9 Nativity of Christ
9 Nativity of Christ THE NATIVITY OF CHRIST (Mt. 1:18-25)
Only the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Luke tell us about the Nativity of Christ and the events associated with it. St. Matthew reports that shortly after the betrothal of the Most Holy Virgin Mary to the elder Joseph, "before they came together", it became clear to Joseph that the Virgin Mary had a child in Her womb. Joseph did not want to expose Her alleged crime before everyone, so as not to subject her to a shameful and painful death, according to the law of Moses (Deut. 22:23-24), and intended to secretly release her from himself, without disclosing the reason for this. When he was thinking this, an Angel appeared to him and explained that what was in the betrothed was "Of the Holy Spirit", and not the fruit of sin. "And she will bear a Son," the Angel continued: "And you will call his name Jesus: and He will save His people from their sin." The name "Jesus" is "Yehoshua" in Hebrew and means "Savior". In order for Joseph not to doubt the truth of his words, the Angel refers to the ancient prophecy of Isaiah "Behold, the Virgin will conceive and bear a Son..." (Isaiah 7:14) and "They will call his name Immanuel." The name "Immanuel" is not a proper name, but a symbolic one. It means" God is with us". When this miraculous birth of a Baby from a Virgin takes place, people will say: "God is with us," because in His person God came down to earth. Convinced by the Angel, Joseph "took his wife", i.e. brought her to live with him. "And he knew Her not till she gave birth to Her firstborn Son": "till" does not mean that after the birth of Jesus, he "knew Her", began to live with Her as with a wife. It is incredible that such a righteous man as Joseph would have decided to know the holy Virgin after She has become such a wonderful mother. The word "till" or "until" - in the Greek text "eos" - can mean also never till and after. Thus it is used in the Bible, for example, in the phrase when telling about the end of the flood: "the raven did not return to the ark until ("eos") the water from the earth was dried up " (Gen. 8:6), but he did not return either after that. Or, the words of the Lord: "I am with you all the days until ("eos") the end of the age" (Matthew 28: 20); surely this does not mean that after the end Christ will no longer be with us.
Jesus is called here "the firstborn" not because the Blessed Virgin had other children after Him, but because He was the first born and the only one. In the Old Testament, God commands that "every firstborn" be sanctified to Himself, regardless of whether there will be other children after him or not. "The brethren of Jesus Christ" mentioned in the Gospel (Matthew 12:46; John 2:12, etc.) were the children of Joseph the betrothed from his first marriage.
(Luke 2:1-20):
The Evangelist Luke dates the events of the Nativity of Christ to the census in the Roman Empire at the behest of Caesar Augustus. The exact date of this census has not been preserved, but the time of the reign of Octavian Augustus gives us the opportunity to approximately determine the year of the Nativity of Christ. The calendar "since the Birth of Christ", was introduced in the VI century by the Roman monk Dionysius, who, for the basis of this chronology, made his calculation that the Lord Jesus Christ was born in 754 from the foundation of Rome. This Dionysian era has become widespread in Christian countries since the X century, although all chronologists now recognize that Dionysius was wrong by 5 years. The year of the Nativity of Christ can be determined more accurately on the basis of the following data from the Gospel:
1. The time of the reign of Herod the Great. It is quite clear from Luke 1:5 that Christ was born during the reign of this Herod. Herod reigned from 714 to 750 from the foundation of Rome. He died in April 750, i.e. at least four years earlier than "our era".
2. The census mentioned in Luke 2: 1-5, begun by the edict of Augustus in 746, in Judea it started in the last years of Herod's reign, was then suspended due to Herod's death, continued and ended when Syria was ruled by Quirinus, mentioned in Luke 2:2. As a result of this census, a popular uprising occurred in Palestine. Herod subjected its instigator Febda to burning on March 12, 750. It is clear that the census had begun before that.
3. The reign of Tiberius Caesar, in whose fifteenth year, according to the testimony of Luk. 3:1, St. John the Baptist preached, and the Lord Jesus Christ was thirty years old (Luke 3: 23). Augustus accepted Tiberius as co-ruler two years before his death in January 765, i.e. the 15th year of Tiberius ' reign began in January 779. Since Jesus was 30 years old at that time, He was born in 749.
4. Astronomical calculations show that the year of the death of Christ the Savior on the cross (and it, according to the Gospel, occurred in the year when the Jewish Passover came on Friday evening) could only be 783,