When was Jesus born? And when did He die? There are some compelling theories we will look at in this post. Let’s start by looking at the first five verses of Revelation 12:
12 And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:
2 And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
5 And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.
Now, the woman is generally agreed to be Israel, represented here by Virgo the Virgin in the constellations. The Sun is over Virgo, so she is ‘clothed’ with it, and the Moon is at her feet (see screenshot from Stellarium below).
Leo the Lion, representing Jesus, the Lion of Judah (Genesis 49:9), stands in protection of Virgo (Israel), and at Leo’s heart is the star Regulus, which is, on September 11, 3 BC, in conjunction with Jupiter, the ‘King’ planet. Note that the date in Stellarium is 2BC, that’s because Stellarium has a year 0, but no year 0 exists in reality – there was no year zero; if you were to travel back in time, it would go year 2, year 1, year -1, year -2, year -3.
When I lived in Sweden several years ago, we lived in a smaller town and the night skies were fairly dark. It encouraged me to start studying the stars. One night I had my star chart out and saw a quite prominent star that was not on the chart – further consultations with Stellarium had me realizing that I was seeing my first planet, Jupiter.
Some scholars believe that Jupiter was the ‘star’ that pointed to the birth of Jesus two thousand years ago. E.L. Martin, in a view that is shared by Dr. Michael Heiser, makes the case in The Star that Astonished the World that the conjunction of the ‘King’ star with Regulus (the ‘heart’ of Leo) and the supporting positions of the sun and the moon near Virgo makes a strong case for heralding the birth of Jesus.
Revelation 12 is not prophecy – by the time that Revelation was written, Jesus had already been born, died, and resurrected. Rather, Revelation 12 is telling us what already happened.
Now I realize I’m skipping all kinds of important additional information, but I want to get to the other side of this equation quickly – the death of Jesus was approximately 30 AD. How do I arrive at that?
In a previous post, I cite text from the Jewish Talmud that says that:
“Our rabbis taught: During the last forty years before the destruction of the Temple the lot [‘For the Lord’] did not come up in the right hand; nor did the crimson-colored strap become white; nor did the western most light shine; and the doors of the Hekel [Temple] would open by themselves” (Soncino version, Yoma 39b).
Read the complete post for the long explanation, but in brief, once Jesus was crucified and resurrected, there was no use for the temple any longer. The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, but for 40 years before that destruction, four very powerful signs were observed by the priests; for example, the temple doors would open by themselves.
So there we have it; evidence from the heavenly bodies for Jesus being born on September 11, 3BC, and evidence from the Jewish Talmud for Jesus being crucified in approximately 30AD.
We know from Luke 3:23 that Jesus started His ministry at about the age of 30, and we know from the gospel of John that His ministry spanned three Passovers, putting Him roughly at the age of 33 when He was crucified. If we count from September 11, 3BC forward to 30AD, we end up with 32 years exactly. We have to also figure in that for Jesus to have observed three passovers during His ministry would only require just barely over two years. So the strong possibility is that 9/11/3BC to sometime in 30AD could well be the nearly-exact lifespan of our Lord and Savior; and being that it is until now the most significant event we have on record in human history, that is pretty interesting. I would say that the heavenly signs in the Moon, Sun and stars gives one the proper scale of His first coming; God, incarnated into human flesh.
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