2020 has gone, 2021 has arrived. The Trump administration has gone, the Biden administration has arrived. What has gone before, still leaves us with its legacy, though. CoVID-19, racism, white supremacy, gross income inequality, global warming, armed conflicts, nuclear arms, exploitation, injustice, and many other ills are still with us. There is still much work to be done, but maybe it can be done with more hope and joy than we experienced in 2020. This being the February issue of SciTech, I am well aware that it is supposed to be too late, but I want to wish all of you a happy and blessed 2021 anyway.
The PASTCF board has said goodbye to Sara Miles and welcomed Hal Breitenberg, Leslie King, and Margie Peeler. Margie is the undergraduate advisory member. Sara has been an invaluable member for all her 12 years of service on the board – two terms as an “ordinary” member and two terms as secretary-treasurer. She has done an incredible job and we are much in her debt. Bill McIvor has quickly laid claim on her proof-reading talents for future SciTech issues. Her job has been split: Sandy Hawley, who would have rotated off the board, is now our treasurer and Carol Anway was elected as our secretary. The board appointed Leslie King to fill her position on the board.
On 20 January 2021 the board met — electronically, of course – and took care of housekeeping business. Among those: the affirmation of decisions made by email since the last board meeting and the dismissal, with deep thanks, of the 2020 Nominating Committee: Deborah Meinke (chair), Stephen Kolderup, and Jim Miller. The intent had been to devote a large chunk of time on discussing the way PASTCF functions in the PC(USA) and where would like to focus our attention, but we ran out of time. Consequently, we decided to set up another board meeting in the second half of February to have a healthy and substantial discussion on those subjects. I have hinted on thoughts about PASTCF’s role in the denomination in some of my columns last year and we would welcome any input from the membership. In that meeting we will also consider all-member electronic gatherings.
In the days before Christmas 2020 we saw the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. A more astute president than I would have said something about that in November, since it is a (partial) repeat of the phenomena that most likely gave rise to the story of the magi in the gospel of Matthew. I did post something on our Facebook page, but, in short, here is what it is about. For centuries people have been wondering what event in the natural world might have been at the root of what the author of Matthew tells us. Comets and novae have been suggested, but by far the most compelling is the realization by Michael Molnar in the 1990s of the significance of three conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn in the year 7 BCE, followed by a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in 6 BCE. It goes too far to explain in detail here, but Molnar argues convincingly that there is a strong connection with Judea for astrologers of that time.
Molnar published his research in his book “The Star of Bethlehem; The Legacy of the Magi”[1]. There is a convincing argument that, at least for astrologers of the time, these events had a strong connection with Judea.
The book itself is not available electronically, but there are a few reviews that are readily accessible[2]. In the extensive proceedings[3] of an interdisciplinary conference (astronomers, historians, theologians) at my alma mater Brad Schaefer wrote an evaluation that is available on Arxiv[4].
While we are on the subject of astronomy, at the (virtual) annual winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in January there was one presentation that struck me especially, because of its vast, unimaginable implications. Those of us, old enough to have witnessed moon landings in real time, will also remember the Pioneer and Voyager spacecrafts. In particular, Voyager 1 and 2 brought us spectacular images — the first high-resolution close-ups of the outer planets and their moons. Voyager 1 swung close by Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s moon Titan, while Voyager 2 continued the grand tour, visiting Uranus and Neptune, as well. These missions were the subject of a Historical Astronomy session, but there was one talk that did the opposite and extrapolated the life of the missions into the future. This can be forecast pretty reliably, for the next century, but also way beyond that. It was the realization that, five billion years from now, after the sun has become a red giant and gobbled up the earth, and certainly a few billions of year later after the sun has died, these lonely spacecrafts are probably all that will be left in the universe of our current civilization. A sobering thought.
[1] Michael R. Molnar 1999, “The Star of Bethlehem – The Legacy of the Magi”, Rutgers University Press, ISBN 0-8135-2701-5
[2] New Scientist: https://www.newscientist.com/…/dn1713-early-christians…/
Owen Gingerich: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2002JHA….33..386G
[3] P. Barthel & G van Kooten, Eds. 2014, “The Star of Bethlehem and the Magi”, Brill, ISBN 978-90-04-30848-0
[4] https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07642
