THE ARCANE CELESTIAL PRECEPTS THAT EXPOSE THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM AMID THE STELLAR TABLEAU OF JESUS' NATIVITY

The identity of the star of Bethlehem reported in Matthew's Gospel remains one of Christianity's greatest mysteries. Equally inexplicable are the outright contradictions that appear in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth. Matthew 2.1-12 describes how a star had signalled the birth of the Christ-child, then led astrologers from the east to the child's house in Bethlehem, where they offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Luke 2.1-20 makes no mention of a star and instead describes a pastoral scene in which Jesus' mother, the pregnant virgin, Mary, utilizes a manger as a make-shift crib. Afterward, an "angel of the Lord" informed shepherds that the "swaddled child lying in a manger" would be the "sign" of the Christ-infant's birth. This article presents two esoteric forms of history verification accessible to the evangelists in the late first century A.D. From Hellenism came katasterismos, the idea that the constellations comprised tableaux of monumental, historic events. From Mesopotamia came lumasi - or 'constellation' writing, the conviction that polysemy encrypted in the constellations' cuneiform titles imparted inviolable truth. When used as a cipher, these precepts expose a direct correlate to the main characters and props in Jesus discordant Nativity narratives, impart a wordto-word correlation with the Luke 2.12 claim that the "swaddled infant lying in a manger" would be the "sign" of the Christ-child, and simultaneously imply the Christmas star's celestial identity while providing an exact correlation with the words used to describe the star's scientifically implausible motion in Matthew 2.9.