When was jesus born?

Comments

• kokiie

  October 2006

  umm that was my unerstanding.. [that He was born in the year 0] but i read in one of these threads that it was actually more than 2006 years ago.. it was by Orthodox11.. maybe he/she can help ?
• minabdalla

  October 2006

  from what i heard laterly.. Jesus was born around the year 3 ad
• joyisgod

  October 2006

  I ran by this article a while back and thought that it provided a pretty rational calculation to the date, but I do not know whether it’s the accurate date or not. So take it as a theory until a better explanation arises.
  
  The Christian era ("A.D.") was calculated in the 6th century by a Scythian monk called Denis the Short, who believed he had worked out the year in which Christ was born. Everyone agrees that he made a mistake and that Jesus was in fact born "B.C." But in which year? The answer often given is 6 or 5 B.C., based on the information in St Matthew’s Gospel, that king Herod ordered the massacre of all male children aged two years and under in Bethlehem and the surrounding district. Since the historian Flavius Josephus puts the date of Herod’s death in the spring of 4 B.C., Christ must have been born a year or two earlier. But this date conflicts with the information given by St Luke, that Jesus was born at the time of a census held when Quirinius was governor of Syria, which, once again according to Josephus, took place in 6 A.D., so ten years after Herod’s death. Various attempts have been made to bring the two items or information closer together, but in any case, a Roman census would have been out of the question during the lifetime of Herod, who, though a vassal of Rome, was a sovereign ruler in his own country. So we have to choose between Matthew and Luke.
  It would be surprising if no-one before Denis the Short had ever thought of giving the date of Christ’s birth. In fact we find that a number of Christian writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries representing quite different parts of the Church (Irenaeus of Lyons, Hippolytus of Rome, Tertullian in Africa, Clement and Origen at Alexandria, also a 4th century writer Epiphanius of Salamis who quotes earlier sources) are in broad agreement about when Jesus was born. They have different ways of calculating the date and different points of reference, but all place Christ’s birth in either 4 or, more frequently, 3 B.C. Such quasi-unanimity is impressive.
  
  This dating finds confirmation in a source which has never been used in this context because it is regarded as too recent. This is a group of Gospel Harmonies composed in the middle ages but derived from written texts going back to the middle of the 2nd century, to a time when the canon of the gospels had not yet been fixed. Three of these Harmonies give us the text of Luke 2:1-5 in a form which is older than that which we read today: "At that time, Caesar Augustus ordered that all men should come to their own town and bring the governor a silver coin as a sign of subjection to the empire." This is not about a census, but describes an act of submission to Rome. In fact, we can suggest exactly when the emperor Augustus would have issued such an order. Josephus is still our informant. He tells us that, on Herod’s death, his two sons came to Rome to obtain a settlement of their quarrel over their father’s succession. While they were away, revolts broke out in Galilee, then in Judaea and Jerusalem. Several adventurers proclaimed themselves "king" and wanted to recover their independence from Rome, going as far in some cases as to forbid payment of taxes to the empire. The governor of Syria, Quintilius Varus, had effectively to reconquer the country in order to put down these revolts. This was in the last months of his term as governor, which finished at the end of 4 B.C. It would have been at this time, and after these events, that the emperor Augustus required all the men of Galilee and Judaea to come in person and make an act of submission before the representative of Roman authority. This would bring us to 3 B.C., the date preferred by the earliest Christian writers as the birth of Christ
  
  In His Name
• Mari_R

  November 2006

  Wow, very interesting. Do you have a source for that, so I can look it up? I'd be interested in reading more.
  
  Does anyone know how accurate the December 25th date is? (Yes, I said 25th, not January 7th, which is the same day on a different calandar - if that make's sense. :) )
• Georgeously Kool

  December 2006

  isnt it jan. 7?
• Unknown

  December 2006

  [quote author=Georgeously Kool link=board=13;threadid=4557;start=0#msg64534 date=1165463879]
  isnt it jan. 7?
  
  
  Jan 7th is Dec 25th on the Julian calendar. So its still Dec 25th, just the old way of calculating it.
• SarSooRah

  January 2007

  well in the bible it says that Jesus Christ was born either in 5-4 B.C.
• Unknown

  January 2007

  in coptic, he was boen on kiahk 29. christmas day!!