Was jesus born on december 25th?
- Thread starter Shakeel
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Soldato
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In all reality probably a hibrid of Phariseic, Persian and Latin religious regalia traditions. The head of Roman state religion has always been called the Pontifex Maximus which to this day is the person we call the Pope, religious fashions will have been part of the history of that role (which was as much political as religious) and had an effect to this day.
Excellent description
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Man of Honour
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Going off topic a little, I think atheists annoy me more than die hard Christians, or at least as much.
No-one who has any idea what's going on believes that Jesus was born on the 25th of December. For Christians it's even clearer, because their own holy book makes it clear that he wasn't.
Christians didn't celebrate the birth of Jesus until much later and it wasn't a big deal until more than two centuries later.
The key issue was the Christian takeover of the Roman empire. The biggest religious festival in the empire took place from the 17th to the 25th of December. 17-23rd was Saturnalia, 25th was the festival of the invincible sun (25th of December was the date of the winter solstice in ancient Rome). The Persian religion of Mithraism was also included later (but starting before Christianity existed), when it became popular in Rome. So that's the time that the Christian church targetted for takeover, essentially trying to overwrite the other religions with their own. Obviously, they succeeded.
So Christmas is about a politically motivated power grab that has absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Jesus whatsoever. Or, really, anything to do with Christianity as a religion.
This is the main evidence, but there is more if you dig around. There are indirect dates given for the conception of Jesus relative to the birth (or conception, I forget which) of John, based on Jewish religious observances that occur on specific dates.
For that reason, I favour autumn as the time in which the Christian bible says Jesus was born.
However, I find aspects of the story so wildly implausible that I dismiss it completely and conclude that there's no evidence at all regarding the birth of Jesus. Requiring people in a troublesome province to spend weeks travelling to the birthplace of their ancestors for census registration? Augustus was no fool. He would have seen how disruptive that would be to the smooth running of his empire. It might well have triggered a revolt. Also...why an inn? Surely one of Joseph's relatives would have put them up.
It is now, using a slightly different calendar. It wasn't then.
They refer to Christians who believed that there had been a person, who they called Anointed One ('Christos' in transliterated Greek). They did not refer to Jesus as a historical person.
I could refer, entirely accurately, to the existence of scientologists who believe in the existence of Xenu. Does that constitute evidence that Xenu exists?
= The Bible, and other holy texts.
Why? Surely atheists just believe in science?
No. Atheists believe that there isn't a god. Which really is a belief in evolution, which is a belief in science, so ignore this sentence tbh.
Hmmm, I think you maybe right. Hardcore Christians call atheists ignorant yet the one thing scientist all say regularly is "we just don't know" yet Christians seem to have all the answers /Stephen Fry.
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Not necessarily true.
Doesn't follow from your premise. Besides, one of the cornerstones of science is that it doesn't require belief. Science is essentially a matter of "this will happen under these circumstances" and "given the available evidence, this appears to be the most likely explanation of how it works", neither of which require belief in any way comparable with religion.
That makes a lot more sense with 'arrogant' rather than 'ignorant'.
True.
Well yes, they did refer to him as a historical person. For example, Tacitus wrote:
Nero fastened the guilt of starting the blaze and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians [Chrestians] by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius 14-37 at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.
Here Tacitus refers to Christ as a literal person who died under Pontius Pilate. He does not merely say that the Christians believed Jesus existed; he treats Jesus as a historical figure and refers to him in the context of verifiable historical events.
Oh, of course not. I wasn't saying that this constituted proof of the existence of Jesus; merely proof that non-Christians believed him to exist.
No one does not imply the other.
Correct. Saturnalia, to be precise.
