The whole world celebrates Jesus’s birthday on the night from 24th December to 25th. But did you know that is probably not even the day he was born? So when was it really? Listen and you will know…
Hi and Welcome to the advent edition of my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. In this edition, I bring you a new short Christmas-themed episode every day of December until Christmas. If you want to read the transcript of this episode, click the link in the description!
Today we will discuss the real birth date of Jesus since it is probably not what you thought!
Did you know that the New Testament of the Bible doesn’t mention Jesus’s birth at all? And not only the day is in question- also the year! There have been many, and by many, I mean A LOT of attempts to discover when exactly Jesus was born. I have read an academic paper on this topic where they mentioned these possible years of Jesus’s birth: 4 or 3 BC, April 19th or 20th in 2 BC, and others mentioning also the year 2 BC.
Some people had the idea to look at the date of Jesus’s death and then go back roughly 30 to 33 years. The problem with this is that the information of when exactly Jesus died is also a mystery. In the study I read, there were like 11 possible dates of Jesus’s death on the CROSS. So it doesn’t help at all. But in general, if we took into account this theory, Jesus would have been born somewhere around 6-7 BC.
As you can see, the fact that people cannot agree even on a year, the day is also in question. Most probably Jesus wasn’t born in the winter since realistically, shepherds taking care of their sheep wouldn’t be mentioned in the Bible because they wouldn’t have been shepherding when the weather was cold.
So why do we celebrate it on the 25th? This probably comes from the Pagan celebration of the winter solstice (in Czech: pohanské oslavy zimního slunovratu) which ends on the 25th.
So when was Jesus born? Long story short: no one knows. But it wasn’t on the day we all thought.
Sources:
Blumell, Lincoln H., and Thomas A. Wayment. „When Was Jesus Born?: A Response to a Recent Proposal.“ BYU Studies Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 3, 2012, pp. 53–81. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43039893. Accessed 14 Oct. 2023.
Lucey, Candice. „When Was Jesus Born? Bible Facts and Historical Evidence.“ Christianity.Com, Christianity.com, 20 Oct. 2022, www.christianity.com/wiki/jesus-christ/when-was-jesus-born.html.