Why December 25th Was Chosen As Christs Birthday
The angel Gabriel announcing Marys conception by Paolo de Matteis 1712. This was part of the Feast of Annunciation celebrated by some Catholics on March 25th.
There is much debate on why December 25th was chosen as the day Jesus was born.
There is little Biblical evidence that reveals the date of Jesus birth. Luke 2:8 refers to shepherds in the fields suggesting Jesus birth took place in the spring when shepherds were with their flocks during lambing.
Maybe not coincidentally, John refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God .
Clement of Alexandria , an Egyptian Christian teacher, had cited May 20th and April 20th or 21st as possible dates of Christs birth fitting the spring theory.
The most popular reason why December 25th was chosen is because the church was Christianizing the pagan celebration of Sol Inviticus a sun-god that Roman Emperor Aurelian had introduced on that date in 274 AD
However, in his article, How December 25, became Christmas, historian Andrew McGowan suggests December 25th was selected for a much different reason.
He notes that it wasnt until later the 12th century that Christian writers first suggested the date was chosen deliberately to overrule the sun-god festival.
McGowan says early Christian writers from the 4th century noted December 25th was the date of the sun-god holiday but considered Christs birth falling on the same day as coincidental.
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How Old Would Adam And Eve Be Right Now
They would be the same age of the earth, which is about 6000 years old.
Who was Jesus father?
Summary of Jesus life
He was born to Joseph and Mary sometime between 6 bce and shortly before the death of Herod the Great in 4 bce. According to Matthew and Luke, however, Joseph was only legally his father.
What is Jesus real name? Jesus name in Hebrew was Yeshua which translates to English as Joshua.
How old was Jesus when died? The great majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of three persons of the Trinity.
The Three Pilgrimage Festivals
In the legend, Simon Peter and the sages try to steer the believers away from keeping the three pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles in the same manner as the rest of the Jewish community. They accomplish this by assigning Messianic significance to each festival connected with Yeshua of Nazareth:
You will not celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread but instead celebrate the day of his death. And in the place of the festival of Shavuot, celebrate the forty days from his execution until after his ascension to the firmament. And in the place of the festival of Sukkot, you will celebrate the day of his birth, and on the eighth day from his birth, you will celebrate his circumcision.
The fictitious story attempts to credit the leadership of the Jewish community with the creation of Christianity, but what kind of Christianity is this? Church history tells us that second-century Christians did observe the day of the Masters death on Passover , and that all Christians observed the day of his ascension forty days after his resurrection, but who celebrated the day of his birth on Sukkot? Who celebrated the day of his circumcision on the eighth day of Sukkot?
Footnotes
Topics:
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Titles And Other Names For Jesus
In addition to “Christ”, Jesus is affectionately called by various other names or titles throughout the New Testament. Some of them include:
- Almighty
- Alpha and Omega
- Advocate
- Bread of Life
- Beloved Son of God
- The Bridegroom
- Faithful and True
- Good Shepherd
- Great High Priest
- Head of the Church
- Holy Servant
- Indescribable Gift
- Judge
- King of Kings
- Lamb of God
- The Life
- Light of the World
- Lion of the Tribe of Judah
- Lord of All
- Mediator
- One Who Sets Free
- Our Hope
- Peace
- Risen Lord
- The Rock
- Sacrifice for Our Sins
- Savior
- Son of Man
- Son of the Most High
- Supreme Creator Over All
- True Vine
- The Truth
- The Way
- The Bread of Life
When Was Jesus Really Born Not Dec 25
Around the world, Christians anxiously await the arrival of Christmas, a joyous day to celebrate the birth of Jesus. But more than two millennia after Jesus’ momentous ministry, even Christians can’t agree on his birthday. In Catholic and Protestant traditions, Christmas is celebrated Dec. 25, while Orthodox Christians in countries like Russia, Greece and Egypt celebrate Christmas on .
Yet according to historians and biblical scholars, even those traditional dates are debatable. The Bible’s most detailed account of the Nativity is in the New Testament’s Gospel of Luke, but even that “orderly” narrative complete with highly specific references to Roman rulers and a worldwide census fails to name a day, month or even a year for Jesus’ birth.
“We have this modern obsession with dates and chronological order, but the gospel writers were much more interested in theology than chronology,” says Ian Paul, a theologian, biblical scholar and author who blogs at his website Psephizo.
That said, Paul’s own best guess for the true date of Jesus’ birth is somewhere in September, based on a complex set of calculations related to the birth of John the Baptist, also mentioned in Luke. A fall date for Christmas makes sense when you consider that the shepherds were in the fields tending their flocks, a sign of mild weather. Paul says that by December, the Judean foothills outside of Bethlehem are cold enough to get snow.
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Date Of Birth Of Jesus
The date of birth of Jesus is not stated in the gospels or in any historical reference, but most biblical scholars assume a year of birth between 6 and 4 BC. The historical evidence is too incomplete to allow a definitive dating, but the year is estimated through three different approaches: by analyzing references to known historical events mentioned in the nativity accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, by working backward from the estimation of the start of the ministry of Jesus, and astrological or astronomical alignments. The day or season has been estimated by various methods, including the description of shepherds watching over their sheep.
Does The Date Of Jesus’ Birth Matter
Even if the global Christian community could decide with certainty that Christ was born on a different day, changing the date of Christmas worldwide would pose many problems. Selecting a new date for celebrating Christs birth would require massive adjustments at both commercial and institutional levels.
- School calendars and public holidays have been established to coincide with this time.
- The economies of developed nations rely on the financial boost provided during the Christmas season.
- Churches organize special events around this time.
- Families use this date as a reason to get together.
There is a benefit to fixing a date for Christmas day, even if it seems arbitrary. In an age where our fast-moving lives have wreaked havoc on our relationships, as Rick Warren said, and we feel disconnected from one another, celebrating Jesus birth unifies the church body both locally and at large.
Moreover, Christmas celebrations provide an opportunity to engage community members who might not otherwise attend church events. The day is set apart even in the hearts and minds of non-believers. Associating Christmas with light-hearted festivities might seem disrespectful in light of its true meaning, but the joy of singing familiar carols and lighting candles the sense of belonging and love connected to the holiday encourages many unbelievers to attend Christmas services where they might hear the gospel.
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Language Ethnicity And Appearance
Jesus grew up in Galilee and much of his ministry took place there. The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the 1st century AD include Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, with Aramaic being predominant. There is substantial consensus that Jesus gave most of his teachings in Aramaic in the Galilean dialect.
Modern scholars agree that Jesus was a Jew of 1st-century Palestine.Ioudaios in New Testament Greek is a term which in the contemporary context may refer to religion , ethnicity , or both. In a review of the state of modern scholarship, Amy-Jill Levine writes that the entire question of ethnicity is “fraught with difficulty”, and that “beyond recognizing that ‘Jesus was Jewish’, rarely does the scholarship address what being ‘Jewish’ means”.
The New Testament gives no description of the physical appearance of Jesus before his deathit is generally indifferent to racial appearances and does not refer to the features of the people it mentions. Jesus probably looked like a typical Jew of his time standing around 166 cm tall with a slim but slightly muscular build, olive-brown skin, brown eyes and short, dark hair. He also likely had a beard that was not particularly long or heavy. His clothing may have suggested poverty consisting of a mantle with tassels, a knee-length basic tunic and sandals.
Where The Date Of December 25 Came From
Early traditions claim that Yeshua was born in the spring. The oldest written records say he was born a hundred and ninety-four years, one month, thirteen days before the death of Commodus, which would work out to November 18.1 Some historians, in what is likely a massive misunderstanding of a Jewish tradition, insisted it was December 25 because our sages believed that tzaddikim died on their birthdates.2 Somehow, the Christian interpretation assumed the tradition was that great men died on their conception dates. According to their logic, if Yeshua died on March 25, as many believed, then that was his conception date, and therefore, he would have been born a full nine months later on December 25 .
Googling Jesus birth date was a good start, but it also made me realize these traditions are long-outdated assumptions. If I was going to find the actual date of Yeshuas birth, Id need more scientific evidence. Then I had a realization: the magi had followed a star from the East to find the newborn Messiah,3 and if the appearance of that particular star could be tracked down to a time frame, then ascertaining the birth date of Yeshua might be possible.
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Was Jesus A Real Person
ByNatalie Wolchoverpublished 14 April 11
Jesus Christ may be the most famous man who ever lived. But how do we know he did?
Most theological historians, Christian and non-Christian alike, believe that Jesus really did walk the Earth. They draw that conclusion from textual evidence in the Bible, however, rather than from the odd assortment of relics parading as physical evidence in churches all over Europe.
That’s because, from fragments of text written on bits of parchment to overly abundant chips of wood allegedly salvaged from his crucifix, none of the physical evidence of Jesus’ life and death hold up to scientific scrutiny.
Holy Hardware
In a documentary called “The Nails of the Cross,” set to air April 20 on the History Channel, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici tells the story of two nails allegedly discovered in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem. He presents circumstantial evidence that seems to suggest the rusty relics once nailed Jesus to the cross.
The tomb in which the nails were found is believed by some to be that of the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who presides over the trial of Jesus in the New Testament.
“If you look at the whole story historical, textual, archaeological they all seem to point at these two nails being involved in a crucifixion,” Jacobovici says in the film. “And since Caiaphas is only associated with Jesus’ crucifixion, you put two and two together and they seem to imply that these are the nails.”
Biblical blankets
Lead lies
Sacred scrolls
Jesus Wasn’t Born In ‘year 1’
Before we even get to the month and day debate, historians generally agree that we’ve got the year of Jesus’ birth all wrong. How can that be, though, if “year 1” on the Gregorian calendar was based on the year that Jesus was born?
The short answer is that the man who invented the idea of anno Domini for “Year of Our Lord” was off by several years. Even Pope Benedict XVI agreed in a 2012 book that Dionysius Exiguus, the sixth-century monk who first calculated the year of Jesus’ birth, miscounted, and that Jesus was likely born anywhere between 7 B.C. and 2 B.C.
One compelling reason for an earlier birth year is that the Bible mentions in several places that Jesus was born when Herod the Great was king of Judea. But Herod the Great supposedly died in 4 B.C.E., according to Flavius Josephus, the famed Roman-Jewish historian who lived in the first century C.E. If we take Josephus’s word for it, then Jesus must have been born at least four years earlier than our calendar says.
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The Angel Visits Joseph
When Marys soon-to-be husband found out about the pregnancy, he planned to break it off with Mary quietly. He was a good man who didnt want to shame her. But during the night he was visited in a dream by an angel who told him, Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins .
When Joseph woke up, he followed the angels advice and married Mary.
The Death Of King Herod
Some scholars believe that he was born between 6 B.C. and 4 B.C., based partly on the biblical story of King Herod the Great. In an attempt to kill Jesus, the king allegedly ordered the death of all male infants under the age of 2 who lived in the vicinity of Bethlehem, an event known as the Massacre of the Innocents. This occurred shortly before Herod’s own demise, a date which is still disputed. However, most scholars, including Peter Richardson and Amy Marie Fisher in their book “Herod: King of the Jews and Friend of the Romans: Second edition” , follow the date used by Roman historians, who believed that Herod died in 4 B.C.
But historians disagree about Herod’s actual year of death, and many have argued that the mass infanticide is nothing more than a legend. In his book “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” , biblical scholar and author Reza Aslan wrote that Herod’s massacre was “an event for which there exists not a shred of corroborating evidence in any chronicle or history of the time whether Jewish, Christian, or Roman.”
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Did Anyone Celebrate Birthdays In The Bible
The Few Mentions of Birthdays In the Old Testament, it talks about multiple Pharaohs celebrating their birthdays. In the New Testament, it talks about Herod celebrating his birthday. They had feasts, danced, ate, drank, and were merry. In Genesis 40 it talks about how the King made a feast for all his servants.
What The Bible Says About The Birth Of Jesus
Obviously, the New Testament is the best starting place for piecing together the most important facts about Jesus birth. Between the accounts in Matthew and Lukes Gospels, we can put together the following details:
- She had found favor with God .
- She would conceive and give birth to a son .
- Her son would be a significant part of Gods plan. He would occupy the throne of David and rule over Jacobs descendants .
- Her pregnancy would be caused by the Holy Spirit, and the child would be called the Son of God .
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Not Everyone Celebrates Christmas On December 25
Did you know that theres a large part of the church who celebrate Christmas on January 7?
Its true. Most Orthodox churches used the Julian calendar, which was created under the reign of Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. They never adopted the Gregorian calendar proposed by Pope Gregory in 1582.
In 1923, a revised version of the Julian calendar was introduced that harmonized Christmas with the Gregorian calendar, but it wasnt universally accepted by all Orthodox churchestypically those in central and eastern Europe.
Christmas Disguises Paganism As A Holy Day
The time of worship of the sun/Saturn on Saturnalia, culminated on December 25th. On the Julian calendar which the ancient Romans used, the winter solstice was on December 25th.
It is said that church leaders chose the date of December 25th to coincide with the pagan Roman festival marking the birthday of the unconquered sun, at the time of the winter solstice . Many scholars believe that this was done in order to make Christianity more meaningful to pagan converts . Of course, we know these apostate church leaders are not of our God, but are of the antichrist spirit.
The mistletoe, tree, lights, wreath and Santa all have pagan origins. Caroling was done in nakedness. Santa is the pagan god Odin.
False god Odin
The word holiday means holy day, but it is a false holiness rooted in pagan deity worship that is not of Jesus and God the Father.
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