The birth of Jesus was a unique event of singular importance. In the infant God took human form in order to keep his promise and, in the fulness of time, put death to death and loose its sting, and all humanity may find eternal life. It was an event for which even angels sang to praise God,
Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests.
In a culture in which news of a victory in battle was euangelion,"good news," Jesus' birth was the best of them all.
Though the calendar in universal usage today is referenced to Jesus, and divide all dates into BC and AD, and assumes that Jesus was born on 1 AD, we do not, in fact, know with certainty when Jesus was born. This is hardly surprising; our current—Gregorian—calendar did not then exist.
The idea of dating the calendar with reference to Jesus seems to have begun with Dionysus Exiguus, a monk, mathematician, and astronomer, who lived sometime between 500 and 560. His concern was with worship, more precisely, with how to predict precisely the date of Easter. This was important because Easter had become the 'index' from which all the other "moveable" liturgical events of the church were determined. Dionysus was not quite so successful in what he wanted to do but, in 525, he proposed to the Pope the use of Anno Domini, "the Year of Our Lord," as the standard scheme of dating. Slowly the idea spread. Its use by the church historian Bede in his Ecclesiastical History in 731 set the example for other Europeans to adopt the system. Beginning sometime in the 17th Cent scholars began also to adopt BC to count the years backwards from the year Jesus was born.
But the scheme was plagued with many difficulties. When really was Year 1 of AD? When should the year begin? With Christmas or Easter or Lady Day (Annunciation Day, 25 March)? Or 1 January, the day used by the Roman Julian calendar? To these questions was added other problems, of which the most serious was the fact that a solar year was actually not 365 days, but 365¼ (365 days 5hrs, 48minutes, and 46seconds). Now, though the ¼day may not bother most people in the practicalities of their everyday lives, over centuries they add up to disrupt the calendar; in just over 730 years, January would move from being winter to summer! How was one to square the circle of the ¼day?
Many approaches were tried, as represented in the Babylonian year, the Jewish with their addition of an extra month in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th, and 19th year of every 19-year cycle, and the Egyptian Metonic year that Julius Caesar adopted and called Julian calendar (in the East the Chinese had their own, of course, but the Europeans knew then nothing about the East). Our present calendar comes to us through the reforms to the Julian calendar then in use in Europe that was initiated by Pope Gregory XIII. In addition to other changes, he ordained in 1582 that October 4 was to be followed by October 15, upsetting many people for having been robbed of ten days of their lives. He also made 1 January the beginning of the year. But the Gregorian calendar was not universally adopted for many more years. Coming just as the most stormy periods of the Reformation were begining to ease down, the Protestant nations resisted. So did the Eastern Orthodox Christians. The English adopted it by a bill of parliament only in 1751, and it created chaos for them; the English year would now begin on 1 January instead of Annunciation Dary, 25 March, that they had used for centuries, and the day after 2 September 1752, was to become 14 September. The American colonies followed suite the next year, and in the adjustments, George Washington's birthday, which fell on 11 February 1751 under the Old Style, became 22 February 1752. Those who went to bed on the 2nd of the month, Benjamin Franklin, in his characteristic cheeriness, was happy to tell "those prone to love thier pillow," that they need not wake until the morning of the 14th. Japan came align in 1873, die-hard communist Russia not until 1919 and China 1949 (unofficially, China had been using both the Gregorian alongside the Chinese since 1911). The result of all these changes was that what was thought to be 1 AD was not. After all the massive revision of dates had been done to accomodate with the Gregorian calendar, the death of Herod the Great was found to be 4 BC.
The Gospels make it clear that Jesus was born before Herod the Great died. If Herod died in 4 BC. Jesus must, therefore, have been born before this date. But how much earlier? Again, we cannot be certain. Herod had, according to Matthew, "called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared" (2:7) and, when he "realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi" (v16). Taking the logic of Herod's computation at face value, Jesus could not, therefore, have been more than 2 years old when Joseph made off with him and Mary to seek refuge in Egypt. This suggests that Jesus was probably born about 5 BC with Herod providing a safe one-year margin-of-error either way. On this basis, 5±1 BC is as close as we can come for the date of Jesus' birth.
Our mathematics is complicated by Luke's account of Jesus' birth:
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David . . . 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, a son.
Lk 2:1-7.
We know only of certain from extra-biblical sources that Quirinius was governor of Syria from 6 AD onwards. Commentators think that the complication is not irresolvable.
1. The the Greek verb hegemon used of Quirinius is a very general term and not a specific office; it need not, therefore, refer to the role of Quirinius from 6 AD onwards.
2. It is also possible to translate the sentence as "before Quirinius was governor" rather than "when Quirinius was governor".
3. Census were carried out every fourteen years in NT times. On this basis the last census before 6 AD would have been ordered about 9 or 8 BC. In fact, we know that Augustus himself had ordered just such a census in 8 BC. By the time the order could get to Judea for it to be processed, 5 BC may just be within the probable time limit for the census to be completed.
It is, however, not the numerical figure attaching to Jesus' birth that matters. It is that it happened, and so stupendously marvellous an event can neither ever be dimmed in the slightest by not knowing the specific date nor ever be made one lumen more stupendous by knowing it with certainty.
If it is difficult to be certain about the year of Jesus' birth, it is even more so with the day of his birth. Christians had begun to celebrate the birth of Jesus by 3rd Cent. In the west parts of the Roman empire, it was celebrated on 25 December, a public holiday for worshipping Sol Invictus, "the unconquerable Sun." Christians there, probably took avantage of the holiday to worship Jesus on that day instead. In the west it was celebrated on 6 January (and still is). Either day is not likely to have been the day Jesus was born; shepherd would have more likely watched their flocks at night during lambing season in the spring instead of the frigid December of winter. But Christmas, if we need to be reminded, is not about when Jesus was born; it was, and remains, an act of worship and thanksgiving to God for the fact that Jesus was born.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2015