Truth or Tradition?

I know ... most of you think I'm making a big deal out of nothing when I even remotely reference the fact of the matter regarding December 25th. But, somewhere along the line in my life, I was taught that truth was important. ...that lying is deception. ...that honesty was not just the best policy, but it was EXPECTED of me.  To be honest meant knowing what the truth was; which brings me to the need to know the truth about this date on our calendars that we celebrate as the birth of our Savior.


As Providence would have it, back in the early '80s I heard a radio teaching (which I recorded as much of as I could) by a Messianic Jewish woman who told us about things they (Messianic Jews) had brought down in their historical telling and re-telling of the birth of Christ, and all that surrounded it.  With that in mind, I went to the Scriptures to see if I could find the TIME of Jesus' birth.


My jumping off place was Luke’s 1st chapter, where Luke tells of Mary's cousin, Elisabeth, and her husband, Zechariah, both descendants of Aaron. Zechariah, we are told, was 'a priest of the course of Abijah,' and it says in verse 8, that Zechariah was on duty when the angel Gabriel appeared and spoke to him, so we need to know when that would fall during the year.  That’s where the trail takes us temporarily back to 1 Chronicles 24:4-19, where the courses (by lot) are identified, and their times explained, with Abijah being assigned the 8th course, in verse 10.


In this setting, (understand we're talking about the priesthood), so the calendar being used [there are two] would likely be the sacred calendar, not the civil one. With that in mind, note that each 'course' is 2 weeks in length, beginning in Nisan, which corresponds to March-April, and that Abijah is the 8th course. So all we need do is to count through the months, 2 weeks at a time, to get an idea of when it was he was in the temple. (calendars make this much easier, but)... counting... 
last 2 weeks of March, 
1st 2 weeks of April, 
last 2 weeks of Apr, 
1st 2 weeks of May (that's 4 courses)... 
last 2 weeks of May, 
1st 2 weeks of Jun, 
last 2 weeks of Jun, 
1st 2 weeks of Jul... 
so we get it that Zechariah's on duty in the temple during the 1st half of July... OK? You still with me?  We know the narrative here... Gabriel tells Zechariah that he and Elisabeth are going to have a son, what to name him ... Zechariah responds in unbelief, is rendered speechless, etc, and in verse 23, "...as soon as the days of his ministration were accomplished, he departed to his own house." (KJV)


Verse 24 "And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself 5 months..." Zechariah would have gone home in mid July, Elisabeth conceived (from the way it reads, almost immediately!!!) so counting... mid Jul-Aug=1 month, mid Aug-Sept=2, mid Sept-Oct=3, mid Oct-Nov=4, mid Nov-mid Dec=5.


Now the telling turns to Mary verse 26. "And in the 6th month [after that], the angel Gabriel was sent..." So sometime during Elisabeth's 6th month (mid Dec to mid Jan) we have Gabriel's visit to Mary, at which time she's told she'll conceive by the Holy Spirit.  So it's entirely possible that this visit took place sometime during last two weeks of December. (I like to think so, anyway! ...why hold off till late in the month???)


As soon as the Angel Gabriel leaves Mary, it says she arose and went (in haste!) to see Elisabeth (who, upon hearing her greeting, referenced the 'fruit of her womb' in blessing her, indicating to me that her pregnancy was already in progress).  So Mary's baby would be born like about ... late September. But I jumped ahead of the chronology there... sorry... 


Mary stayed with her cousin Elisabeth 3 months (verse 56) till like mid February and returned home.  You know, I always found it interesting that she left just before the birth of John... amazing.  Anyway, Joseph sees her back home and notes the obvious 3 month 'baby bump', and plans to ditch the girl, till he's told not to, in a dream (for that you have to go to Matthew 1:18-25).


Oh, there was one other thing the Messianic woman added during the teaching: the Shepherds out by Bethlehem... those sheep they were watching over were raised for supplying a Passover sacrifice for out of town visitors who didn't have one, and they would NOT have been out in the field by night during the rainy season ... December!  She said the latest they'd have stayed out there with the sheep was late October.


Here we have the whole storyline is laid out clear as day, so what's with December 25th? ...just tradition... thanks to a whole host of folks down through the ages.


Does that explain it clearly enough? So... what are we celebrating? 
THAT HE CAME!


Tags: truth, tradition, Christmas 


Thursday 6 December 2007 - 04:49PM (EST)