The Actual Birth Date of Jesus Christ (3)

Biblical records and history shows that Luke includes three statements identifying the period of the nativity. So what period and day was this, Yom Kippur known as the Day of Atonement and also the 10th day of the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar. In Luke's time, Yom Kippur was called three things: The day of the "Fast," “the day of the Purification”, “and the day of Redemption”. Luke uses all three to identify the day Jesus was brought to the Temple. And he even quotes the Torah rule that mandates the 40-days period for the mother to wait after the child's birth [Luke 2:22-38]. And if there were any doubt that it was Yom Kippur, Luke tells of a woman named Anna who had been in the Temple for a "night and day" without leaving. There was ONLY ONE DAY A YEAR when a person could pray overnight in the Temple: Yom Kippur. All other days, the Temple was locked at sundown. This shows the 40th day of Mary's Purification had begun at the end of Yom Kippur, the end of the 10th day of the 7th month, because we know the Purification was done at the earliest opportunity- at the beginning of the 40th day after birth. And since the 6th month normally had only 29 days, simple arithmetic shows Mary's 39 days of Purification had to have begun around sundown on the 1st day of the 6th month, called Elul. This was the night of the first sighting of the new moon of Elul. The Magi in Babylon were recording this sunset sliver of the new moon on a clay tablet. The cuneiform tablet the Magi made at that hour 2000 years ago, along with thousands of others from Babylon, resides in the British Museum. It is possible that this clay tablet was inscribed by one of the famous Magi who later brought a strange set of gifts to Bethlehem. So the new moon seen by the Magi in Babylon at the very moment of Jesus being born is recorded on one of the tablets now in London. Cuneiform scholars have identified the date on this tablet as equivalent to September, 11, 3 BC. The Hebrew lunar calendar dates vary with respect to our solar calendar. So the 1st of Elul was September 11th in 3 BC, but began on August 22 in 1998. The same was true in the days of the early church, of course in a given year; the 1st of Elul could have fallen on September 8th. This discovery may have helped to solve another ancient mystery that is unknown to man.