Jesus was born in April of the year 6 BCE. According to my Armenian friend, it was on the 18th. We know this because astronomical evidence shows the supernova which was the “star seen in the east” appeared in April of 6 BCE. Also Herod who was visited by the “we three kings of orient are” and ordered that all children under the age of 2 be killed, himself died in 4 BCE.
Then we get to the crucifiction. Jesus was executed during Passover in the year 27CE, making him 33 years old at his death. Pontius Pilate was transferred to Tyre or Sidon as a promotion in 29 CE after Felix was recalled to Rome. The Gregorian monk tasked with setting the calendar according to the Church was obviously not a Jesuit and couldn’t do the math, hence our calendars have been fouled up ever since.
Christmas was set on Dec. 25 both because of Saturnalia, and the 25th of the month corresponds with the Jewish minor festival of Hanukkah on the 25th of Nisan. Back in the orginal days of Christianity all believers were Jews and had to be converted to Judaism before being baptised. St. Paul didn’t get rid of all the Jewish practices much as he tried to distinguish the early Christians from Jews to protect them from Roman hostility. They got Roman hostility anyway until Constantine converted.
No. No conceivable astronomical event can produce the effects ascribed to the Star of Bethlehem. Either it didn’t happen or it was a miracle.
I dare say Dionysius Exiguus could do the math. The problem was that there were a great many calendars to be reconciled, and many didn’t even assign numbers to years. He simply didn’t have the resources.
Maybe, maybe not.
No.
In the very early days, yes, but that was discarded long before the establishment of any Christian Kalendar.
Wrong. St. Paul was more apt to claim that he was a Jew, Judaism being a protected, pre-existing ethnic religion under Roman policy, which Christianity was not.
It does appear the early Church was wrong. But they do seem to have been sincere. In other words, they didn’t calculate the birthday to be Dec 25th for any reason related to other faith’s holidays.
In any case Saturnalia was on Dec 17th, not Dec 25th.
Also note that Christmas wasn’t really a big holiday for early Christians, the big Christian holiday was Easter, not Christmas.
The development of Hannukkah as a holiday is interesting history, but probably not really relevant to this thread. Basically, it was a big deal holiday from about 165 BC to about 70 AD, because it celebrated the triumph of the small Jewish rebels against the huge Greek/Syrian overlords. During the years following and during the time of the Roman occupation, it was seen as a celebration of hope: that just because a big, powerful army was in control of our country, doesn’t mean that we can’t oppose them. After 70 AD when the Temple and country were destroyed by the Romans, the holiday became very much a minor celebration. Light candles each night, say a brief prayer, that was it.
In America in the last 70 years (number picked at random), Christmas became a huge commercial holiday – you can’t go anywhere without seeing decorations, hearing the same music over and over and over, TV specials, etc. Many Jews therefore have tried to “compete” by expanding Hannukkah – decorations, gifts, songs, etc. – so that their children wouldn’t feel “left out” of the Christmas extravaganza.
What WERE the effects ascribed? Certainly not the dazzling object of a million Christmas cards. Whatever it was, it was so small an event that Herod’s own astrologers hadn’t noticed it.
One thing I’ve wondered. King David’s symbol is called a star in English. Could the star of Bethlehem be a metaphor for the child? Does the double meaning work in the original language? Or is it just a quirk of translation?
Yes. Unlike most Jewish holidays, the events it commemorates aren’t even in the Jewish Bible (though they are in the Roman, Greek, and Anglican bibles).
If you’re Eastern Orthodox (more inclined to recognize Epiphany, instead) or Puritan, yes. But mainstream Western Christianity has had Christmas fairly high for a long time.
One thing we can deduce from Matthew is that the Star was female.
It led the wise men to Jerusalem, but they had to stop and ask directions before continuing on to Bethlehem. It then led them right to the house Jesus was in.
So it knew his street address, but not his city.
A male star would have insisted it knew everything.
Well, the Hebrew is “shield of David,” not “star of David.” And in both Aramaic and Hebrew at the time of Jesus, the word for “star” meant the shiny thing up in the sky, not a celebrity or the person with the lead in an ancient Roman movie.
I believe (but haven’t looked it up) that the term “star” to mean celebrity arose in English in the early 1900s and was, in fact, from the film industry.
My cousin’s JW wife says it was October (she said the exact date, but I forget), and was very certain about it. You can’t both be right!
(Personally, does it really matter when he was born? Christmas celebrates him and his birth, but it doesn’t have to be on his actual birth date. Heck, with all the calendar adjustments of the past 2000 years, even if he was born on December 25, we aren’t celebrating it on that date any more. (Which is why Eastern Orthodox Christmas is in early January.))
Makes sense, any schmuck can be born. It takes the Son of God to rise from the dead, and that’s what sets Christianity apart, what makes it unique.
I think Christmas is major in the same way the minor Jewish holiday of Hannukah is major, if you want to make a holiday all about gifts and celebration and food and revelry and songs, pick one of the major ones. You’ll notice there’s a stark contrast between a minor holiday like Hannukah and a major one like Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur, those are all pretty much “played straight”. In Christianity, while many devout Christians don’t have a problem with decking the halls, presents, carols, or even Santa at Christmas, Easter is a lot more solemn.
*Tryggve Mettinger argues that there is a scholarly consensus that the category is inappropriate.[18] The chief criticism charges it with reductionism, insofar as it subsumes a range of disparate myths under a single category and ignores important distinctions. Marcel Detienne argues that it risks making Christianity the standard by which all religion is judged, since death and resurrection are more central to Christianity than many other faiths.[19] Jonathan Z. Smith, a scholar of comparative religions, writes the category is “largely a misnomer based on imaginative reconstructions and exceedingly late or highly ambiguous texts.”[
*
The original is in Greek, for pity’s sake. And the word is ἀστήρ, which definitely means “star” although one known extended meaning is “celebrity” (and the English “star” meaning “leading actor” goes back at least to the 1820s).
But, be that as it may, the “metaphor for the child” meaning would mean an extreme wresting of the sense of the four sentences:[ul]
[li]Matthew 2:2[/li]Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
[li]Matthew 2:7[/li]Then Herod, when he had privily called the wise men, enquired of them diligently what time the star appeared.
[li]Matthew 2:9[/li]When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.
[li]Matthew 2:10[/li]When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.