The star of Bethlehem

Giotto - Adoration of the Magi

Chapter 2 of St. Matthew’s Gospel begins with these words:

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

First, a few considerations about this text:

• Magi is a term with different meanings. Strictly speaking, it was applied to the priests of Mazdayasna, the religion of Zoroaster. Zoroastrian magi were frequently devoted to astrology (the name then given to the science we now call astronomy). So, in a broad sense, the word magi could be applied to anyone who worked in that science. The New Testament does not say that they were kings. That is a later tradition.
• It will be noted that the text does not say that they were three. They must be at least two, since the term is plural, but later thinkers have discussed whether they were two, three, or even six. The three magi is also a later tradition.
• It is explicitly stated that King Herod was alive. When did Herod die? Since Emil Schürer (1896) it has been assumed that he died in the year 750 ab Urbe condita (a.U.c., since the founding of Rome), which corresponds to year 4 b.C.e. (before the Christian era). From this, many historians deduced that Jesus Christ must have been born before that date. Therefore Dionysius Exiguus, author of the idea of ​​numbering the years since the birth of Christ, would have made a mistake in assigning the year 754 a.U.c. to his birth. But some modern historians think that Herod could have died in the year 753 a.U.c. (year 1 b.C.e.), and that his sons pushed back the beginning of their own reign, thus causing the discrepancy and leading Emil Schürer to a wrong conclusion. Consequently, the most probable date for the birth of Christ would be between the year 7 b.C.e. and the year 2 b.C.e.

Dating the birth of Jesus Christ

Copy of Raphael's The Virgin of the Rose, 
by Manuel Alfonseca Santana

I will not enter here into the nineteenth-century debate on the historical existence of Jesus Christ, for after 1926 historical criticism has unanimously accepted his existence, and the persistence of the idea that Jesus Christ did not exist is solely due to ignorance or anti-Christian bigotry.

In the previous post we saw that December 25 might actually have been the date of the birth of Christ, if we follow a tradition that dates back to Irenaeus. Traditionally, the main argument against that date was the unlikelihood of the shepherds being in the fields in winter, watching their flocks. However, other studies disagree with this statement.
The chronological system used today internationally is the Christian era. After the collapse and disintegration of the Western Roman Empire, the Roman era, which counted the years from the founding of Rome, remained in use for about two hundred years, but in the sixth century, the Scythian theologian Dionysius Exiguus introduced the custom of dating historical events from the birth of Christ. Dionisius calculated that Jesus must have been born around the year 754 AUC (Ab Urbe Condita, since the foundation of the town) and called this year 1 AD (Anno Domini, the year of the Lord). Later dates in the Roman era could easily be translated into the Christian era by subtracting 753 from the corresponding Roman date. As for the years before 754 AUC, in the new era they correspond to negative numbers and can be obtained by subtracting the Roman date from 754 and by adding the abbreviation BC (Before Christ). In this system, there is no year zero.