What are the facts some historians consider to set the birth of Jesus on August 21st, 7BC?

Question

I'd also like to know if there are some other dates based on facts, and why catholic church set the date on December 25th, and what year they consider valid, since there's no year 0.

Thanks.

Answer 1

In the Gospel of John, an eye-witness, someone says to Jesus, 'Thou art not yet fifty' - which would be used to a man in his forties, not his thirties as the other gospels claim.  Possibly they chose the 'thirty' to show Jesus was in the prime of life.

Herod the Great died in 4 BC, so Jesus must have been born before then.  Scholars now favour a late date for the Crucifixion of 33 at the earliest.

Answer 2

Having a pagan holiday  coincide with a Christian one, was a way of keeping the pagan converts within the church. If you follow when Jewish religious holidays fall and how the bible made mention of who was taking care of the temple on what time frame, you could see that the Feast of the Tabernacles was the likely time of Christ's birth, around Sept. 29th if my memory is correct.

Shepherds would not have been in the fields in December because of the weather but would likely be there in September. In any event, Christ asked that we celebrate his death, not his birth. As to the year of birth, I seem to recall something about the Jewish calendar versus the Julian calendar and making a difference of about 4 years in the BC/AD event time.

Answer 3

The date of the roman census.

Christmas is the pagan winter solstice festival. The christians just took it over.

Answer 4

I've never heard the exact date in August but the idea is that for the conditions to be correct as described in the Bible it would have to be around that time frame (specifically the alignment of the stars and the pilgrimage for taxes).

One theory as to the December 25th date relates to early pagan festivals. Early Christians were fairly flexible with certain rituals in order to convert people to Christianity and allowed them to work in their own special times and customs. December 25th is close to the Winter Solstice which would have been a special time and often symbolically represents birth in the life cycle or birth of gods, fitting in well with the birth of Jesus idea.