“…little evidence of any kind of notable festivities at that time…”? We present to you the Roman celebration of Saturnalia.
One would not encounter newborn ewes any time before mid-February. Christmas–as the birthday of young master Jesus–is yet another in a line of post-hoc rationalizations to retrofit the cultural belief system of (most) Christians to some semblence of alignment with the statements in the Christian bible.
Stranger
I don’t think I overstated Cecil’s point.
Yes, he calls it a hypothesis, but he also calls it “the most tenable hypothesis,” which means that it’s the one with the best evidence to support it (so far).
This means that this is the answer that Cecil is going with, bar any additional evidence to the contrary.
In a matter such as this, that’s as good as it gets.
Saturnalia was quite a bit earlier in the year. See my cite from the Catholic Ency which dismisses the Saturnalia hypothesis out of hand. By the time the Christians wanted a Holiday for Christ’s birth, Saturnalia was pretty well a dead letter, and had- to a extent- been replaced by Natalis Invicti, which was then replaced by Xmas.
Spiff- I agree it’s a tenable hypothesis. In fact it’s likely the best out there. But- it’s not a fact as is commonly stated.
Freddy, I think that Julius reset the Calendar so that the Solstice was on the 21st (as is correct). And, it does drift by about a day a century under the Julian Calendar. By the time of Pope Gregory it was on Jan 8th.
It drifts earlier each century, not later. At the time of Pope Gregory it was on 12/11. The Gregorian conversion skipped days; it didn’t add days.
Nowhere else in John does the author or narrator of the gospel say that Jesus is born in Bethlehem, nor is anyone else quoted as saying “But Jesus was born in Bethlehem”. Bethlehem is only mentioned in John in that one passage. Thus, the Gospel of John doesn’t come right out and say “Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem”, but it does imply that. (Or implies that as far as the author of the Gospel of John knows, he wasn’t.)