Yesterday on Fox & Friends Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, said:
We don’t absolutely know the date that Jesus was born, but it surely made eminent sense for the early Church to say, why don’t we do it at the darkest time of the year, when the sun is about to rise and the Son, Jesus, the Light of the World, is born.
Of course, the English homonyms “sun” and “Son” weren’t available to anyone in the 4th-century, when certain Church leaders officially conformed the Christian’s calendar to the pagan’s. His Eminence might have been remembering Augustine’s rendering of the metaphor:
Hence it is that He was born on the day which is the shortest in our earthly reckoning and from which subsequent days begin to increase in length. He, therefore, who bent low and lifted us up chose the shortest day, yet the one whence light begins to increase. Sermon 192
But should poetic sense trump the seasonal facts Scripture records? It would have made the opposite of eminent sense for Caesar to have ordered “the whole world” to be taxed in the dead of winter or for shepherds to be tending their flock under those conditions.
Or for a pregnant woman to be traveling in them.
So consider this:
Since Elizabeth (John’s mother) was in her sixth month of pregnancy when Jesus was conceived (Luke 1:24-36), we can determine the approximate time of year Jesus was born if we know when John was born. John’s father, Zacharias, was a priest serving in the Jerusalem temple during the course of Abijah (Luke 1:5). Historical calculations indicate this course of service corresponded to June 13-19 in that year (The Companion Bible, 1974, Appendix 179, p. 200).
It was during this time of temple service that Zacharias learned that he and his wife Elizabeth would have a child (Luke 1:8-13). After he completed his service and traveled home, Elizabeth conceived (Luke 1:23-24). Assuming John’s conception took place near the end of June, adding nine months brings us to the end of March as the most likely time for John’s birth. Adding another six months (the difference in ages between John and Jesus) brings us to the end of September as the likely time of Jesus’ birth. (“Biblical Evidence Shows Jesus Christ Wasn’t Born on Dec. 25”; emphasis added.)
That is, on or around Rosh Hashanah. No shortage of homiletic material there.
Springtime would also make better sense (and also inspire poetry) than the Winter Solstice. More precisely, the first day of Nisan, which corresponds to March 20, 6 BC, as Rick Lanser concluded (at the end of complex adduction of evidence):
Let us further analyze this scenario from the perspective of Mary’s travels. We proposed that she did not leave for Elizabeth’s until after the spring festival season had completed. . . . After staying for three months with Elizabeth, she returned home without waiting to see John born because of the impending Feast of Trumpets, Rosh Hashanah, on Tishri 1. In 7 BC Shavuot, the pilgrimage Feast of Weeks, was on Sivan 10 (June 7), squarely in the middle of Elizabeth’s sixth month on the proposed chart that follows. . . . And at the other end of her visit, we proposed that she left shortly before Tishri 1, just before John’s birth. In 7 BC, Rosh Hashanah just happened to take place during the 40th week of John’s conception! Yes, Mary’s travels fit this date, too. I do not think it would be a coincidence if God, thinking of type/antitype significance with His date choices, chose to have John born exactly on Tishri 1 as the forerunner for Jesus who was born on Nisan 1. This degree of precision is not provable from the records we have, though. (“The Daniel 9:24-27 Project: The Framework for Messianic Chronology,” May 15, 2019.)
There’s no proof that Jesus was born either during the time of planting or that of harvesting. But at least those hypotheses privilege divinely inspired clues over paganism-accommodating tradition.
No Christian leader should ignore those clues, thereby inviting the inference that an aesthetic fit trumps them.
