They Say It's Your Birthday

Neither the Bible nor history tells us exactly when Jesus was born...

There are many things about history that we all think we know, that we accept without question. We’re all pretty sure today the earth is round and is not found at the center of the universe, but there is an active chapter of the Flat Earth Society that does not subscribe to the “round” descriptor and believes fervently that sailing too far across the ocean will bring you eventually to an edge. When asked about the photos from space showing the earth to be an essentially round sphere, their universal answer is a rather unconvincing “trick photography.” There is also an actual religion - sort of - that calls its thousands of members Pastafarians and its central figure is an alien deity known as The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Every Friday for Pastafarians is a religious holiday, there are no dues, beer is available in the afterlife and pirate regalia is de rigueur for formal occasions. Personally, I believe that no matter what proof may be offered in support of any historical occurrence there is a segment of the human population at any given moment in time who believe strongly that their purpose in life, with little or no regard as to what others may believe, is to fervently support the opposite. They suffer from an intense and deeply personal aversion to conformity, and will go to great lengths to implement their ingrained oppositional defiance disorder to any and all things accepted by others regardless of the evidence. Sometimes skepticism is a healthy thing, especially where people are concerned, but there are times when skepticism can reach an unhealthy level of absurdity. Yosimite Sam described this psychosis well when he observed “People is dumber than anybody.”

Conversely, there are some things that qualify as “generally accepted” that may or may not be fact. One of those is the actual date of the birthday of Jesus. There is no doubt, whether through historical records, by faith or a combination of both, that Jesus was born, but considerable doubt remains as to exactly what day, month or in what year his birth actually occurred.

The story of the birth of Jesus is given in the Bible in both Matthew and Luke. The journey of Mary and Joseph leaving Egypt after the death of King Herod, the angels that appeared to the shepherds and the location of Bethlehem are provided, but the date and time are not mentioned. There are several clues, however, that provide some answers. In Luke 2, verses 8 and 9 state “Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold, the angel of the Lord stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were greatly afraid.”

Jewish shepherds traditionally kept their sheep in the fields during the spring and summer and stayed with them to keep away predators. As colder weather began in early October, the grass the sheep fed on would begin to die and the shepherds brought them nearer their houses for food, protection and warmth. Since the shepherds were “keeping watch over their flocks by night” the announcement by the angels was probably made to the shepherds no later than October. Winter months, though relatively milder than those in the US, occur at the same time as winters in North America.

Another clue can be found in the birthdate of John the Baptist, son of the Jewish priest Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth. The Bible says Elizabeth thought she could not have children, but John was conceived soon after Zacharias completed his duties as a priest around the middle of June. Believe me when I tell you there are historians and scholars that understand how periods of time were calculated back then and how that compares to our modern measurement of months as they are now much better than I could ever begin to explain, so we won’t delve into their computations for your sake as well as mine.

The Bible also says the Angel Gabriel visited Mary to tell her she would become the mother of Jesus during Elizabeth’s 6th month of pregnancy in Luke 1:24-28; “Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David… Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!...and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call his name Jesus.

So if John was conceived in June, Gabriel’s message to Mary was delivered in December, and Jesus’ birthday was probably sometime in September. Certainly plausible, but not definitive.

Matthew 2:1 says Jesus was conceived during the reign of Herod, and was a baby when Herod died. Matthew also describes Herod’s attempts to kill Jesus by ordering the “Massacre of the Innocents” in Bethlehem. King Herod’s reign began in 36 or 37 BC, and he died around 4 BC. Several clues to the time of Jesus’ birth are mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew. “After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.” The Gospel of Luke states clearly that Jesus was born during the census ordered by Caesar Augustus; “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world…and everyone went to their own town to register…He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn son.”

The early Christian church leaders may have chosen December 25 as the date Jesus’ birth would be celebrated in an attempt to replace the Roman celebration of Sol Invictus (Invincible Sun), a cult revived by the Emperor Aurelius in 247 AD and established as the “official” religion of the Roman Empire. The reign of Constantine the Great (306-339 AD) and his conversion to Christianity not only led to the end of the Roman criminalization of Christians and their systematic persecution by the Romans, but the conversion to Christianity by the Emperor also helped found the basis for modern Western civilization and established Christianity as the official state religion of Rome. Celebrations of Jesus’ birth would have been preferable to Christian leaders at the time, and replacing a pagan ritual with a Christian one may have been a pragmatic political decision more than one based on actual dates.

The winter solstice, observed between December 17-25, was another widely celebrated pagan holiday marking the shortest days and longest nights of each year and is sometimes mentioned by historians as a reason Constantine’s Christian church leaders might have placed the date of Jesus’ birth in December. Another ancient Roman festival held in December was Saturnalia, the celebration of the Roman god Saturn that included feasting, the giving of gifts and several days of general debauchery. The Christian placement of Jesus’ birth date as a replacement for this pagan holiday may be another possibility. Again, all plausible scenarios, but nondefinitive.

Historians do, however, note that replacing one pagan holiday with another was not an unusual event as gods and belief systems changed often and may have been seen as a way to attract converts to a growing Christian religion by supplanting a pagan holiday with a Christian celebration.

The Star of Bethlehem the Bible says led the Magi to Bethlehem is often noted by astronomers as an important event heralding Jesus’ birth. One theory is that the Star was in fact the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that occurs every 20 years, and was present in 7 BC, and that conjunction of the planets would have been seen from Earth as a new and brilliant star in the ancient sky. A passing comet or celestial supernova at or near the same time would have had a similar effect, but astrological records record neither.

The Gospel of Luke provides another clue through the mention of a census ordered by Caesar Augustus in Chapter 2 verse 2. There is historical evidence of such a census ordered by him between 6 and 4 BC.

Not only are the month and day of Jesus’ birth in question, but the actual year is also unknown. Julius Caesar established his own calendar in 45BC based on the older Roman Republican calendar. His version, used for the next 1600 years, was a solar calendar with a leap year every 4th year. This meant that the Julian calendar used a solar year that was 365.25 days long and the actual solar calendar was actually 365.2422 which means one extra day every 129 years or 3.1 days every 400 years. You see the issue - there might be no problem when you are actually living under such a calendar other than an occasional extra day in your lifetime (maybe) but it would create an issue when historians were referring to events that occurred on specific dates in the past or in the future. Another problem was that the calendar before Julian’s was based on the belief that Roman years actually began with the founding of Rome in 753 BC. You begin to see the possibilities for confusion. While Romans might believe in the all powerful might of their emperors, the measurements of time used by Romans and most other civilizations did not necessarily agree.

Sextus Julius Africanus, a Greek of Roman and Ethiopian descent, claimed to have been born in Jerusalem and was possibly a cleric but definitely an historian, traveler and writer. He was born in 160 AD and lived for 80 years. He spoke Latin and Hebrew and wrote exclusively in Greek. His 5-volume history of the world was titled Chronographiai, was mentioned often by other writers of his time but no copies survive. His calculations concluded that the time between creation and the birth of Jesus was 5,500 years. He arrived at both dates in 221 AD by painstakingly tracing the lineage and chronology of significant events in the Bible and aligned them with both historical and astrological data to the extent that he believed he had determined the Incarnation (the conception of Jesus) at the spring equinox on March 25, 1 BC. While he did not specifically name December 25 as the birthday of Jesus, his calculations did lead to the assumption that Jesus’ birth would follow 9 months after the conception.

Here’s another wrinkle in time, so to speak; Dionysius Exiguus, a monk born about 500 years after Jesus with a gift for math and time on his hands (dramatic pause for subtle laughter), decided he would use his own complicated system to determine exactly when Easter should be celebrated by working backward through historical records, and, in so doing invented the concept of AD and BC that became standard for European calendars around 700 AD. Dionysius, by inventing the terms, placed the date Jesus was born as AD 1.

In October of 1582 Pope Gregory XIII (or more accurately the monks he employed during his reign) established the Gregorian calendar used since that time by most of the Western world. The primary difference between the Pope’s calendar and Julian’s was in the way leap years were spaced. The Gregorian calendar used 365.2425 as a solar year (the length of the Earth’s revolution around the sun) and established the rule for leap years as “every year divisible by 4 is a leap year except those divisible by 100. These centurial years are leap years ONLY if they are divisible by 400. Hence, the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 are not leap years but the year 2000 was.

Why did the leap years in Julian’s calendar bother anyone enough to necessitate a solution? It was all about the March equinox and the importance of its relationship to the date of Easter to Christians. By assuming that each year had exactly 365.25 days per year, the Julian calendar required a shifting date for the celebration of Easter by the Christian church that eventually created a paradox for church doctrine. Since the Catholic Church said that Easter is celebrated on the Sunday following the vernal equinox, Julian’s calendar eventually led to issues the church could not support.

In addition to the changes in the calculations for leap years, the Gregorian calendar also had to account for all the leap days accumulated by the Julian calendar and advance the current calendar by 10 days, so Thursday October 4, 1582, was followed the next day by Friday October 15, 1582. In other words, the leap days accumulated by the Julian calendar in a little over 1600 years amounted to 10 extra days that nobody really knew what to do with, so in addition to what amounted to moving everything up 10 days, Gregory’s new calendar also had to alter the lunar calendar because actual new moons were occurring about 4 days (by calendar) before the phase the moon was actually new. Confused? Just imagine being a Catholic priest trying to explain to farmers why in the Julian calendar the new moon occurred on the calendar 4 days after it was supposed to…or why Pope Gregory’s calendar magically made 10 days disappear. Old habits die hard; daylight savings time is a current proof of that ancient adage.

Figuring out the tangled web of calendars, historical records and prophecy is similar to a riddle wrapped in an enigma surrounded by a mystery hidden inside a conundrum, but many scholars believe Jesus was actually born between 4 BC and 6 BC. Most Christian calendars use either 1 BC or 1 AD, but the truth is nobody really knows other than God.

Regardless of the actual day and year of Jesus’ birth, Christmas and the celebration of His birth is highly significant to the Christian religion and fulfills many Old Testament prophecies about the identity of Jesus as the promised Messiah. The celebration of His birth marks the beginning of Jesus’ life on earth leading to his death on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of men and his resurrection as the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation foretold by Scripture. Jesus’ birth signals to the world, regardless of the date that men celebrate, of the joy and hope when he entered the world to bring light into the darkness and the offer of salvation to all who would simply believe. Without the miracle of His birth, his life, death and resurrection could not occur. When the day of His birth is celebrated is not nearly as important as the fact that it occurred. With Jesus’ life, death and resurrection salvation was created. Via et veritas et vita.