Mike Heiser

in

Michael S. Heiser

9 years ago

The date of Jesus' birth is of course on the minds of many since it's almost Christmas. Many will know that I believe the actual birthdate of Jesus was Sept 11, 3 BC (you can find me discussing this on my Naked Bible YouTube channel, but see below). This isn’t based on any original research of my own. Rather, it is based on the work of E. L. Martin’s The Star that Astonished the World (which can be read for free), correlated with research by other more known scholars. Most academics are unaware of Martin’s research because he wasn’t a member of the biblical studies guild. Others reject it out of hand because of Martin’s involvement with the old Worldwide Church of God. The quality of one’s research, however, doesn’t depend on having a PhD in biblical studies or whether one is doctrinally correct in all areas. I don’t buy Martin’s views on other things, but I find his work on the birth of the messiah persuasive (and it has a long history of endorsement in planetariums). In briefest terms, Martin considers Rev 12:1-7 to describe the actual celestial events of the birth of the messiah (which birth is part of the context of Rev 12:1-7). Most New Testament scholars don’t consider Rev 12 as astral prophecy. The major voice in that regard is Bruce Malina, a well-known New Testament scholar. Unfortunately, Malina dramatically overstates his case in his book, On the Genre and Message of the Book of Revelation. Malina argues that (basically) the entirety of the book of Revelation is astral prophecy. Scholars like G. K. Beale and David deSilva have rightly pointed out Malina’s near total neglect of the Old Testament context of John’s Revelation. Malina’s work deserves such criticism. But it’s misguided to think that we have to choose between seeing astral prophecy everywhere in Revelation to the neglect of how John uses the Old Testament, and seeing it nowhere. I don’t buy that either-or fallacy. Martin’s thesis has, of course, been critiqued in some detail. There are problems, but none of them are insurmountable and can be rebutted with good evidence. This reality, along with the comprehensive explanatory power Martin’s work, as well as the date’s remarkable synchronicity with Jewish messianic symbolism and calendar, make Martin’s work persuasive to me. Most of the criticisms of Martin’s work revolve around the fact that it requires a date of 1 BC for the death of Herod the Great, something that flies in the face of the (current) consensus of 4 BC for that event. Critics of a 1 BC death for Herod that I have read seem oblivious to the past and recent work in defense of that date — at least I have found references to that research lacking in their criticisms. A date of 1 BC for Herod’s death is not only possible, but more accurately reflects the data now available. The two best sources for defending Herod’s death in 1 BC — which, again, seem utterly neglected in criticisms of Martin’s work — are: 1) The difficult to find article by Ormond Edwards, “Herodian Chronology,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 114 (1982): 29-42. Edwards’s article is a study of Herodian coinage and its implications for dating Herod’s reign, including his death. Edwards’ research shows that the death of Herod the Great was Tishri 1, 3 BC (Martin’s Sept 11) by the civil new year’s calendar, or Nisan 1, 2 BC using the ecclesiastical calendar. Edwards writes in his conclusion: “It is concluded that Josephus in Jewish War was mistaken in his handling of the calendars of the Herodian period. He dated all the Herods’ reigns from the spring new year, whereas the earlier Herods (excluding Agrippa II) dated their coins from the autumn civil new year’s day preceding accession. The error comes to light only when the data in Josephus is compared with the coin dates.” 2) The more recent article by an expert in biblical chronology, Andrew Steinmann, “When Did Herod the Great Reign?” Novum Testamentum 51 (2009) 1-29. The abstract of this article reads: For about 100 years there has been a consensus among scholars that Herod the Great reigned from 37 to 4 BCE. However, there have been several challenges to this consensus over the past four decades, the most notable being the objection raised by W. E. Filmer. This paper argues that Herod most likely reigned from late 39 BCE to early 1 BCE, and that this reconstruction of his reign can account for all of the surviving historical references to the events of Herod’s reign more logically than the current consensus can. Moreover, the reconstruction of Herod’s reign proposed in this paper accounts for all of the dateable evidence relating to Herod’s reign, whereas the current consensus is unable to explain some of the evidence that it dismisses as ancient errors or that it simply ignores." The above articles are not in the public domain, so I cannot post them. However, you can get them another way I describe in episode 138 of my Naked Bible podcast (we just recorded this today -- so give it a few days to be uploaded at www.nakedbiblepodcast.com). The episode was all about the birth date of Jesus, and there's a lot more to the astronomy and its amazing alignment with Second Temple Jewish messianic expectations than the above items. It connects back to Gen 6:1-4 and the flood narrative. That material is based upon the work of Ellen Robbins from Johns Hopkins -- that article is also available by means of the method noted in my podcast:  Ellen Robbins, "The Pleiades, the Flood, and the Jewish New Year,” in Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine (ed. Robert Chazan, William W. Hallo, and Lawrence Schiffman; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 329-344.