From Dr. Taylor Marshall:
Now we move on to establishing the birthday of Christ from Sacred
Scripture in two steps. The first step is to use Scripture to determine
the birthday of Saint John the Baptist. The next step is using Saint
John the Baptist’s birthday as the key for finding Christ’s birthday. We
can discover that Christ was born in late December by observing first
the time of year in which Saint Luke describes Saint Zacharias in the
temple. This provides us with the approximate conception date of Saint
John the Baptist. From there we can follow the chronology that Saint
Luke gives, and that lands us at the end of December.
Saint Luke reports that Zacharias served in the “course of Abias”
(Lk 1:5) which Scripture records as the eighth course among the
twenty-four priestly courses (Neh 12:17). Each shift of priests served
one week in the temple for two times each year. The course of Abias
served during the eighth week and the thirty-second week in the annual
cycle.
[ii]However, when did the cycle of courses begin?
Josef Heinrich Friedlieb has convincingly established that the
first priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the destruction of
Jerusalem on the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av.
[iii]Thus
the priestly course of Jojarib was on duty during the second week of
Av. Consequently, the priestly course of Abias (the course of Saint
Zacharias) was undoubtedly serving during the second week of the Jewish
month of Tishri—the very week of the Day of Atonement on the tenth day
of Tishri. In our calendar, the Day of Atonement would land anywhere
from September 22 to October 8.
Zacharias and Elizabeth conceived John the Baptist immediately
after Zacharias served his course. This entails that Saint John the
Baptist would have been conceived somewhere around the end of September,
placing John’s birth at the end of June, confirming the Catholic
Church’s celebration of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist on June
24.
The second-century
Protoevangelium of Saint James also
confirms a late September conception of the Baptist since the work
depicts Saint Zacharias as High Priest and as entering the Holy of
Holies—not merely the holy place with the altar of incense. This is a
factual mistake because Zacharias was not the high priest, but one of
the chief priests.
[iv]Still, the
Protoevangelium regards
Zacharias as a high priest and this associates him with the Day of
Atonement, which lands on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri
(roughly the end of our September). Immediately after this entry into
the temple and message of the Archangel Gabriel, Zacharias and Elizabeth
conceive John the Baptist. Allowing for forty weeks of gestation, this
places the birth of John the Baptist at the end of June—once again
confirming the Catholic date for the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist
on June 24.
The rest of the dating is rather simple. We read that just after
the Immaculate Virgin Mary conceived Christ, she went to visit her
cousin Elizabeth who was six months pregnant with John the Baptist. This
means that John the Baptist was six months older that our Lord Jesus
Christ (Lk 1:24-27, 36). If you add six months to June 24 you get
December 24-25 as the birthday of Christ. Then, if you subtract nine
months from December 25 you get that the Annunciation was March 25. All
the dates match up perfectly. So then, if John the Baptist was conceived
shortly after the Jewish Day of the Atonement, then the traditional
Catholic dates are essentially correct. The birth of Christ would be
about or on December 25.
Sacred Tradition also confirms December 25 as the birthday of the
Son of God. The source of this ancient tradition is the Blessed Virgin
Mary herself. Ask any mother about the birth of her children. She will
not only give you the date of the birth, but she will be able to rattle
off the time, the location, the weather, the weight of the baby, the
length of the baby, and a number of other details. I’m the father of six
blessed children, and while I sometimes forget these details—
mea maxima culpa—my wife never does. You see, mothers never forget the details surrounding the births of their babies.
(Read more.)
Share
No comments:
Post a Comment