[ANSTHRLD] Re: Stars

[Tim McDaniel]

Sorry, Eirik, but it's an interesting line here.

On Sun, 10 Mar 2002, Chandranath <chandra at plumes.org> wrote:
> > According to the Bible "We saw his star at its rising and have
> > come to do him homage." (Matthew 2:2)

New American (modern Catholic) and doubtless others.  I didn't find it
because I searched the KJV, and as Chandranath mentioned, it's "the
East" there.  (Mostly, "rising" in the KJV is in the context of body
sores and whether they're leprosy or not.  That's for me: the Order of
the Rising Sore of Ansteorra.)

> Well, since you bring it up...
>
> ... eidomen gar autou ton astera en tE anatolE ...

The Vulgate, which is what Western Europeans used until the
Reformation, had

    dicentes ubi est qui natus est rex Iudaeorum vidimus enim stellam
    eius in oriente et venimus adorare eum

( http://www.stg.brown.edu/templates/pbcgi?sourceform=pbeasy.shtml&version=vulg&searchtype=fetch&searchstring=Mat+2 )
"Oriente" doesn't look promising, assuming its modern usage is cognate
to the period one (probably where KJV and Tyndale got "the East",
I suppose).

> It seems to me that nothing is really supported here about period
> use of "a star rising,"

(Well, to be precise, there's no question that stars were said to rise
in period -- my question was whether we could find a particular famous
Rising Star, which would be one possible avenue of documenting it as
an order.)

It's not clear to me that this is not support.  After all, one would
expect modern translations to be more accurate than older ones (pace!
to those who hold that "if the King James Bible was good enough for
Jesus, it's good enough for me"), so maybe there were people who would
have interpreted it as "rising star".  There might have been other
translations in other languages in period -- the Orthodox churches,
say.  Anyway, it looks like a lead to investigate.

Eirik, have you already snagged Metron Ariston Herald in on this
passage?  She's one of the few CoA experts on classical culture (I
think there may be one other person willing to argue Greek with her),
so she has great influence in this area.  Silverdragon at charleston.net

Daniel de Lincolia
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