Jesus born before Christ? An even more frequent question received from readers concerns the year of Jesus birth. Few subjects are fraught with so much confusion and misunderstanding. This immediately brings up a preliminary question:How could Jesus have been born in a year B.C.-before Christ- as most authorities suggest ? It would seem to be a contradiction in terms! First,understand that the manner of reckoning time according to B.C. and A.D. was devised hundreds off years after Jesus birth. It was invented in the sixth century A.D. by a monk in Italy named Dionysius misunderstood the time of the reign of Herod the Great,king of Judea. So he reckoned the birth of Jesus to have occurred in December of the year 753 AUC (aburbe condita)-from foundation of the city [of Rome] In the past ages,time was often reckoned using the foundation of Rome as the starting point for counting. Thus,in Dionysius new system,January 1,754 AUC,became january 1,-ad 1 (anno Domini,in the year of the Lord) That is,he assumed Jesus was born on December 25th,just a week before January 1,A.D. 1....Later it was discovered that Dionysius had been incorrect in his reckoning of the reign of Herod and hence of the commencement of the Christian era. Jesus had been born some years earlier that Dionysius had thought. But by then,the new chronology was in general use and it was too late to change! It had continued in use through out most of the world to the present day. With that understanding we can now proceed to determine the year of Jesus birth. There are several ways of doing so. Notice,first,this ancient prophecy from the book of Daniel:Know therefore and understand,that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks,and threescore and two weeks... (Daniel 9:25) The commandment or decree to restore and to build Jerusalem was made in the seventh year of the reign of Axtaxerxes 1,king of ancient Persia (Ezra 7:8)-according to the autumn reckoning of the Jews,in 457 B.C. The archangel Gabriel told Daniel that there would be a total of 69 prophetic weeks from that tome until the public appearance of the Messiah. Sixty-nine weeks is equivalent to 483 days (69x7). A day of prophetic fulfillment is a year in actual time (numbers 14:34;Ezekiel 4:6)So 483 prophetic days (69 prophetic weeks) is 483 years. Simple arithmetic now takes over. Four hundred eighty three years from 457B.C.(the year of the decree) brings us to A.D. 27-the year when Jesus,the Messiah,began his public ministry . ( In calculating this,be aware that you must add 1 to compensate for the fact that there is no year 0). Now consider further:It is generally that Jesus entered upon his ministry in the autumn of the year,immediately after his baptism. (His ministry lasted 31/2 years,ending in the spring at Passover time.) in Luke 3:23 we learn that Jesus was about 30 years old when he began his ministry. If he was about 30 years old in the autumn of A.D.27,then he must have been born in 4 B.C. But there is yet further proof. Students of the Bible recognize that Jesus was born before the death of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:15,19). When did Herod die? The first century A.D. Jewish historian Flavius Josephes,in Antiquities of the Jews (book XVII,chapter vi) ,tells of an eclipse of the moon late in Herod`s reign. Solar and Lunar eclipses of the ancient near east by Kudlek and Mickler.It`s tables reveal that the lunar eclipse in question occurred on March 13,4 B.C. Further corroborating this,Josephus also records (XVII,viii,1)that at his death. Herod had reigned 37 years since he had been declared king by the Romans. That had occurred in 40 B.C.,a fact that Dionysius over looked. Herod`s death therefore took place late in in 4B.C.-more specifically ,according to a Jewish tradition,on the seventh day of the lunar month Kislev in the Hebrew calendar (equivalent to November /December on the Roman calendar)-shortly after Jesus birth in the early autumn of 4 B.C. This is the only date that is consistent with all the provable facts.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 05:27:05 +0000
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