Luke 2 says Mary came to the Temple for purification, 40 days after producing. Since he died during the Passover (their month of Nisan), we only have to go back six months to discover his birthday which puts us to the month of Tishri, that falls between our September and October. Calculating back puts his birth at 2 AD.īible scholars indicate his ministry took three and a half years. Luke dates Jesus’ baptism and beginning of His mission to the 15th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius calculable at 29 AD and says Jesus was 30. We can use Jesus’ events, which are tucked to definite dates, to count back to his birth. It was an exploding star, visible to the Chinese astronomers of the Han dynasty for more that 70 days in 5 BC.
Most recently, British astronomers, David Clark of the Royal Greenwhich Observatory, John Parkinson of Dorking’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory and Richard Stephenson of Newcastle University offered yet another theory that the star of Bethlehem was not a comet. On December 17, 1603, a German astronomer, John Kepler, observed a striking conjunction of the planets: Saturn and Jupiter in constellation Pisces and calculated that a similar conjunction must have occurred in 7 BC.Ĭould this have been the star Matthew talked about? Seventy-nine years later, an English astronomer Edmund Halley discovered the comet (which now bears his name) and referred to it as the star of Bethlehem.īut the most coincidental of its periodic flypasts nearest to the time of Jesus’ birth was calculated to have occurred in 12 BC! Matthew referred to the an unusual star, which hung over Bethlehem at the time. Luke talks of Caesar Augustus’ decree for census ‘while Quirinius was governor of Syria’ (Lk 2: 1-3).īut while the first ever census among the Jews was during Quirinius governorship, this could not have happened until at least 6 A.D, the first year that Judea came under direct Roman rule. But Roman records show this Herod to have died in 4 BC, four years before the purported birth year of Christ. and February with 0 C.Īll Gospels agree that Jesus was born in the reign of Herod, the Great. That area has three months of frost: December with an average of 1.6 C. Even the census would have been impossible in winter: a whole population could not, then, be put in motion.Īccording to Sara Ruhin, the 1990 chief of the Israeli weather service, the December temperature in Bethlehem is about seven degrees Celsius (C) but can drop to below freezing point, especially at night. In Israel no one would permit flock out on a winter night. It could not have been on December 25, as the shepherds were out in the fields, watching over their flock by night because that is mid winter. You may not cancel your Christmas yet but it pays to know why scholars burst out laughing when December 25, 1 AD midnight is mentioned. It was on September 11, 3 BC between 6:00 and 7:00 in the evening. Jesus was not born on December 25, 1AD a few seconds after midnight.
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