Joseph and Mary took the child and flew to Egypt and remained there until they were told by God that Herod was dead. Joseph and Mary brought the baby Jesus into Jerusalem forty days from His birth for Mary's purification and the child's dedication according to Torah this had to be done within forty days of the birth of a male child—not doing so is considered a sin.
This indicates that Herod died within the same forty days, because as long as Herod was alive, they could not appear at the Temple. Later in His life, Yeshua may have been celebrating His birthday on a mountain with three of His disciples. In contrast to birthday parties, such as Herod's, where people were killed for entertainment, His was a celebration of life. One disciple, Kepha Peter , suggested building three Succoth for Yeshua, Moshe, and EliYahu, because it was required for the festival, but he did not understand that these three were fulfilling that which the festival symbolized: they were dwelling in their Succoth temporary tabernacles of flesh, awaiting their eternal resurrection temples Killian n.
A number of Christians are celebrating Christ's birth during the Feast of Tabernacles, complete with decorations and lights on the Sukkah and music. This web site offers many insightful remarks concerning Jewish holidays and is recommended as an additional source of research.
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Zechariah Mourning for the One They Pierced. Daniel The Exalted Son of Man. Jeremiah The New Covenant. My reasoning was that, despite an apparent connection with efforts by the Roman Catholic Church to co-opt the pagan celebration of the Saturnalia, December 25th not only had a long history of Church observance, it was also in very close proximity to Hanukkah, the Feast of Lights.
It was an appealing connotation. At the same time, the idea that Christ could have been born on the Feast of Tabernacles Sukkot, also called the Feast of Booths likewise had considerable appeal.
Nevertheless, it became clear that there was a fundamental difficulty in equating several such favored dates with the birth of Christ. It lay in the fact that the only possibilities where we can reasonably imagine God intended to make such connections, were with events He Himself had set up. Shabbat—The Sabbath day Lev. Note that Hanukkah is not on the list.
This should not surprise us, since it was a man-created celebration of the rededication of the Temple by the Maccabees. The Pilgrimage Festivals. No other place would do. Therefore, it was not possible for Jesus to be born in Bethlehem during the Feast of Tabernacles, because Joseph, as an observant Jew, would have had to be in Jerusalem that week.
It is as simple as that. Proposing that the Feast of Tabernacles corresponded with the birth of Jesus for reasons rooted in typology or analogy is a non-starter, because Joseph would not have gone to Bethlehem at that time, nor would the Romans have purposely riled up the Jews by forcing them to gather for a census when one of their major festivals took place.
There is another thing to realize about the Feast of Booths. It is a fall festival, variously taking place in September or October, with symbolism tied to the Second Coming of Christ, not His First Coming; the spring festivals symbolize the latter. And this mishkan was completed on Nisan 1 in the spring Exodus , not on Tishri 1 in the fall.
The clear implication is that we should seek a fulfillment of the imagery of Christ tabernacling with us John in an event taking place in the spring month of Nisan. I am indebted to Messianic Jewish rabbi Jonathan Cahn for this insight. Some of Cahn's observations can be faulted, but the video drove me to examine for myself whether the things he claimed were true. I discovered that many do hold up to scrutiny. Therefore, with no need to debate the validity of their symbolic interpretations, we can immediately set aside both Hanukkah and the Feast of Tabernacles from further consideration as well as the Feast of Unleavened Bread and Shavuot, the other two pilgrimage festivals.
We turn instead to developing a chronology of Christ's birth based on several texts from Scripture and some extrabiblical sources that preserve important historical clues. Many have proposed the shepherds of Luke were out in the fields at night because it was lambing season, with the implication that it was early spring.
However, although in America a single spring lambing season is the norm, the same does not hold true in Israel. The flocks there stay out in the open all year round if weather permits, or are given shelter during the coldest months and driven into the fields in early spring to graze until fall.
They return to the villages for the winter when temperatures at high altitudes are very low and the mountains are covered with snow [which could happen in the Judean hill country]…Bedouin and fellahin shepherds know nothing of tent or house but live entirely in the open together with the flocks under their care.
They are working days a year, from 13 to 16 hours a day. Their work includes shepherding, watching at night …In Iraq, the principal lambing season of Awassi ewes is in November, and in Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Israel in December-January … emphasis and brackets added.
Israeli meteorologists tracked December weather patterns for many years and concluded that the climate in Israel has been essentially constant for at least the last 2, years. The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible states that, "broadly speaking, weather phenomena and climatic conditions as pictured in the Bible correspond with conditions as observed today" R. Scott, Vol. The temperature in the area of Bethlehem in December averages around 44 degrees Fahrenheit 7 degrees Celsius but can drop to well below freezing, especially at night.
Describing the weather there, Sara Ruhin, chief of the Israeli weather service, noted in a press release that the area has three months of frost: December with 29 F. Snow is common for two or three days in Jerusalem and nearby Bethlehem in December and January.
These were the winter months of increased precipitation in Messiah's time, when the roads became practically unusable and people stayed mostly indoors. This is important evidence to disprove a December date for Messiah's birth. Note that, at the time of Messiah's birth, the shepherds tended their flocks in the fields at night.
A common practice of shepherds was keeping their flocks in the field from April to October, but in the cold and rainy winter months they took their flocks back home and sheltered them emphasis added. It was the custom then as now to withdraw the flocks during the month Marchesven Oct. This information indicates the shepherds could have been out in the fields with the sheep at night by Nisan 1, from mid-March to early April cf. Not only were the flocks staying outside in the open fields after the spring warm-up began, the shepherds at this time were keeping active watch over them at night.
This detail also is understood by many interpreters to imply lambing season, but it need not. As mentioned above, Epstein puts the lambing season in Israel from December to January, during the time when the highland sheep would probably not have been in open pasture.
It may be that in the providence of God, He had Luke record the detail of nighttime watching so we might know that Jesus was born after sundown. Since the Jews reckoned their days as beginning in the evening at sunset, the Messiah was born shortly after a new calendar day had begun. Now we turn our thoughts to the timing of the Star of Bethlehem. Let us first refresh our minds about the natal story as given by Matthew:.
Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi Mt —16, abridged. By far the most vigorously marketed theory of the Star is that put forth by Ernest L. Martin, published as The Star that Astonished the World. What are the other options? Various websites have offered differing proposals for the type of astronomical phenomenon it was—a star, a planet, a conjunction of planets or stars, a comet, a meteor, and a supernova have all been suggested, as well as different years.
How is one to narrow it down? Cahn apparently drew his information—but neglected to credit the source, at least in the video—from Michael R. The birth of Christ probably corresponded to the first lunar occultation on 6 BC March 20 , that exhibited astrological attributes found in imperial [royal] horoscopes emphasis and brackets added. Molnar also discusses a second occultation several weeks later on April 17, after the Moon had passed around to the other side of the Earth, when the phenomenon changed from one taking place around dusk in the western sky, to one occurring after dawn in the east.
Molnar's theory is important in that the event that he describes is genuinely very rare. I have checked all lunar occultations of Jupiter from BC to 1BC, some in all, finding to my considerable surprise that only in BC and in 6BC did occultations take place in Aries.
We are only recognizing the potential that God Himself, in this case, was using something, though corrupted by evil, for good. After all, God did say in Genesis that He made "the two great lights"—the Sun and Moon—and also the stars, to function as signs Genesis — We have to find some way to accommodate this biblical fact in our thinking about it.
Now, Jupiter was known as the planet that, in the astrological symbolism of the Magi, signified a king, while Aries was the constellation connected with the land of Judea. Molnar states p. AD — Astrologers had compiled lists of countries that were said to be controlled by certain zodiacal signs.
Molnar observes on page The occultation ended half an hour later almost on the horizon. David R. According to Luke , Zacharias was a priest of the division of Abijah. Luke says that Gabriel appeared to Zacharias while he was serving as a priest in the Temple.
We know from the Talmud and other sources that the division of Abijah served as priests during the second half of the fourth month of the Jewish religious calendar — which would have put it in late June the Jewish religious calendar begins in March with Passover.
Fifteen months later would place the birth of Jesus in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. That would be in the fall of the year, in either late September or early October. His conception, not His birth, would have occurred in December of the previous year. The seventh month of the Jewish calendar is the month of the Feast of Tabernacles.
So, when God came to earth to tabernacle among Men it appears that He timed His arrival in the Bethlehem manger to coincide with the Feast of Tabernacles.
That was only appropriate, for the Feast of Tabernacles is the most joyous of all the Jewish feasts. It is, in fact, their feast of thanksgiving.
The total meaning of that feast will not be fulfilled until the Lord returns again to tabernacle among Men for a thousand years while He reigns over the earth from Mt. Zion in Jerusalem.
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