...except after "C"

I knew as soon as I posted yesterday that someone would jump in with a comment telling me that my conclusions demonstrate nothing, but I was hesitant to title the post "part 1 of X" for several reasons. One, there is no telling how many posts it's going to take to elucidate this issue. Two, there is no telling how passionate I'm going to be about continuing the discussion and I don't want to disappoint by not coming through with part X of X.

However, now that I have at least one reader's attention, let me fill you in on my basic outline:

• Premise 1: The Bible itself, along with other historical documentation, offers evidence for pinpointing the date for Christ's birth.
• Premise 2: Early Christians, while perhaps not having a full-blown celebration, at least made an effort to pinpoint the date for Christ's birth.
• Premise 3: Both the assigning of the date and the earliest celebration of Christ's birth could have been completely distinct from any pagan holiday.
• Premise 4: Even if the earliest celebration of Christ's birth was somehow directly related to a pagan holiday, the details about which impacted the other could be murky.
• Premise 5: If the earliest celebration of Christ's birth originated as a pagan holiday, it may not nullify the religious significance of the traditions that followed.

In the latter half of the second century A.D., Clement of Alexandria was among the earliest to affix a date to Jesus' birth:

"From the birth of Christ, therefore, to the death of Commodus are, in all, a
hundred and ninety-four years, one month, thirteen days."

If you use the Roman calendar, we would arrive at the date November 19, 3 B.C. However, being from Egypt, it is not unreasonable to assume Clement would count using the Egyptian calendar, bringing us to January 6, 2 B.C. For several reasons, this date quickly became the most popular theory, although several others are mentioned, including March 25 or April 6.

Apparently there was a widespread belief in Judaism at the time of Christ that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception. While some held to the March 25 or April 6 crucifixion date (which I might try to demonstrate in a few months to be inaccurate) as his birth date, it was more commonly held that this was the date of his Incarnation. Thus, his birthday would naturally follow nine months later, landing on December 25 or January 6, depending on which calendar you used.

[The reason for the discrepancy arose from the difference between how the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it calculated the date of Christ's crucifixion.]

In his early third century commentary on Daniel, Hippolytus, Bishop of Rome, wrote (according to some manuscripts):

"The first coming of our Lord, that in the flesh, in which he was born at Bethlehem, took place eight days before the Kalends of January, a Wednesday, in the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus, 5500 years from Adam."

Writing as he was from a Jewish-Christian perspective, this would be interpreted as December 25, 2 B.C. However, many believe that this date is contradicted in the same manuscript where he calculates it as April 2. Therefore, it is surmised that he amended his date to conform to the more popular traditional date held by his contemporaries.

It is interesting to note that despite these ancient (well before the establishment of pagan festivities around the winter solstice by Aurelian in A.D. 274), attempts to calculate the actual date of Jesus’ birthday, there was very little interest in celebrating it as a holiday in the early church or even in the post-reformation evangelical church until at least the 19th century.

Please be patient - I'll get to my point eventually.
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