Welcome back.
If this is your first time, and you would like to be well oriented, you can refer to the Introduction here.
Today there's much to discuss, so we will jump right into it. We will first talk briefly about the dating of Christ's birth, which we have just read about in Matthew. After that, we'll move on to today's Gospel reading, which will prompt some study of the Book of Micah, another Old Testament prophet.
First of all, today: the dating of Christ's birth. You will recall what we discussed a few weeks back regarding the two Roman Emperors who ruled during the life and ministry of Jesus. Upon reading that entry, a reader expressed confusion at the following sentences:
From that point, Augustus had a long and effective reign over the nascent Roman Empire which lasted until his death by natural causes in 14 AD. Jesus Christ would have been around 18 years old at the time of Augustus' death.The reader wondered how it could be possible that Jesus' birth year was in 4 BC, especially when "BC" stands for "Before Christ." A great question. Let's get to the bottom of this.
Some people believe that Christ was born on Year Zero. Those people would be surprised to find that there is no Year Zero in the Anno Domini (Year of Our Lord) system. The dating system we use goes from 2 BC to 1 BC, straight to 1 AD and then to 2 AD. Upon learning that there is no Year Zero, I think that many would assume that Christ's birth occurred in either 1 BC or 1 AD. This misses the mark again. We can understand why only once we've understood how they decided where 1 BC and 1 AD were in the first place.
For a long time, people in the West dated things differently than we do now. The Romans (read: everyone in the West) dated their years according to the consul(s) of that year. (The Consuls were like presidents who reigned for one year, starting on January 1st.) You would say "I was born in The Year of the Consulship of Whoeverus," Whoeverus being the Consul who had been in power the year you were born.
That system was slowly supplanted by what we call the "Anno Domini" system, beginning when a monk named Dionysius Exiguus started dating everything based on what he believed to be the year of Jesus' incarnation. Dionysius did this during the consulship of Probus Junior, and it was believed at that time that Jesus had been "incarnated" 525 years earlier, so "The Year of the Consulship of Probus Junior" became "525 AD." Arguments over the accuracy of this started almost immediately, but for a long time the common understanding in the West was that Jesus was born circa 1 AD.
Modern Bible scholarship does not agree on the date of Christ's birth. A couple of methods for attempting to precisely date Christ's birthday exist. We can date it based on historical events or figures mentioned in our two nativity narratives, or we can try to work backwards through Jesus' ministry based on chronological references that we get primarily from Luke. Both methods bring us to similar date ranges, but we will stick with the more direct "dating by events and figures associated with the nativity narrative."
It's like this:
Recall last week when we learned about King Herod? Historians date Herod's death to 4 BC. According to the Gospel, Herod was still alive when Jesus was born. Given these two facts, we are obliged to set 4 BC as the upper range for Jesus' birth.
The narrative of the massacre of the infants by Herod in Matthew (which we've yet to cover) causes us to push the window out from 4 BC to 6 BC. We get the extra two years when Matthew shows Herod ordering all the boys in the Bethlehem area "two years old and under" put to death "in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi."
Since every event in history was already tied to their respective Anno Domini date by the time scholars looked into this, the date could not be changed again to match Jesus' birth, so today we paradoxically know him as being born four years "Before Himself."
We say that Jesus was born circa 4 BC and admit that we do not currently know the exact date and that it could be as far back as 6 or even 7 BC.
I hope that clears that up for the reader in question. Later we will talk about the ambiguity surrounding the date of Jesus' death, which is quite interesting.
Now for a reading.
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Matthew 2:4 through Matthew 2:6
4 Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.
5 They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet:
6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
since from you shall come a ruler,
who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
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Remember that the "he" doing the inquiring in v. 4 is King Herod aka Herod the Great. This section of text refers us back to the Old Testament, the same way Matthew 1:23 did. This time, instead of Isaiah, we will look at the Book of Micah. In Micah 5, we see the following:
But you, Bethlehem-EphrathahThis is immediately apparent as the source for the material quoted in Matt 2:6. What is Micah talking about here? He does indeed seem to prophesy that a great king would come forth from Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.
least among the clans of Judah,
From you shall come forth for me
one who is to be ruler in Israel;
Whose origin is from of old,
from ancient times.
Reading further, we see that the salvation the messianic figure in Micah is supposed to bring is a worldly salvation from war or internal strife in Judah. The book consists of rather poetic verses describing how the cities of Judah had erred and describing the ways they would be punished, and then the way Jerusalem would again be elevated. Micah accuses the aristocracy of Jerusalem of coveting and seizing fields, cheating owners out of their houses, and allowing soothsayers, diviners and priests to greedily trick the people of Judah out of their resources.
Unlike the comparison of Matt 1:23 and Isaiah, there is no glaring translation error here.
Tradition says that Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah, and thus was writing in the eighth century BC, although modern scholarship says that Micah may not have actually been written until a couple hundred years later, during the era of the Babylonian exile.
Micah is notable for its talk of social justice, peace, and humility, as well as its aforementioned poetic style. The book is short, and I would recommend it as good supplementary reading at this point, as it is a good example of the content of the Prophetic Books.
I will sound like a broken record at some point, but Matthew's pointing back to Jewish scriptures will inform everything else he tells us. The author is a Jew who is writing for other Jews, and sees the cosmology of Christ as a new tradition within Judaism.
So, now that Herod is all worked up into a paranoid fit over this newborn potential "Messiah," who could potentially displace him in his glory, what will Herod do?
You'll have to come back next week to find out. Please share this writing.
Love
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