Assuming Zechariah was on his first duty of the year, the timing would look like this:. So John was likely conceived in the second half of Sivan, which is around the beginning of June. This would mean that the shepherds in their fields were outdoors in September Luke 2. Given the mild weather at this time of year, this is highly plausible.
The hill country around Jerusalem and Bethlehem is cold in the winter, often with snow, so this would be less likely in December. This feast commemorates the period of time that Israel lived in tents in the wilderness. This connects with John 1. It is worth pointing out that it is rather unusual that we can be relatively confident of historical events at this kind of level of detail.
The root source of this is the Jewish interest in schedules and calendars, in this case, the rota of priestly duties. Such precision and organisation is relatively rare in the ancient world, and it offers a historical framework for the material of the New Testament that is unrivalled. I have found no arguments either for or against this in the literature. Does this all mean we are wasting our time celebrating Christmas in December? Not at all. The main point of Christmas is not chronology but theology.
As I comment elsewhere :. As the nights close in, and the days shorten, we long to see light. As the winter gets colder, we long for warmth. As nature around us seems strangled by death, we need signs of hope and life. And as the inconvenience of going out gets greater, and we are more isolated from friends and neighbours, we long for company…Who can bring us light but the light of the world John 8. Who gives us hope beyond death, but the one who not only tasted death for us but swallowed it up in victory 1 Cor And who else can bring us into friendship with God 2 Cor 5.
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Does Christmas preach the good news? Preaching Christmas—without a Stable Does it matter that Jesus wasn't born in a stable? Where does your analysis differ from his — where does he go wrong? The critical factor is when the division of Abijah would serve. Gavin Ashenden places the service around the time of Yom Kippur, at the end of September or beginning of October. He does not justify this. There is a Wikipedia page on this which gives the dates the divisions would serve over the next few years:.
However, this seems to imply that the 24 divisions seem to serve in a continuous sequence, without regard to festivals! As a result, each year the division will serve about a month earlier. If this pattern is correct, then we need to know the year when Zechariah was visited by the angel in order to determine the month. It discusses some of the issues in chosing a system. In particular, if the cycle restarts each year, then the early divisions will always have more work to do.
If the cycle is continuous, then, as per Wikipedia, the time of year for a given division will shift from year to year. When does lambing happen in the hill country of Judea? So they were out all year round. David, thanks for this. The Wikipedia article does appear to omit the festivals. I was interested as well in the comment that, following the destruction of the temple, the priestly divisions moved to locations around Israel.
Richard Bauckham argues or assumes that they were always thus distributed in his recent article on Cana and the wedding. Who fills in the one or two weeks of the short cycle? Also worth pointing out that 1 Nisan as the start of the ecclesiastical new year is well established, being recorded in the Mishnah from AD, and is not an arbitrary choice. Thanks Will. Gavin appears to have made multiple errors, but they are hidden because he has not laid out his calculation clearly.
As I mention above, the domestic calendar begins with the month of Nissan, usually our mid-March. For some reason, Gavin has started his year in Av, which is the start of neither the ecclesiastical nor the domestic calendar. His goal appears to confirm the tradition of the early church, which elsewhere he maintains expresses a historically reliable record of events, in parallel with the written record of Scripture—without any real evidence. Gavin also claims here that Telesphorus, whom Gavin claims is the seventh bishop of Rome, celebrated Christmas on Dec 25th, but I know of no evidence that this was the case.
As Christian numbers increased and their customs prevailed, the celebrations took on a Christian observance.
In fact, for more than years, people observed the birth of Jesus on various dates. In the year AD, solstice fell on 25th December. Thank you for posting this information out for others to read. At the time I had a Christian friend who discovered his mother was Jewish, and he began paying a lot of attention to calendars, practices, festivals, and more. It served me well to pay attention to what we can learn from putting our attention on facts, rather than on beliefs. Proximity to a festival might also explain why the guest room was already taken up although there could of course be any number of reasons for that, not least the census.
There has been a little debate about the historical climate of Bethlehem and Jerusalem with some suggesting that two thousands years ago was similar to today, others arguing that it was wetter and milder. But even if there was some frost and snow in winter, as Bethlehem can experience today, I wonder what would have happened to the sheep. Do we have any evidence that they were kept somewhere else in winter than in summer?
Thomas, to take your questions in reverse order, there does seem to be evidence of sheep being taken into winter shelters in Roman practice. By choosing this day to celebrate Jesus' birthday, the church could co-opt the popular pagan festival, as well as the winter celebrations of other pagan religions. Related: Why does Christianity have so many denominations?
Some scholars think that he was born between 6 B. Not long before Herod's demise, which is believed to have occurred in 4 B. But historians disagree about Herod's actual year of death. Most likely, Joseph and Mary stayed with family but the guest room was too small for childbirth and hence Mary gave birth in the main room of the house where animal mangers could also be found. There were probably not three magi and they were not kings.
The tradition of three comes from the mention of three gifts — gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Notably, the magi visit Jesus in a house not an inn or stable and their visit is as late as two years after the birth. Notably absent from these biblical accounts is Mary riding a donkey and animals gathered around the baby Jesus.
Animals begin to appear in nativity art in the fourth century AD, possibly because biblical commentators at the time used Isaiah 3 as part of their anti-Jewish polemic to claim that animals understood the significance of Jesus in a way that Jews did not. When Christians today gather around a crib or set up a nativity scene in their homes they continue a tradition that began in the 12th century with Francis of Assisi.
He brought a crib and animals into church so that everyone worshipping could feel part of the story. Thus a popular pietistic tradition was born. Later art showing the adoration of the baby Jesus reflects a similar devotional spirituality. If we pare back the story to its biblical and historical core - removing the stable, the animals, the cherub-like angels, and the inn - with what are we left?
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