See also: Gospel harmony
The Chronology of Jesus depicts the attempt to establish a historical chronology for the events of the life of Jesus depicted in the four canonical gospels (which allude to various contradictory dates for several events). Certain events in the chronology of Jesus as described in the Gospels can be cross-referenced to Jewish festivals, and to the tenure of historical rulers and high priests. However other events such as the specific years of Jesus's birth and death cannot be accurately determined. When correlated with external secular sources, the accounts of the four canonical gospels describe something like the following outline:
- Jesus was born either before 4 BC (when Herod the Great died) or in 6 AD (when the historical Census of Quirinius was undertaken.)
- Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist during John's ministry, which according to Luke 3:1-2 began in the "15th year of Tiberius" (around 28/29 AD) and may have lasted up until 32 AD;
- Jesus' ministry lasted around one year, according to the Synoptic Gospels, or three years according to the Gospel of John;
- Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate, the governor of Iudaea province between 26 AD (when Pilate was appointed as governor) and 36 AD (when Pilate was removed.)
See Historicity of Jesus and Historical Jesus for an exploration of the factuality of the gospels and the results of attempts to apply historical methodology to understanding the life of Jesus.
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Year of birth
See also: Nativity of Jesus, Census of Quirinius, and Contradictions in the GospelsOur only sources of information on Jesus' birth are the gospels of Matthew and Luke of the Bible, which provide two different accounts of the nativity.
Matthew describes King Herod as the ruler during the time of the Nativity, and Herod died in 4BC. Furthermore, in order to kill Jesus and eliminate him as a rival king, Herod orders the "Massacre of the Innocents" — the killing of all male children in Bethlehem aged two years and under. This implies that Jesus may have been up to two years old already by that time, and this sets the Nativity at around 6BC.
Luke on the other hand places the Nativity during the Census of Quirinius which took place in 6 AD, although Luke also implies that the conception took place during the reign of King Herod - about 10 years earlier.
Because both Gospel accounts seem to assume that the birth took place some time before the death of Herod, most historians assume that Jesus was born around 4 BC or slightly before.
Some commentators have attempted to establish the date of birth by identifying the Star of Bethlehem with some known astronomical or astrological phenomenon. There are many possible phenomena and none seems to match the Gospel account. Raymond E. Brown, having studied the various astronomical explanations, concluded: "no astronomical record exists of what is described in Matthew". Many scholars regard the star as a literary invention of the author of the Gospel of Matthew, to claim fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy (Numbers 24:17)..
In the 6th century, Dionysius Exiguus made the incarnation of Jesus the basis for his chart of Easter dates, although he did not specify whether incarnation meant conception or birth. Dionysius' labeled the years since Jesus' incarnation Anno Domini (meaning "in the year of the Lord" in Latin), which is now abbreviated "AD". Later the abbreviation "BC", which stands for Before Christ was added. Dionysius' estimate is generally thought to be inaccurate; "although scholars generally believe that Christ was born some years before AD 1, the historical evidence is too sketchy to allow a definitive dating".
Day of birth
The New Testament provides no information regarding the date of the birth of Jesus. The traditional date is 25 December, which is mid-winter in Judea. Because the Luke account says that shepherds were outdoors with their flocks it has sometimes been suggested that this implies a summer or autumn date. However, the climate of Palestine is quite mild and in fact sheep are allowed to forage even in December.
It is believed that Christmas' date was chosen to take advantage of the imperial holiday of the birth of the Sun God Mithras, more specifically Sol Invictus, which coincided with the "return of the sun" after the shortest day of the year. According to this theory, the reason was to replace the popular pagan holiday with a Christian celebration of holy communion. For example, the Catholic Encyclopedia states: "Natalis Invicti, celebrated on 25 December, has a strong claim on the responsibility for our December date."
Early Christians sought to calculate the date of Christ's birth based on the idea that Old Testament prophets died either on an anniversary of their birth or of their conception. They reasoned that Jesus died on an anniversary of his conception, so the date of his birth was nine months after the date of Good Friday, either December 25 or January 6 .
At least as early as 354 AD, Jesus' birth was celebrated on December 25 in Rome, according to Chronography of 354. Other cities had other traditional dates. The history of Christmas is closely associated with that of the Epiphany. If the currently prevailing opinion about the compilation of the gospels is accepted, the earliest body of gospel tradition, represented by Mark no less than by the primitive non-Marcan document (Q document) embodied in the first and third gospels, begins, not with the birth and childhood of Jesus, but with his baptism; and this order of accretion of gospel matter is faithfully reflected in the time order of the invention-of feasts. The church in general adopted Christmas much later than Epiphany, and before the 5th century there was no consensus as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on January 6 or December 25 .
The earliest identification of 25 December with the birthday of Jesus is in a passage, otherwise unknown and probably spurious, of Theophilus of Antioch (171-183), preserved in Latin by the Magdeburg centuriators, to the effect that the Gauls contended that as they celebrated the birth of the Lord on the December 25 , whatever day of the week it might be, so they ought to celebrate Easter on 25 March when the resurrection occurred.
The next surviving mention of December 25 is in Hippolytus' (c. 202) commentary on Daniel. Jesus, he says, was born at Bethlehem on December 25 , a Wednesday, in the forty-second year of Augustus. This passage also is almost certainly interpolated. In any case he mentions no feast, nor was such a feast congruous with the orthodox ideas of that age. As late as 245, Origen, in his eighth homily on Leviticus, repudiates as sinful the very idea of keeping the birthday of Jesus "as if he were a king Pharaoh." Thus it was important to the early Christians not to have indecorous parties on that day, but to keep it a time of devotion, reflection, and communion.
The first early mention of December 25 is in a Latin chronographer of 354 AD, first published in complete form by Mommsen. It runs thus in English: "Year I after Christ, in the consulate of Augustus Caesar and Paulus, the Lord Jesus Christ was born on 25 December, a Friday and 15th day of the new moon." Here again no festal celebration of the day is attested.
Other Dates
There were many speculations in the 2nd century about the date of Jesus' birth. Clement of Alexandria, towards its close, mentions several such, and condemns them as superstitions. Some chronologists, he says, alleged the birth to have occurred in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus, on the 25th of Pachon, the Egyptian month ( May 20 ). These were probably the Basilideans. Others set it on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi (19th or 20 April). Clement himself sets it on November 17 , 3 BC
The same symbolic reasoning led Polycarp (before 160) to set his birth on Sunday, when the world's creation began, but his baptism on Wednesday, for it was the analogue of the sun's creation. On such grounds certain Latins as early as 354 may have transferred the human birthday from January 6 to December 25 and is by the chronographer above referred to, but in another part of his compilation, termed Natalis invicti solis, or birthday of the unconquered Sun. (Under the Julian Calendar, the winter solstice occurs on December 24 , so starting with December 25 , the days begin to get longer again.) Cyprian invokes Christus Sol verus , Ambrose Sol novus noster , and such rhetoric was widespread. The Syrians and Armenians, who clung to January 6 , accused the Romans of sun-worship and idolatry, contending with great probability that the feast of 25 December had been invented by disciples of Cerinthus and its readings by Artemon to commemorate the natural birth of Jesus. Ambrose, On Virgins , writing t
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