Jesus’ Two Births
What’s up Heathens? While I am now a mythicist, even as a Christian I knew that Jesus wasn’t born in December. He would have more likely been born near the end of August or beginning of September due to the description in Matthew as well as the timelines surrounding John the Baptist and Jesus’s births. That’s if he was even born at all.
There are two possible stories about Jesus’s birth. The Gospel of Matthew has Magi being directed by God. The only indication of a time period is that this happened during the reign of Herod. This places Jesus birth before 4 BCE when Herod died. There is no indication of what time of year Jesus was born in this account. Luke has a bit more complex story though. For one thing, there is a 10-year difference in the time periods between Luke and Matthew. Luke has shepherds that are visited by angels while Matthew has magi that were guided by the Star of Bethlehem.
Jesus’ birthday wasn’t important to the early Christians. The virgin birth aspect was only added to the theology later in the evolution of Christianity as a way to convert pagans to the new state religion of Rome. Originally Christians celebrated what is called The Epiphany. The Epiphany is when the Messiah entered Jesus as he was being baptized by John the Baptist. Generally, this is celebrated on January 6th, which coincidentally is the birthday of another god from that area (Aion, the Lord of Infinite Time). Given that Mark is our earliest gospel composed by Jewish-Christians, logically this is a more important event because it’s when Jesus becomes the Messiah. In Mark, he is not considered the messiah until this point.
December 25th was selected (or chosen) as Jesus birthday in the 4th century as a way for the Romans to convert pagans into their new state religion. Hippolytus was the first to coin this date in the 3rd century but wasn’t adopted by the Council of Nicea in the 4th century. Most early Christians didn’t care about Jesus’s birth because, at the time, it wasn’t seen as miraculous. The Gospel of Mark is a clear indication of this. Contemporary Christians have even remarked on how some early Christians thought the virgin birth was too pagan in nature and most actually rejected this Christ birth story. In Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with the Jew Trypho, he remarks about how a majority of Christians at the time, being ~150-165 CE, felt that Jesus was not divinely fathered.
