Given our present-day calendar system and penchant for using the designations B.C. (meaning Before Christ) and A.D. (meaning anno domini or “in the year of our Lord”), most people wrongly assume that Jesus’ birth took place in year one (or worse yet, during a so-called “zero year”). Because the Bible does not provide an exact day or calendar year for our Lord’s birth in Bethlehem, the actual date and time remains uncertain. However, upon close examination of scripture and the chronological details of history, we can narrow this event into a reasonable window of time.
Accounts of Jesus’ birth can be found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Matthew (2:1) records that Jesus was born during the days of Herod the king. Since Herod died in 4 B.C., we begin to have a parameter of time to work with. In addition, after Joseph and Mary fled Bethlehem with Jesus, Herod ordered all the boys two years old and younger in that vicinity killed. This indicates that Jesus could have been as old as two before Herod’s death. This places the date of His birth between 6 and 4 B.C.
Luke’s gospel (2:1-2) notes several other facts to consider: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”
We know that Caesar Augustus reigned from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D., while Quirinius governed Syria during this same time period. Since records indicate that a census which included the Judean region was taken approximately in 6 B.C., we can begin to assume that Christ’s birth most likely occurred in Bethlehem around 6-5 B.C.
Luke mentions yet another detail concerning our timeline: “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23). Jesus began His ministry during the time John the Baptist ministered in the wilderness, and John’s ministry started “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas” (Luke 3:1-2).
Given these facts, the only time period that fits all these criteria is 27-29 A.D. If Jesus was “about thirty years of age” by 27, a birth sometime between 6 and 4 B.C. would fit the chronology, making Him about 32 years old, still “about thirty years of age.”
Even if we can deduce an approximate year, there is nothing mentioned anywhere concerning the month or date of Jesus’ birth. The Church having set December 25th as the Feast of Christ’s Nativity is in reality a fourth century attempt to celebrate the event of God becoming Man as the Christ-Child. However, the exact date and time when this actually took place might never be known.
