The Eric Metaxas Show - Nativity Star (Encore Continued)

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

Eric's conversation with Colin Nicholl from Socrates in the City continues, exploring the validity of the Star of Bethlehem -- it's science at its most festive and most fun! (Encore Presentation)

Welcome to the Eric Metaxis show. Did you ever see the movie The Blobs starring Steve McQueen? The blood-curdling threat of The Blob. Well, way back when Eric had a small part in that film, but they had to cut his scene because the blob was supposed to eat him. But he kept spitting him out. Oh, the whole thing was just a disaster. Anyway, here's the guy who's not always that easy to digest.

Eric the Texas! Hey there, folks. Yes, it's Christmas Day. Today, today, today is Christmas Day. And we're going to do a very special re-airing. This is one of the greatest conversations I've had. Socrates in the city, I did this nine years ago in Oxford, England, talking about the actual identity of the Bethlehem Star. This is insane. Enjoy it. God bless you. Merry Christmas. Okay, now I'm guessing that before this whole thing, you didn't know much about comments. Well, I had been reading a little bit about it as part of a broader reading about comments and everything. The remarkable thing, and this stands... Independent of this. Yes, but, well, as part of this and independent of this. As part of what I, everything I found, and this actually remains true for four years.

Every single thing I find out about comments fit perfectly. Nothing didn't. And that was the amazing thing. I mean, if you're thinking about, for example, the star, what do we know? We know when the star appeared, first appeared, over a year beforehand, and we know that the star remained visible for a long time. Yeah, that's strange right there. So it suddenly appears and then it remains visible.

Yeah. Right. Well, that alone, if it's visible for more than a year, can only really be explained with reference to either a supernova, which is a massive nuclear explosion of a star, which causes the star to become incredibly bright. or a great comet, right? And it has to be a really great comet to do that.

And there's plenty of comets that are in that historically, if you go back over the last couple of centuries, that would attain to that. But that's still a great comet. If you don't mind explaining, because I know there are many people, and I'm probably one of them, it doesn't really understand what is a comet.

You hear about comets. I, for many years, looked forward tremendously to 1986, because I couldn't wait to see Haley's comet. And Haley's comet was a bust. It was very disappointing. Not as disappointing, of course, as the great comet Kohutek, which was also a bust. But in my lifetime, I've never seen anything like this, and I never really looked deeply into it. What exactly is a comet?

A comet is effectively what astronomers now call an icy dirtball. Okay. So how dare you? I think when you say an icy dirtball, okay, those of us who don't study astronomy don't understand when you say icy, what ice, I mean we think of snowballs, we think of slush, an icy dirtball. Does that mean that it's something gaseous that has turned to liquid and solid and is going through the universe? when you say ice, it's not H2O ice. No, it's, when astronomers talk about ice,

they're referring to different chemicals, which are stored, each comet really has a unique concoction of chemicals that make up its ices. And those ices are packed within the comet and then surrounded by dust. But how do they form? I mean, there are no planets like this. No, well, they're said to be,

they're reckoned to be the leftovers from the brinked. of the solar system. So... What do you mean the leftovers? Nobody used them and they... Effectively, they're regarded... They were produced when the solar system was produced. The solar system, not the universe and not the Milky Way.

Solar system, solar system. So our solar system, our star system, when it was formed, somehow created these comets, which are still in orbit in our solar system? Yeah, I mean, there are reckoned to be billions of comets. In our solar system? Yeah. Billions. That's amazing.

I'm just astounded. So, comets do not travel between solar systems? No, no, no. They're within solar systems. So the gravity of the sun is what determines their path. That's true of all comets. comments that the comets

there are different comets to get a little bit technical there are short period comments which ones that really have a very short orbit they complete one revolution round the sun in less than 200 years

you will call those short period comments and there are long period comments which take more than that up to thousands millions of years but the great comets in history are generally speaking long period comets, with the exception of the one you mentioned Halley's comet, which historically

has had a lot of very dramatic shows. 1066? Yeah, exactly. And all that. How big are these comets, and don't they eventually burn out? I guess this is what confuses me. I'm trying to think about

something like this firing through the universe. The idea that that could happen for many, many thousands of years is a little puzzling to me. Well, yeah, what's happened, what a comet really is is a dirty ice ball or icy dirtball which comes into the toward the sun and as it the closer it gets to the sun the more it responds to the sun the ice is so-called on board effectively begin to react and turn to gases okay and that's the tail of the comet

and that's what forms the head of the comet the head of the comet and the tail of the comet as the sun's pressure pushes that the gases and the dust behind the comet so so that's why some comets have these incredibly long and impressive tails or extra large heads or comers. And that's all from the dust and the gases, which are produced as the comet comes into the... Okay, so there's this thing called a comet, which when it's very far from the sun, does not look like what we see when we see a comet. No, it's just when it's far from the sun, all it is is it looks like a barren barren dirtball. Yeah.

Okay. When this inert barren dirtball comes near enough the sun, it begins reacting, and then it glows, and it gets the comb of the head and the tail, and it becomes what we think of as a comet. Exactly. Okay. And you ask what size? Well, part of the answer to that depends on that distinction between short period comets and long period comets, because some comets, nearly all short period comets are quite small. You're talking, you know, just a few kilometers in size, and some are small. Like Halley's comet, how big, I'm just wondering, because we don't tend to think about these things.

How big is it, the size of one of the moons of Mars? It's quite small, as I recall. So are they. Seven to nine kilometers in diameter. That's smaller than, yeah. But, okay, so not that big, and it lasts forever. Anyway, I don't want to get off on this too much, but just to start thinking about what is a comet. So there are these, but some comets are taken so long to go around in their orbit.

You know, they're coming in, they're loaded with these ices that are highly reactive. and I could correct you a little bit in something that you said in the sense you said you haven't seen a great comet you have seen a great comet but maybe didn't think of it as that great and that was comet Hale Bob

in 1997 yeah comet Hayekataki in 1996 those were really well technically they're great comments but I'm saying great in the generic sense that they didn't seem that great to me but hail bob had a large coma

and remained bright in fact Hale Bob is an important comment It's an important comment for the discovery of the star of Bethlehem being a comet because really up until Hill Bob, the longest that a comet had been, we had in the scientific period, had been observed to be visible was about nine months, the great comet of 1811. But then with Hail Bob, Hill Bob was visible for a total, to the naked eye that is, for 18 months. now that that suddenly was comparable

it's comparable not only to the star of Bethlehem but to what Josephus mentions in a passage concerning the Judean war he says that there was a comet that lasted for a year and that was one of the things he said was an omen of the destruction of Jerusalem so so there are these great comments but you see why that's important information the only comet that can remain visible for that long is a comet that is intrinsically bright. You're listening to a special presentation of the Eric Metaxus show.

This is my conversation with Dr. Colin Nicol in Oxford, England, about his book, The Great Christ, comments. You're listening to a special presentation of the Eric Metaxus show. We taped this in Oxford, England. It is a Socrates in the city conversation with Dr. Colin Nicol about his groundbreaking book, The Great Christ Comet. Listen in. The only comments that are intrinsically bright

are comets that are, generally speaking, that are large. So Hale-Bopp was a large comet, 40 to 70 kilometers in diameter. Now, that's, as comets go, is quite big. The star of Bethlehem, similarly, if you think about it, and this was one of those kind of little insights I had to get where I had to break through. It's actually very simple when you realize it, but it took me a while to realize it,

that when Herod asks when the star first appeared, he is not asking when the star rose. The star rose much later on, and it was the rising of the star that caused the magi to come to Jerusalem. Okay, so what does that mean when a star rises and a star appears? Because to me, it wouldn't mean anything. Well, if you look, ancient astronomers who looked at comets for one thing

were especially interested in the first appearance of the comet and what they call the rising of the comet. The rising of a comet is, the appearance of a comet's pretty obvious, really, and that it's the first time they see the comet. Usually it's very, very difficult to see, and only a trained astronomer will be capable of seeing it. Someone who knows the stars and is able to see or whether something new up there. When it first appears.

Okay, so what does it mean when a comet rises? Rising, the language of rising refers to a very special. occasion in a celestial entity's history, really. For an ordinary star, an ordinary star rises in this sense. It's called technically a hill yako rising. What it really means is most stars

will have a time during their annual career when they're not visible due to being too close to the sun. But then slowly but surely the sun appears to move through and move past it, and then the star becomes visible over the eastern horizon. Or you mean it moves past the sun? We're talking about appearances, yeah. Uh-huh. We're talking about the sun is moving.

So the star begins to reemerge over the eastern horizon. You see it just for a moment. Over the eastern horizon? Yeah, eastern horizon. Yeah. Well, in terms of an ordinary star, yes. Yeah. So, and then just for a moment, and then the sun's light extinguishes the view.

Okay. And then from that point on, the star gradually becomes visible in a darker sky, further from the sun. So that's what a Hale-Yako rising is for an ordinary star. And it's the most, the ancients regard that as the most important moment in a star's annual history. Now, when it comes

to a comet, now a comet is the only entity whose HILACO rising is dramatic and is surprising. Because every other HILJACO rising is a very predictable thing. You know

the brightness of it. You know it's not going to to be very impressive visually. But a comet, you see, is making its closest pass by the sun. And when it's making its closest pass by the sun, it's degassing to use this language. The ices are being converted. It's sending off the dust. Okay, so close to the sun, it's passing on the other side of the sun or whatever. You can't see it, you can't see it, you can't see it, and then suddenly boom. Well, no, no, not that it's there. It's not that you can't see it, because they've seen it. They've been following it. Oh, you mean

if it hasn't been seen by the sun? Well, comets are a little different than ordinary stars. Ordinary stars are only gradually and slowly, just according to the schedule, you know, they disappear for a little while. Whereas a comet is moving quite quickly through the inner solar system, so visibly through the sky. Okay. It's usually not that long that it's invisible due to the sun. Okay. But then it reappears however long it has been away, if it's coming close to the sun, then it's suddenly appearing. And at that point when it's appearing, it's at its most dramatic.

because it's degassing and producing the dust in this amazing way. And so when the magi say we have seen a star at its rising, that really is a big clue to it being a comet, because only a comet at its rising is doing anything extraordinary and surprising. So that's really a major thing. And we have many, anyone that gets a book, will see that most of the great comets in history similarly made close passes by the sun

and there are these dramatic images of them heliatically rising over the horizon Okay, so what happens now again, you're studying this you're putting these different pieces together. What are the other pieces that come into play that make you realize

this fits, this fits? And because the larger narrative here is that to figure out what the star of Bethlehem is, is a huge discovery because it's helping us to see that the Bible is describing something that happened. This is not metaphorical, this is not fanciful,

this happened, and here, for the first time in 2000 years, we know roughly what happened and how it happened. and therefore once again the Bible has passed this test because I know that there are many people that would say listen who knows what happened it doesn't I don't expect it all to fit together the idea that you push through and you're able to find this without forcing it as you say yeah because it's a wonderful thing when there as you say there's a surprising amount of information about the star not just about the first appearance about the rising about it moving

being perceived by the Magi to go before them to Bethlehem? Describe these different pieces. I mean, there are these things that we forget. We hear it or we read it it, but it doesn't register. That the star went before them. You see, you have that the star has to, really, that language of rising means it was low in the eastern sky

when at its rising. When they say that it, when it says that it went before them toward Bethlehem, when they were heading toward Bethlehem. So it's heading west. Well, no, that's south. So it's in the southern sky at that point. So that's telling and that they didn't see it before they went into Herod,

but they see it afterward, and they see it quite high in the sky. That means most naturally that it's the evening, and the sunset, and the stars are appearing, so the comet is in the southern sky at that point, the southern evening sky. Okay. Well, that is a big clue, because that's telling you that this entity is moving.

So within the time of the Magi's journey, approximately a month, give it take a little, the star has moved from the eastern morning sky to the southern evening sky. Okay. Only a comet can do that. Okay. So then when you start to put the picture together, then the comet, it says, stands over the place where the child is.

See, that's another one of those things. When I read it, I thought, what a strange, compelling image. A star standing over where the child was. You know, I don't know what that means. It's like saying that the moon was over. It's over everything. What does that mean? Well, it's standing over the house, pinpointing the location.

Because the most natural interpretation of the text, if we're honest, is that it is pinpointing the actual house where the baby is. Right, but how can that be when you're talking about something thousands and thousands of miles distant? Exactly. The answer is really, if you've ever seen a picture of a long-tailed comet that is setting over the horizon, the comet its tail is pointed straight up

or roughly straight up and seems to be a pointer right down to a location on the horizon I have lots of images in the book of this exact phenomenon so it's it the Magiare simply describing it as they saw it as they perceived it

and the amazing thing is actually if you look at the journals of great travelers that travel across wildernesses you'll see some similar type language where they talk about entities in this kind of personal kind of way of going before them, that kind of thing. But in this case, as Craig Keener, a New Testament scholar pointed out, and he's right, there only is one entity that can stand over something and be perceived to be pinpointing

a precise location. And that is a comet which is approaching setting on the horizon. And so, you know, you start to put together the picture. The comet is foreseen in the southern. southern sky and then it moves over to the western sky to set. And evidently the magi were the other side of this house opposite where the comet is the sky. I mean, this is traveling from Jerusalem, from Herod's palace to Bethlehem? Yeah, they travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Which is only a couple of miles, right? Well, it's about six miles, so five or six miles.

And so the comet is in the southern sky at that point. The big challenge they have, of course, is where is this child? And so we're told that when they look, they see the star standing over the place where the child is and going in, then they find the Messiah with his mother. So really every point standing over, I mean, really when you see the images or just Google great comets, and you see this again and again, just standing over the horizon. And it's a powerful image. And it's evidently, it makes perfect sense within the story of. of a comment. And again, that the whole thing works out in that way and can all be explained with a single paradigm is really quite extraordinary.

Find us on the web at metaxus talk.com and on Twitter at Eric Mataxis. Back with more show. Next. I wanted to mention that the CSI thing, it's very close to my heart. I hope that people who are listening to this program, if you haven't yet participated in that, I want to give you the phone number. The phone number is 888-253-3522, 888-253-3522. 8-88-253-3522. I'm hoping to get 100% participation, even if you give $10, whatever it is.

It's such a beautiful thing. So God bless you. You're listening to a special presentation of the Eric Metaxus show. This is my conversation with Dr. Colin Nicol in Oxford, England, about his book, The Great Christ Comet. You know, different people have suggested comets in the past, you know, Halley's coma of 12 BC. It's just way too early. It wasn't visible for long enough, only 56 days. There was a comet the Chinese reported in 5 BC.

Again, it's only visible for about 70 days, wrong part of the sky. but when you actually listen to the biblical text and let it drive the solution and let it tell you where the comet was and how long it was there, then suddenly you get it and you're able to put together the profile of the comet. And so there's nothing in the text that doesn't make sense to you or there's still some mysteries? Well, the text is fully explained with what I'm saying by letting the text drive the search for data. And then, really, and it's, I can't say that it was just the star of Bethlehem, which was, the Matthews text, which drove me. The other major factor is, of course, Revelation Chapter 12. I mean, I've always had a passing for the book. Oh, of course, Revelation Chapter 12.

It goes without saying. Except, what do you mean? Revelation Chapter 12 has this extraordinary text, which talks about, it opens up by saying it's telling us a sign. and that word sign can actually also sometimes mean constellation. As a number of scholars have pointed out. But it is this very astronomical text. It talks about these two constellations, a woman and a dragon. It talks about the sun and the moon in reference to the woman.

It talks about 12 stars in a crown. It talks about a third of the stars being dislodged and thrown to the earth from the dragon. And this is the passage where it's describing a woman giving birth and then the dragon devouring the baby, trying to devour the baby just as it's born. So that's all from Revelation 12. Yes.

And how do you read that? How do you see that? Well, what's really fascinating by that text is it's talking about the birth of the Messiah. The Messiah. Because it's all about the Messiah being born and he's going to rule the nations with an Iron Scepter text which were by early Christians always taken to refer to Jesus,

and in fact Jesus is explicitly identified later on in the chapter. So why do we have a story of the nativity where it's clearly celestial? Well, I was going to say, and also why do we have a story of the nativity at the end of the book? You know, it's a funny thing that in Revelation, we've got a story of something that's happened 90 years earlier. you know, it's just it's puzzling and intriguing. It is intriguing. And again, it's one of those times when scholars have noticed that it's astronomical language,

they've struggled with it, but they've never really asked the question, why? Why is Revelation doing this? Well, if you think about it, there's only one obvious answer, and that is that Revelation is describing the sign which occurred in connection with the Messiah's birth, which was the sign announcing his arrival. Okay, and to those of us whom

this is not immediately evident, can you explain how it is that Revelation 12 is describing this comet? Well, you say, I say a comet at that point is the most natural explanation of that text, simply because this baby is said that the pregnancy develops,

it results in the Virgo, the Virgin, woman giving birth, and it said to be a painful labor. And then the neighboring constellation, which is Hydra, the dragon, the serpentine dragon, responds by dislodging these stars. Now, that, you know, that's classic language for what was called a meteor storm, where, in fact, during the great Leonid meteor storm, the meteor storm is effectively way of thousands, hundreds of thousands sometimes of meteors all coming at the one time. It's the most amazing, one of the most amazing experiences of a human can witness,

but it literally looks like the stars are coming down from the sky. And in 1833, many people thought that the end of the world had come. And some actually quoted this passage in Revelation, saying before our very eyes this had come true. So it's one of those, it's one of those, it's telling you really a sequence of events. But how does that fit into what you know of this period? Yeah. I mean, do we know that astrologically and astronomically that these things in fact happened at 3 BC?

Well, what we can say is it gives us very precise information. The sun and the moon can only be in the respective locations within relation to Virgo, the constellation, at a very particular day in a particular year, September the 15th, 6 BC. It's that precise. We're able to say, just because of the way it works, there's only one day when that, when it's what's described in Revelation 12,

what's verse one. Now, that was known before you came to it. Well, some people have talked about things. They haven't, they kind of almost got that, but not quite.

Is that what the Larson DVD says that you were talking about? The Larson DVD would talk about, would, gets it, takes it in a different direction and has, hasn't found the proper time when this really occurs because at the point he's talking about the moon isn't really under the feet of the Virgin. Regardless, he's taken that in a slightly different way and not really notice in the broader context.

Because the broader context is about a birth and it's telling the sign is of a birth in the heavens. And so the only way to explain it is that there is a comet, a great comet, which is appearing in Virgo's belly and grows in Virgo's belly and then is born. Now that sounds, that's an extraordinary thing. Well, when you tell an comet astronomer that the comet astronomer immediately says, well, I know what happened. You are listening to the Eric Metaxus show. More of My Socrates in the city conversation with Dr. Colin Nicol about his book,

The Great Christ Comet, coming up next. You're listening to a special presentation of the Eric Metaxus show. we taped this in Oxford, England. It is a Socrates in the city conversation with Dr. Colin Nicol about his groundbreaking book, The Great Christ Comet. Listen in. Part of what makes this so impressive is that you are a biblical scholar who has also clearly mastered the world of astronomy to the extent that you're able to write this book and have

these conversations and confuse many of us, although we're still interested. But to know these things, so you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, said to me that you had gone to Armagh and you had worked with astronomers and you talked to them about this and learned much from them. But did any of them get excited by this? Well, I was amazed by how receptive the astronomical community was to me as I came in really as a someone unknown to them and I was in dialogue with some of the guys from the Arma Observatories. It really some of the best comet astronomers in the world. And they invited me up to talk as I was dialoguing with them.

And it really was the most amazing experience of my life, to be honest. We sat for seven hours. And I gave the input from what the biblical text was saying, and they were giving me the astronomical dimensions of that. And it really was just a dynamite. It was just incredible dynamic. I was just wired at the end of it. It was just an amazing experience.

And that was really a critical moment as they kind of guided me and took me out to their human orory, which is really where you walk around, taking someone plays the role of Earth, someone plays the role of a comet. I've never heard of this. What is that called? A human orory.

It's a really neat thing. What was really fun is, because I was going to them and saying, well, how can I explain how a comet can be in the Virgin's womb? How can I explain? How does that happen? Because at that stage, I didn't really understand it. And they said, okay, you be the comet. You stand here and be the comet.

And they chose an appropriate type of comment. And then they took other positions around this. Where do they do? It's out in a field and a room. They have a special place just outside the observatory. So that was a really incredible thing because I started to get it. Some of this stuff can be difficult to get your mind around. I've tried to explain it as simply as it can in the book.

But really, for me at that stage, walk around and play the different parts. To play the role of the comet. Yeah, it really helps you see it. What was your motivation? As an actor. Just kidding. That's okay. Heralding the Messiah, of course, which is what your motivation seems to be generally. I think it's just an extraordinary thing to me that you did all this.

And was there ever a moment that you were giddy that you had come upon a great historical discovery that in these centuries no one has said what this is. I mean, it seems to me that you ought to be able to enjoy this gift, because, you know, it's not enough to be bright and willing. I mean, you know, to actually have been able to be the person to bring this to the world, it seems to me that at some point it must have dawned on you. Well, it dawned to me in stages. Initially, I kind of realized I was hit in gold, to be honest, at an early stage of it.

I realized this is, you know, this is really neat. And I just couldn't believe that no one had really developed it because it seemed quite straightforward, taking it from Matthew, that you just take a Matthew at face value, and, you know, not backing away from it at any point. And then I'm looking at it and going when I started to realize, initially I actually thought it might be a short period comment in a very early stage, like a puny type of comment,

but that was doing something pretty magnificent. But then the more Gary Quunk, who's the author of Six-Fodium, comitography came alongside, helped me a bit and gave me some guidance, and pointed me, said, no, it's really not a short period comment. This is a long period comment we're talking about here. And as Gary Kronk, it kind of prompted me in that direction, I started, suddenly a lot of the things started to come together. I realized that the comet was a retrograde comet, because only a retrograde. That means going, that means going clockwise around the sun rather than, and it sounds like

Most of them do that? Half and half. But it was a big thing because I was assuming when I was trying to work it out, pro-grade, I just couldn't figure it. And suddenly it dawned to me, retrograde. And as soon as I plugged that in, that was one of those moments. I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is it. This is what they saw.

This is why this is happening. And then at that point, you can work out, you can work out a lot about it, about the profile of it, and then even develop the orbit in an approximate way, which enables you to actually recreate then what the magic I saw, where the star was when it first appeared, what it looked like, it's brightness, and Gary Crunk and I both did brightness calculations

to work out, it's peak brightness, and so it peaked at brightness approximately of the brightest comets in the last few centuries. And it really is, and then you can work out using the latest astronomical research, the approximate length of the comet, the size of the comet.

And so you can tell the whole story from start to finish. and then even recreate what it would have looked like standing over the horizon. And September 15th, it would have been at its brightest? No, September the 15th is just a point that it's pinpointed in Revelation, but that's before it's actually heliatically rising. Remember, the sun there is said to be over her, clothing her. So that's the clue that it's in the aftermath of that when the sun...

You mean in Revelation it says the sun is clothing her? Yeah, that's all. So when is Christmas? roughly. That's a big question. I personally think I want to leave that for people to buy the book. Wow. Well, here's the good news. The book is worth buying. So it's even the pictures in the book are so beautiful. The idea that there is this history of comets through the centuries. Doesn't the Bayo Tapestry have a comment on it? you know, it's an extraordinary thing. And you can imagine, particularly what the ancients or people in the middle ages would have thought, you know, much less the people in 1811, was it? Or that was the Lenni-ended meteor shower I'm talking about. But I mean, to see these celestial signs, it would be awesome and frightening, I think. And as I said, in my lifetime, unless I wasn't paying attention when Hale Bopp was flying around, I don't think that I've ever seen anything like this. And so in the ancient world, clearly it would have been very dramatic and overwhelming.

It is, and it is very interesting to look because we have a couple of sources, Ptolemy and plenty that tell us how they interpreted comments, which is also very interesting and very compatible with what Matthew is saying. You've been listening to the Eric Mataxis show. More of My Socrates in the city Oxford conversation with Dr. Colin Nicol coming up next. I wanted to mention that the CSI thing, it's very close to my heart. I hope that people who are listening to this program,

if you haven't yet participated in that, I want to give you the phone number. The phone number is 888-253-3522. 8-88-253-3522. 8-88-253-3522. I'm hoping to get 100% participation, even if you give $10, whatever it is. it's such a beautiful thing. So God bless you.

You're listening to the Eric Mataxis show. This is a special presentation of my Socrates in the city, Oxford, conversation with Dr. Colin Nicol about his book, The Great Christ Comet. This is now going to be revealed to the world. The world has never known that there was a plausible explanation for all of these disparate descriptions of this phenomenon in the Gospels. What do you think will happen now? What do you think the reception will be, will people be surprised, shocked, angry? It's very important for astronomers because of course this is like a heel bob type comet, and slightly bigger, which is coming close to the sun. Well, that's something that we know did happen because we know of one particular comet that did exactly that. It was very large also. But that's of great scientific interest. Amongst the other things because astronomers

are worried about comets that come too close to Earth. This comet did come close to Earth. So that leaves a lot of astronomers a little shaken by the thought. That's their nightmare. Why? Because they don't want the Earth to be hit by a comet and utterly destroy.

Or they don't want any other crazy religion to get started. Maybe so. Well, that's... Okay. So there's that dimension. So astronomically it's actually of great importance. and at the same time you have the biblical side, which, yes, does authenticate Matthew as a gospel writer, because of anything in Matthew's gospel is doubted,

it's the story of the star. Really? Until now. Once you show that, no, this, in spite of how many people have mocked the star, once you show, no, every detail there is explicable perfectly with reference to modern astronomy. and not only that, but the amazing thing

that Revelation 12's data fits perfectly with Matthew 2. That's extraordinary. And we don't... Because you couldn't... You know, comets can do anything, really. So they have two descriptions of comet, and you take the Revelation 12 data, plug it into astronomy software, and out comes a description which is in perfect accord with everything Matthew 2 describes.

It's truly extraordinary. And one of the things is, you know, the scholars that essentially poo-poo the biblical text, a lot of what they're doing is really feeling to take into account the genre because the biblical, the gospels are now widely recognized to be theological biographies, ancient biographies, which are known to have a historical interest. And much like Tacitus and Suetonius, the historians writing about things in the relatively recent past, they had a concern for accuracy.

And so, you know, once you put that into the equation, you really should be reading Matthew at fierce value. and with respect for the historical claims that he texts that he makes. And once you put this all in and you realize, my goodness, this all makes perfect sense, the simple truth is, in my opinion, there's no way any ancient could have invented it. It was just not possible. It would be a joke to even suggest it. It's much too complicated to invent.

I guess what this whole thing is, it ends up being at least a very powerful apollo. for the Bible and for the authors of the Bible and their ability to speak clearly about things. That's, it's really powerful. Well, I just have to say, you know, Colin, thank you and congratulations. It's a very rare thing that this kind of book or discovery would happen. This doesn't happen every year or even every five or ten years. This is really significant. So I'm excited for you, and I'm excited for what lies ahead.

I just cannot wait. But maybe now we can end with a rousing round of applause for our guest, Colin Nichol. Thank you. I really, terrific. Thank you so much. Thank you. You've been listening to a very special Socrates in the city, Oxford Conversation, with Dr. Colin Nicol, right here on the Eric Mataxis show. The conversation's been about his groundbreaking new book, The Great.

Christ Comet. Amazing. I hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday, and I will talk to you tomorrow on the Airquintaxus show.