NT Pod 76: This year's Christmas episode

The Christmas episode of the NT Pod has landed!

NT Pod 76: The Magi in Matthew's Gospel

This time with sleigh bells! And Johnny Cash! And Ella Fitzgerald! And me yabbering on about Matthew 2.1-12.

You can find it in the usual places -- at podacre, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on your RSS reader, and (if it ever updates) Duke's iTunes U.

NT Pod 63: Conflicting Christmas Stories

It's that time of year again, the time for the release of the Christmas episode of the NT Pod!  So I have interrupted the series on the Gospel of Thomas, for NT Pod 63: Conflicting Christmas Stories.

The episode explores the differences between the Birth Narratives in Matt. 1-2 and Luke 1-2 and asks how this can be the case if Luke is familiar with Matthew.

This is now the fourth year of the NT Pod Christmas episode.  You can find the others here: NT Pod Christmas episodes.

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Latest NT Pod, Was Jesus Born in a Stable?

I always used to post the latest episodes of the NT Pod here also on the NT Blog but I have got out of the habit since NT Pod 38.  So if you used to be in the habit of picking up the news of new episodes here, then I should add that there have been eight episodes since then, 39 to 46.  I won't tire everyone by listing them all, but will point you instead to the NT Pod web page or remind you that you can subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes. Or, of course, you can follow the NT Pod on Twitter or on the NT Pod Facebook page.

The latest episode, 46, asks Was Jesus Born in a Stable? It pays special attention to the translation of Luke 2.7, inspired by a recent article by Stephen Carlson, and it mentions also the Protevangelium of James 18-19 and Matthew 2.11.

NT Pod 20: When Was Jesus Born? Programme Notes

I uploaded the latest NT Pod last Friday night, just before beginning an epic journey through the snow to Washington DC to catch a flight. Those who follow me on Twitter or on Facebook know some of the grizzly details, but now we are now safe and sound Britain, first England, now Wales, and I am getting a chance to catch up while on the road.

I was pleased to see this morning that the previous episode of the NT Pod, "Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem?" is currently featured on the front page of the main iTunes U site, no doubt because of its seasonal content. I had looked at the stats and was wondering why they had gone through the roof.

The most recent episode of the NT Pod, 20, "When Was Jesus Born?", is also seasonal. The "when" here refers not to the time of year, which is impossible to know, but to the rough date of Jesus' birth. Was it in or around 6-4 CE, as Matthew suggests and Luke echoes and if so, why does Luke have the extraordinary note in Luke 2.2 about Quirinius, Governor of Syria?

The key texts are of course Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, with special references to the notes about Herod (Luke 1.5, Matthew 2:1; Matthew 2:19; Matthew 2:22; Luke 2:1-2; Luke 3.1-2; Luke 3:23). I will add references to Josephus later, but I've run out of time to update this post for now.

NT Pod 19: Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem? Programme Notes

I released the latest episode of the NT Pod last night, NT Pod 19: Was Jesus Born in Bethlehem?. There will be another NT Pod along soon with another Christmas related theme.

I was shocked to see that it is over a month since the last episode of the NT Pod, but this is the reason that I never stated publicly my aspiration to make it a weekly podcast. I knew that sooner or later, I would get too busy to record as regularly as I would like.

The short clip of Tom Wright that you hear at the beginning of the podcast is taken from The Real Jesus Christ, first broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live on Christmas Day 2002, and repeated on Christmas Day 2003. (See NT Gateway: Historical Jesus Audio and Video for more). You can listen to the whole documentary via audio streaming from the BBC. I must admit that I have no memory at all of how my pieces were recorded, so my guess is that I was sitting in the cosy little studio cell at Pebble Mill (now demolished) in Birmingham, but I could be wrong.

This podcast is my reflection on the question of whether or not it is likely that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a question that is difficult given that it is a "with the grain" tradition. See the useful comments already from James McGrath and Doug Chaplin, each of whom comes down on a different side, Nazareth and Bethlehem respectively, though both, like me, are cautious.

BCE / CE vs BC / AD

Bob Cargill's latest In My View over on Bible and Interpretation argues in favour of BCE / CE vs. BC / AD, Why Christians Should Adopt the BCE/CE Dating System . In my previous post, I looked at N. T. Wrong's take on the issue, but now I would like to make a few additional comments of my own.

For some, the usage will not in any case be a matter of choice. Within Biblical Studies, the usage is now so widespread that some authors will have had it imposed on them by publishers who make this an element in their house style. Indeed, the usage is much more widespread in our area than it is in any other discipline, and by a country mile. Bob speaks of "the increasingly accepted international scientific standard of BCE (“Before Common Era”) and CE (“Common Era”)": but I am not sure that it is so widespread. I rarely hear it outside of our field.

Bob's focus is on the BC / AD labels as they are used by Christians (note the title), but the difficulty is that everyone uses these labels. As Chris Heard points out in comments, Richard Dawkins uses it without apology.

Moreover, I don't think the term "dating system" is quite right. The dating system is the same, on BCE / CE and BC / AD; it is the labelling within the system that differs.

I would like to comment also on the following:

While the Gregorian calendar accurately represents years of 365.25 days, Dionysius’ calculations skipped the year zero, jumping immediately from the year 1 BC to the year 1 AD. The result is a calendar that claims to be based upon the birth of Jesus, but which skips the first year of his life.

There is also no "year zero" on the Gregorian calendar, so bringing it up in this context is a bit of a red herring. Dionysius did not "skip[] the year zero"; he did not factor in a year zero. It is true that there are astronomical calendars that subsequently have factored in a year zero, but this is not relevant to the Gregorian calendar, or to Dionysius Exiguus, which work with a transition from 1 BCE to 1 CE. There is no question of the first year of Jesus' life being "skipped".

Bob goes on to note that Jesus' birth can be located around 4BCE because it happens near to the death of Herod in Matthew 2:

If we add to these 4 years the fact that Herod the Great did not die immediately after the birth of Jesus, but, according to Matthew, ordered the death of all children two years of age and younger in an attempt to kill Jesus, we can add an additional two years to the birth of Jesus, making his birth approximately 6 BCE. If we also add the missing year zero, it is most likely that, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was born around 7 BCE!

I doubt that we can be too precise about Matthew's dating. I am a bit of a sceptic when it comes to the historicity of Matthew 1-2. At best, I think he had a vague idea of the rough time when Jesus was born. The murder of children of two years old and younger may also say nothing about the time elapsing; it may have to do rather with Herod's attempts, as Matthew conceptualized it, to be thorough. The extra year for year zero is not necessary and should be dropped too.

Bob goes on:

Thus, the BC/AD system is fundamentally flawed in that it misrepresents the birth of Jesus by approximately 7 years. This means that Jesus’ ministry did not begin around the year 30, but instead around the year 23. Likewise, Pentecost and the origin of the Christian Church should not be dated to “33 AD,” but to about 26 CE.

The "year 30" is presumably based on Luke's notice that Jesus was "about thirty years old" at the beginning of his ministry (Luke 3:23), working forward from 7 BCE to 23 CE. But there are other indicators of date here in Luke, most specifically the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberias (Luke 3:1), which places the beginning of Jesus' ministry in 29CE. Bob's "year 23" can't be right. Moreover, 23 CE is too early for the note that Pontius Pilate was governor of Judaea (Luke 3:1), which makes 26 CE the earliest possible date for this (26-36 CE).

I have one more concern. Bob notes rightly that Matthew dates Jesus' birth near to the death of Herod the Great (Matt. 2.15, 19-21) and that Luke apparently dates it at the time of the census that took place "when Quirinius was governor of Syria" (Luke 2.2). Since the latter probably occurred in 6 CE, Bob suggests that there is a 10 year (or so) discrepancy between the dates of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke. However, this cannot be the case. Luke 1.5 follows Matthew in dating the action during Herod's reign. Unless he thought that Elizabeth had a ten-year pregnancy, Luke is not dating Jesus' birth in 6 CE. What on earth he is doing with the mention of Quirinius in Luke 2.2. is a mystery, but my guess is that his dating is a bit off. He has things roughly in the right decade or so, but he is not precise enough here for us to work out exactly when he thought Jesus was born. (He is a bit more confident when he gets to the beginning of John's ministry, on the other hand, in 3.1).

See also comments on Daniel McClellan, Clayboy and The Sacred Page.

Mason and Murphy O'Connor on where Jesus was born -- redux

It is clearly the week of resurrections. Just off the Biblical Archaeology Society's twitter scroll is notice of the return of a "classic" BAS couple of articles:

Jesus' Nativity -- Where was Jesus born? (And when?)
Jerome Murphy O'Connor
Steve Mason

By my reckoning, this has been off the web for at least six years, and probably longer. Back in the day, it was a "featured link" over on the NT Gateway. It is good news that BAS are taking some time to bring back some of their lost online content.