If anyone is interested ...
The Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on January 12th.
He definitely was NOT born in December. There was a Roman festival called Saturnalia in December. Christians started celebrating at the same time because that way "the neighbors" wouldn't think anything of it. Pagan Romans used to blame Christians for "anything and everything" wrong because "they angered the gods by not honoring them."
There were 24,000 levitical priests who served in the Temple. So they had WAY more priests than they needed at any one time. They split them up into "courses" of 1,000, and each group would serve for one week twice a year. For the remaining 25th and 26th week they would pull from the various courses.
The Bible says that Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, was 6 months pregnant when Mary told her about the angel. Elizabeth's husband Zechariah had served in one of the courses--so that basically narrows it down to one of two one-week periods.
Jesus definitely was not born in a winter period--shepherds would not have been out with sheep in the field in winter.
ALSO, scientists have figured out what the "star of Bethlehem" was. It was NOT a STAR--if there had been something bright visible in the sky for months there would be independent reports of it. The Persians, Babylonians, Greeks, Chinese and others all regularly studied the sky.
Consider a kite in the sky about 1,000 feet up. You can't point to it and say it's over THAT house. If it HAD been a star they wouldn't be able to tell which house it was over.
The same for "maybe it was an ANGEL!" Others would have seen it and written about it.
They were "seeing" A HOROSCOPE. ASTROLOGY was HUGE back then and a MAJOR influence on the culture. And the DIFFERENT astrological systems produced DIFFERENT predictions. Because once you know the system it's possible to reconstruct that system's chart for a given time and place, scientists have been able to figure out which one they were using. (Persian, Babylonian, Greek, etc.)
The one they used indicated a great king would be born in that area in early April. That fits with the other info. (That does NOT "prove astrology is valid". The OTHER astrological systems would show completely different results.)
For details, check out The Star of Bethlehem : The Legacy of the Magi by Michael R. Molnar (You're better off buying a physical copy--the e-book is $17. I bought two physicals, one for $0.59 and the other for $1.99)
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