As I comment elsewhere :. As the nights close in, and the days shorten, we long to see light. As the winter gets colder, we long for warmth. As nature around us seems strangled by death, we need signs of hope and life. And as the inconvenience of going out gets greater, and we are more isolated from friends and neighbours, we long for company…Who can bring us light but the light of the world John 8.
Who gives us hope beyond death, but the one who not only tasted death for us but swallowed it up in victory 1 Cor And who else can bring us into friendship with God 2 Cor 5. If you enjoyed this, do share it on social media, possibly using the buttons on the left.
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The critical factor is when the division of Abijah would serve. Gavin Ashenden places the service around the time of Yom Kippur, at the end of September or beginning of October.
He does not justify this. There is a Wikipedia page on this which gives the dates the divisions would serve over the next few years:.
However, this seems to imply that the 24 divisions seem to serve in a continuous sequence, without regard to festivals! As a result, each year the division will serve about a month earlier. If this pattern is correct, then we need to know the year when Zechariah was visited by the angel in order to determine the month. It discusses some of the issues in chosing a system. In particular, if the cycle restarts each year, then the early divisions will always have more work to do.
If the cycle is continuous, then, as per Wikipedia, the time of year for a given division will shift from year to year. When does lambing happen in the hill country of Judea?
So they were out all year round. David, thanks for this. The Wikipedia article does appear to omit the festivals. I was interested as well in the comment that, following the destruction of the temple, the priestly divisions moved to locations around Israel. Richard Bauckham argues or assumes that they were always thus distributed in his recent article on Cana and the wedding. Who fills in the one or two weeks of the short cycle?
Also worth pointing out that 1 Nisan as the start of the ecclesiastical new year is well established, being recorded in the Mishnah from AD, and is not an arbitrary choice. Thanks Will. Gavin appears to have made multiple errors, but they are hidden because he has not laid out his calculation clearly. As I mention above, the domestic calendar begins with the month of Nissan, usually our mid-March.
For some reason, Gavin has started his year in Av, which is the start of neither the ecclesiastical nor the domestic calendar. His goal appears to confirm the tradition of the early church, which elsewhere he maintains expresses a historically reliable record of events, in parallel with the written record of Scripture—without any real evidence.
Gavin also claims here that Telesphorus, whom Gavin claims is the seventh bishop of Rome, celebrated Christmas on Dec 25th, but I know of no evidence that this was the case. As Christian numbers increased and their customs prevailed, the celebrations took on a Christian observance. In fact, for more than years, people observed the birth of Jesus on various dates. In the year AD, solstice fell on 25th December. Thank you for posting this information out for others to read.
At the time I had a Christian friend who discovered his mother was Jewish, and he began paying a lot of attention to calendars, practices, festivals, and more. It served me well to pay attention to what we can learn from putting our attention on facts, rather than on beliefs.
Proximity to a festival might also explain why the guest room was already taken up although there could of course be any number of reasons for that, not least the census. There has been a little debate about the historical climate of Bethlehem and Jerusalem with some suggesting that two thousands years ago was similar to today, others arguing that it was wetter and milder.
But even if there was some frost and snow in winter, as Bethlehem can experience today, I wonder what would have happened to the sheep. Do we have any evidence that they were kept somewhere else in winter than in summer? Thomas, to take your questions in reverse order, there does seem to be evidence of sheep being taken into winter shelters in Roman practice. The notion that the eighth division took place in October is based on the citation of a German work from !
In the Bablylonian Talmud, it was argued on theological grounds that the destruction of the temple happened on the same day on the two occasions, the ninth of AV. The division on duty was that of Jehioiarib, which is the first division. I have to say that that is pretty flimsy logic; I am not sure there is any supporting evidence to suggest that the ecclesiastical year ever began then. Surely if we can tie down the return of Christ to a festival and I recognise the flaws in attempting such a thing , it must be the Feast of Trumpets.
Thanks Chris. At the end of the day other than fulfilling a need to show oneself to be smarter than everyone else what does it matter? Those who do not believe will continue to glom onto the thought that the story of Jesus is made up, thus saturnalia comes in. Those who question will not accept the stated facts of the story as one respondent above wants to think this explains the extra room being filled.
No matter that the story explains that already. Is this not one of those areas in which we should be able to give great grace to one another and not act as though we possess the divine inspiration?
First, this discussion has mostly been driven by those who staunchly defend the traditional date. Thirdly, it is remarkable that we can have the possibility of knowing at this level of details—thanks to Jewish obsession with calendars. And, fourthly, you would be amazed to find out how many people find this kind of historical details fascinating. In , astronomer Dave Reneke argued that Jesus was born in the summer. Using computer models, Reneke determined that this rare event occurred on June 17, in the year 2 B.
Other researchers have claimed that a similar conjunction, one between Saturn and Jupiter, occurred in October of 7 B. Theologians have also suggested that Jesus was born in the spring, based on the biblical narrative that shepherds were watching over their flocks in the fields on the night of Jesus' birth — something they would have done in the spring, not the winter.
Live Science. The day is set apart even in the hearts and minds of non-believers. Associating Christmas with light-hearted festivities might seem disrespectful in light of its true meaning, but the joy of singing familiar carols and lighting candles; the sense of belonging and love connected to the holiday encourages many unbelievers to attend Christmas services where they might hear the gospel.
Share this. When Was Jesus Born? Candice Lucey Contributing Writer 26 Aug. What Year Was Jesus Born? Evidence in the Bible Bible scholars work from what Scripture tells us regarding the history of Jesus.
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