CapF,
Thanks for the response. No, He was probably not circumcised at midnight, but if I were to bet, I would select in the first hour that is between 7 and 8AM Jewish time. By the way, it was Sunday, the first day of the Jewish week.
I was both smiling and dead serious as I typed that short response, because I was mainly saying that there was no year zero. Every thing I said I am able to prove from the Scriptures or from unaided eye astronomy. I am a person who has studied the Scriptures at a graduate school level for more than 3 decades and I continue to be increasingly interested. But I felt that typing any unsupported statement was pretty much a waste of effort. Since you asked, I give references.
It seems like I have studied enough that recently it has become easier and easier to place the pieces of the puzzle of Biblical Chronology. I knew that Jesus was born on 25 of December for over ten years, but it has only been in the last year or so that I learned that the sun and moon bowed down at His birth and at His death and the stars bowed down to announce His soon coming also that the sun was darkened and the moon turned to blood at His presence (Joel 2:31) at His birth and at His death. Peter refers to the Sun darkened at His death and the moon to blood in Acts 2:20. This makes His death on the first Friday in April 33 unequivocal, because on that day at sunset, the moon rose eclipsed at the horizon and a moon on the horizon is made red because of the atmosphere.
December 25 in 1 B.C. was the winter solstice, the day the sun was darkest and at midnight it was the most bowed down, add in thick clouds and the moon had just set. Four days later the sun rose at the horizon eclipsed. This is the shortest period possible between the solstice and an eclipsed moon unless the moon was in the sky at the solstice.
My web site is
www.scriptursescholar.com
See the Dionysius Exiguus Got it Right shows that the record of Zechariah priestly course documented. I have since learned that two of the Dead Sea scrolls document the priestly course rotation and support my conclusions. Second, the angel Gabriel came to Mary in Elizabeth’s sixth month that is some where between five months and one day and five month plus one month. Secondly, because pregnancy is counted from the date of the last period, so about two weeks before conception, Jesus was conceived about eight and a half months before Jesus was born.
On at least three occasions the census records which were brought to Rome from Jerusalem in 70AD were investigated to determine the day of Jesus’ birth and it was placed on December 25 because of those records not because of any pagan holiday.
I know what and when the Star of Bethlehem brought the magi to Jesus, they followed His star (Venus) during the day the passover lambs are slain and arrived at Jesus house as Passover was starting Sunday March 27, 1AD. Joseph was not there, he was celebrating the Seder in Jerusalem. Mary and Joseph fled that night for Egypt I would vote for midnight as the time they departed just as Israel left at Midnight on Passover 1438 years earlier. Jesus was just 3 months old as Moses was when he was given to the Egyptians.
How to I know the day and time of the conception? First, it is the fight amount of time before Christmas, second, Wisdom 18:14-15 in the context of Passover, when the night was half-gone, the all-powerful word leaped to earth. Jesus the word came to be conceived at midnight. The church chooses this reading for advent. That Mary left in haste means she stopped keeping the watch of Passover and Journeyed about 90 miles starting in the middle of the night.
For my chronology of Jesus’ life and I date nearly every event and give references, see
scripturescholar.com/ChronologyJesus.pdf
Grace and peace,
Bruce