Quick question about the year of Jesus' birth...

Ashles

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Ashles
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Hello,

I dug out an old book the other day "Every Boy's Handbook"

It had a list of important historical events. It mentioned 4 BC as "actual year of Jesus Christ's birth", and I was thinking how this seems to be commonly accepted.

But why? From what I have read elsewhere there seem to be few/no verifiable records of Jesus existence.

So how has the 4BC date gained such a hold as fact?
 
Good luck with that Ashles.

I am curious about the answer to that myself.
 
I don't remember the exact reason, but it has to do with the dates that Cyrenius was governor of Syria, and Herod was King of Judea. I don't recall the exact reasoning.
 
Well, the Bible very clearly claims that Jesus was born during the reign of Emperor Herod. But since we have very good historical sources telling us that Herod in fact died in 4 BCE, most Christians agree that Jesus can't have been born later than that.

I'm not sure why they would choose 4 BCE, I've also seen claims about 7 BCE I think.

Also the date is similarly surrounded by weird speculation. For example, I find one page claiming that a winter birth would be unlikely as the gospel is quite clear that Jesus was born during a census, and no such census would be ordered in the winter.
http://www.new-life.net/chrtms10.htm

But all this ignores the complete lack of historic evidence that there was such a census at all. And it seems quite unlikely that such a major source of important data would not have been preserved as various quotes in all sorts of historical documents.

I think most of this speculation comes from the fact that the Gospel doesn't go well with what is known from established history about this period. Because it is a presupposition that Jesus *was* born, the Christians then try to fit as much as possible of the Gospel into something that doesn't completely go against established historical records.
 
I've seen 4 B.C. as the latest Jesus could have been born, based on the death of Herod, as others have pointed out. The earliest would have been 6-7 B.C., based on Matthew 2:16, where Herod orders the death of all boys in Bethlehem 2 years old and younger.

Marc
 
Marc L said:
The earliest would have been 6-7 B.C., based on Matthew 2:16, where Herod orders the death of all boys in Bethlehem 2 years old and younger.
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Doesn't necessarily follow. Herod the Great could have issued that order at any point in his reign, up to and including when he first took over in 37BCE (or something like that).

If Jesus was two years old in 37BCE, He might have been born in 40BCE.....
 
By the time you put together Herod's reign/death, the star of Bethlehem, a basic misinterpretation of Jesus' age at death and a few other goodies, you actually come out to about 12(?) BC. I just happened to be reading about this last night (concidence? I think not!) and the the most specific factor is a visitation by Halley's Comet; no other contemporary astronomical event comes close in prominence.

However, let's not forget that, while the Magi may have been astrologers/astronomers, the Gospel writers almost certainly were not, and wrote at least a generation after the event from heresay; chances are they got a few details wrong (assuming they got something right, in the first place).
 
How could Jesus have been born at any time B.C.? Wouldn't the year of his birth by definition become the Year 1 (by the Christian calendar anyway)? And how confused does everything get when you add in the conversion from the Gregorian to the Julian calendar?

Yours, Baffled
 
Beady said:
BHowever, let's not forget that, while the Magi may have been astrologers/astronomers, the Gospel writers almost certainly were not, and wrote at least a generation after the event from heresay; chances are they got a few details wrong (assuming they got something right, in the first place).
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:D *lol*

All I've read so far (from authors assuming Jesus in fact was a historical figure) resulted in a birth in the year 7 B.C.

Weird, isn't it? "Hello, my name is Jesus Christ. Dunno about my last name. And I was born 7 B.C., that is, 7 years before me."
 
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