They Followed a Star

Two things have converged for me to raise an interesting question.



A few days before Christmas, Andrew McGowan, in his blog A New Parson's Handbook discusses the origin of the date 25th December as the date we remember the birth of Jesus. He canvasses various suggested sources ranging from astrology, paganism, the Roman Emperor Cult and even an example of very interesting early Christian logic - based on an assumption that the death of Jesus was coincident with the date of his conception in Mary's womb, and given that his death can be carefully dated in relation to the date of Passover in the relevant year (dates ranging from April 25 - May 6) then his birth mist have occured on a date nine months before those dates (hence the existence of two dates for Christmas).

Regardless of which story may actually be the explanation of the source of the date, two things are clear, the nominated date of December 25th is most certainly only that, a nominated date, and the earliest attribution of that date for the birth of Jesus seems to be about the 3rd Century. In other words, we have no way of actually knowing the date of Christmas.



Then yesterday, in the ABC Broadcast of Songs of Praise produced by the BBC the presenter, in between the various songs about the Wise Men following a star, we were introduced to a range of astronomers, some no less influential than those residing in the Vatican, who have deduced that the year of our Lord's birth must have been 6BCE because in that year there was a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Mars (I think) within the constellation of Aries, an event that would have been of some significance to middle eastern astrologers. This convergence was not apparent on 25 December in the year 0 so the explanation must relate to some error in the assignment of the date of the start of the Christian Era, and Jesus was born BCE.

Two things immediately came to my mind that made this amusing. First was the aspect mentioned above by which December 25 is in most likelihood completely arbitrary as the date of Jesus' birth. Second is my basic understanding of the history of our calendar. The Julian Calendar started in 45BCE and was basically a solar calendar of 365 days with a leap year each 4th year adding an extra day. But over time that extra day added too much time because a solar year was 11 minutes short of 365 1/4 days. So, in the 16th Century Pope Gregory XIII modified the Julian calendar into what we observe today, a calendar not universally accepted in Western Europe and when some Eastern European countries eventually relented in the 20th Century they had to wipe out 13 days - not to be celebrated that year. Even though Gregory and his mathematicians did some amazing calculations to work this all out, I live with a niggling doubt that we can actually tie down the year we nominated as 0 to a documented moment in history.

In other words, I found it rather preposterous that here we are in 2010 trying to fit scientific facts to a view of time and history that is so rubbery and slippery that any conclusions we might arrive at would inevitably be flawed.

I am happy to live with a nominated date for Jesus' birth. I am happy to live with birth narratives that are highly figurative and symbolic rather than historical. The fact of Jesus is indisputable. The thrust of his teaching, although subject to some debate, is generally agreed upon. The establishment of a movement that became the Church as a result of his life and story is beyond doubt. It is the details that ground all this in a very particular historical moment that is much harder for us to pin down.

What do you think?