Messianic rabbi reveals Christ's birth date Hint: It's not on
Dec. 25
Today I share this article about Yeshua’s birth by Leo Hohmann
from a talk by Jonathan Cahn
Jonathan
Cahn likes to teach in the Socratic Method, presenting questions in the form of
a mystery and then launching an investigation that eventually turns up answers.
He
provides a clue to the answer in his title – with the meaning of the Hebrew
word "mishkan" – but more on that later.
Not only
would the weather be too cold and rainy that time of year for shepherds to be
"out in their fields," as the gospels say, but the Romans would not
have held their census during the winter because it required families to travel
back to the father's hometown to register. Joseph's family hailed from
Bethlehem.
In the
Church record, it's hard to find a credible reference to Dec. 25 as Christ's
birth date prior to the fourth century time of Emperor Constantine. More than
likely, this date was picked to line up with the Roman holiday of Saturnalia,
which was celebrated with a pagan sacrifice to Saturn and a public banquet,
followed by gift-giving and a carnival-like atmosphere.
Another
theory is that Jesus may have been born on Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights,
which would fit nicely with Him being the Light of the world. But Hanukkah is a
newer, minor Jewish holiday and comes with the same pitfall used to debunk the
Dec. 25 date – it's too cold for shepherds to be out in the fields at night
gazing at the stars.
One other
popular theory is that Jesus was born during the Feast of Tabernacles or
Sukkot, also called the "Feast of Booths," which occurs in late
September or early October each year on the Hebrew calendar. Proponents of this
theory say Jesus was born in a sukkah or booth and that this temporary shelter
was later referred to as a manger.
While this
is "well meaning" and "sounds nice," Cahn says it would
have been impossible for several reasons. First, Jesus was born in a manger,
not a sukkah, and a manger is a type of feeding trough.
Also, the
spiritual meaning of the Feast of Tabernacles lines up with the end times and
the closing of an era, not the opening or beginning of an era, Cahn says, and
Messiah's birth, death, resurrection and second coming must come in the proper
chronological order. Tabernacles "is all about the closing of the age.
It's the wrong order," Cahn says.
Plus, the
Tabernacles theory puts Mary and Joseph in the wrong place. Jewish families
traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.
"He
was born in Bethlehem not Jerusalem. It would have caused revolution to require
travel (for the census) at a time when Jews were supposed to be in
Jerusalem," Cahn said. Not to mention, they would have had to have
traveled back home during the onset of winter, again not convenient or
comfortable for a pregnant woman. So Cahn rules out winter and autumn for the
birth of Jesus.
But what
about summer? That would have been difficult during Israel's brutally hot, dry
summers but perhaps doable for a woman with child. The only problem is there is
no major Jewish feast day in the summer.
"There
are no holy days to fulfill, which is how God works," Cahn said. Passover
lines up with Jesus' death, He rose on the Feast of First Fruits, he created
the Church with the sending of his Holy Spirit on Shavuot or Pentecost, and the
Feast of Trumpets or Rosh Hashanah foretells the Messiah's second coming. "There
must be a time when travel is practical and comfortable, when shepherds would
be out with their flocks and a pregnant woman could travel," Cahn says.
The
Lamb is born
That
leaves only one option – spring. In Israel, this would have been known as the
"lambing" season. "Only in the lambing season do shepherds watch
their flocks by night," Cahn said, as described in the gospels.
This would
have been in late March and into April when shepherds were out watching for
lambs to be born in the fields.
"So
here they are out looking for lambs to be born and who do they find? The Lamb
of God," he said. But is there a holy day in the spring?
There
certainly was, but it's been downplayed over the years. It's called Nisan 1,
the historical first day on the Hebraic calendar. It falls in early April on
the Gregorian calendar.
The birth,
death, resurrection, and second coming of Jesus fulfill the Jewish holy days,
in the proper order, Cahn said, starting with Nisan 1 for his birth But it gets
even better if you look deeper.
"Messiah
fulfills the feasts but he also fulfills the theme of the feast," Cahn
said. "Is there a day on the Hebrew calendar that would fulfill the theme
of the Messiah's birth?" If there is, it would have to be Nisan 1. It
represents a new beginning.
"Nissan
1 is the calendar changer. It breaks the calendar," he said. "Every
calendar changed based on the birth of Messiah, from B.C. to A.D. So it would
put us back to Nisan 1."
But
because the early Christian Church changed from being Jerusalem-centric to
Rome-centric, all of this history was lost to the Western believers in Jesus. Besides
linking Christ's birth to an existing Roman holiday, Saturnalia, the 25th of
December also linked it to the Roman New Year just one week later on Jan. 1.
"They
saw the birth of the Messiah and they linked it to another day on their
calendar that was similar. New Year's Day, the Roman New Year," Cahn said.
A clue
from the Talmud and early church father
Building
his case further for Nisan 1 as Jesus' birthday, Cahn looks to an unlikely
source -- the Talmud, which contains ancient biblical interpretations by Jewish
rabbis. According to Talmudic teachings, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all were born
and died during the month of Nissan. Isaac in particular was a type of the
coming Messiah.
"The
first commandment was to begin everything in Nisan. It's been forgotten by
modern Judaism," Cahn said. "It's the real New Year. Not Rosh
Hashana."
In Exodus
12:1-2 it says about the month of Nisan: "God said to Moses and Aaron in
the Land of Egypt, 'This month shall be for you the beginning of the months; it
shall be for you the first of the months of the year.” In fact, the title
"First of the Months" ("Rosh Hodashim" in Hebrew) is
reserved in the Torah for the month of Nisan.
In his
quest for still more evidence that Nisan 1 was the birth date of Jesus, Cahn
moves to the writings of the early Christian church father Hippolytus of Rome,
who lived and taught in the third century, having been martyred in 235 A.D.
His
writings are among the first that refer to Dec. 25 as the birth of Christ. But
because one page of Hippolytus' writings still mentions springtime as the
proper birth date, some historians have speculated that his writings were later
doctored to reflect the new Dec. 25 date with the caveat that the one reference
to spring somehow got past the censors.
"There
is one manuscript left that actually gives us two different dates," Cahn
said. "One says Messiah was born in the springtime. They forgot to put the
Whiteout." In fact, the statue of Hippolytus in Rome today still mentions
April 2 as the month of Christ's birth.
The
final clue
But beyond
the physical, historical importance of nailing down the accurate birth date for
the most important man in the history of the world, there is a spiritual reason
that Cahn brings to our attention in "The Mishkan Clue."
Yes,
there's more to this story than just setting the record straight. It has to do
with the Hebrew words "Mishkan" and "Goel."
God's
instructions for the "goel" redeemer were given in the Torah. When a
man died his next closest male kin was allowed to marry the widow. He may
"redeem" her if he is not already married. This was the case when the
widow Ruth was wedded to Boaz, her "kinsman redeemer" by whom she had
a son. Boaz is a type of the Father God who brings the childless widow a redeemer.
Boaz is the new father who brings a son.
"There
is going to be one more Goel redemption," Cahn says. "This time the
Goel is going to be God. God is going to intervene in the line of Judah, the
line of man. He comes to the virgin Merriam. God marries the creation. He
fathers the Child."
And that
offspring is the Messiah. That matches up with the type of the Messiah in the
book of Ruth, whose son is conceived in Bethlehem at the end of the wheat
harvest. Go forward nine months and that ends up in the month of Nisan for his
birth. The last "clue" to Jesus' birth lies in the mishkan and ties
in with John 1:14 "and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."
In Hebrew,
the translation for the word dwelling is something similar to a tent or
"tabernacle," which was a temporary dwelling place for God's glory.
The incarnation, God coming in the form of a temporary human body, also fits
the theme of a tent, as Peter explain in his letter 2 Peter 1:13-14: "Yes,
I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding
you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ
showed me."
"He
pitched his tent among us or tabernacled with us," Cahn said of the
Messiah. "It wasn't a sukkah it was a tent, a mishkan. The glory of God
was in that tabernacle. Messiah's incarnation is foreshadowed in God's glory
coming into the tent…the tabernacle.
The bottom
line is that, through a deeper understanding of the birth of Messiah,
Christians can experience the new birth every day, not just once a year, Cahn
said.
"The
real point is…It's about God joining himself to your life," Cahn says.
"Being intimately joined with God through his Messiah. Every day in Christ
should be like Nisan 1. A new birth. A new beginning. You cannot have life without
that union. You cannot have new life. Your soul is waiting to get close with
God. We need to get rid of the distractions. Nisan 1 is the day that everything
is made new again. Your life was meant to be like this tabernacle, filled with
the glory of God. In that place is the fullness of your healing, in that place
comes your emotional healing, your joy, your shalom, your destiny."
