Jesus was born years earlier than thought, claims Pope

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meltzerboy said:
The Dec. 21, 2012 doomsday prophecy is another miscalculation, Mayan-style. But just in case, I promised my students I would have the grades in before that date.

In regard to Jesus’ birth, for many years I had heard that 4 BC was the date.
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but if this is 2016 then then world has already ended, we just haven’t realized it yet.
 
I have read a lot of postings here and I have noticed that so many of you have so much against this Pope!!! He has been doing his best to bring all Catholics together and he is going as far as bringing all christians together instead of seperating them from each other or declaring wars on one and an other! Pope Benedict is for re unification of all christians and I could not agree more with him! We really need it in today s world! Look what is happening to our churches today! Why do we need so much seperations, when it is time for all of us to come together??? Did not we have enough of them already druing last three centuries!!! What did we gain from all these sepations so far??? Nothing! We are braking our faith in pieces and weakenning our Catholic faith instead of fighting together against the real dangers! Stop being such nitpickers, no one was there to witness the exact birth date of our Lord Jesus, not even you people! Look at Catholic assyrians, they celebrate Christmas one week later then us! Armenian Catholics celebrate it in a different day too! God help us al! The Mystical Rose apparition was truly a wake up call to all of us!
 
InJesusItrust, abba is the same world we all believe in (the Father) and it is said in passion of Chris movie which was made in Aramenian (Siryan) language. abba, dady, baba, pere, dada…You can translate the world father to five hundred different languages, but the meaning stays the same! We all believe in our father, and in our Lord Jesus Christ
 
It is a word play on how similar Allah sounds to Abba, and the second part affirms Jesus instead of Mohammed. I know Father is universal, but I am playing with words here. 🙂
 
RyanBlack said:
There’s nothing at all that is new about this idea. Furthermore, I don’t know why it would matter at all to anyone’s faith.
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The big deal is this: the news media and just about every anti-religionist I know is of the opinion that everyone who has any core Christian belief is essentially an imbecile, incapable of any historical or scientific evaluation. The popular concept among these hate groups is that Christians all believe in a literal 6 day creation which occurred 6,000 +/- years ago. Their minds are so closed that they have no idea that non-fundamentalist Christians have dated Jesus’ birth as 6 - 2 B.C. for years.

They have no idea that a monk drew up the calendar and how he went about that and they don’t care to enlighten themselves. So when His Holiness makes a simple statement about the birth (notice they didn’t come off the rails about the Virgin birth or Divine birth just the date) date of Jesus the hate groups think they’ve found a “GOTCHA!”. They don’t even know how profoundily idiotic they sound.
 
Just out of curiosity, how many counted the start of the new millenium at midnight on Dec 31: 1999 or 2000? :crutches:

The crutches tell a little about me, they do not imply anything about anyone else.
 
godismyfather said:
I have read a lot of postings here and I have noticed that so many of you have so much against this Pope!!!
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It’s a sad commentary that in a faith where we’re supposed to love one another that you have noticed this.
 
So what year was he born? Was it zero bc or zero ad? And i wonder if the ppl who lived in bc ever wondered what they were counting down to?
(Yeah yeah i know old joke.)
 
My top 10 sudden thoughts on this:
  1. Well, but not years earlier than HE thought !
  2. Earlier hmm? That Mayan Calendar is already obsolete then. :eek: NO! It’s back to haunt us! :bigyikes:
  3. Had the same Mother … and FATHER though right?
  4. 2,000 years ago they kept time with hourglasses and sundials. Clouds could wipe out a day, a week a month!
  5. Remember Jesus was born before there was even TV. They barely had radio.
  6. Who: - Jesus Where: - Bethlehem What: - Born Why: - To save mankind. When? Well SOMETHING should be a mystery shouldn’t it?
  7. Just another way he messed with Herod. That and the Angels warning the Wise Men.
  8. He had to wait until Myrrh was discovered.
  9. Was the Pope shown some calculations and evidence or did … you know … he get told in a vision?
  10. No matter when He was born it was the perfect time to do it. So PLEASE no “birther” stuff now. Pharisees got in trouble over their guesses!
On top of that theologians will be having a dickens of a time telling what year Jesus was born in even when they do pin everything down. Should they rename the years, will we all be younger? Will about-to-retire Bishops get another half decade to their reign?

Some overdue library books will still have time on them. Kindergartners could pass out of existence altogether! :eek: Who’d take the midday naps THEN? 🙂 < me!

If Jesus was conceived in 1 BC and his first year was in 1 AD … what year was it between December 25 and January 1? C? Or did C start at conception? About March 25? 🙂

I really should read more than the headline to a thread … but sometimes its more fun like this.
  • Please note “Sudden thoughts” are not always coherent. But I like stream of consciousness stuff … and Lewis Caroll … and Paul Simon … Dr. Seuss … Charles Schultz … and Groucho Marx! :takeoff::whacky: :takeoff:
 
Faithdancer said:
Yeah, that’s it for me too. This changes everything…Ha I’m back, tried the Amish and the Rastafarians but it just didn’t work out.
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You and Bob Marley!

A lot of people don’t know he converted from Rastafarianism to Ethiopian Orthodox before his death, ya man?
 
A couple of thoughts on issues that have been raised:
  1. Many of the elements of popular celebration of Christmas, such as the donkey and the ox, or Mary’s past as a Temple Virgin, come from the Protoevangelium of St. James, an apocryphal work that is not accepted as part of the scriptural canon. Such works may have served a growing Catholic hunger for more information in the early Church, but have the same weight as the many popular novels about the life of Christ that “fill in” details about His life. The Protoevangelium, in addition to influencing many of the elements that pop up in the great works of art depicting the Nativity (such as the belief that Jesus was born in a rock grotto or cave), may represent continuing traditions within the early Church that are based on truth…but such issues are not doctrinal.
  2. If the Mayans were so freaking prophetic, why didn’t they foresee the Spanish coming?
DaddyGirl: But the dates in the gospels never quite jived with official recorded censuses dates anyway, I think…so it doesn’t make a difference in this respect.
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  1. Re the Roman Census and approximate dates of birth for Jesus, I don’t see a huge problem. We have essentially two good sources on the comings and goings of 1st century Palestine, the texts of the Bible and Josephus.
Luke said the registration for the census took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. But Josephus wrote that Quirinius became the Legate of Syria after Archelaus, the son of Herod the Great, was deposed. Archelaus was deposed in 6 A.D.

Yet Matthew wrote that Jesus was born during the time of “King Herod,” who killed all the children in Bethlehem two years old and under. After Herod died, and Archelaus ruled over Judea in his place, that Matthew says Jesus, Mary, and Joseph returned from their exile in Egypt to Galilee. Herod died circa 4 B.C.

So Matthew implies that Jesus was born before 4 B.C., and Luke that Jesus was born after 6 A.D. Many scholars have spent a lot of time trying to reconcile this problem.

But if Luke tells us that the Angel Gabriel told Zecheriah that his wife would conceive “in the days of King Herod of Judea,” there is a clear implication that she conceived St. John the Baptist around that time (i.e., when Herod was king). Luke uses the word basileos for “king.”

The Annunciation to Mary happened in the 6th month of St. Elizabeth’s pregnancy, per Luke. Again, it is implied that Jesus was conceived around the time of the Annunciation. (That’s the way most people read it.). So, Jesus was just 6 months younger than St. John the Baptist, and both he and Jesus would have been born in, or just after, the reign of Herod. Which King Herod? Archelaus also took the name Herod as king (there is coinage proving this.) Luke, who seems to have been a better historian than Josephus, also says St. John the Baptist began his ministry when Herod was ruler (tetrarch) of Galilee - he does not call this Herod basileos, and tetrarch is a much better description of Archelaus’s position, which differentiates this Herod from the one who Matthew says was king when Jesus was born. From Luke’s historical cross-references (“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius…”, and Luke’s dating of Jesus’ ministry when He was “about thirty,” (i.e., in 28 A.D.) that means Luke and Matthew agree broadly about the date of Jesus’ birth.
  1. The main problem with the census description in Luke is based solely on the disagreement between Luke and Josephus, and most scholars agree that Josephus, while a good general historical source, was frequently inaccurate and exaggerated. Josephus’s reference to Quirinus as Legate of Syrius after the ascension of Archelaus is essentially a footnote of little interest to Josephus, and he may not have paid much attention to its historicity. If he was incorrect and Luke was right, the dating of the census ceases to be an issue.
Re Quirinus, some apologists have argued that there must have been 2 Quirinuses,or that he may have been governor of Syria more than once, and both arguments are weak. A more likely explanation lies in the fact that Luke’s word for Quirinus was not “governor,” and not even a noun or title - hegemonuew, the present active participle of a verb for leading, or ruling, or governing. Luke uses the noun version of the word to speak of the rule of the Emperor Tiberius, and in the same sentence uses the verbal form to talk about the function of the emperor’s subordinate, Pontius Pilate. It cannot be argued that Tiberius and Pilate held the same position, and Luke’s usage of the word clearly shows that it does not connote a specific title or rank.

Josephus himself, in referring to the governorship of Syria, uses the same root form of hegemon (Kaisaros hegmosi in Greek) to describe the same position held by two “officers of Caesar” under the reign of Tiberius, Saturninus and Volimnius. So, the term as used by both Luke and Josephus, described a general leadership role rather than a specific title. It is likely that Quirinius, like most Roman bureaucrats, was somewhat of an area specialist in the Roman provinces of Asia and fulfilled many such governorship obligations as part of the posts he held on behalf of the Empire.

We know that Quirinius commanded the Roman army in the Cilician campaign between 12 and 6 B.C., in an area adjacent to Syria, and as this was the only Roman legion in the area, it is likely, again, that his overall command of the area, including his responsibility for the census, was just part of his general responsibility for the pacification of the region and the Homonadensians, over a broad period of time.
 
DaddyGirl: First problem is…we have pretty good records for the reign of Caesar Augustus, and there is no mention anywhere in any of them of an empire-wide census for which everyone had to register by returning to their ancestral home.
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The gravestone of the Roman officer Secundus (the Aemilius Secundus) who served under Quirinius while Quirinius was governor of Syria, describes a census in Syria while Quirinis was “Legate.” It does not give the date of the stone or the census, so this may not be the same census that Luke describes, but it is very likely that there was more than one census under Caesar Augustus, who was a little OCD about inventories and censuses of his belongings and lands (he bragged that he had counted the Roman nation three times), such as the one in Gaul carried out by his stepson, Drusus. Palestine had been ruled by Rome since 63 B.C., and Roman dissatisfaction with Herod’s accounting would be likely to trigger a census to make sure Rome got its cut. If you have ever dealt with an incoming bureaucracy, you know that among the first measures is an accounting for all property of the concern, especially if the CEO has any doubts about the manager of the local franchise.

The “worldwide” census of Augustus’s Empire seem to have been carried out incrementally, as part of the normal functioning of Augustus’s empire.

(It’s also been argued that Luke 2:2 has been mistranslated, and that it should be better translated as the census taking place before Quirinus was governor of Syria, which removes all difficulties in reconciling the three accounts. I can’t speak to the validity of the argument, which is hotly contested, but it’s a possible objection.)

As Luke, who even his critics now admit was a careful historian, refers to the census as the “first” one, this clearly implies there was more than one, whereas Josephus only references one. It would appear the one referenced by Josephus as causing such civil unrest (and open rebellion) in Galilee (and which Luke would have known about) in 6 A.D. was after the one referred to be Luke in the Nativity narrative. And this census probably occurred under the responsibility of Quirinius, who would later become Legate of Syria and would now be the go-to guy for censuses for the Empire in the troublesome area of occupied Palestine.

So, not a huge problem in terms of historicity.
DaddysGirl: The second problem is…the logistics. How could everyone have possibly returned to the homes of the ancestors from a thousand years earlier? It wouldn’t be physically possible, and at the very least, it would cause such pandemonium that surely it would have been mentioned in at least one historical source apart from Luke.
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Have you never had to wait in a Motor Vehicles Department line? Bureaucracies seldom concern themselves with the comfort or convenience of those involved, and the bureaucracies of an occupying empire even less so. One such census did cause armed rebellion, by Judas of Galilee in 6 A.D., as I mentioned earlier and as described by Josephus. The high-handedness and condescension of the Empire in the earlier census described by Luke could have been one of several pieces of straw that eventually broke the camel’s back.

And actually, returning to one’s ancestral home would have seemed annoying and unnecessary to the monotheistic Jews, but would have made perfect sense as an organizing bureaucratic principle to the pagan, polytheistic Romans, whose paganism was always strongly parochial and based on local civic allegiances. Each Roman village, city, and province had its own patron deity which demanded regular sacrifices and worship, and to whose hometown temple the strongly patriotic Roman families regularly returned to offer propitiation for generation after generation. The bosses in Rome probably did not understand why the Jews detested the forced pilgrimage, as the Jews, who through much of their history were nomadic through no choice of their own, had no such tradition.
 
CaptFun said:
If Jesus was conceived in 1 BC and his first year was in 1 AD … what year was it between December 25 and January 1? C? Or did C start at conception? About March 25? 🙂
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The was no year zero. 1 B.C. was followed immediately by 1A.D. Jesus was conceived at midnight on Passover April 6, 1 B.C. was born at midnight Dec 25, 1.B.C. was circumcised on January 1, A.D. 1
Grace and peace,
Bruce
 
CaptFun responds in RED
Bruce_Killian said:
The was no year zero.I knew that. 1 B.C. was followed immediately by 1A.D.and that deductively. Jesus was conceived at midnight on Passover April 6, 1 B.C.Amazing detail in this report. was born at midnight Dec 25, 1.B.C.So the BC remains for the last week rather than any designation … be it “C” (because Christ is HERE) or the dispensed with “year zero”. was circumcised on January 1, A.D. 1 I LIKE this idea … don’t know if it’s technically TRUE … but the idea that the first “Year of our Lord” (anno domine, AD) would begin at the outset of His sealing of the Abrahamic covenant in the Temple. And that New Years’ Day 1/1/1 started the clock ticking.
Grace and peace,
Bruce
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I like your confidence Bruce. From the look of your report would it be symmetrical to assume Jesus was circumcised at the stroke of Midnight between 12/31/1 BC and 1/1/1 AD in keeping with the “new day” theme of this theory?

Since I can’t see your facial expressions or hear your tone of voice I can’t tell if you are subtley kidding or quite serious about the details above. To me the details are less important than the reality that Jesus DID change time and our future forever when He came the first time.

At Advent we consider that bigger message and ponder His second coming to a lesser extent. The Pope’s mentioning this detail is probably for a good reason too … though I am not inclined to be very interested in seeking it out right now.

Do you have further detail on your claims Bruce (writings of a saint, say?) and is this something that can agree with what Benedict is saying or … ?

By the way, my March 25 “conception day” was simple subtraction of nine months from
December 25, not any “knowledge” I had on the subject. The Passover date for His conception date would be intriguing in that the first OT Passover began with an Angel of Death coming to pass judgement … while (then) on this proposed Passover the miracle would be the Incarnation, God coming amongst us to deliver us FROM death.

Again, I’m not subscribing to what you’ve proposed, except to say … it’s possible … I can’t prove otherwise … and I did get a nice insight or two out of it (which is better than just engaging in the controversial aspects of it). So thanks. Whether we hear more from you on this or not. 🙂
 
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