When Was Jesus Born?

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…” or at least it is at my house. The lights are up, the trees (yes, plural) are decorated, and the shopping…is nowhere near done yet. All in all, our family is definitely in the Christmas spirit, which got me thinking about some of the biblical, and extra-biblical, things related to Christmas. These, I will attempt to address in a few posts between now and Christmas.

One of the first questions that come to mind is why we celebrate Jesus’ birth on December 25. It’s not always been so, but that date does have a long track record; making its way solidly into Church tradition by the mid 6^th century AD. Was Jesus born on December 25, 0 AD? No. First of all, the whole BC / AD division was invented by Dionysius Exiguus who concocted the division between BC/BCE and AD/CE in the year 544 AD.

What Day Was Jesus Born?

Ever wonder how we know Jesus was born on December 25? Was it recorded at the Mount Sinai Regional Medical Center, Bethlehem? Do we have his birth certificate, or is it hidden away in a Hawaiian vault somewhere? No, nothing as clear as that set the date of December 25 for the birth of the Lord.

It seems Pope John I was intent on settling the controversy over the date for Easter, so he asked Dionysius to determine the exact dates for Easter from the years 527-626. In his desire to please the Pope, Dionysus went in a direction the Pope never intended. He decided to begin by determining the date of Jesus’ birth. I guess if one is going to find the date of a person’s death, it helps to know when that person was born.

Dionysius chose the year Rome had been founded and determined, from the evidence available to him at that time, that Jesus had been born 753 years later. He was almost certainly knowledgeable of the Church Father Hippolytus’ (AD 170-236) suggestion that Jesus was born on December 25. Problem is, Hippolytus postulated that date, but gave no evidence to support it. So, why would Dionysus suggest the same date? A few reasons explain his argument:

• ·         His contemporaries claimed that God created the earth on March 25
• ·         The Son of God could not have been imperfect in any way
• ·         Therefore, Jesus must have been conceived in His earthly incarnation on March 25
• ·         This meant that He must have been born exactly nine months later on December 25

Interestingly enough, using the same logic, Dionysius concluded that Jesus must have also died on March 25, thus helping to establish the date for Easter. 

December 25 was an interesting choice by Hippolytus, let alone Dionysius. Why? In 274, Roman Emperor Aurelian declared December 25 a civic holiday in celebration of the god Mithras, By 336, Christianity had all but replaced paganism as the official Roman religion, thus the Christians supplanted the celebration of the birth of Mithras with a celebration of the birth of Jesus.

The December 25 date was not universally accepted though. Christians in Antioch as late as 375 celebrated Jesus’ birth on January 6, while Christians in Alexandria didn’t even begin to celebrate Jesus’ birth until sometime around 430. So, until Dionysus came along, confusion over the date of Jesus’ birth, let alone whether to celebrate it at all, dominated Christianity. What had been the most important to Christians until this time was the celebration of Easter, not Christmas. With a stroke of unintended genius, Dionysius, by formalizing the date for Jesus’ birth, managed to shift the focus of the Church from Easter to Christmas; effectively putting Christmas on the Church map.

So, was it December 25? Probably not. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke state that Jesus was born while the shepherds slept with their flocks in the fields at night. Luke 2:8 states, “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.” December weather in the mountains surrounding Jerusalem and Bethlehem, where shepherds would routinely tend their sheep, can drop to well below freezing at night. The shepherds would not have left their flocks out in the fields, let alone slept with them, during this part of the year. Most likely, the appearance of the angels and the birth of Christ happened in the spring when the weather was much milder in that region. Jesus was probably born sometime between late March to early May, not in the dead of winter at the end of December.

What Year Was Jesus Born?

Dionysius declared that Jesus was born on December 25, 753 and declared that January 1, 754 – Roman New Year – was also the beginning of a completely new historical era, anno domini – the year of our Lord. Thus, 754, post Roman founding, became AD 1. But Dionysius made a mistake. In doing his calculations, he forgot, neglected, or was unaware of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth. Matthew clearly states that Jesus was born while Herod the Great still reigned; putting Jesus’ birth between 7-4 BC. It seems Dionysius calculations were off just a bit.

Most conservative scholars agree that Jesus was born sometime between 7-4 BC. How was this determined? Two approaches have been used to estimate the year of the birth of Jesus. 

The first involves an analysis of the historical record presented in Matthew and Luke along with accompanying extra-biblical historical data. This method associates the birth of Jesus with the reign of Herod the Great who died around 4 BC (cf. Matt. 2:1). Furthermore, Luke aligns Jesus’ birth with the first census overseen by Quirinius (aka Cyrenius) which occurred around 6 BC. Herod the Great assumed Jesus could have been as old as 2 when the magi visited him – seen in his orders to execute of all male children 2 years old and under in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16) – and Joseph was not told to return to Israel until after Herod’s death (Matt. 2:19). If Herod died shortly after giving those orders, Jesus would have been upwards of 2 in 4 BC; placing a date of birth sometime around 6 BC. Most scholars provide a window of 7-4 BC but lean toward the earlier dates.

The second method seeks to determine the birth of the Lord independent of Matthew and Luke. It starts in the Gospel of John and works backwards from the statement in Luke 3:23 that Jesus was about 30 years old when he began his earthly ministry. Those who prefer this method combine information from John 1:13 and 2:20 with the writings of Jewish historian Flavius Josephus to estimate that Jesus was 30 between AD 27-29. If one assumes that Jesus was 32 years old in AD 28, as some have, then the birth of Jesus can be extrapolated backwards to a date of 6-4 BC.

Interesting how either method works to produce nearly the same date range.

What Do We Do Now?

Since we have seen that Jesus was probably not born on December 25, and that He was born around 6 BC, what should Christians do? Should we replace the date of Easter with a Christmas celebration? It makes sense to celebrate a person’s birth before their death, but Jesus was probably born closer to the date we celebrate Easter than when we celebrate Christmas. (Think about it. Jesus was probably crucified near the date for his birthday.) Again, I ask, what should we do? Nothing. Does it really matter when we celebrate Jesus’ birth? Not in the slightest. I skip my birthday every year, and have for almost the last decade. 

Does it matter what year Jesus was born? In a sense, yes. It has bearing on the Gospel records, so it does matter. Should we change our calendars to match the truth and change the coming 2013 to 2006 (subtracting 6 years for Dionysius’ mistake and one for skipping year 0)? Yeah, that would go over well! No biggie.

The point is we are celebrating Jesus’ birth. It doesn’t really matter when, so why do it at all? We celebrate the birthdays of men like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King because of their historical significance and the impact they made on our nation. We should celebrate the birth of Jesus with even more gusto and enthusiasm. Why? Because we are celebrating the culmination of millennia of revelation and prophecy dating back to the first promise of a coming Savior given to Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:15). The birth of Jesus is important and worth celebrating. Without His birth, the incarnation of God the Son, we’d have no Savior, no cross work, and no resurrection – in short we’d have no Easter and no salvation. The birth of Jesus isn’t about the exact date; it’s about God becoming incarnate – fully God, fully human – for the express purpose of dying and rising again to pay the penalty for every sinner’s sin. Now that’s a birthday worth celebrating!