We celebrate Christmas on December 25, to commemorate the birth of Jesus. But when was Jesus actually born? The Bible provides some possible insights to this question.
On the night of Jesus’ birth, it states in Luke 2:22, that shepherds were in the field, keeping watch over the flock by night. Due to the cold in that area during late December, it would seem more practical that the shepherds and their flocks would be indoors.
Doing some research on the birth date of Christ, we came up with some evidence that Christ was born during the Jewish month of Tishri, which corresponds to the end of September and the beginning of October. We found that some Christian scholars believe that December 25 was the date of His conception. There are many ways of arriving at a September-October time frame as being His birth date, but we’ll just outline one taken from Grant Jeffrey's book "Armageddon".
Although there appears to be no clear scriptural proof of the exact date of the birth of Jesus, one can infer from John’s Gospel that the day might have been during the Feast of Tabernacles. In John 1:14, a key Greek word is often translated into English as "dwelt."
And that Greek word also means "tabernacled." If John was saying that Christ was born on the Feast of Tabernacles, then Christ was born in the fall of the year, during the Jewish month of Tishri (late September and early October).
The Feast of Tabernacles started on the 15th day of the month and lasted for seven days. If Christ was born in the fall of the year, around Oct. 1, then using the normal 280 day period of pregnancy would mean that Mary conceived Jesus on or near Dec. 25.
This curious fact may account for the early church's acceptance of the date of Dec. 25, in addition to transforming an existing Roman holiday into a Christmas celebration of Christ's incarnation. Dec. 25 was originally a pagan festival to a sun god known as Saturnalia. But, and around AD 320, the church adopted this date to officially celebrate the nativity, under the direction of the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine.
Christ's age, which some scholars believe to be 33-and-a-half at the time of his His death, during the Feast of Passover, which is in the spring of a year, would also correspond to His birth as being in the fall of a year.
At any rate, if Christ's birthday was in the fall, then we are celebrating His conception on Dec. 25. And if the early church accepted Dec. 25 as Christ's birth date, they did so with good reason. And if Christ was considered by God to be a living human being at the moment of conception, wouldn’t that mean all of us are living human beings at conception?
This is another good reason for anyone thinking of aborting their baby to stop and think again. You are not aborting a fetus, you are killing a child. Not only in the Eyes of God, but even in the eyes of science, which today says that at the moment of conception you are in your genetic totality. You were exactly in that moment the biological person that you are today. Your physical being, build, height, coloring, and to some extent, your IQ, are largely determined at the moment of conception. You were already You! Abortion is not killing a "thing", it is killing "You" as you are right now.
By George Konig
Christian Internet Forum
www.georgekonig.org
October 5, 2003
See a list of all of our commentaries