What are facts about the star of Bethlehem before Christ?

Answer 1

Answer
The following are facts about the star of Bethlehem:

1. The star of Bethlehem would surely have been an amazing event, but was entirely unknown to the author of Luke's Gospel, who would have written of it had he known about it.
   
2. It defies the laws of nature for a star or even a comet, millions of kilometres away, to be able to guide the magi to the exact house, or even the town, in which Jesus lay.
   
3. Throughout the Roman Empire, and in Palestine itself, scholars recorded every natural event out of the ordinary, but no one recorded a star such as that described in Matthew's Gospel during the reign of King Herod.
   
4. There was a star that caused a great deal of wonderment, just a few years before Matthew was written. (i) It was seen by some as an omen that had foretold the death of Nero; (ii) Josephus, captured by the Roman army, said that the star was a sign that General Vespatian was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah and that he would become the Roman emperor (a prophecy that came true), and gained clemency for these prophecies.
   

5. Numbers 24:17 says, "I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth." This was an unfulfilled prophecy that could not have been referring to Jesus, even with considerable imagination. But nevertheless it was a prophecy about a star.
   

6. The author of Matthew made frequent references to the Old Testament in order to 'prove' that it foreshadowed or foretold of Jesus. It has been suggested that he was inspired by the star of 68 CE, some fifteen years before the time of writing, to make allusion to the star of the Book of Numbers.