On Christmas Day. By definition.
To me the only thing that matters is THAT He was born.
Which brings me to one of my hobby horses:
We already agree that our calendar is wrong, off by anywhere from 2 to 16 years, depending on who’s doing the reckoning, and further in error because of the absence of a year zero.
The more fundamental point is that God did not intend us to mark His years by the birth of Jesus.
If He had intended this we would have a Biblical fixing of the date.
Further, the day of Jesus’ birth is unremarkable as all men are born.
However, very few return from the dead, that event is remarkable, and it is the defining moment of Christianity, the very moment of proof that his sacrifice was not in vain. And the Bible gives a precise reference for when this happened!
Clearly this was the date the calendar was supposed to start!
For extra points, this makes our calendar off by anywhere from 17 to 30 years. That makes this something like Holy Year 1991 to Holy Year 1978, giving us anywhere from 9 to 22 years to get our affairs in order before the real end of the millennium...
A few years before Strom Thurmond.
I’ll read it all later but seems a leap to assume that the conception of John was within one month of the announcement. I can see it now, Z coming back and writing it all out for his wife and she says, “hey old man, you want what? Get out of here.” It would take him at least a month to talk her into sex. Then even with divine assistance, a couple of months isn’t unusual for getting those juices started. Just saying. In the “manner of women?” I read more into that than the author.
Probably late spring early summer.
April 6th
it is really only important that he was born, but, for trivia folks: 11 September 3 BC at about 7pm
When one collates the Biblical references avaiable, it lists some very, very specific signs in the sky concerning the Moon’s location in Virgo, etc, etc which actually pins it to within an hour, bracketed by Herod’s death tied to a lunar eclipse, etc, etc. The information available in the Bible gets quite explicit. Just need some advanced, computer based astronomy and there you are.
According to some, August 4, 1961.
Actually, we do know the time of year He was born, and we've got a good idea of the day. Luke gives us the clue we need (Zechariah's priestly order) to know the time of John's conception (mid-summer) with just a bit of study in the Judaica, and tells us point blank that Yeshua's conception was six months later. It should also be noted that John, who came in the spirit and power of Elijah, was probably born on Passover, the time of year when we set out a cup for Elijah in the expectation of his reappearance.
We do know for a fact that Yeshua was not born in December, because it rains, sleets, and snows in the Judean mountains during the winter months, so the sheep of Bethlehem would have been closed up in pens, not out in the fields with their shepherds.
Roman law was a bit fluid about when to collect taxes, especially if a census was involved, because they had to allow time for individuals to travel. In this case, registration may have been due by January, but there's no reason why Joseph and Mary, on their way to Jerusalem for Sukkot, wouldn't have stopped off in Bethlehem to register on their way (Bethlehem being only six miles south) to get it over with instead of traveling during the rainy season three months later.
Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, makes sense as the birth-date: It is the most joyful of the Feasts, and has the theme of celebrating God dwelling with His people. Tradition tells us that the construction of the Tabernacle began on Sukkot, and 2Chr 5:3 tells us that the inauguration of the First Temple, when the Divine Presence came to dwell in it, took place on Sukkot. It lasts for eight days (really, seven plus a bonus day), which would neatly correspond with Yeshua's birth and circumcision on the eighth day.
And finally, there was absolutely zero reason for the very-pregnant Mary to travel along with Joseph if they were only going for secular tax registration. On the other hand, if the event coincided with a pilgrimage Feast, it makes sense that the Messiah's earthly parents would want to be extra-scrupulous in observing all the Feasts.
While I can't say with 100% certainty that Yeshua was born on Sukkot, I can say with 100% certainty that He wasn't born on Christmas, which was originally a pagan holiday celebrating the winter solstice. He was probably conceived close to what is now Christmas, however, which may be why the early Church began adopting and altering that holiday.
Shalom!
00/00/00 (they weren’t Y2K compliant back then
Probably in April. “Shepherds tending their flocks by night” Shepherds were not in the fields in winter time!
Ah, yes the annual When Was Christ Born thread!
September 11 3BC between 6-730 am I believe.
First of all, I marvel at the attention this gets every year, because Christmas is a feast day, it’s not an exercise in historical precision. If you didn’t know the day a child was born (say they were adopted from another country), you’d pick a day and celebrate that. The point is to set aside time for a commemoration, and if you fixate on the calendar date you’ve already lost the whole point.
Second of all, I am not a little bemused by all of the modern theorists who posit this reason or that reason why the date is not the day we commemorate. It’s all pure speculation, and the fact that a hundred different individuals come up with a hundred different dates tells me that we have no compelling reason to overturn the traditional date.
Thirdly, some of the Church Fathers said in the 4th century that the date had been established by the Roman Church *on the basis of the Roman census records*. The census records were kept in Rome and were quite familiar to the early Christians (Tertullian mentions them I believe); it is therefore entirely possible that the traditional date is based on historic documentation.
Also, I hear these theories about Dec. 25th being an originally pagan festival. What people fail to realize is that paganism at this late date (and even as early as the gnostics) was a complete mish mash and borrowed from Christianity as well as other religions. Gods that were widely worshipped in 300 A.D. could well have been completely unknown to the Augustan Age. Unless evidence is found that the festival/cult in question *predated* Christianity, then it could just as easily have been pagans coopting the date from Christians and not the other way around. Or just pure coincidence. At any rate, the earliest source of the date that I know of (from the 4th century) has BOTH the pagan feast day and Christmas on December 25th. It’s somewhat speculative which came first, but I’ll side with Christianity on this one.
Oh... you meant the FIRST Christ?
;)
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http://www.americanpresbyterianchurch.org/christ’s_birth.htm
Conclusion:
Ultimately we will never really know exactly when our Lord was born. And that does not matter because we really do not need to know. If we needed to know God in his goodness and wisdom would have caused the inspired authors of the gospels to record that information. And if God had intended that his church celebrate the birth of his Son he most certainly would have both provided the necessary information and instructed us to do so. Jesus was the King of the Jews. The Jews did not celebrate their birthdays, not even the birthdays of their kings. The only birthdays recorded in the Bible are the birthdays of Pharaoh and of Herod, the Edomite. Both these recorded birthdays were celebrated with bloody cruelty, with Pharaoh’s baker being hung and John the Baptist being decapitated. The Bible does not give us much incentive to celebrate birthdays and no instructions or examples to celebrate the birthday of Jesus Christ, The King of the Jews.
What the Bible does clearly teach is that Christ was born in the fall and not on December 25th. The latter date was the great pagan holy day of the ancient world. It was the birthday of the sun god, when at the winter solstice, the sun that had been in decline grew stronger again and regained new life. It was Baal’s birthday. It was Tammuz’ birthday. To the Romans it was the birthday of the invincible sun. God has given us just enough information for his purposes. He has not given us enough information to determine the exact date of Christ’s birth and thus be able to institute on mere human authority a celebration of his birth. He has also given us enough information to clearly demonstrate that Christ was not born at the time of the winter solstice and thus show us that participating in pagan traditions and resurrecting pagan festivals on the basis of a pretended birth of Christ at that time of year is totally without foundation or merit. God in his wisdom has given us the information that we need. May we have the wisdom to walk according to that knowledge and depart from evil.
Probably in April. “Shepherds tending their flocks by night” Shepherds were not in the fields in winter time!
It is my learned opinion that Jesus Christ was born on His birthday, in the year He was born.
It doesn’t matter. If it did God would have told us.