What month was Christ actually born?

[marietta]

redrosetea:

Would you be specific in your description of these “lies”? Thanks.

marietta

 

[redrosetea]

Saying things like Christ was not really divine, trying to say Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail…Trying to point out that Christ really was not a historical figure…and there was a Pope Joan

 

[marietta]

redrosetea:

This is very interesting to me. Can you tell me who made these claims and in which programs they appeared? I would like to investigate them.

Thank you.

marietta

 

[redrosetea]

I certainly have no dates for you…I don’t write this stuff down…It did a very one sided program on the inqusition…google is your friend…I am sure the things you want to know are out there

You can believe anything you want, just don’t expect me to…If you think there isnt a deep anti caltholic bias in this country go to the non catholic forum

 

[redrosetea]

Here is one look at 1/12/94

catholicleague.org/annualreport.php?year=1994&id=9

Here is another

Holy Moses! PBS documentary suggests Exodus not real
Abraham didn’t exist? The Exodus didn’t happen? The Bible’s Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor.

from Reverend Know it all

Nowadays, just try to put up a Christmas display on public land. Instead of the Biblical epics that always aired on TV during the Holy Days, you have PBS and the Discovery Channel telling you that it never happened in the first place.

 

[marietta]

redrosetea:

All due respect, there is an anti-EVERYTHING bias “out there”. I’m a drunk: there’s an anti-drunk bias; I’m bi-polar: there’s a whole school of thought which says I’m just irresponsible. I’m a woman: have you never heard of anti-feminism?

I get a charge out of hearing what the other side has to say. Most of the time I vehemently disagree, but I have learned to embrace a wider, more tolerant viewpoint through the mere effort of entertaining a different idea now and then.

You “don’t write this stuff down” and yet you can harbor a resentment about some hazy misrepresentation for - how long? And condemning both PBS and the History Channel for ostensibly reporting a viewpoint different than yours - isn’t that throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Just wondering,

marietta

 

[redrosetea]

No it is not…I don’t waste my time with people that I neither trust nor respect…now can we get back to the original topic?

 

[marietta]

redrosetea:

If the History Channel or PBS reported that Jesus was actually born in Springtime but we celebrate His birth on December 25th for any of the reasons aforementioned on this thread, would you believe them?

marietta

 

[Eliza10]

I for one am very careful about trusting sources like PBS or the History Channel for the truth as far as Catholicism…

Good!

There are lots of things that are distortions and down right lies told as if they were the gospel truth…you find people that believe the lies of the DaVinci code because they saw it on some TV program

That irks me so much!

Unless you are listening to a Catholic theologian or apologist be very careful about believing what they are telling you

Unfortuantely thats not always enough. There’s that O’Brien guy from Nortre Dame that the media likes to drag out to offer “expert” opinion on Catholicism and that never seems Catholic to me.

 

[redrosetea]

It depends on what else they had to say…I am not interested in listening to people who promote heresy

I spend my time reading things to help me get to heaven…If you want to watch be my guest

I can watch EWTN and know that I am being taught as Christ taught the 12 apostles, that is the only thing I care about, not some flake who is trying to make money by doing a hatchet job as was Dan Brown

It is a sin to blaspheme and I am not going to watch someone do it, nor take any stock in what they say…I hope I have made my postion clear…I don’t know how to say it any plainer

Fr Groeschel has offered to come on the Histroy channel many times to tell the real version of what they are saying and they never answer him. …they are not interested in the truth, they are intersted in sensationalism…

 

[brigid12]

I doubt that any of the apostles knew Jesus’ birthday, to be honest. I can’t imagine our Lord preaching and exorcising demons, and later in the night saying to his disciples “by the way, a very special day is coming up soon and I’ve got my eyes on these sandals…”

 

[jmcrae]

This stuff has to be approved by Rome and the Bishop…people can’t just teach anything they feel like teaching.

Unfortunately, not all programs are that well supervised. There are a lot of RCIA leaders out there who are not only not checking in with their Office of Adult Education, they don’t even know that the place exists, or that they should check in. In our Diocese, there are four RCIA programs who check in with the Office, but I know of at least ten programs going on in our Diocese - which means that more than half are not checking in, and not having their teachings reviewed by the Bishop.

This is in the printed material dispensed by the church…It carries an imprimatur…which means it is free from doctrinal error

But not free from speculation. Just because there is speculation that Christmas may not have occurred on December 25th doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with believing the teachings of the Early Church - even if they aren’t at the level of Dogma.

 

[redrosetea]

No there isn’t. Nor is there anything wrong with speculating when it might have occurred from historical facts and data…

 

[jmcrae]

No there isn’t. Nor is there anything wrong with speculating when it might have occurred from historical facts and data.

What “historical facts and data” is there?

Really, all we have that has any substance whatsoever is the decision of Pope Sylvester to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. His reasoning process has been lost to the mists of time, although the best explanation is that December 25th is nine months after the traditional celebration of the Annunciation (the conception of Christ) on March 25th - which was celebrated from the very beginning, along with Easter.

That explanation makes way more sense to me than anything to do with pagan gods, etc.

 

[Spirithound]

Lambing season would have been a highly symbolic time for Jesus ,the Lamb of God to be born… For like other lambs born near Bethlehem( in the shadow of Jerusalem’s temple) Jesus was destined for sacrifice

So when is lambing season in Palestine? I’ve heard March-April-ish, and I’ve head December. Does anyone know?

 

[redrosetea]

I think it was March and April

 

[redrosetea]

What “historical facts and data” is there?

Really, all we have that has any substance whatsoever is the decision of Pope Sylvester to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. His reasoning process has been lost to the mists of time, although the best explanation is that December 25th is nine months after the traditional celebration of the Annunciation (the conception of Christ) on March 25th - which was celebrated from the very beginning, along with Easter.

That explanation makes way more sense to me than anything to do with pagan gods, etc.

If you go to new advent which is a catholic encyclopedia It will tell you a bit…It seems a censcus wouldn’t have been possible in the winter

+They list a lot of differnt reason why it could or couldn’t have been one season or the other

There are a lot of places on the net that discuss this, but I only look at the Catholic ones…Some of the christian ones go so far as to use meterological data, to tell them if it would have been springtime

Some use scripture to try to figure it out

 

[tassitus]

. . .Really, all we have that has any substance whatsoever is the decision of Pope Sylvester to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. His reasoning process has been lost to the mists of time, although the best explanation is that December 25th is nine months after the traditional celebration of the Annunciation (the conception of Christ) on March 25th - which was celebrated from the very beginning, along with Easter. . .

The true answer is most likely this simple. I recently heard Jimmy Akin answer this exact question (probably a late September mp3 of Catholic Answers Live!), and what he reasons it that, all else said, those advising Pope Sylvester on this actually believed Jesus was born on (yup, you guessed it…) the 25th day of December (at least on our calendar). That certainly makes the most sense to me, unless we want to accuse them of being dishonest (and thus picking December 25th for some other, less apparent reason).

Peace all.

 

[Eliza10]

Eliza10:

May I ask, what is your opinion of Joseph Campbell and his interpretations of religion, myth and lore? Would you consider him a “self-important theological ‘expert’”, and of the type you apparently feel are singularly presented by PBS and its bias, or would you consider him a scholar of such matters as Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Buddhism, the Upanishads?

marietta

I may have seen Joseph Campbell before but the name doesn’t ring a bell. Sounds like you have a lot of respect for scholars of religion, and thats fine. Nothing wrong with scholars, but they don’t wow me just becaue they are scholars. There are a lot of scholarly atheists, and there are even religious scholar athesits.

 

[Eliza10]

I can’t imagine our Lord preaching and exorcising demons, and later in the night saying to his disciples “by the way, a very special day is coming up soon and I’ve got my eyes on these sandals…”

LOL, I can’t imagine Jesus asking for presents either. But I can imagine His disciples saying, “Tell us, Lord, about the night of your birth!”

Also did you know that the Feast of St. John the Baptist is exactly six months before the Nativity, June 25th? Unlike the Nativity, the day when days get longer, from this point on the days get shorter. This goes along with what John said about our Lord “I must decrease so that he can increase.”

That is fascinating! Wow, God’s ways are so perfect.