A few weeks ago I blogged on the question whether or not Jesus was born on December 25. To continue the conversation, here is what I consider to be the best article on the subject, by Paul Maier, Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University. The piece originally appeared in Chronos, Kairos, Christos: Nativity and Chronological Studies presented to Jack Finegan, ed. J. Vardaman (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1989), and is posted here by permission of the author. Maier writes, “In 1968 I published an article that offered fresh evidence in support of Friday, 3 April A.D. 33, as the date of the Crucifixion. Since then, much attention has focused on the other terminus of Jesus’ life in response to recent recalculations of dates for the death of Herod the Great and the birth of Christ. Although a precise date, as in the case of the Crucifixion, still seems unattainable for the Nativity, some further refinement within the usual range of 7 to 4 B.C. is possible, which would suggest late 5 B.C. as the most probable time for the first Christmas. This time frame, along with 3 April A.D. 33 for the Crucifixion, provides a very balanced correlation of all surviving chronological clues in the New Testament, as well as the extrabiblical sources. Earlier or later dates, in either case, tend to disregard or manipulate at least one or more of the sources. Using the form of a running commentary on the relevant chronological sedes in the New Testament, I will respond briefly to the current status of research on each. …”   To continue reading Paul Maier’s article, click here. 

This blog was originally written for inclusion in the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 4 vols., ed. G. Kurian (Blackwell, forthcoming), along with 15 other forthcoming entries.

Monogamy (from Gr. monos, “one,” and gamos, “marriage”) refers to marriage to one marriage partner. Monogamy is firmly embedded in the Old Testament teaching regarding God’s plan for marriage. According to Gen. 2:24, “A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” This clearly stipulates a heterosexual, monogamous relationship as the norm for God’s people across both covenant periods.

After the Fall, it took only six generations until monogamy began to be compromised. Barely after Adam had died, Lamech “took two wives” (Gen. 4:19). During the course of Old Testament history, prominent men such as Abraham (Gen. 16:3), Esau (Gen. 26:34; 28:9), Jacob (Gen. 29:30), Gideon (Judg. 8:30), David (2 Sam. 3:2–5; 5:13), Solomon (1 Kgs. 11:3), and others practiced polygamy. Nevertheless, the Old Testament never approves of polygamy.

In the New Testament, both Jesus and Paul upheld the biblical ideal of monogamy. When asked about the permissibility of divorce, Jesus reiterated God’s original plan for marriage as stated in Gen. 2:24 (Matt. 19:4–6 pars.). Paul, likewise, assumed monogamous, heterosexual marriage as the norm, even relating it to Christ’s relationship with the Church (Eph. 5:21–33; cf. Col. 3:18–19). Peter did likewise (1 Pet. 3:1–7; cf. 1 Cor. 9:5).

Scripture proscribes any form of extra-marital sexual intercourse, calling it sexual immorality (porneia), whether adultery, incest, or other forms of illicit sexual relationships (1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Thess. 4:3–6). Jesus even taught that adultery is committed in a person’s heart (Matt. 5:32; cf. Heb. 13:4). In the Greco-Roman world, too, marriage was viewed as monogamous and lifelong (Modestinus, Digesta 23.2.1), though divorce often disrupted the marital bond.

Bibliography:

Campbell, Ken M., ed. Marriage and Family in the Biblical World. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003.

Hawthorne, Gerald F. “Marriage and Divorce, Adultery and Incest.” In Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1993), 594–601.

Keener, Craig S. “Marriage, Divorce and Adultery.” In Dictionary of the Later New Testament & Its Developments (ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997), 712–17.

Köstenberger, Andreas J. God, Marriage and Family. Wheaton: Crossway, 2004.

This blog was originally written for inclusion in the Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization, 4 vols., ed. G. Kurian (Blackwell, forthcoming), along with 15 other forthcoming entries.

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) was born January 14, 1875 at Kaysersberg in Upper Alsace, Germany, the son of a Lutheran pastor. In 1893, he began his studies at the University of Strassburg, taking classes in New Testament with the well-known German scholar Heinrich Julius Holtzmann. From 1902 until 1912, he served in Strassburg as a lecturer in New Testament, as pastor of a church, and as director of the Thomasstift. Apart from being a New Testament scholar, Schweitzer also earned a medical doctorate and was an accomplished organist and authority on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Starting in 1913, with occasional interruptions, Schweitzer served as a missionary doctor in Lambaréné, equatorial West Africa. During this time Schweitzer continued his work as a scholar, contributing, among other works, a study on The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Schweitzer also received the 1952 Nobel peace prize on December 10, 1953. He died at Lambaréné on September 4, 1965.

Doubtless Schweitzer’s most influential scholarly work was his survey of studies on the life of Jesus, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A critical study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede, a work he wrote not even being thirty years old. In this book, written in a lively style, Schweitzer discusses and critiques approximately 250 (mostly German) works on Jesus in the previous (nineteenth) century. In the end, he concludes that writing a life of Jesus is impossible, because we do not have the data for a biography in the modern sense. Those who were trying to do so nonetheless, according to Schweitzer, ended up domesticating Jesus, removing him from his time and transposing him into their own in order to render him intelligible to a modern audience. But Jesus refuses to be domesticated, and thus all liberal modern lives are blind alleys, falsifications rather than expositions of Jesus’ life.

For his part, Schweitzer endeavored to understand Jesus within his own first-century Jewish framework, presenting him under the rubric of what he calls “thoroughgoing eschatology” (though what he meant more closely approximates what today is understood as “apocalyptic,” that is, the expectation that the world will come to an end through the cataclysmic, end-time intervention of God). Within this framework, Schweitzer understood Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God as the proclamation that in him, Jesus, the end of time had dawned and was imminent. Yet Jesus died, and history failed to come to an end. By implication, Jesus was mistaken. While not followed in every respect by anyone, Schweitzer’s work has cast a long, influential shadow on subsequent generations of German and Anglo-American scholarship. The importance of Jesus’ Jewishness and his first-century Palestinian milieu is widely recognized today. At the same time, many would concur that Schweitzer underestimated the role of Jesus’ resurrection in spawning a movement that extends to every corner of the globe.

Bibliography:

Baird, William. History of New Testament Research. Volume Two: From Jonathan Edwards to Rudolf Bultmann. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003, pp. 229–37, 508–9.

Neill, Stephen and Tom Wright. The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986. 2^nd ed. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 205–15.

Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A critical study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede. Ed. and trans. John Bowden. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001 [1^st orig. ed. 1906; 2^nd ed. 1913].

Idem. Out of my Life and Thought: An Autobiography. 2^nd ed. Trans. A. B. Lemke. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954 [1931].

Idem. The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle. Trans. W. Montgomery. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1931 [1930].

The Christmas season is over, but the debate regarding Jesus’ probable date of birth is never out of date. While many have disparaged the traditional date of December 25, J. Stormer, PCC [Pensacola Christian College] Update (Winter 1996), cited by G. E. Veith, “Evidence December 25 is the right day,” online at http://www.geneveith.com/evidence-december-25-is-the-right-day/_184/, has recently argued for December 25 as a possible date of Jesus’ birth on the basis of the course of temple duties for the clan of Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5, 8; cf. 1 Chron 24:10).

The argument goes as follows. The sons of Abijah ministered in the eighth month of the Jewish year (which started with Nisan anytime between early March and early April), that is, sometime between mid-October and mid-November. Luke 1:24 says that after Elizabeth conceived, she kept herself in seclusion for five months. Then, in the sixth month of her pregnancy came Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that the Lord Jesus would be conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:26–27). Counting from mid-October to mid-November (see above), the announcement to Mary and Jesus’ conception in her womb would have come sometime between mid-March and mid-April. A normal gestation period of nine months would place Jesus’ birth toward the end of December, making a birth date of December 25 entirely possible. (In addition, Stormer makes an argument from when lambs are born requiring shepherds to be out in the fields at night [cf. Luke 2:8], an argument which is ancillary and which we will not engage here since, unlike the above-described argument from the assigned temple duties, it is not put forward on the basis of Scripture.)

In principle, we are certainly open to the type of argument presented by Stormer. We do believe that there is nothing in the NT that rules out a winter date for Jesus’ birth. Nevertheless, in the ultimate analysis, we find Stormer’s argument unconvincing for the following reasons. First, his work is too anecdotal and makes some big assumptions that are not adequately documented. More importantly, his argument has some serious problems with regard to their handling of the available sources and evidence. He argues that the 24 courses of the priests each served for one month. However, he did not document that claim, and the OT does not indicate the length of priestly service. Clues in the Mishnah suggest that each course served for one week—not one month—by rotation (see, for example, the note on m. Taanith 2:6 in Danby’s translation of the Mishnah). Josephus and the Talmud confirm that the courses each lasted one week (Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 119). If, then, the priestly service lasted one week, not one month at time, this causes their entire chronology to break down. Most likely, therefore, each course of the priests served for one week, from Sabbath to Sabbath, two different times each year. Since we cannot be sure whether the course mentioned in Luke was the first or second annual course, and other difficulties are present as well, the information concerning Zechariah’s temple service in Luke 1 is hardly adequate for pinpointing the time of Jesus’ birth.

More likely correct are scholars such as Oscar Cullmann, Der Ursprung des Weihnachtsfestes (Zurich/Stuttgart: Zwingli, 1960), who points to the uncertainty regarding the date of Jesus’ birth in the first three centuries of the Christian era and believes the traditional date was determined by the church sometime in the fourth century (Cullmann specifies AD 325–354 as the most likely range, p. 24). The date was most likely chosen as the Christian equivalent to the Roman holiday of sol invictus (“the invincible sun god”), celebrated at the time of winter solstice, the message being that Jesus was Christians’ true invincible “sun” (see also the helpful collection of data in Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, rev. ed. [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998], 320–28).

As mentioned, this does not necessarily mean that Jesus could not have been born in December, or even on December 25, but that the specific argument set forth by Stormer is found wanting. In addition, in light of the argument advanced by Cullmann and others, greater historical probability attaches to the traditional date having been chosen, not primarily on the basis of historical data, but in relation to the surrounding culture. In any case, our Christian faith should not rest on Christmas (which, after all, with all its trappings is only a human tradition), much less on the date of Christmas as December 25, but rather on the reason for the season—the virgin-born, divine-human Son of God, who came to save sinners by dying a sacrificial, substitutionary death on the cross and rose again on the third day (1 Cor 15:3–4).