When Was Jesus Born?

      When was Jesus actually born? This is a question which comes up sooner or later around this time of year for obvious reasons. Traditionally, we celebrate His birth on December 25th, and believe our calendar was set to begin with the year of His birth.

     In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter. He was born, and that is what matters. It changes nothing about who He is if His birth date wasn't 12/25/0001 (there is no year 0000). There are no major doctrines of the faith in jeopardy if He wasn't born at midnight between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This being said, I'd like to offer up the fruits of my own study into this question.

      First, the year. Luke's Gospel is actually very specific. He says that it was during the census when Quirinius was Governor, or Legate, of Syria. This census occurred in 6CE. It was taken when Rome assumed direct governance over Judea after deposing Herod Archelaus for his brutality towards his own people. In short, like most of their client states, they had allowed Judea to govern itself with its own monarchy up from the time Pompey imposed order upon it until then. That changed when Herod Archelaus had been so brutal towards his own people that a delegation of Judeans went to Rome to beg Caesar to depose him. This wasn't the only problem Rome had with Judea governing itself, but it was the last straw for Caesar. Rome divided Judea and imposed direct rule through a procurator over the provinces of Iudaea, Samaria, and the Coastline leaving Galilee and Idumea to Herod Antipas and his family. The census was taken as a matter of course for the Roman government. So, the year Jesus was born was 6CE.

     Now, for the month. Luke says that Gabriel told Mary about Jesus' birth in the sixth month. A reasonable assumption can be made that this is referring to the Jewish lunar calendar which is composed of months of 29 and 30 days on average. The sixth month in the Jewish calendar is Elul, which corresponds to roughly August/September. An average human gestation period is forty weeks or 280 days. Doing the math for that year on the Jewish Calendar would put his birth date around the middle of Iyar, possibly the 15th. On the Gregorian calendar, this would be right around the end of April or the beginning of May, roughly May 1st.

     So, a more likely date of birth for Jesus Christ would be May 1st, 0006. The hard date for His crucifixion (for various reasons) is April 3rd, 0033. This would have put him at right around 27 give or take when He died and was resurrected. (Yes, Luke says He was about 30 when He began to preach, but "about" 30 could be anywhere from 25 to 34; and Luke probably didn't know exactly how old He was).