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.

      As a preliminary, while it is traditionally taken that the Herod mentioned during the nativity accounts in the Gospels was Herod the Great, it actually never says that. It only says "Herod." Now, "Herod" was a family name, not a given name. It was used much like "Caesar" was used. No one would have said "Caesar" during the reign of Augustus or Tiberius and meant "Julius Caesar" unless they were specifically talking about Julius Caesar. They would have meant the current "Caesar." The same is true for "Herod." Herod the Great was already dead by the time Jesus was born, and Herod Archelaus had been made king over the Kingdom of Judea by Caesar after his father's death.

      Now, first, the year of Jesus' birth. Luke's Gospel is actually very specific. He says that it was during the census when Quirinius was Governor, or Legate, of Syria. Quirinius was appointed Legate of Syria in 6 CE and his first act was to take a census of the new provinces which resulted from the breakup of the Kingdom of Judea. 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. Caesar Augustus removed Archelaus and sent him into exile. Then, Rome divided Judea into four provinces or districts 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 in the incorporation of the newly formed provinces for the Roman government. There is no other census recorded while Quirinius was Legate of Syria from 6 CE to 12 CE. So, the year Jesus was born was 6 CE.

     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 approximately May 1st, 6 CE. The hard date for His crucifixion (for various reasons) is Friday, April 3rd, 33 CE. 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).

A Ramble About "Home"

 Home and family are where you feel like you belong. They're where you feel safe, and those around you can be trusted to support you just like you support them. They're where no one is left behind or forgotten.

     Over the three years Jesus' apostles, disciples, and their families were together, they became both home and family each one to the other, and Jesus Himself was not only Teacher to them all, but just as much of a brother, older or younger to them all, and even a kind of father figure to those younger than Himself. They cared about Him and He about them. They were there for Him and He was there for them. He was never aloof or distant from them, and while there were times He needed time alone, they respected that and looked out for Him all the same. He was personable, vulnerable, had an easy smile, and always kindness in His eyes. To those who were cruel, those eyes became saddened and unflinching, but no less kind, as though there was a pleading in them to turn around immediately.

     As time went on, and especially after His resurrection, they began not only addressing Him as "didaskalos" or "epistata," that is, "Teacher," but also as "kurios," "owner," or as most know it, "Lord," because of what they saw and heard from Him, and the sheer command He held over everything, though He did not lord it over anyone or anything. There was just no question as to His position in the grand scheme of things, and especially after they saw Him risen from the dead, demonstrating His power and authority over the lord of death himself. There was no better word or title to give Him. But you wouldn't know it just from interacting with Him. He was everyone's best friend, beloved older brother, and the person whom you just naturally trusted the most. When you talked to Him, He made you feel like you were the only person there other than Him, and He listened. For women, He was safe. He felt safe to be around. He never looked at anyone in a way that would make the feel unsafe from Him. He had an easy sense of humor as well, and laughed easily when they were all together.

     Jesus Christ was home for them, and He felt like home for them and for anyone who spoke with Him and got to know Him, even if they couldn't quite put their finger on it. Those who turned away from him or actively worked against Him felt it too, and were terrified by it. It was their fear that made them so antagonistic towards Him. He naturally drew people to Himself with the welcoming light of His "homeness", and this scared those who couldn't comprehend His sheer goodness so much that they saw Him as a threat to be destroyed.

     After His ascension, His disciples and apostles felt like home to each other, and to those around them because He shone through them. It was He who continued to draw people through those whom He inhabited and lived out through. And those who interacted with them noticed, and either were drawn to that home, or again tried to destroy what scared them so much.

     This is the mark of a disciple, Jesus' homeness being seen and felt through them. This is the mark of His genuine grouping of followers, whether or not those who interact with them feel like they've come home.

More Musings on Reincarnation

 "We all change when you think about it. We're all different all through our lives. And that's okay. That's good. You've got to keep moving. As long as you remember all the people that you used to be." - The 11th Doctor, Doctor Who "The Time of the Doctor"

I've been reflecting again on reincarnation. I realize that many folks will take objection to even its mention, but I think there are some important things to take from it even if you don't accept a literal reincarnation of the soul from one body to another.

     One of the big red flags I think most folks get when listening to or watching an interview with someone who claims to be reincarnated is that their whole identity seems to become wrapped up in it. It's as if the past incarnation of their soul suddenly becomes the only personality or person which matters to them, and who they were up until the point they learned of their past life no longer makes a difference to them. This hyperfocus and preoccupation becomes an unhealthy thing psychologically.

     Why is this? Because while this may be who the person "was," it's not who they "are" right now in the present moment. A person may have been a 5th century blacksmith in France in a past life, for example, but in this life, from the time they were born up until they learned of that past life, they accrued other experiences, language, history, relationships, and so on. They may or may not even be the same gender. It may have been the same soul as the French blacksmith, but it is not the same person, nor should it be. That French blacksmith might, in some way, have contributed to who the person is now, but they are still a different person altogether, and they should be. The French blacksmith did not know what the new person knows, did not see what the new person sees, and did not experience what the new person experienced.

     The same is true of a person just within the one life, the one incarnation, they might have. The person I was at 5 years old was very different from who I am at 47 years old. The same is true of the person I was at 20 years old. I may have had the same name, the same parents, and so on, but I can rightfully say that the person I was at 20 and the person I am now at 47 are two completely different men. We think differently, we have different goals, different relationships, and who I am at 47 has had many, many more experiences, learning, and growing which would shock and probably horrify who I was at 20. Given that every cell in the human body is replaced every seven years, I don't even technically have the same body I did at 20 years old, and with time, age, and experiences, even my DNA has probably somewhat changed.

     Doctor Who, as a fictional character, literally changes into a different person each time he regenerates even as he retains the memories of each past regeneration. But the point the 11th Doctor makes is a good one. We all change and become different people than we used to be over time. No one of us is ever the same person twice from moment to moment, even if each change is gradual or miniscule. And as he said, that's good. You have to keep moving forward. It does no good to hold on to who you used to be, and resist changing and growing. It's a fight against both nature and time which you will lose. Where the creation is concerned, that which does not change, dies, or was never alive to begin with. Even the rocks change as they're exposed to the elements over time. Coal changes to diamond given time, heat, and pressure.

     Whether a person has been literally reincarnated or not, it's never a good or healthy thing to try and return to the person you used to be. The 20 year old cannot return to being 5, neither the 40 year old to 20.

     As the Doctor said, "You have to keep moving forward, as long as you remember all the people you used to be." Knowing who we were and where we've been helps us understand those components of ourselves in a richer and more full picture as long as we recognize that we are no longer those people, and cannot hold on to them. The goal of life with respect to this is growth, understanding, maturity, and the wisdom which comes from those experiences the soul has had whether it fully remembers them or not.

     While who we used to be in the past must be remembered and learned from, they must also be let go of to make way for who we are right now in the present, and who we will be in the future.

A Theory of the Relationship of the Soul to the Brain, and Memory

      I had an interesting thought for an alternative theory of memory. What if the brain was more like a Chromebook than a Desktop? That is, what if the soul or "psyche" was stored "in the cloud" as opposed to "on the device"? It's been fairly well known that the storage of memory in the brain is still something of a mystery as, while different parts of the brain are clearly dedicated to motor control, sensory inputs, cognitive processing, threat assessment, and so on; there yet remains to be found a memory center of the brain, that is, a dedicated storage device or "hard disk". In this case, the hardware of the brain would maintain a constant connection (possibly due to quantum entanglement?) to the majority of the storage and software of the soul (except perhaps a kind of "BIOS" which allows the brain to function and connect in a minimal way) which is held "in the cloud," the brain itself writing, rewriting, and adding to that software throughout the person's life.

     The theory of memory comes in because the soul, potentially being eternal and therefore not subject to the motion of time in and of itself, is simultaneously present at all points of that person's existence. The soul itself is still present in what the brain, being subject to the motion of time, considers the past. The further through time the brain moves away from a certain moment, the harder it is to remember because all conditions around it, including the structure and makeup of the brain itself, are dynamic and constantly in flux as they are subject to the motion of time. 

     Those memories which are associated with strong emotion, and in particular survival emotions, are retained the longest and sharpest because those have the biggest imprint on the soul, that is, the soul is still being forced to contend with them by the brain at the moment they are happening. As a person changes over time, some memories are harder to recall because the brain itself has changed so much that it can no longer process that software as cleanly or as accurately as it does in the moment when it happens.

     This might also, hypothetically, allow for the idea of reincarnation as well, and why the brain frequently does not synchronize with the previous brain's events and experiences stored with the soul. As I have written before, the brain needs common symbols and frames of reference in order to process information. The soul is still present in that distant past, but because of the extreme differences physically, culturally, linguistically, and so on, the most which can be processed with any accuracy is emotions and feelings, which then the person in this life has no idea where they come from. It might also explain why there are more accounts of very young children being able to remember details from a past life which are more difficult to recall by adults later in life. And the more recent the past life, the more linguistically and culturally similar the past life, the more clear details which can be remembered. In particular, I remember a recent article (CNN I think), within the last year, about a very young boy in the South (3 or 4 years old) who began talking about the murder of his mother's brother as though it had happened to him, and who pointed out the murderer in question.

     This is just a hypothesis, and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But it is an intriguing concept. As to what the "cloud" is that the soul might be stored in, my thought is that the soul would be stored and held within God, connecting with the brain within the body, but never actually changing "location." Again, just a hypothesis.

How do you Forgive the Deepest Hurts?

     How do you forgive the deepest hurt committed against you? By choosing to love the person who committed it. By choosing to see the person as someone with their own hurts, their own history, and saying, "I understand why you are doing what you are doing, and I cannot say that, in your shoes, I wouldn't have chosen the same path." Love, the word actually used in the Greek text, has little to do with romantic attachment or familial affection, and everything to do with choosing to have compassion for the other person.

     How do you forgive a murderer, a rapist, a person who has become a monster? You look deeply into that person and recognize that they were not always so. You look at the experiences of the child they were, the neurological considerations of their biology, the education and what they know or knew at the time; you look at everything and really ask yourself, would I have done any differently were I them?
We always want to say, "Yes, of course I would have done differently." Ah, but you are a different person, with a different past history, a different brain chemistry, a different set of learning experiences from them. Of course you would have done differently, you were never that person.
     The only path through the bitterness, the anger, and the hurt which we feel is by choosing to love the other person. By setting that person as the object of our compassion. Fear is always the root of things like anger, frustration, hurt, and bitterness. But Love tosses fear outside, always, and because it tosses fear outside, things like anger, bitterness, and hatred are tossed with it. These cannot exist where there is no fear, and thus they cannot exist where love and compassion are present.
     Loving the other person isn't always about the other person, but it is always about ourselves. Loving the other person may change the other person, but it will change ourselves. The other person may or may not understand, or even have knowledge of this love. That is not always the point. They may be so twisted within themselves, and thus dangerous to themselves and others, that it may not matter whether they recognize it or not. Again, that is not the point. Loving the other person is about overcoming your own fear, your own anger, and your own hatred. If it overpowers theirs as well, so much the better.
Love always lets go. Fear always clings. Fear always holds on to wrongs, love always releases them into the void. It is because of fear we become either attached or averse; fear of loss of something we perceive as beneficial, or fear of gain of something we perceive as harmful. But attachment, either positive or negative, is always driven by fear.
     God loves and is love, but He holds no attachments. What need is there for Him to be attached to anything? All things depend on Him for their existence. Nothing is ever lost to Him, but is merely transformed.
     How do you overcome the fear, anger, and hatred from the most grievous of offenses? How do you forgive the one who has caused you the greatest suffering? By choosing to love them, and letting the fear go because of that love.

No One Comes to the Father Except Through Me

      There is no salvation outside of Jesus Christ. This is one of the most basic, foundational understandings of the Christian faith. Jesus Himself said in John 14 that “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through Me.” We all have a pretty good idea of what traditional Christianity means when it proclaims this. That is, no one goes to heaven unless they, at the very least, profess belief in Jesus Christ.

     But is this what He meant?

     Really, the concept of salvation meaning going to heaven as we now think of it wasn’t within the worldview of the ancient world. The word which we translate as “heaven” actually just means “sky” in nearly every case, and the “sky” is where the divine dwelt in virtually every ancient pantheon (the Greek gods dwelt on Mt. Olympus, but that was still basically in the sky as far as they were concerned). It was where the divine dwelt, but no mortal living or deceased ever set foot there. Mortal souls descended into the underworld to be judged and sent to either paradise, torment, or someplace in between depending on the cultural worldview. The idea that a mortal soul would dwell with the divine after death was foreign to everyone in the first century, either Jew or pagan.

     The concept of a mortal soul going to the realm of the divine after death stems from what Paul says, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” That is, for those who are joined to Christ as part of His body, where He is, they are, and where they are, He is. And so, of course when one of these endures physical death he or she is automatically with Jesus Christ, because they are joined as one thing, one body. It is not a prize to be won, per se, but a fact of their union with Jesus Christ. But the hope of the follower of the Way of Jesus Christ was not even this, but the resurrection and transformation of the physical body as immortal like His body after the resurrection.

     But was this actually the salvation Jesus spoke of? It was certainly the end result, but the salvation He spoke of throughout His life was the rescue from our common malfunction which in Greek is called “hamartia.” Not the consequences of that malfunction, but the malfunction itself. The Way He taught and modeled to His disciples was about letting go of your own will, attachments, and desires, and surrendering all of it to the Father so that He did not say or do anything which the Father did not say or do through Him. It was a voluntary cooperation between Himself and the Father, not forced. And on the night before He was crucified, He explained it in really no uncertain terms that just as He surrendered Himself and remained in the Father, so His disciples were to surrender themselves and remain in Him, so that it would be the Father acting and speaking through the Son, and the Son acting and speaking through the disciple what the Father acted and spoke through Him.

     Paul also elaborates on this heavily in his letters, detailing the internal workings of this salvation from our own malfunction, explaining that the malfuncton itself is both hereditary and biological in nature. And only those who submit themselves, or enslave themselves, to the Spirit of Christ with whom they have been joined will be able to function, to speak or act, apart from that malfunction because it will in fact be the Spirit of Christ, which is without the malfunction, speaking and acting through them.

     So, the salvation which was first proclaimed had very little to do with the afterlife and everything to do with what we do and how we function in this life, in these mortal and physical bodies. It was meant as a final solution to the problem of the human malfunction which, as it was voluntary, would not violate our free will. As long as we voluntarily cooperated with the Spirit of Christ within us, our malfunction would be rendered inert and unmanifested. Once we chose to not cooperate, it would manifest itself again.

     And it is this salvation, this voluntary possession and control by the Spirit of Christ which bypasses our own malfunctioning biology, which is impossible without Jesus Christ. There are things like meditation and philosophy which can mitigate our malfunctioning behavior, rules and laws which can restrain harmful behavior, but it is only this cooperation with the Spirit of Christ which can bypass the malfunctioning source of behavior altogether. It is this salvation which He and His Apostles taught first and foremost, and everything else which happens including the union with Jesus Christ as a part of His body, including being present with Him wherever He is whether in the body or outside of it, and including the final transformative resurrection to be like Him in every way is a byproduct, a consequence of this submission and cooperation with the Spirit of Christ within us.

     And it is this salvation, this rescue from our own malfunctioning selves, which is the most important to understand, to preach, and to practice. If we understanding nothing else about salvation, if we understand nothing else about theology, if we are going to call ourselves true disciples of Jesus Christ then we must, absolutely must, understand this.

A Ramble about Human Language and Theology

The problem with doing theology and then comparing notes with others is that human language is completely inadequate for the task. Any human language. We could literally be describing the exact same thing, but use such wildly differing descriptions that we argue militantly about what we've observed and experienced. Why is this? Because of what language is, and how it works at the most basic level.

     A language, as such, is essentially a group of symbols whose meaning has been mutually agreed upon by two or more parties. This is true whether those symbols are composed of sounds which can be heard, or written, drawn, or engraved pictures or characters which can be seen. Thus in English, we have the written symbol "bird," which we have agreed represents a vocalized labial stop, an unconstrained sound, a liquid sound made with the tongue curled against the hard palate of the mouth, and a vocalized dental stop. Further we have agreed that both written symbol and the sounds it represents themselves represent a warm blooded two legged vertebrae with wings, feathers, and a beak, which may or may not be capable of self-powered flight. But for the Chinese speaker, the audible symbol is something like "niao," and the visual symbol is something else altogether.

     What these symbols which we have agreed upon represent come from the things we experience with our five senses. What we have smelled, what we have touched, what we have tasted, what we have seen, and what we have heard all become symbols stored in our brains. Our brains then use these symbols to process other symbols and information which we encounter.

     The human brain however, can only process and describe something using the symbols it has, and the symbols it has are limited to our three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. A concept like Eternity, even when experienced as Eternity, must still be filtered through those symbols which the brain has at its disposal. As a result, if one's internal set of symbols, or internal language doesn't match someone else's internal language exactly, one person will not fully understand what the other person is trying to describe and may misunderstand it completely.

      One analogy of this deficiency might be the color "blue." Most ancient languages, Greek in particular, have no word for "blue." This was not because "blue" did not exist, but they simply did not experience it as a separate color. In order to describe it, they used terms like "wine dark" or "the color of sapphires" and other similar descriptions. As a result, this could lead to confusion about what color someone might have been trying to describe a thing. And even with English having this symbol "blue" there can still be some confusion as some people see and experience color differently from another, and of course there are different shades, and still, one person might swear something was "green" while another will swear it is in fact "blue."

     Spiritual realities take place in more dimensions than we as human beings can experience, and because we cannot experience them, we have no symbols to accurately describe things within them. With no common frame of reference, no common "lexicon" if you will, there is no way to really describe with any accuracy what one sees and hears when the veil is lifted for that person. We have the English symbol "Eternity," for example, but we have no functional, agreed upon experience to attach to it, and so we resort to different descriptions like "timeless," "the ever present now," "all of time happening at once," "outside of time and space," and so on. And none of these descriptions presents a clear and accurate meaning to our brains because our brains can't experience it through their inputs, the five senses.

     And so, when someone does have an experience with God where the veil is pulled back, they fumble and grasp for ways to describe it. And sometimes, the way they describe things is different from the accepted descriptions we have agreed upon through study, opinion, and mutual discussion whether or not we have had such an experience ourselves.

     Another analogy which comes to mind is the old one about the blind men and the elephant. There are a group of blind men who are trying to describe an elephant, but they of course cannot see the animal. So one describes the elephant like a rope, feeling its tail. One describes it like a wall, feeling its side. Still another describes it like a tree feeling its leg, and still another describes it like a hose feeling its trunk. All are attempting to describe the elephant accurately, but are unable to do so because they can only describe what they've experienced using the symbols of things they have themselves previously experienced.

     This is why attempting to maintain a strict dogmatic theology, a strict description barring all others, simply doesn't work when dealing with the Reality. This is the reason why one's personal theology must always be held as being able to adapt, change, and grow as one experiences God in different ways more and more.