[jinx]

Originally Posted by smoothmoniker

Well, there are a few options to choose from. In 11 BCE, Halley's Comet rolled through, but that’s probably too early to be the indicator. In 7 BCE, there was a planetary conjunction of Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter. This seems a fairly likely dating for the actual birth. Chinese astrological records hold information about something that was probably either a nova or supernova around that time. It’s extremely difficult to align the dating of those records, but they probably place the event somewhere between 5 BCE and 20 CE. Unlike Comets and planetary orbits, Novas are obviously non-cyclical, so we can’t roll back the astrological clock and see what was going on at that time.

Then there’s always the possibility that they were referring to some non-natural, singular occurrence prepared by God to mark the coming of his son to the earth. It certainly wouldn’t be the most spectacular miracle in the book …


-sm

This is where I would apply the principal of parsimony.