Massacre of the Innocents

[Angrboda]

Your trying to say a very specific place and I'm saying that it was the city where the Christ child was born. The Bible doesn't say the star stopped over the stable, it says the place. A planet in retrograde will stop at a specific point in the sky and from a persons perspective at the time and place they are it would look as it it stopped over a certain place. I've challenged you to look at the DVD "The Star of Bethlehem," but stubborn you just can't do it. I read the book you sent me when I first came to this site, I took your challenge. The star and the planet both had names and yes at that time with significant meaning to who the Christ child was to be, imagine that.

GC

Okay, GC, I watched your video, and discovered about what I expected, it didn't answer the necessary questions.  What does it mean for a star to stop over a specific place on earth?  He makes the speculation that this referred to the turning phase of Jupiter through its retrograde motion within the sky.  Even if I accepted that speculation, that gives us a 'when', not a 'where'.  The only reasonable interpretation one can give to the idea of Jupiter or the conjunction being "over the place where the Child was" is that one can draw a direct line between the center of the earth, and that object in the sky, and that when this line intersects the surface of the earth, it does so at Bethlehem.  Mr. Larson demonstrated no such thing, and given the position of the objects in the sky at the time, it seems highly unlikely that such a line would have intersected Bethlehem.  A more pressing concern would be how magi would be able to determine this fact from visual observation, and the fact is that they wouldn't have been able to do so.  Any determinations made from visual observation would have placed them in a large general region, not a specific town.  Moreover, we know why they went to Bethlehem, and it was because of prophesy, not because of any star in the sky.

So even if one can make an appropriate interpretation of what it means for a star to stop over a certain location, your video did not in any way demonstrate that such had occurred.  As Mr. Larson says on his website, "Magi viewing from Jerusalem would have seen it stopped in the sky above the little town of Bethlehem."  Whether this was even possible, much less something actual, Larson doesn't even begin to explore.  So your video answered basically nothing.  It gave one more speculation that an object might have been in the night sky at the time of the birth, but no indication that said object localized to a specific town, nor that a human observer could have even determined that it had done so.  In short, the video was just more speculative crap that didn't answer the basic questions.

So, as expected, your video showed absolutely dick.  What it did, however, show, was what a gullible twat you are.  But then, we already knew that.

Flaw 3: The theory is unable to give a plausible account of the Star’s behaviour over Bethlehem

Larson’s explanation of the Star’s behaviour at the climax of the Magi’s journey is inadequate. Matthew 2:9b strongly suggests that the Star was observed to “stand over” a particular house, not the town as a whole, leading the Magi to the exact place where the child was. This is indicated by the context. Matthew in v. 8 underlines how difficult finding the Messianic child would be for the Magi. Then, immediately after Matthew mentions that the Star stood over the place where the child was, he emphasizes the Magi’s joy at seeing this.  Finally, in v. 11 he makes explicit what “the place” was—it was a house. Advocates of the 3–2 BC hypothesis are unable to offer a plausible explanation of what Matthew describes in v. 9b.

The Star’s “standing” could not refer to Jupiter becoming stationary relative to the fixed stars immediately before changing apparent direction, as Martin and Larson suggest, because that is not detectable by the human eye in the short space of a few hours.  Moreover, as surviving records from Babylon reveal, ancient astronomers would have known when Jupiter would change its apparent direction well before it happened....Moreover, since the Star’s “standing” occurred at the end of the Magi’s journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, not its start, in order to be perceived to be “over” Bethlehem, it would have had to be in the very roof of the sky (the zenith) or near the horizon. However, it was neither.  Jupiter never got higher than 67½ degrees over the southern horizon on December 25 and so was 22½ degrees from the zenith.

What Is Wrong with Rick Larson’s 'Star of Bethlehem' DVD Documentary  [emphasis mine]