Do the Scriptures Tell Us the Actual Date Christ Was Born?

This provides us a completely different understanding of the new moon from our own which has become calendar dependent.

Rather surprising and also pretty good as well.  however a better calendar based protocol would establish thirteen months having four weeks of seven days each.  And every four years we can toss in an extra new years day.

We obviously retain the calendar system because it cannot drift around the Sun from any arbitrary start point such as the birth of Christ..

There s actually a lot here that was at best obscurely known.  And 2000 years takes us to 2032 or so.  This may coincide with the return.  just saying..

Do the Scriptures Tell Us the Actual Date Christ Was Born?

We know the Scriptures tell us the exact date of the Passover week Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey when he was crixified and rose again.

Therefore, why wouldn't the Scriptures also tell us the other most important date in human history - His Birth! At One Path Research, we believe it might have.

When we read the scriptures sometimes, we come across passages that don't make sense to us. In fact, they are so confusing that you'll find hundreds of interpretations of what that might mean other than what the passage is literally saying. One such passage is Rev 12:1-2, and if we read that passage literally it opens itself to an extremely specific moment in time! Here is the passage:

And there appeared a great wonder (shmei/on == sign) in heaven; (1) a woman (2) clothed with the sun, and the (3) moon under her feet, and (4) upon her head a crown of twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. (Rev 12:1-2)

Clearly, the woman is the nation of Israel (from Joseph’s dream) who is to bring the messiah into the world. So, we’ll just assume that going forward. There are a few points which should be mentioned before continuing. Stars in the Scriptures can refer to angelic beings or actual stars depending on whether it is a figure of speech or not (which is clearly defined in the actual Hebrew and Greek based on the precise wording whether it is a figure of speech or not).

As most Christians know, whenever we read the scriptures, they are to be read literally unless the wording clearly shows a parable, allegory, simile, metaphor, or an idiom figure of speech, and this is no different. The wording does not suggest any of the prior figures of speech and clearly is describing a literal heavenly sign about Jesus’ birth. [Gen 1:14 indicates that the heavenly objects also serve as signs. ‘ttoaol.]

The next point is that “Wandering Stars” are heavenly bodies which obviously move in the sky. The wandering stars consist of 5 visible moving planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) whose paths had been plotted and understood for over a thousand years before Revelation was written. [The book of Jude was written prior to John writing Revelation where Jude refers to wandering stars in a cryptic manner, referring to evil rulers. The important thing is that the Apostles, including John when he wrote Revelation, understood the concept of wandering stars.]

As a side note, the scriptures told us when Jesus would be declared as the Messiah (on what we call Palm Sunday) which was to be 173,880 days after the command was given for the rebuild the temple. King Artaxerxes of Persia decreed this in the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of his reign and the temple was subsequently rebuilt as a result of that decree. Therefore, the scribes and Pharisees should have known that Christ would come and be declared as the Messiah 173,880 days later which fell on the Passover week in Nisan 32 AD.

There is one last thing that has to be mentioned and that is the date when each month began. [It seems odd to mention that here, but you’ll see it’s critical to this specific sign because of the placement of the sun and moon in the sign itself.] There is an old Scriptural “idiom” which all Jews knew instinctively as they practiced it each month for over 1,500 years. That “idiom” is “no-one knows the day nor the hour” and that is because the starting of each month was undefined and no-one would know the day nor the hour that a new month would start (statistically, based on the sun/moon movements, the starting of a month is undetermined by a 3.5 day period each month if you use the scriptures to define the starting of a month).

That phrase is an extremely well-understood idiom and means a specific time. This was understood by all the Jews prior to and at the time of Christ. Of all the feasts only the Feast of Trumpets which celebrates the Messiah’s coming starts on the first of a month. The Jewish people celebrated the first of each month as if it were a minor holiday (Num 10:10). The first of a month is not defined by a calendar or a pre-defined number of days in a month but by a specific lunar event being a “new moon”. The “new moon” as defined by scripture is totally different from what our modern society calls a new moon today and the difference is extremely important. Today we define cardinal phases of the moon (first quarter, full, last quarter, and new) based on the shadow of the earth passing over the moon but this is not how it was defined in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament God has defined the appearance of a “new moon” as the ending of the prior month and the 1st day of the next month. In a nutshell, a “new moon” is when the moon “disappears” from the sky and then it “reappears” back in the sky (ie, it is now a NEW moon). Theoretically, it is impossible to create a precise monthly calendar based on God’s definition of the start of the next month as it is not possible to determine in advance “when” the new moon will reappear for any month.

The sun circles the earth every 24 hours, and the moon circles the earth every 27.32 days, and they also travel approx. along the same path across the sky (on the ecliptic plane) from our perspective looking up at the sky. If you look up at the moon at the same time each night, you’ll see it in a slightly different position in the sky than the night before along that path (by 13.177 degrees). During the course of a mouth, you’ll notice that eventually the moon can’t be seen at all at night because it is on the same side of the earth as the sun and when the day comes you still can’t see it because the sun’s brightness blinds you from seeing where the moon is because it’s too close to the sun in the sky. [The moon has disappeared.] As the two again separate more each day eventually the moon will become visible again following the setting sun if the spacing between the sun that just set below the horizon and the moon that will follows it is a great enough of a distance so that the sky is dark enough so that you can see the sliver of the moon just before it also sets below the western horizon following the sun. [The moon first reappears as a sliver above the western horizon just after sunset and this defines the “new moon” and the 1st of the month.]

Days start in the evening: We know from Genesis that the calendar God provided starts in the evenings ("and the evening and the morning were the first day"). So, once a month, when the “new moon” has been seen at the start of the evening as a sliver in the western sky near the horizon just after sunset, the first of the month then starts. It’s also not just anyone that has the authority to say this is the “new moon”. It requires two priests, looking towards the west from Jerusalem after the sun sets, to both agree that they see the new moon. The Sanhedrin would then be informed, and after confirming it, the priests would blow the trumpets on the temple mount announcing to Israel the first day of the new month has started.

The reason the above is important here is because the Rev 12:1-2 sign describes the position of the sun and moon in close proximity with the moon further away from the horizon so that the sun would set first. When the sun sets first followed by the moon and there is sufficient separation between the two, then we know it’s the 1st of a month and the Priests would blow their trumpets announcing the start of the month. Even they would not be aware of the special heavenly sign of this particular moment because they are most likely unaware that the three wandering stars have moved into position on this date (making a crown of 12 stars).

Now that we got that all out of the way, we can look at the heavens and see “when” that event occurred (the approximate date of Jesus’ birth). We have to start by setting our orientation in Jerusalem facing to the west and the setting sun West and are looking for the following (the details of Rev 12:1-2):

Constellation Virgo

The sun is actually inside that constellation and clothed with the son

The moon is at her feet

Crown of 12 stars = 9 fixed stars of Leo (Jesus came from the tribe of Judah) plus 3 wandering stars which must all align up above the head of the constellation Virgo

Since planets (“wandering stars”) move through the ecliptic plane at different rates, it is rare that any 3 of them would align themselves above a single constellation. This event would only happen every few hundred years, but we also have to look at the position of the sun and moon at the same time. It’s a simple but time consuming task to move through each night for the last few thousand years one day at a time to find this pattern from the viewpoint of Jerusalem. After doing exactly that, you will only find two days in a row where that patten exists which are Sept 11th, 2BC and Sept 12th, 2BC. [At this time the crown of 12 stars consists of the 9 fixed stars of Leo and the 3 wondering stars of Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Since the priests are experts in seeing the moon's sliver just before moonset (after sunset), it's most likely that Sept 11th, 2BC was the date and not Sept 12th.] But that’s not the most interesting part. We already knew that it would be on the 1st of a month (based on the sun/moon position) but this occurred in the month of our modern month September which then would make it correspond to the 1st of Tishri which is the start of the Feast of Trumpets where all Jews were required to rest from work and present offerings to the Lord. This suggests that Jesus was born on Sept 11th, 2BC and that presents were provided to Him symbolically via the observation of the Feast of Trumpets. On that specific day:

Sunset was at 5:53pm … (not possible to declare the 1st of the 7th month before the sun sets)

Moonset was at 6:35pm … (not possible to see the moon crescent after moonset)

Therefore – the 1st of the 7th month had to be declared between 5:53pm and 6:35pm. Since it had to be dark enough to see the moon sliver, the time would have to be at least at the halfway point between those times or around 6:12pm.

As a curious side note: If you look carefully at the specific pattern, you’ll notice that half-way between the sun and moon is the star “Spica” which is identified as “ear of wheat” (or kernel of wheat in Latin). In the image below, as time moves forward, the stars and pattern drops down so that the sun sets first and then the moon will be visible as a sliver but ONLY after the sun has sufficiently moved below the horizon to be dark enough in the western sky to see the sliver of the moon. Incidentally, after the sun sets and before the moon sets, the star Spica would drop down and touch the western horizon (ground) at the same moment when it would be dark enough for the moon to become visible and the priests would blow the trumpets sounding the 1st of Tishri. The ideal time to first see the new moon and blow the trumpets would be approx. 6:12pm (+/- 10mins). You might also find it curious to note that John (who also wrote Rev 12:1-2) also wrote down the following quote that Jesus Himself said:

“And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” (John 12:23-24) Could it be that John was indicating that the priests were blowing their trumpets at the exact moment of Christ's birth around 6:12pm +/- 10mins? It's an interresting idea and yet, quite possible and people were then unknowingly giving presents to each other in celegration of the Lord's arrival at the start of the Feast of Trumpets or The Return of the King?

If we add 30 years from 9/11/2BC we get approx. 9/11/28AD which is approx. when Jesus would have reached his 30th Birthday when Jesus would be legally allowed to be a priest (Num 4:1-4). Jesus wrote the law, so he kept it also. [It’s my guess – absolutely not biblical at all – but my guess that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and became our high priest on his 30th birthday. Why wait a single day longer than necessary?] We also know that Jesus’ ministry was “cut off” halfway through 7 years, or approx. 3.5 years after he became our high priest. Adding 3.5 years to Sept 28AD gets us to March of 32AD (month of Nisan) which is the Passover when Jesus was crucified (which adds credence to the assumption that Jesus was baptized on this 30th birthday).

Considering the above, it’s possible that the Scriptures are telling us the date of Jesus’ birth just like they told us the exact week of his death, burial, and resurrection. John, in hindsight, knew this and told us as much in his writings in the books of John and Rev. The rest of Rev chapter 12 after the sign of Jesus' birth, continues to quickly span the next 2,000+ years of John's future, which is now our past. Could it be that the scriptures did in fact give us this date but most don't read scriptures literally, and hence might have miss it? It's curious to think about and we felt it was worth sharing.

Here is a snapshot of what the priests would have seen on that date and time facing West, standing on the Temple Mount: