Where was Jesus Born and When?

In my last post I briefly mentioned the problems with determining when Jesus was born (hint: it wasn't 0 A.D.). In honor of Christmas day, here are some additional resources if you're interested in exploring the issue of where and when Jesus was born. Being an OT guy, I hadn't even realized there was any question about where Jesus was born until this year. Apparently, the choices are Nazareth or Bethlehem and the scholarly consensus of NT studies leans toward Nazareth.

1. NT Pod 19: Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem?

2. NT Pod 20: When Was Jesus Born?

3. BAR Article: Jesus' Nativity-Where Was Jesus Born? (And When?)

4. Contradictory Christmases by James McGrath about the different stories in Matthew and Luke. Quite a discussion developed in the comments thread.

5. Pisteuomen: Jesus' Birth In Context - a 12-part series that looks interesting but I haven't finished reading yet.

For my second Ph.D., maybe I should do New Testament studies. I've realized lately how ill informed I am when it comes to critical issues in New Testament scholarship. My excuse is that I'm a Hebrew Bible/Ancient Judaism specialist anyway.

Year Zero and Other Observations

'Tis the season when Christmas music has taken over the airwaves at home, at the mall, and in the car. While struggling to manage a semblance of holiday cheer, I have three somewhat random observations (i.e., pet peeves) inspired by things I've heard said in various Christmas songs.

1. THERE IS NO YEAR ZERO. The Gregorian calendar goes from 1 B.C. (or B.C.E.) to 1 A.D. (or C.E.). Even if there was a year zero, it's not the year of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The change of era was off by a few years. If we accept the Gospel of Matthew account, Herod the Great was alive and well when Jesus was born, and Jesus's family lived in Egypt for some months or perhaps even years until Herod died. Herod died in 4 B.C. Jesus's birth must have been before 4 B.C. at the latest. Update: This online article from Biblical Archaeology Review discusses the date and location of Jesus's birth.

2. "In excelsis Deo" from the hymn "Angels we have heard on high" is NOT to be pronounced "in ex-Celsius Deo." Latin only has a hard /c/ like English /k/. Proper choir pronunciation (which doesn't follow pure Latin) is "in egg-shell-sis Deo." But whatever you do, "Celsius" should not leave your lips.

3. Christendom. It's pronounced "Chris-en-dom", not Christian-dom, as in "the belfries of all Christendom" from "I saw 3 ships."

Well, I feel better just getting those observations off my chest. I am now  free to celebrate Christmas as my usual cheerful and festive self.

Oh, one more thing. I drove by a billboard yesterday that had a picture of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. Joseph was wearing a leather vest and he looked an awful lot like Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride.

My random Christmas observations are ended.

Merry Christmas!

Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The current issue of the Smithsonian magazine (Jan 2010) has a long article about the Dead Sea Scrolls and the archaeology of Qumran. Despite the title, most of the article is devoted to surveying the many different interpretations of the archaeological data of Qumran itself. It is a remarkable article for the simple fact that it is  about Qumran and yet well-balanced, giving equal time to multiple minority views about the site. Personally, I share the skepticism of Yuval Peleg concerning the site as a settlement of a religious community:

But hearing the dramatic recitation, Peleg, 40, rolls his eyes. “There is no connection to the Essenes at this site,” he tells me as a hawk circles above in the warming air. He says the scrolls had nothing to do with the settlement. Evidence for a religious community here, he says, is unconvincing. He believes, rather, that Jews fleeing the Roman rampage hurriedly stuffed the documents into the Qumran caves for safekeeping. After digging at the site for ten years, he also believes that Qumran was originally a fort designed to protect a growing Jewish population from threats to the east.

I agree with Peleg, so I'm not quite sure what Jodi Magness is getting at when she's quoted as saying:

But Peleg’s view has won few adherents. “It’s more interpretation than data,” says Jodi Magness, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who shares de Vaux’s view that the site was a religious community. She says that some archaeologists—by refusing to acknowledge evidence that residents of Qumran hid the scrolls—are inclined to leap to conclusions since their research relies solely on the ambiguous, physical remains at the site.

"More interpretation than data"?! The data are all meaningless without interpretation. By evidence that residents of Qumran hid the scrolls, I assume she means the similar pottery found in the caves and at the site. Is there more than that? All that proves is that local pottery was used to hide scrolls. It says nothing about who was doing the hiding.

I recommend the article for anyone interested in an overview of current research related to Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

HT: Robert Cargill

Quote of the Day: Lazy American Students

From an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe:

We’ve got a knowledge gap, spurred by a work-ethic gap.

Kara Miller, professor at Babson College.


I think that describes large segments of American society, not just the students. We have a big sense of entitlement coupled with a disdain for personal responsibility.


If you're at all concerned with the decline in performance of American students compared to international students and how that might affect the global marketplace of ideas, then I highly recommend you read the whole essay.


HT: Rich B via Facebook

House of Jesus Himself Discovered in Nazareth . . . sort of . . . well, not really

Just in time for Christmas (coincidence?), the Israel Antiquities Authority has announced the discovery a house in ancient Nazareth dating to the first century CE, the time of Jesus. Here is an excerpt from the IAA press release.

According to Yardenna Alexandre, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The discovery is of the utmost importance since it reveals for the very first time a house from the Jewish village of Nazareth and thereby sheds light on the way of life at the time of Jesus. The building that we found is small and modest and it is most likely typical of the dwellings in Nazareth in that period. From the few written sources that there are, we know that in the first century CE Nazareth was a small Jewish village, located inside a valley. Until now a number of tombs from the time of Jesus were found in Nazareth; however, no settlement remains have been discovered that are attributed to this period”.

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs has this photo:

It is nice to see that, so far, none of the news stories are connecting this story to a specific person or family (as my headline does in an intentionally facetious way). Now if they'd found a tunnel in the city of David, I'm sure they would have quickly speculated a connection to David's conquest of the city.  Oh, wait . . .

HT: Wild Wild West, Todd Bolen