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Was Yeshua Born on September 11?
There is a lot to unpack in this 48-minute video, so don’t strain your brain trying to grasp it all in one listening. I’ve been thinking in those terms (the signs of the zodiac setting the stage for the Babylonian magi to expect the King being born) for over 40 years and I’m going to need to download the transcript to parse the message of the video. So here is both the video and the transcript. Enjoy!
The YouTuber’s description: “Most of us Christians already know that December 25th is not the actual birthday of our Savior Jesus Christ (Yeshua), but is there a way to calculate his exact date of birth? There is quite a bit of scholarly debate on this topic, and in fact, two of our favorite scholars, Dr. Michael Heiser and Dr. Chuck Missler, disagree on the exact birth date of our Messiah.
“We’ll listen to each of them describe the scholarly paths that led them to their own beliefs and use their studies to draw our own conclusions about the day on which Jesus was born.
“We’ll hear from Heiser about one date in particular which is theorized to be Jesus’ birthday, that is widely regarded as Noah’s birthday, the anniversary of Adam’s creation, and the Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah). The exact date will surprise you because it has modern day implications as well!”
Was Jesus BORN on September 11th?
with
Michael Heiser & Chuck Missler - The Answer Is In The STARS!
Dance Like David
Transcript
Dr. Michael Heiser: The combination of astronomical signs produces a unique set of circumstances which can only be accounted for by one date that matters in the sweep of New Testament chronology. This date has dramatic significance in the Jewish calendar. According to all of these signs taken together and according to all these signs in the heavens, the date of Jesus’ birth, the birth of the Messiah was …
Narrator: On what day and in what year was the Messiah Jesus Christ, Yeshua, born? A large proportion of Christians today celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th. But most of us know that wasn’t the actual date on which he entered this world in his physical form. So if we assume his birth wasn’t on December 25th, is there a way to calculate the exact date? Well, there are several biblical scholars who would argue that yes, you can in fact calculate Jesus’s birthday. In fact, several scholars believe you can calculate within a span of a few minutes when the Messiah was born. Let’s take a listen to Dr. Michael Heheiser, who will, by the way be reading from a number of other scholars writings, including Joseph [unintelligible] and E. W. Bullinger, although he may not totally agree with either of them. Here we go.
Heiser: If you asked the average Christian, hey, why is the world the way it is? Why is it such a mess? You know, why why do we have all this problem with depravity? The answer you’re going to get is the fall. Okay, Genesis 3. But if you asked a first century Jew the same question, that is not the answer you’d get. the fall would be one of three elements, but we’re taught only one because we ignore Genesis 6. We demythologize it it and pretend it doesn’t say what it says. And then we are completely oblivious to the Babel event, Genesis 11, how Deuteronomy 32:8-9 parses that for us.
Most people in in most churches really for centuries, maybe millennia, have never even heard, uh, of Babel talked about in the context of Deuteronomy 32:8-9. But there it is in the text. That’s going to sound a little familiar like what does the birth of Jesus have to do with the theme, the biblical theological theme of reversing the effect of the transgression of Genesis 6? Well, actually a lot.
That is part of a wider area, uh, in scholarship for lack of a better term called astral theology or astro theology. This notion that that the ancients, Jews and Christians included, looked at the heavens and considered what was going on in the heavens as signs of God working out His will or God about to do something. Sort of a prophetic flavor. We see that generally in the gospels with the second coming. There’ll be this sign of the Son of Man or signs in the heavens. We saw it in the book of Acts with things that have already happened. So that’s part of eschatology in biblical thinking.
That’s different, though, than what we think of as astrology. So there they’re they’re two things that are that are sort of conceptually related, but they’re actually distinct. Christians and Jews had negative views of astrology like we would think of it. And you say, “Well, how could they be thinking about something the way we think of it?” Well, the answer is actually pretty simple. What what offended them in terms of astral religion were a couple of things. The the foreign gods element obviously is going to be offensive to Christians and Jews. But specifically, the notion that the movement of objects in the heavens controlled individual destiny, individual fate, that was theologically offensive because understandably they would say only God does that. Only God determines someone’s fate, not stuff moving around in the sky.
That was a very pagan notion of astronomy or astrology. And in the ancient world, those two things, astronomy and astrology, were pretty well blended. They were distinguishable, obviously, because you you would have a lot of data for that in ancient records going all the way back into Mesopotamia, and then of course Egypt. So people knew what they were doing with astronomy and math and and whatnot again to a limited degree, to to the naked eye degree. But all of it had a very deep religious flavor. So that sort of blended with what we would think of as astrological thinking.
But Christians and Jews had boundaries here. They rejected the idea that this determined individual faith. So, we’re not talking about horoscopes and zodiacs and astrology the way astrologers today do when, you know, look at the heavens and what I’m going to who who am I going to marry, what kind of job am I going to have, should I do this or that. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the notion that among Jews and Christians that hey, it was the God of Israel who created the things that we see in the sky. And He created them, according to Genesis, to mark times and seasons, days, the passage of time, which of course they knew meant the flow of human history. ‘As in heaven, so on earth’ sort of thing going on as well. That’s what we’re talking about.
Narrator: Let’s pause for just a moment and take a look at some evidence that backs up Heiser’s idea that ancient churches were privy to astrology. Here’s an image of Dalmony in Britain with the zodiac carved in stone above the doorway. This church is thought to be constructed in the 12th century AD. And here’s an image of the astrological signs on the floor of San Miniato Alante in Florence, Italy, which was built in the 11th century AD. Clearly, the builders of these churches were tipping their hat to a set of beliefs that had been passed down for centuries, if not millennia. Let’s get back to Dr. Mike.
Heiser: So if we go to Romans 10, this is the chapter that talks about whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But if you start in verse 5, you get the context for that. It’s actually quite interesting and takes us into, believe it or not, this topic of astral prophecy. So Romans 10:5, “For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, ‘Do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven?’ that is to bring Christ down. ‘Or who will ascend into the abyss?’ That is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth, and in your heart.’ That is the word of faith that we proclaim.” Verse 9. “Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, ‘Everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. For the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on Him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Now, here’s verse 14. So, I just read verse 13, the passage everybody knows. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Here’s verse 14. “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news?’ But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed and who has believed what he has heard from us.’ So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.”
So Paul, I’ll just stop there before I read the next verse, which is the springboard verse, verse 18. Paul, you know, talks about the necessity of calling on the name of the Lord to be saved. And then he says, “Well, how how are they going to do that if they’ve never heard and for them to hear, you know, they you got to have someone, you know, preaching” and so on and so forth. So the problem is not everybody knows this. Or so we think. You know, not everybody knows, you know, what’s going on here. And so when Paul sets this up, you think that that’s just kind of it. Paul’s going to say, “Look, this is why we’re here. This is why we preach. You know, we got to get people out there. We got to evangelize.” And he does all that and he says all that, but then he asks this question. This is the kicker for me. This is what drew me in. Verse 18, “But I ask, ‘Have they not heard?’” And you expect Paul to say, “Well, of course they haven’t heard. That’s why I’m saying we got to be preachers.”
But that isn’t what he says. Verse 18, “But I ask, ‘Have they not heard?’ Indeed, they have. For…” and then Paul quotes an Old Testament passage as his proof text that people everywhere have indeed heard about Jesus, which you think, what in the world? And here’s the passage he quotes. “Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the end of the world.”
Now Paul is clearly describing the necessity of believing in Jesus for salvation. That that’s easy from Romans 10. Again, we lots of people have memorized that. But in order to believe in Jesus, people have to hear about him. Paul then raises the expected problem. Not everybody has heard about Jesus. And he gives an unexpected answer. He says they have heard. You think, “What in the world? Where? How? Okay, what’s going on here?” The passage that Paul quotes from the Old Testament is Psalm 19:4. Now what Paul does here is he quotes from the Septuagent translation of Psalm 19:4. Again the Septuagent is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. For Paul, everyone had heard or should have heard about the coming of Jesus because, quote, “Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.” Well, whose voice is Paul’s talk… is Paul talking about?
If you go to Psalm 19, you find out. He’s talking about the heavens and the objects in the heavens. Let’s read Psalm 19, first four verses. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His Handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.”
Now you’ll notice there the fourth verse. “Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words the end of the world.” I’m reading from the ESV, and the ESV has in that verse adopted the septuagent reading. “Their voice goes out through all the earth.” Now some of your Bibles may follow the maseretic text here. We’ll get to that in a moment because it says something different. It actually is going to mean the same thing, but it will say something different.
Now, there are a number of terms in those first four verses that convey the idea that the heavens communicate information. Just think about what we just read. The heavens declare, the sky proclaims, the cycle of days and nights pours out speech and, quote “reveals knowledge.” The heavens have a voice, and speech, and words that can be heard since their message, quote, “goes out through all the earth.” It’s very clearly attributing communication and the dispensing of information to the heavens. That’s just a transparent reading of Psalm 19 and and that’s what Paul is tracking on. The key question though is how did Paul think the heavens communicated the coming of Jesus? What I do think Paul was thinking, though, is that the stars communicated the arrival of a divine king.
So in that sense, Paul believes it is possible for the news about Jesus coming to be known to everyone. In other words, everybody should have known that a divine king had been born because the heavens declare. Their voice — again the voice of of these, you know, heavenly objects, these celestial objects — goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. People could have — and should have — known that much, that that a divine king had been born.
Let’s take this a little further. Paul’s task in the gospel was to explain what the coming of this divine king meant. The mystery that Paul, you know, referred to as the plan of salvation. You’re Jew and Gentile united together, same Savior, all that sort of thing. It is fallacious, though, to presume that the starry heavens could actually explain the way of salvation to someone. If looking at the heavens was sufficient for evangelism, why would Jesus send out apostles? The sky has far greater and more immediate coverage. So why bother doing that? Moreover, the message of the traveling apostles was not how to read the heavens. They didn’t tell the story of the sky. They talk about the work of Christ on the cross. So again, there’s a distinction there.
And finally, the notion that the gospel message could be understood through the stars conflicts with the fact that the disciples themselves didn’t understand the cross event until well after the ascension. Or Luke 24, the risen Christ is standing in the room and they still don’t get it. If the heavenly event of the birth and and the signage in the stars was supposed to present the gospel, they they should have been able to understand that. What I am saying is that I think what Paul is tracking on is that there were celestial events, celestial signs that that could have and should have telegraphed to everyone that a divine king had come to earth. And specifically, you know, we we’re going to get this the story of the magi that that factors into this. I don’t think Paul is thinking specifically of the star in Matthew 2. And by the way, that term in Matthew 2 is a term used of of a wide range of celestial bodies. So it’s it’s not a star only like we think of it. It could have been a planet. And and again, I’m going to agree with most astronomers that it was Jupiter. You know, Jupiter’s retrograde motion. So that lone object, the star by itself wouldn’t telegraph anything.
You say, “Well, what do you mean? The magi looked up there and they they could figure out what it meant.” Well, yeah, because what they were looking at had a celestial context to them. This celestial object in Matthew 2, the star of Bethlehem, whatever that was, and its behavior, its movement. If you’re just looking at Matthew 2, you don’t have the context for understanding what that is. In other words, if you weren’t a magi, one of the magi, and you saw that thing in the sky, you wouldn’t think anything of it because you lack the astronomical, the wider context. You don’t really know exactly what you’re looking at. You can see something in the sky. You can see it change directions if you went off and did something, came back a few minutes later, but you don’t have the astronomical context because this isn’t what you do. You’re a shepherd or you’re something else. Well, the magi understood the bigger picture. They could single out this object and understand what it was meaning because they knew the wider context.
Is there anything in the New Testament that might give us that context that might give the star of Matthew 2 the context that the magi had that would inform an ancient sky watcher that this particular object that’s mentioned in Matthew 2 marked the birth of divine king? And and there is indeed there is a context for that in the New Testament. It’s found in a passage that few New Testament scholars associate with the birth of Jesus, which is ironic, especially since this passage says what it says in conjunction with the birth of the Messiah since it’s in the last book of the New Testament. And that isn’t part of the birth narrative in the Gospels. People don’t make the connection. But the connections are there if you just read the text for what it actually says. In other words, if you let the text say what it says, and sometimes, believe it or not, the text just means what it says.
So, Revelation 12 is the passage I’m talking about, specifically the first seven verses or so. What we have in Revelation 12 is, I think, a record of what the Magi saw in a wider lens that was codified by John well after the birth of Jesus. The date produced by reading Revelation 12 the way we’re going to read it coincides perfectly with important calendrical items that are part of Jewish messianic expectation. And the date produced is quite workable. I would say completely workable in the context of the entirety of the rest of New Testament chronology.
So, in other words, you couldn’t arbitrarily pick a day, time, and year or arbitrarily pick something going on in the heavens that happened not not when you’re writing, but at some other point. You couldn’t arbitrarily pick something like that and get lucky that the the scene you’re picking in the sky, you’re making this up after the fact. You just to write something about Jesus that is going to, you know, mystify readers and draw attention to to his birth. You can’t just pick that and get lucky that that the thing you picked works everywhere else chronologically and calendrically in terms of events of Jesus’ life.
Not only that, but all the other events in the New Testament, because this date that Revelation 12 produces does that. It fits in with everything else. I think it’s a real stretch to say John just got real lucky. Just an highly intelligent guess. The best explanation for the star, the celestial object of Matthew 2 is going to be part of the celestial setting that we get when we read Revelation 12. So it gives it a context. So here we go.
A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast into the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.
Now it’s quite clear that the signs in the heavens here in Revelation 12 what John is specifically looking at and he says, “I looked up at the heavens and saw.” Okay they’re indisputably astronomical. Sun, moon, and stars are specifically mentioned. The specific signs though require some attention. Let’s take the woman first. The woman is the key figure, the logical starting point for interpreting Revelation 12 astronomically. Now, since the woman clearly gives birth to the Messiah, and there’s this quotation from the Psalms, “the one who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron.” It’s very clearly messianic. The woman gives birth to the Messiah, and then the Messiah is taken up to heaven. That’s a reference to the ascension. So, you get here in Revelation 12, the birth of the Messiah and the ascension, and then the woman gets persecuted and has to flee into the desert. Israel, of course, is described as the virgin of Zion in the Old Testament and produces the Messiah in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Okay, this is just 101 sort of stuff. 2 Kings 19:21, Isaiah 37:21, Jeremiah 14:17. Again, the virgin of of Zion. Again, Israel is the Virgin of Zion.
Now, more specifically, when it comes to the actual birthing of the Messiah, Mary comes to mind as the Jewish girl who gives birth to Jesus. But virgin Israel best fits both parts of the description of the woman in Revelation 12. In other words, if if it was just the birth, then we might be thinking exclusively of Mary. But since we have the birth, the ascension, and then even subsequent to the ascension… ascension, Israel, you know, fleeing into the wilderness, okay, the woman fleeing into the wilderness, Israel actually fits better. So the the virgin Israel is actually sort of a better paradigm for reading Revelation 12. the meaning of the virgin and the 12 stars around her head is evident in second temple period Jewish literature as well as later rabbitic thought. So even the 12 stars which if we if we look at this astronomically, obviously the virgin is going to be Virgo and Virgo does have you know 12 stars around her head and all that. But if you look at it textually, and specifically in terms of Jewish literature, the 12 stars around the head are going to be references to, a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel. And so the woman again is virgin Zion, you know, Israel. This would have been completely familiar to Jewish readers, completely familiar.
And if you’re looking at the sky, again Virgo is the obvious reference point. The idea that the woman is a constellation is made plausible when one looks closely at the text. Look at the rest of the description here in Revelation 12. The description that the woman was clothed with the sun is stock astronomical language for the sun being in the midst of a constellation. While the sun is in the woman, the the moon is at her feet. For this situation to occur, the constellation of the woman must be an astronomical language on the ecliptic, the imaginary line in the sky that the sun and the moon follow in their journey through the zodiac constellations. If you look at Revelation 12, this is a constellation Virgo, the virgin. The sun is in her midst; the moon is at her feet. That means that we need to start paying attention to Virgo. And the Maseretic text would would would align very well with what we’re talking about here, not just the Septuagent reading. The Apostle John saw the scene when the sun was clothing or adorning the woman. This surely indicates that the position of the sun in the vision was located somewhere midbody to the woman between the neck and the knees. The sun could hardly be said to clothe her if it were situated in her face or near her feet. The only time of the year that the sun could be in position to clothe the celestial woman called Virgo, that is to be midbody, in the region where a pregnant woman carries a child, is when the sun is located between about 150° and 170° along the ecliptic. This clothing of the woman by the sun occurs for a 20-day period each year. This 20° spread could indicate the general time when Jesus was born.
So now we’re starting to to link what’s in the sky and what John is describing with time with real time during the year. That’s the end of Martin’s quote that was from chapter 5. The constellation of the Virgin giving birth to the Messiah would of course have been viewed as quite coherent by the Magi, especially if they knew about Isaiah 7:14. To me, it’s unthinkable that the Magi would not have been exposed somewhere to Jewish learning and specifically the the focus focal point of Jewish learning is the scriptures. So this is not very difficult to imagine that if the magi knew of Isaiah 7:14 and linked it to the Davidic dynasty that they would look at that and go, “Boy, you know, there’s that thing in the Old Testament that read, you know, this virgin shall conceive and you know, maybe we ought to go look at that and oh yeah, boy, it was a sign for Ahaz, you know, the Davidic dynasty.”
But even if they were ignorant of Isaiah 7:14, what they would have been looking at would have been a neon sign for divine royal birth. But the fact that they go to Bethlehem tells you they were familiar with the Hebrew scriptures. Now the detail that the moon was located under the feet of the woman Virgo must not be forgotten in all this. The sun must be in the Virgo constellation while the moon is simultaneously at her feet. Okay, somewhere at under the feet, you know, somewhere there. That condition has to be present for Jon’s vision to be accurately interpreted astronomically because of the moon’s—quote unquote—behavior relative to the ecliptic and Virgo in any given year. The 20-day window narrows to roughly a 90 minute period in which to astronomically pinpoint the birth of the child of Revelation 12, which is the Messiah, which was Jesus.
Let’s talk about the child a little bit. Revelation 12:5 is very explicit that the child is Jesus, the promised Messiah. Quote, “she gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with the rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne.” Reference to the birth and the ascension. Now, this description is an allusion to Psalm 2:7-9, which prophesied that the Messiah would defeat God’s enemies and be installed as ruler over all the nations. In short, John’s wording here in the immediate context is is designed to create the impression that it appeared as if the devil had won the day. He’s the dragon’s right there waiting to kill the child when it’s born. The child’s going to be killed and devoured. But the resurrection resulted in victory for the Messiah, for the child, and the dragon was therefore defeated.
Third figure, the dragon. The scholars of the book of Revelation have long noted the connection of the dragon to Old Testament terminology for the sea monster that symbolized chaos. Throughout the ancient near east, the sea monsters symbolized the war between good and evil, between the gods and chaos. Obviously, in similar fashion to the meaning of abyss in ver… in chapter 9, Revelation 9:1-2, this builds on the fact that for the nations surrounding the Mediterranean basin, the sea meant unfathomable depths and the chaos of death. Thus Leviathan, or the dragon, came to represent all the terrors of the sea and thus the presence of evil and death. It also signified nations that stood against God and his people because, the nations become agents of chaos, agents of destruction, agents of destroying the order God wants, which of course includes this thing called Israel and the Messiah because we want to restore Eden. This is well-known imagery.
The second sign is the fire-colored dragon. The color red locates it in the southern sky. The fact that the dragon’s tail sweeps away a third of the stars of the sky further points to a location generally lacking in stars compared to the other sky locations. This again is in the south, in the region of the abyss, which is another constellation. The question we might pose now is which constellation does John label as the red dragon? The dragon in the south. Obviously it is not Draco, which is found in the north at the north pole. Immediately above Hydra and accompanying it are the constellations of Cororax and Crater which have seven and 10 stars respectively. Cororax with seven corresponding to the number of heads in Revelation 12 lies closer to Virgo. On the other hand, Leman Nichch [?], another author, argues that the prototypical dragon of the sky is really ancient Scorpio. Originally a larger set of stars than the present constellation, it was truly gigantic even by celestial zodiac standards, since it originally consisted of two modern zodiacal signs, Libra and Scorpio. Libra would form the claws of of the Scorpio in in the ancient world.
So you have two options. Now just some opinion of my own. Hydra has the advantage of matching the description of the seven heads at top the dragon. It’s also conceived as a sea serpent imagery that matches descriptions from Revelation like Revelation 13:1, the beast that emerges from the sea, which in turn come from Leviathan material, the Old Testament, namely Isaiah 27:1. However, Hydra is not precisely on the ecliptic. Now, the ecliptic problem is resolved if we opt for Scorpio as John’s reference point. But that said, the text of Revelation 12 only has the dragon present. It stood before the woman. Okay? doesn’t, you know, really say it has to be directly under the feet. So, both options are sort of workable. Pick the one that you like. I have a bit of a disagreement here with my astronomer friend. You know, he might win me over. Who knows? But anyway, you got two options there.
This collection of signs is not especially rare. But there are other celestial portents, celestial things going on in this scene that are not mentioned by John in Revelation 12, but that were nevertheless present during the time of Jesus’ birth, during what John is describing. And these other things would have been taken as indications of a birth of a divine king to both Jews and Gentiles. So there, one of the problems that you get with people trying to use Revelation 12, like to to plot the second coming, which I think is ridiculous, is they’ll go with Revelation 12, but they’ll miss the other things that if you put the elements in Revelation 12 into an astronomy program, and I’ve done that, lots of other people have, and you get that picture. There will be people who only take what’s actually recorded in Revelation 12 as their reference point. What I’m suggesting, and what lots of other people suggest as well, is that hey, you got to actually look at the sky because the magi aren’t, when they’re looking at the heavens, they’re not just seeing what’s in John, you know, John’s writing in Revelation 12. They’re seeing everything, cuz they’re looking at the sky. And there are other things that are going to be in the scene, the recreated scene, that are going to just stick out, and that are going to be meaningful in deep ways to both Jews and Gentiles when it comes to the birth of a divine king.
But those dates narrow to one date. Once other astronomical events that occurred at the same time, which are not noted in Revelation 12, are added to the celestial profile. One of these extra events is, in fact, the leading candidate for explaining the star seen by the magi in Matthew 2. The constellation directly above the head of Virgo. That constellation above the head of Virgo is Leo, the lion. Now, the lion was the symbol associated with the tribe of Judah, from which the Messiah would come. The association arose from Genesis 49:9-10, where Jacob blessed Judah, referring to him in leonine terms while prophesying that a ruler would come from his lineage. Now, here’s Genesis 49. I’ll just read it. Verses 9 and 10.
Judah is a lion’s cub. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down. He crouched as a lion, and as a lioness, who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the people.
This is where the the lion of Judah imagery comes from. It’s part of the Torah. The lion king association is confirmed in Revelation 5:5. Quote, “One of the elders said to me, weep no more. Behold the lion of the tribe of Jude to the root of David has conquered.” The constellation Leo then was associated by Jewish astrotheologians, if you want to call them that, with royalty. The constellation of Leo is also important to Gentiles. It was the chief, or head, sign of the zodiac and had special importance in astrological circles. Leo was considered a royal constellation since it was dominated by the star Regulus. Regulus would have also been in the picture, again the re-creation of of the circumstances of Revelation 12. So the star Regulus was known by astrologers as the king star. It was big and bright. The status of Regulus and Leo is important because on one of the possible dates for the messianic birth, it came into conjunction with Jupiter.
As the largest planet, Jupiter was considered the king planet in astrotheological thinking of the first century. As a result, the constellation Leo, the messianic sign of the lion of Judah to Jews who read the heavens literally here, had two conjoined signs of a royal birth within it. If you’re looking at this sign, you’ve got a Virgin with 12 stars. The sun intermits, the moon at her feet, the dragon. Okay? Then above that, you’ve got Leo, the lion; it’s the symbol of the tribe of Judah. And within that constellation, you have Jupiter, the king planet, and Regulus, the king star overlapping. They’re conjoined at this moment. Remember, we’re talking about a 90-minute window where all these things are are there. So the combination of astronomical signs produces a unique set of circumstances which can only be accounted for by one date that matters in the sweep of New Testament chronology. This date has dramatic significance in the Jewish calendar. According to all of these signs taken together and according to all these signs in the heavens, the date of Jesus’ birth, the birth of the Messiah, was September 11th, 3 BC. Now when we hear September 11th, that just creeps us out because of the context of that date in our own time. Now, there would be a whole separate show to talk about was September 11th, 2001 sort of a shot across the bow in terms of cosmic evil, you know, for the fate of of the earth and humanity and all that stuff. I think there’s something to that because again, I’m a supernaturalist.
Narrator: Let’s pause again here because this absolutely blew me away. I remember September 11th, 2001 like it was yesterday. And it was a pivotal moment in time that repercussions molded the geopolitical world we live in today. And this would be just like our adversary, the devil, to manipulate humanity into associating this date, the birthday of our Savior, with such a horrific event rather than focusing on Yeshua. What do you think about the possibility that Jesus was born on September 11th? I’d love to hear your thoughts. But back to our discussion, this date in particular, September 11th, 3 BC, actually has more significance to the ancient Hebrew culture than it does to us today. What if I told you that September 11th, 3 BC, was the anniversary of the date traditionally thought to be the day that Adam was created? It was also the beginning of the new year on the ancient Hebrew calendar, as well as the Feast of Trumpets, and was Noah’s birthday. You heard that right. This places Jesus’s birth on Rash Hashana, the Feast of Trumpets. Ten days later, after He had been circumcised and cleansed according to Hebrew law, was Day of Atonement. How fitting is that that a trumpet blast signified the arrival of our King, and ten days later the Day of Atonement signified Jesus’ atonement for our sins. Let’s go back and hear Dr. Heiser speak a little more on some of these topics.
Heiser: However, that date is also the Day of Trumpets, or was also the Day of Trumpets, and it has a connection to Noah’s flood. The literary context of Revelation 12 is of relevance here. Immediately preceding Revelation 12, John described the heavenly appearance of the temple and the ark of the covenant, Revelation 11:19. The ark was the central symbol of God’s presence with Israel. The birth of the child in Revelation 12 was John’s way of saying that the presence of God had indeed returned to the earth in the form of this child, the Messiah. A trumpet was to be blown on Tishri 1, which in the rabbinic period came to be be viewed as the beginning of the new year. God’s eschatological judgment of all people was expected to fall on this day. The new year trumpet also proclaimed hope in the ongoing and ultimate kingship of God, in God’s judgment and reward according to people’s deeds, and in Israel’s final restoration.
Now, incredibly, the astronomical reconstruction of the circumstances of Revelation 12:1-7 that produces a September 11th, 3 BC date for the birth of the Messiah was also the beginning of the Jewish new year in 3 BC, Rosh Hashanah. Tishri 1, the Day of the Trumpets, the Feast of Trumpets, and Tishri 1 was also the day that many of the ancient kings and rulers of Judah reckoned as their inauguration day. this procedure was followed consistently in the time of Solomon, Jeremiah, and Ezra.
I would say this is a powerful piece of evidence for the astronomical reading of Revelation 12:1-7 as celestial signs of the birth of the messianic king. Jewish tradition also held that the Day of Trumpets was the day that commemorated the beginning of the world. This was Jewish tradition. In other words, the very first day of the human calendar. As Jewish historian Theodore Gastra writes, “Judaism regards New Year’s Day not merely as an anniversary of creation, but more importantly as a renewal of it. This is when the world is reborn.” Although it might sound odd, this tradition is part of a matrix of ideas that link Tishti 1 to the sin of the Watchers, the Flood of Noah, and the Nephilim.
The first step toward discerning these connections is to understand the Jewish calendar, at least in so far as it relates to our topic. The ancient Israelite, biblical, and Jewish calendrical circumstances are like our own, in that multiple calendars are in play. I mean, we use more than one calendar. In modern Western civilization, it’s common to have a calendar that maps the seasons, one that maps the school year, one that maps the fiscal year. And all three calendars would cover 12 months, but their beginning points would differ.
Today, the Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShanah, occurs on the first and second days of Tishri. Anyone who’s Jewish or has Jewish friends knows, however, that this New Year’s Day and the New Year’s Day we celebrate according to the modern Gregorian calendar are of course not the same. Jewish Rosh HaShanah occurs in the fall season, somewhere in September and October. The first month of the year is Tish and that occurs in the fall. Exodus 12:1-2 though, suggest that the first month of the Israelite calendar was not Tishri. After the Israelites escaped Egypt, the first month was aligned with the Passover. That’s Exodus 12:3. In order to commemorate the new beginning of the Israelite nation after the Exodus from Egypt, the calendar of Exodus 12 detached the first season of the calendar from the agricultural harvest. So the first month of the new calendar, the one that starts in Exodus 12, is Nissan. And you have a reference to that in Esther 3:7.
Now, of these two calendars, the agricultural calendar that had Tishri as the first month, is the oldest in Israelite history, predating the Exodus. The biblical text contains hints of this older calendar in certain passages that describe the ending of the year. Exodus 23:16, Exodus 34:22. Whereas Tishri marked the fall season, the end of the year was marked by the Feast of Ingathering. The important point for our purposes is that the most ancient Israelite calendar began with Tishri, which fell in the fall season with a harvest, after the rains had produced the fall crop.
This is in your head, and you’re thinking Tishri 1. If you go back to the September 11, 3 BC, not only do you have the birth of Messiah on Tishri 1, which is the inauguration day of kings, but that day also meant a renewal of creation. Again, it was it was new life, right? In in simplest terms, but it’s it’s more than that even. In Genesis 7 we read this.
Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons wives went with him into the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Of clean animals and of animals that are not clean, and of birds and of everything that creeps in the ground, two and two, male and female, went into the ark with Noah, as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days, the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were open.
That’s Genesis 7 portion there. Uh, let me give you the exact verse references here. It’s Genesis 7:6-11. Now, according to this passage, Noah had already turned 600 when the flood began. And it began in the 600th year of Noah’s life. In the second month, Noah had already turned 600. By the time of the second month, as the flood waters were subsiding just after the dove was released from the ark for the last time, Genesis 8 provides this chronological note. This is Genesis 8:13-16.
In the 601st year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth. And Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked, and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out. Then God said to Noah, “Go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your sons wives with you.”
Now, the math here is pretty transparent. Barely over a year after the flood began, Noah and his family left the ark in the second month of the year. Noah had turned 601 by the time he had left the ark. Why is this noteworthy? Because Jewish tradition took this chronology to mean that Noah’s birthday was Tishri 1, first month. This would be the same day as the birth of the Messiah, Jesus. So in to a Jew, to many Jews, they would have believed that the Messiah, Jesus, and Noah shared a birthday.
Narrator: That’s a lot to take in. The idea that Jesus was born on such a significant day, both in the ancient Hebrew and modern worlds, doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, but it’s extraordinary to see all this information packed into one segment. But let’s change gears here, because Dr. Heiser’s isn’t the only view on this topic. In in fact, Dr. Chuck Missler has a deferring idea about the exact date of the Messiah’s birth. Let’s take a listen.
Missler: So, first of all, when was Jesus born? Well, we know the flocks from Luke chapter 2, we know the flocks were an open field. That means it was not after October because it gets too cold. Also, the other thing to consider is that no competent Roman administrator would require registration involving travel during a season when Judea is generally impassible, hard to travel through. That’s alluded to in Matthew 24:20 as an example. So, we know the time of year was not in the winter, number one. Secondly, the year. It’s commonly presumed that he was born in 4 BC. Everyone who recognizes the Gregorian calendar has an error. But exactly how large an error? The 4 BC date is assumed primarily from erroneous conclusions from a recording by Josephus of an eclipse that was assumed to be on March 13, 4 BC, just before Herod died. It’s more likely that that eclipse occurred on December 29, 1 BC. But it’s really irrelevant anyway.
Irenaeus, who was born a century after Jesus, also notes that the Lord was born on the 41st year of the reign of Augustus, and considerable time elapsed between Jesus’ birth and Herod’s death, since the family fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s edict, and they didn’t return until after Herod’s death. That we we learned that from the second chapter of Matthew. Herod died on January 14th of 1 BC. Tertullian, who was born about 160 AD, stated that Augustus began to rule 41 years before the birth of Jesus and died 15 years after that event. Augustus died in August 19th of 14 AD, which would place Jesus birth thus at about 2 BC. Tertullian also notes that Jesus was born 28 years after the death of Cleopatra which was in 30 BC. So that also is consistent with a 2 BC year.
And since Augustus began his reign in the autumn of 43 BC, this also appears to substantiate the birth. of a 2 BC birth for Christ. And Eusebius, the father of church history, ascribed it to the 42nd year of the reign of Augustus and the 28th from the subjection of Egypt on the death of Anthony and Cleopatra. The 42nd year of Augustus ran from the autumn of 2 BC to the autumn of 1 BC. The subjugation of Egypt into the Roman Empire occurred in the autumn of 30 BC. So the 28th year extended from the autumn of 3 BC to the autumn of 2 BC. The only date that would be consistent with all these different accounts would be the autumn, sometime in the autumn of 2 BC.
But now, exactly when in the autumn? And this is where John the Baptist comes to the rescue strangely enough. Elizabeth, that was to become John’s mother, was a cousin of Mary and the wife of a priest named Zecharias, who was of the course of Abijah. The priests were divided by David into 24 courses, and each course would officiate from Shabbat to Shabbat. The course of Abijah was the eighth course. That’s in 1st Chronicles 24:10. All these are listed in 1st Chronicles 24. The temple we know from both the Talmud and Josephus. We know the temple was destroyed by Titus on August 5th of 70 AD. And we know that the first course of priests had just taken office at that time. So since we know that from 70 AD, we can work backwards and figure out when Zechariah would have ended his duties. And that turns out to be on July 13th of 3 BC. And if the birth of John the Baptist took place 280 days later, it would have been on April 19th to 20th of 2 BC. By the way, that would have been on Passover, which if he was born on Passover, that’s kind of interesting because he always introduces Jesus Christ as the lamb of God. Again, the lamb, a Passover lamb.
But if John was born on April 19th and 20th of 2 BC, his 30th birthday, which is the minimum to be a priest, would have been on April 19-20th, 29 AD, in the 15th year of Tiberius. John began his ministry then in the 15th year of Tiberius Caesar, which would have been 28 AD. Now, don’t be confused. The 15th year means it would be year 14. If Augustus died on August 19th, 14 AD, that would be the accession year for Tiberius. All this seems to confirm the 2 BC date. But since John was five months older, this also confirms an autumn date for Jesus. And, uh, John’s introduction of Jesus as the lamb of God is particularly interesting if John was indeed born on Passover. But Elizabeth hid herself for 5 months and then the angel Gabriel announced to Mary both Elizabeth’s condition and that Mary also would bear a son who’d be called Jesus. So she went in haste to visit Elizabeth who was then in the first week of her sixth month, or in the fourth week of December, 3 BC. If Jesus was born 280 days later it placed the date of his birth on September 29th, 2 BC, which incidentally apparently was the Feast of Tabern… uh, Feast of Trumpets that year.
There all kinds of speculations about his birth. This is the one that may not be correct but of the ones I’ve seen the one that seems to have the most support. This also assumes a 280-day pregnancy period. But the gamatria of the word for “pregnancy” in the Hebrew happens to be 271. And I haven’t checked the gynecological statistics. But if 271’s a more accurate estimate, then that means that Jesus would have been born on September 20th 2 BC.
But realize all these things are speculative. I toss them out for stretching our imagination a little bit away from the traditions which we know are clearly wrong. What’s the correct date? We’re not sure. But why do we celebrate December 25th then? That’s the that’s obviously our tradition, deeply rooted in our culture.
The first recorded mention of December 25th is in the calendar of Philocalus which was 354 AD and it assumed Jesus’ birth to be a Friday December 25th, which has a couple of problems, not the least of which it wasn’t a Friday. But anyway, after the edict of toleration 312 AD, when Constantine legalized Christianity, it was his second successor after him that made it the state religion. But in any case, after the edict of toleration when Christianity was legalized, the persecuted Christians who had been hiding in caves now could exchange the rags of the caves for the silks of the court.
That’s when Christianity became official. Constantine recognized that over half the world, the Roman Empire, was slavery and most the more than half the slaves were Christians. And so it was a very shrewd political move for lots of other reasons, too. So what happens? Well, obviously everybody was used to observing certain pagan rituals and what they began to do is adapt them with Christian trappings. And so their previous practices were repackaged.
Now, the date of December 25th was officially proclaimed by the church fathers in the fifth century, 440 AD. So, that’s a long time after the fact. It’s interesting, too, in the Hebrew culture that you didn’t celebrate births. You celebrate deaths, strangely enough. And so, they you don’t speak of prophets birthdays or kings birthdays necessarily, unless there’s some events associated with them somewhere. Well, what happens then, of course, is that they they were used to celebrating a holiday called Saturnelia. And this was always celebrated about the time of the winter solstice. The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, the longest night of the year. The winter solstice is typically around on our calendar about December 22nd and the summer solstice about June 20, 21st, 22nd, right in that area. Saturnelia was the worship of the sun, and the sun god was thought to have died at that point. And so, they had the pagan priesthoods that started from Babylon. We should start with Babylon. One thing to keep in mind is virtually every occultic tradition you find has its roots in Babylon. That starts to explain everything. That priestly system from Babylon then moves to Persepolis during the Persians, ultimately finds itself to Rome. And virtually everything in pagan Rome is basically Babylonian practices with Latin names. And so we have all these things adapted to Christian purposes. Now if Christianity is the end thing, they’re all repackaging these ideas. These things are so conspicuous to any serious student. That’s one of the reasons we find so much criticism by scholars against the paganism of Roman Catholicism because it’s carried over many of these things into their current practices.
It all starts with Babel. Okay, Babylon, by the way, has over 300 references in the Bible and it’s mentioned three times in Christ’s genealogy. That should get our attention. And the Tower of Babel was Nimrod’s centerpiece of his rebellion against God. That’s all in Genesis 10. In fact, you can read the whole Bible in a sense as a saga between two cities. The city of God, call it Jerusalem, and the city of man, or Satan if you will, called Babylon. That parallels all, they both start in Genesis and they both climax in the book of Revelation. Bab-el. “Bab” is the term for gate or tower, and “el” God. Babel is a tower to God, or a gateway to the gods. And that’s where we have God himself intervene causing the confusion of the tongues that occurs in Genesis 11.
One of the things that we know as the zodiac is called in the Hebrew the Mazzeroth, and it’s at Babylon that it the original concepts get corrupted. But spiritual Babylon is what we’re interested in here. And all forms of occultic practice had their origins there. You need to understand the legend of Tammuz. He was the son of Nimrod and his queen Samuramus. Samuramus was the original name for Thyatira, the city of Thyatira. So you can tie that together with the fourth letter to the seven churches. In any case, Tammoz was identified with the Babylonian sun god, and thus he was worshiped, if you will, in concert with the winter solstice. As Babylon is conquered by subsequent empires, the entire religious system followed those empires. The priests always follow the money.
Narrator: I just love how Chuck admits that he can’t necessarily prove exactly which date was Jesus’s birthday, but he’s certain about the practices of this modern-day celebration our culture observes and promotes so heavily. But I’d love to know what you think. Which school of thought do you lean towards? Are you in the September 11th 3 BC camp with Heiser or the September 29th 2BC camp with Dr. Missler? I’m personally leaning towards Heiser’s view here, but they both have some great evidence to point in either direction. Let me know your thoughts. And I pray that this video has been a blessing to you, and may God shine His face upon you and give you peace.
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ANXIOUSLY WATCHING FOR MASHIACH’S RETURN,
SPEEDILY AND IN OUR DAY. MARANA, TA!
