Preliminary Notes on the Timing and Circumstances of Advent

Winter is here. The time for celebrating Advent is upon us, and the Christmas season is in full swing! Typically, Christians across the globe recognize the birth of Jesus Christ to be on December 25^th. However, few have paused to consider whether this date is truly the historical day of his birth. If you’ve never asked yourself this question before, it should produce a thoughtful moment of pause.

In turn, that pause should produce a few questions worth answering: Was Jesus Christ actually born on December 25^th? If so, how did we get that information? If not, what are the possible dates that he was born? Finally, is the answer to this question even knowable?

This article is the 1^st of many in a series related to the timing and circumstances of Advent as a historical event. Every December, during the Christmas season, we’ll be progressively exploring this topic. Hopefully, with each subsequent year, we’ll inch closer to discovering the most plausible timeframe for the birth of Christ and a specific date to call his birthday.

My initial curiosity in this question took root when I latched onto a noteworthy piece of information about the timeline for the birth of Jesus in the Bible. However, it might surprise you that this particular Biblical data point doesn’t involve his birth at all. Instead, it revolves around the birth of his relative, John the Baptist.

Let’s take a look at Luke 1:5: “In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.” (Luke 1:5, ESV)

Here we see that the priest named Zechariah is serving at the Second Temple in Jerusalem. In case you don’t know the story, spoiler alert, Zechariah is soon to be the father of John the Baptist. The interesting part pertaining to our investigation regards the specific priestly division in which Zechariah serves; it’s the division of Abijah. A chronological listing of these priestly divisions can be found in the book of 1Chronicles 24:1-19, and in verse 10, the division of Abijah is identified as the 8^th of the 24 divisions to be performed every year at the Temple in Jerusalem.¹ Now, although it comes from a part of the Old Testament that you’ve likely not read more than once, the division of Abijah is actually quite helpful for pinpointing when Jesus was born!

How that works is a fairly straightforward explanation. The 24 priestly divisions correspond to the 12 Biblical months of the Hebrew calendar.² So, if we can somehow discover in which of the priestly divisions Jesus was born, we can narrow the timing of his birthday into roughly an 8-day or 16-day window on the Hebrew calendar.³ Afterward, we can convert those Hebrew calendar days into our Gregorian calendar days to produce a range of modern dates like December 15-30 or some other timeframe. 

Sounds easy enough, right? Bada-boom, bada-bing, birthday!

Well, for several reasons, it’s not quite that easy. I’ll spare you the mind-numbing details for now, but to do this investigation justice, I’ll eventually have to get into them at some point during a later article. For now, let’s just follow the logic of trying to identify the birth of Jesus with a particular priestly division. To do that, we need to go back to the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke 1.

If you don’t know the story, here’s a quick recap of it. While he is burning incense in the Temple, Zechariah is visited by the angel Gabriel who gives him good news. Gabriel tells Zechariah that his wife, Elizabeth, will conceive and give birth to a son. However, because his wife is over childbearing age, Zechariah is somewhat disbelieving in the message given to him by Gabriel.⁴ Therefore, as a sign of its truthfulness, Gabriel tells Zechariah that he will be mute until the day of John’s birth. 

We pick up the Zechariah/Elizabeth story in verses 23-24: “And when his time of service was ended, he went to his home. After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden… (Luke 1:23-24, ESV)”

We see in verse 23 that Zechariah went straight home after his time of service in the Temple was completed. Therefore, we can somewhat safely presume that John the Baptist’s conception occurred during the 9^th priestly division: Jeshua.⁵ Verse 24 reveals that Elizabeth grew to be 5 months pregnant, but in the following verses, the story quickly shifts its focus to the Virgin Mary. 

Take a look at verses 26-27: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. (Luke 1:26-27, ESV)”

Gabriel makes his second appearance in the story and visits Mary during the 6^th month to announce the coming birth of Jesus.⁶ It’s worthwhile to note that Mary is in Nazareth at the time of Gabriel’s appearance, but Zechariah was at the Jerusalem Temple when Gabriel appeared to him.⁷ Little did they know that their stories would soon become divinely entangled.

The rest of the Advent story unfolds from here and needs little if any explanation for this audience; after all, it is the foundation for Christmas. However, as the muse for this investigation, it’s merely our first stop in a long line of inquiry. Nevertheless, to make it our first stop, we still need to study a few more verses to complete our initial bit of data collection.

Verses 36-37 confirm that Elizabeth was in her 6^th month of pregnancy when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary. Gabriel tells Mary, “And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God. (Luke 1:36-37, ESV)”

Finally, to seal the deal on this line of thinking, let’s read what Mary does immediately after this visitation in verses 39-42: “In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:39-42, ESV)”

The details outlined in this passage are important and contain some of the most interesting points to consider. Firstly, verse 39 reveals that Mary traveled “with haste” to see Elizabeth. Remember, Elizabeth had secluded herself all this time; she’s kept her pregnancy secret thus far. This was probably the first time that Mary ever heard about it; so, her visitation does double duty. On the one hand, it seems like she’s going to confirm what Gabriel said about Elizabeth. On the other hand, if indeed Elizabeth is pregnant, it bodes well that Gabriel was telling the truth about her pregnancy too. Regardless of her motives, she gets both of these questions answered by Elizabeth before she can even ask them.⁸

Secondly, we also learn that Zechariah and Elizabeth lived in the hilly region of Judah. This is a reference to the Judaean Hills located slightly South of Jerusalem. The northernmost part of the hills is a relatively quick trip from the Jerusalem Temple.⁹ The southernmost part of the hills is just over a daylong trip. So, wherever they lived in the Judaean Hills, it didn’t take Zechariah long to get back home after his priestly duties were completed. Although it’s quite possible that his travels back home took less than a day, it probably didn’t take any more than a couple of days for Zechariah to have gotten back home.¹⁰

However, Mary’s trip is another story. She had to travel from the northern city of Nazareth, pass through Jerusalem, and find their home in the Judaean hills. I’m going to tentatively say that it took Mary at least 3 days to travel to Elizabeth in the Judaean Hills, but I’m open to the idea that it might have taken upwards of a week for her to get there.¹¹ At this point in the research process, I’m just giving a range of possibilities; that number will be narrowed down into a more precise number in the future.

Lastly, verse 42 records the most pivotal part of this passage. It gives us a huge Biblical data point regarding our investigation; namely, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth recognizes that Mary is currently pregnant! Therefore, conception occurred sometime between Gabriel’s visitation and this specific moment of conversation.¹²

This key piece of Biblical information officially starts the birthday countdown clock. Mary becomes pregnant in the 6^th month of Elizabeth’s own pregnancy. Knowing that 40 weeks is the gestational timeframe for a typical pregnancy and presuming Mary had a typical pregnancy, we can start a 40-week countdown from this point forward to find the original date of the Christmas story!

In the years ahead, we’re going to examine a multitude of Biblical and extrabiblical details related to Advent. Settle in because, Much like the journey of the wise men (which we’ll get to later), this is not going to be a short trip. It’s impossible to know exactly where this journey will end, but here’s my current train of thought and logical progression for where we’re going next:

1) Presuming 40 weeks of pregnancy, what priestly division was serving at the time of Christ’s birth?
2) Which dates on the Hebrew calendar would that priestly division have occurred?
3) Which dates on our modern-day Gregorian calendar are correlated with those Hebrew calendar dates?

I have a feeling this will be more than I can deliver for next year, but we’ll at least cross one of those items off the list. Let’s see what God empowers us to do!

Until next time, may God bless you abundantly. Take care.