Judas of Nazareth by daniel t. unterbrink Barrie Wilson

Author:daniel t. unterbrink, Barrie Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-11T16:00:00+00:00

The Dating of Herod the Great

Perhaps the most important difference between the two accounts is the dating. According to Matthew the star appears near the end of Herod the Great’s life, or around 4 BCE. Matthew follows the story line of Mark, in which John the Baptist is executed before the death of Jesus. John dies around 35–36 CE ( Antiquities 18.116–119), so the birth of Jesus at approximately 6 BCE would have made him around forty years of age at John’s death and a bit older at the time of his own crucifixion. Since Mark provides no information concerning Jesus’s age, considering him to have been forty at the time of his crucifixion must have appeared reasonable to Matthew. In addition the positioning of Jesus’s birth at 6–4 BCE coincides with the Golden Eagle Temple Cleansing in 4 BCE, which pits Jewish insurgents against King Herod. Herod successfully kills many of these rebels, just as he supposedly slaughters the innocents at Bethlehem.

The account in the Slavonic Josephus also covers the period of Herod the Great’s reign, but is positioned in the text at approximately 25 BCE. This earlier date for the Messiah’s birth is unacceptable to Matthew, since it would have made Jesus sixty years old at the time of John’s death. So, for now, we must just note the differences in the dating of the Messiah’s birth.

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