DATING THE BIRTH OF JESUS

A lecture by Professor Kevin Butcher, Classics And Ancient History

Today in the West we use a system devised by a sixth-century Roman monk, Dionysius Exiguus, as the basis for our calendar, dating back to the nativity of Jesus and the ‘first Christmas’. Since the 16th and 17th century, however, scholars have questioned the veracity of this way of synchronising events. Prof Kevin Butcher reveals how a coin may hold the answer to this long-debated question and asks: Can we actually trust our calendar?

This year, people from around the world will celebrate Christmas AD 2011, with AD standing for the Latin Anno Domini, or in English ‘in the year of our Lord’. Professor Butcher comments that “nowadays we might prefer to use the less religiously-charged term Common Era or we might not think at all about the reasons why we use the era that we do. Ultimately, there’s no way of getting away from the fact that this is an era that claims the birth of Jesus as its starting point”.

Dionysius Exiguus’s calendar wasn’t adapted as a universal dating system upon its invention. It took centuries for it to come into general use. In the eighth century the English monk the Venerable Bede adopted Exiguus's era for his work The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. “Whilst this may have popularised it,” notes Prof Butcher, “it was not enough for it to be commonly adopted”.

It was during the later Middle Ages when states began to use Exiguus's dating system for chronology, but even then some scholars saw its deficiencies and were reluctant to adopt it. Could the monk have got it wrong, they asked, and did the birth of Jesus occur at some other time?

Prof Butcher continues the story. “When Christian scholars of the 16th and 17th centuries endeavoured to create chronologies of the world they were troubled by some of the evidence that was emerging. One piece of evidence that contradicted Dionysius's date for the nativity was a coin.” This simple coin wasn’t issued during the life of Jesus. “It was struck by Antipas, one of the sons of King Herod. A 17th-century book of our eras written by a cardinal provides an illustration of it.”

How could a simple coin disprove Dionysius's dating system? “On one side is a wreath containing an inscription in Greek. It gives the name and titles of the ruling Emperor Caligula. We know he ruled from AD 37 to AD 41 on Dionysius's scheme. The other side has a palm branch and in Greek the name and titles of Antipas. Most importantly it carries a date in Greek – year 43.” This is a regnal year stating in which year of Antipas's reign it was minted.

The problem comes when comparing this evidence with the account of the nativity given in the Bible’s gospel of Matthew, assuming the gospel is taken as historical fact. In the gospel of Matthew, the birth of Jesus occurred when Herod, and not his son Antipas, was King. Says Prof Butcher, “the story of King Herod trying to locate Jesus and the ensuing massacre of the innocents is an integral part of the nativity story”. The coin was issued much later than this, between AD 37 and AD 41 when Caligula was Emperor. Considering that Antipas's reign lasted 43 years then the Herod must have died somewhere between six and four BC.

“In fact we can do better than that,” Prof Butcher goes on to say. “Historical sources tell us that Antipas was deposed by Caligula in AD 39. This means that Herod the Great must have died in 4BC. So if we accept the account of the Gospel of Matthew as true, then this means that Jesus cannot have been born later than four BC.”

On this evidence it’s not surprising that some 17th-century historians decided to call the dating system the Common Christian Era.

Of course we do not have to take Matthew’s Gospel as historical fact. “After all, the nativity story occurs in only two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke, and there are differences between the two that are difficult to reconcile. Luke doesn’t even mention Herod in conjunction with the birth of Jesus. Instead he places the nativity at the time when Caesar Augustus decreed that all the world should be taxed.” Problem solved? No. “This doesn’t help Dionysius's scheme either because the census that Luke is talking about took place in AD 6."

On this evidence it’s not surprising that some 17th-century historians decided to call the dating system the Common Christian Era, implying that the era was commonly, but mistakenly, treated as beginning with the birth of Jesus.

“In the end we have to conclude that the era we use has no historical event as its starting point and that its use derives from our very modern desire for a universal system of dating with which to anchor and synchronise events”, says Prof Butcher. But spare a thought for poor Dionysius Exiguus, who never intended to devise a worldwide calendar but rather to help people calculate the date of Easter. “It’s simply an accident of history that we’ve ended up using the miscalculations of an obscure sixth-century monk," the Professor concludes.

By Penelope Jenkins