, it merits attention. After all, Paul must have had some objective basis for his striking claim that Jesus was born at the divinely ordained moment for the initiation of the plan of salvation.
7 900 AU is 135 billion km, 0.014 light years, or 1/307 of the distance to the closest star system, Alpha Centauri. The approximately 1,000-km-diameter trans-Neptunian object 90377 Sedna, the largest solar system object discovered since Pluto, has an eccentricity of 0.84 and an aphelion distance of about 900 AU.
8 My translation.
Appendix 1: The Chinese Comet Records
1 The 87 BC apparition of Halley’s Comet may also be preserved only by the Babylonians, since the Chinese record does not prove a natural fit. To get the Chinese record to agree with Halley’s Comet, one must assume that the Chinese made a mistake in the month or direction (see Tao Kiang, “The Past Orbit of Halley’s Comet,” Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society 76 [1972]: 56).
2 Virgil (Georgic 1.488), a contemporary writing in 36–29 BC, speaks of frequent fearsome cometary apparitions at the time of the battle of Philippi (as does Manilius, Astronomica 1.907–908). The use of the Latin cometae and the context make it clear that comets are in view. Cassius Dio 47.40.2 speaks of the “Sun” shining at night.
3 Cassius Dio 66.17.2, and Suetonius, Vespasian 23.4, refer to a “long-haired” comet that portended Vespasian’s death. We simply cannot be sure that it was the same comet recorded in April by the Koreans.
4 However, this may not have been a comet.
5 Donald K. Yeomans, Comets: A Chronological History of Observation, Science, Myth, and Folklore (New York: John Wiley, 1991), 361–424; and A. A. Barrett, “Observations of Comets in Greek and Roman Sources before A.D. 410,” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 72 (1978): 81–106. It should be noted, however, that the reliability of Korean records up until about AD 400 is questionable (see Ho Peng-Yoke, “Ancient and Mediaeval Observations of Comets and Novae in Chinese Sources,” Vistas in Astronomy 5 [1962]: 149). Thomas John York, “The Reliability of Early East Asian Astronomical Records” (PhD thesis, Durham University, 2003), 12, comments that the Korean source of these early comet reports contains few records and that most of them are simply copies of Chinese records (York’s thesis is available online at http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3080/).
6 Seneca, Natural Questions 7.17.2.
7 Plutarch, Caesar 69.3 (my translation).
8 With respect to the chronology and the question of the relationship between the late-July comet and the Chinese reports of a comet in May–June of 44 BC, John T. Ramsey and A. Lewis Licht (The Comet of 44 B.C. and Caesar’s Funeral Games [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997]) claim that the same comet is in view. On this basis they seek to use the two reported positions of the comet to “arrive at a relatively narrow range of orbital parameters that fit our evidence” (12). The Roman apparition is taken to be a sudden cometary flare-up due to “change in the internal structure of the comet’s nucleus” or nucleus splitting “almost two months after the likely date of perihelion” (119–124). Assigning May 30 to the Chinese observation and July 23 to the Roman sightings, they develop hypothetical orbits of the comet (125–132). Ramsey and Licht may be correct in suggesting that the same comet was described a
t different stages of its apparition (their development of a single orbit that holds together the two apparitions is impressive), but their hypothesis requires that there was a massive outburst well after perihelion. It seems equally, if not more, likely that a different comet was being reported (cf. Alexandre Guy Pingré, Cométographie ou Traité Historique et Théoretique des Comètes, 2 vols. [Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1783–1784], 277–279), a very bright one around perihelion time.
9 Octavia 231–232.
10 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 2.23.
11 Also Tacitus, Annals 15.47; Suetonius, Nero 36.
12 E.g., Yeomans, Comets, 368.
13 Gary W. Kronk, Cometography: A Catalog of Comets, 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–), 1:33.
14 Tacitus, Ann. 15.47 (my translation).
15 Kronk, Cometography, 1:298–308.
16 C/1618 Q1, V1, and W1.
17 See Kronk, Cometography, 1:342.
18 C/1880 C1 (Great Southern Comet), C/1881 K1 (Great Comet), C/1882 F1 (Wells), and C/1882 R1 (Great September Comet). We could also include other naked-eye comets like C/1880 S1 (Hartwig) and C/1881 N1 (Schaeberle). Peter Grego, Blazing a Ghostly Trail: ISON and Great Comets of the Past and Future (New York: Springer, 2014), 105, points out that six of the nineteenth century’s eight great comets appeared within a 40-year period.
19 Josephus, J.W. 6.5.3 (§289; cf. Cassius Dio 64.8.1).
20 Fourteen comets if we include a rather peculiar record in January–February of 5 BC: “a white vapor emerged in the southwest, reaching from the ground up to the sky. It emerged beneath Shen and penetrated Tiance, as wide as a bolt of cloth and over 10 zhang [100 degrees] long. It lasted more than 10 days before departing” (David W. Pankenier, Zhentao Xu, and Yaotiao Jiang, Archaeoastronomy in East Asia [Amherst, NY: Cambria, 2008], 23–24). Curiously, I find that this phenomenon coincided with the birth of future Emperor Guangwu of Han, who ruled from AD 25 to 57. When I asked David Pankenier how sure he was that this was a comet, he replied (email correspondence, October 6, 2012):