This is a two-fer, because there’s two questions; one, what month, and two, what year.
The implicit question is more like “is it OK to celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December.”
The answer to that is yes, yes it is. He’s outside of time. Sort of like how we can have Mass and it’s not required to be at the exact time that He did the Passover “this is my body.”
Now, for the season– y’all have probably seen folks claim that sheep can’t be out in the field with shepherds in winter. One, my great-grandfather’s sheep were out in the winter and you always had shepherds because sheep are edible, and two, we can get a real time weather update for Bethlehem. It is six thirty on Christmas eve, and 55 degrees; two hours after sunset.
There’s arguments that the shepherds would only be out if they were lambing, and so obviously Jesus was born in the spring.
That…is not quite accurate.
The Awassi sheep is a desert sheep, a fat-tailed breed that has existed in the Middle East for an estimated 5,000 years. It is the only indigenous breed of sheep in Israel. They are raised for wool, meat, and milk. Awassi sheep breed in the summer and drop lambs in the winter, when there is sufficient pasture for the ewes in milk. In Israel, the principal lambing season is December through January.
As she points out, of course the Lord who apparently adores puns and allusions is going to have the Lamb of God, the Sacrificial Lamb, born at the same time as all the other Passover lambs. Same way that it’s rather in keeping to have the Light of the World enter the world when the light returns, after the winter solstice.
If we make a series of “it happened pretty much immediately after that” assumptions, Zachariah’s service in the Temple means Jesus had to be born either in the summer or the winter. (Exact dating a bit iffy because…well, moon calendar to modern calendar….)
There’s also that the Mary’s Yes is 9 months prior to Christmas; a logical choice of dates. (I’ll repost my Christmas C&C article for other stuff.)
About that year of birth thing….
I keep hearing that Jesus has to be born before 4BC, because Herod died then; it’s almost the exact same pattern of “everybody knows” as the thing where Easter is named for Ester. It’s about as well supported, too, in light of additional information.
Here’s Jimmy Akin’s summary, you can read the whole article for details to support these claims:
The Case for 4 B.C. Is Exceptionally WeakAll four of the main arguments proposed are problematic:
1) The first argument names an impossible date (one that did not exist) for the beginning of Herod’s reign.
2) Josephus contradicts himself about when Herod conquered Jerusalem.
3) There is another lunar eclipse that fits what Josephus says even better.
4) We have evidence that Herod began giving his sons rulership roles before he died.
For the more scholarly minded, there’s also When Did Herod the Great Reign? published in Novum Testamentum 51 (2009): 1–29, written by Andrew Steinmann, and if you read it on Academia dot edu there’s a citation for an update to the discussion, too. Here’s the abstract:
For about 100 years there has been a consensus among scholars that Herod the Great reigned from 37 to 4 BCE. However, there have been several challenges to this consensus over the past four decades, the most notable being the objection raised by W.E. Filmer. This paper argues that Herod most likely reigned from late 39 BCE to early 1 BCE, and that this reconstruction of his reign can account for all of the surviving historical references to the events of Herod’s reign more logically than the current consensus can. Moreover, the reconstruction of Herod s reign proposed in this paper accounts for all of the datable evidence relating to Herod s reign, whereas the current consensus is unable to explain some of the evidence that it dismisses as ancient errors or that it simply ignores.
and the bottom of page three, top of page 4 of the PDF (It’ll try to auto-download at the link, sorry. They’re trying to avoid content skimmers so there’s no normal webpage.) summarizes the shape of the argument. Which I’d love to quote, but the PDF explicitly says don’t, so /sigh. Here’s the link to the ‘updated discussion,’ too.
Merry Christmas Eve!
Straight from the belly of New Hampshire where global warming hasn’t hit yet, I would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year. Though we may all roll a little differently we all seem to have the same goal in mind and that is to love God with our whole mind, our whole soul and our whole being and all of our strength. I pray that when we all take our last breath in this life, God will look at our soul and be pleased with it. Amen.
Merry Christmas To All!
Merry and Blessed Christmas to all!
Felix Nativitas omnibus!
The importance tho g is that He was born!
Thank you, Foxfier, for a factual perspective on the actual basis for the birth of Our Lord on December 25th.
Again, the mysterious “consensus of the experts” goes “poof.” Makes one wonder about the those “experts” and their “scholarship,” if not their possible underlying bias or motivations.
Just as:
One still may run across “learned biblical scholarship tracts” from prior to 1960 that declaimed certain doubt regarding the existence of Pontius Pilate “since the Romans were excellent historians and there is no contemporary record he ever actually existed” (of course, dismissing the Gospels as factual witnesses—- also Josephus and Tacitus. But never mind that “fable in the stable” stuff ).
And then an archaeological dig at Caesarea Maritima in 1961 uncovered an indisputably original intact inscription on a proclamation stone memorializing a building dedicated by Pontius Pilate, esq., in honor of Tiberius—at a theatre originally built by that Herod the Great guy (“d. 4 BCE”).
Oops! Instant readjustment by “consensus of experts”—-as though their prior rationalist skepticism had not misguided their previous piously certain conclusions.
No one mentions now how wrong the experts were about Pilate: but they of course got it “right” about 4 BC.
Thank you, Foxfire. Now one of these days the Magi will be finally corroborated and the late Raymond Brown, SS, will have a hissy fit, wherever he is.
My favorite phrasing is “evidence unconnected to Christianity.”
So if it mentions anything about Jesus or Christians, or that might be either, it’s not allowed. I can see this to avoid tainting sources, but dang!
An excellent recent book for anyone interested in the “problem” of the historicity of Jesus is Brandt Pitre’s The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ
As apostate Catholic and historian, Will Durant observed:
“The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion…. The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man.”
Not just Christians, but a moving enough testament that the Gnostics were latching on to Him from very early on– which is really impressive for someone who, if the Resurrection is a lie, didn’t do anything.
The ancient version of the religious magpies were impressed by someone whose morality wasn’t even in the “cool” range at the time; that means there had to be some kind of impressive mystic stuff commonly believed.
/sigh
“As apostate Catholic and historian, Will Durant observed….”
Note how Durant presumes an entirely human Christ, even as he acknowledges that Jesus of Nazareth was no mere myth or legend. Reminding us that the crux of the debate remains what it always has been:
Who men say that I am?
True. However, once the historicity of Jesus is conceded, and the attempt by atheists to deny that historicity is absurd based on the historical record, I think many begin to realize that Jesus is sui generis among other historical figures. As Napoleon observed: I know men. Jesus Christ was not a man!