When was Jesus of Nazareth born? Possible dates of birth according to the gospels
Christians around the world celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas. However, the actual date is a mystery as the historical data doesn’t match up.
The birth of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the most important historical, social and cultural events in history. The celebration of his birth is one of the most deeply rooted traditions, being a universal figure for humanity, especially in the religious sphere.
For centuries, December 25 has been set aside to recognize and honor the life of the prophet of Christianity around the world. In short, the beginning of a journey that would transform lives and teach lessons of love, compassion and redemption.
When was Jesus of Nazareth born? Possible dates of birth according to the gospels
However, according to the latest work carried out by historians, it is more likely that the date was selected because of an earlier Roman festival and that the actual day of the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth to the world occured perhaps in spring. And then there is the question of in which year he was born that is also in doubt.
More specifically, the main sources that we have about the birth of Jesus are the Gospels and these offer us two incompatible data points. On the one hand, the evangelists Matthew and Luke date his birth to the “days of Herod the great”.
This king, vassal of Rome between the years 37 and 4 BC - dates that Roman records determine exactly -, reigned for another year or two in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the gospels, therefore, he would have been born in the year 5 or 6 BC.
However, Luke himself indicates that in the year of his birth, the emperor Augustus ordered a census of the population, which was carried out by the governor of Syria, Publio Sulpicio Quirino. Something that the historian Flavius Josephus places 37 years after the battle of Actium which would place Jesus’ birth in the year 6 or 7 AD.
Conclusions
This means that there is a little more than a ten-year range between the two possible dates to set the birth. If we look at the record of Flavius Josephus, and the mentions of King Herod, it is more convenient to take as valid the date that marks the birth during the life of this king and, therefore, place it around the year 6 BC.
The date incorrectly considered year 1 was established, accidentally or intentionally, in the 6th century by a Byzantine monk called Dionysius the Exiguous, who designed a new system of dating the years to separate the pagan era from the Christian: the Anno Domini -”year of the Lord”, that is, of the birth of Jesus - , replacing the Roman dating ad Urbe condita, ”from the founding of the city”, that is, of Rome.
With all this, it should be noted that the date chosen to celebrate his birth is almost certainly an intentional choice. In fact, primary religious sources do not mention such a day and the celebration of Jesus’ nativity was not even important in the first few centuries of Christianity.