 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 138. What day was Jesus born? I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Merry Christmas, Mike. Yeah, this is our sort of pseudo, I don't know what to call it, Christmas episode. Yeah. Basically, I'll disagree with December 25th the whole time, but hey, it is what it is. Yeah, I'm excited about this one. I know you've got a video up on this, you've got a blog post, you've got the book coming out about it, so there's a wealth of information about this particular subject, so it's good that we're gonna have a podcast version of it. Yeah, yeah, like you mentioned, this is in the new book coming out, Reversing Hermon, there's a chapter in that book related to this, and I'm basically gonna go through that chapter and add some material. People who've read The Portent, which is my second novel, The Sequel to the Facade, they would have gotten the basics of this in dialogue in the book, so it's gonna be for them, you know, somewhat familiar, but there's, again, there's a lot more detail to it. So, yeah, you know, I guess consider this a precursor to reversing Hermon, at least in some way, in a small way. I'm ready for it. All right, well, that's actually not a bad way to start because we ought to say something about what, you know, I am talking about and what I'm not talking about. You know, in reversing Hermon, again, and consider the title, this idea of reversing sort of the theology, the biblical theology of reversing the effect of the transgression of Genesis six, that was part of the Messianic profile. This, the whole birth issue and the timing and the calendar and all that is actually part of that. And if you're new to the podcast, that's gonna sound kind of weird. And I've said before that if you asked, you know, the average Christian, hey, why is the world the way it is? Why is it such a mess? You know, why do we have all this problem, you know, with depravity? The answer you're gonna get is the fall, okay, Genesis three. But if you asked a first century Jew the same question that is not the answer you'd get, the fall would be one of three elements. But we're taught only one because we ignore Genesis six, we demythologize it and pretend it doesn't say what it says. And then, you know, we are completely oblivious to the Babel event, Genesis 11, how Deuteronomy 32.89 parses that for us. Again, most people in most churches really for centuries, maybe millennia have never even heard of Babel talked about in the context of Deuteronomy 32.89. But there it is in the text, you know? So again, that's gonna sound a little bit familiar. Like what does the birth of Jesus have to do with the theme, the biblical theological theme of reversing the effect of the transgression of Genesis six? Well, actually a lot. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. So that's gonna be our focus. Now, that is part of a wider area in scholarship. Sort of, you know, for lack of a better term called astral theology or astrothiology. This notion that the ancients, Jews and Christians included, looked at the heavens and, you know, considered what was going on in the heavens as signs of God working out his will or God about to do something. Sort of a prophetic flavor. Now, you know, we see that generally in the gospels, you know, like with the second coming, there'll be the sign of the Son of Man or the signs in the heavens. You know, we saw it in the book of Acts, you know, with things that have already happened. So that's part of eschatology in biblical thinking. So that's different though than what we think of as astrology. So there are two things that are sort of conceptually related, but they're actually distinct. Christians and Jews had negative views of astrology. Like we would think of it and you say, well, how could they be thinking about something the way we think of it? Well, the answer is actually pretty simple. What offended them in terms of astral religion were a couple of things, you know, that the foreign God's element, you know, obviously is gonna be offensive to Christians and Jews, but specifically the notion that the movement of objects in the heavens controlled individual destiny, individual fate, that was theologically offensive because, you know, understandably, they would say only God does that. Only God, you know, determines, you know, someone's fate, not stuff moving around in the sky. So that was a very pagan notion of astronomy or astrology, and in the ancient world, those two things, astronomy and astrology were pretty well blended. They were distinguishable, obviously, because we have a lot of data for that in ancient records. Going all the way back into Mesopotamia and then, of course, Egypt. So people knew what they were doing with astronomy and math and whatnot, again, to a limited degree, to the naked eye degree. But all of it had a very deep religious flavor so that it sort of blended with what we would think of as astrological thinking. But Christians and Jews had boundaries here. Again, they rejected the idea that this determined individual fate. So we're not talking about horoscopes and zodiacs and astrology the way astrologers today do. You know, look at the heavens and what I'm gonna eat. Who am I gonna marry? What kind of job am I gonna have? Should I do this or that? That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the notion that among Jews and Christians that, hey, it was the God of Israel who created the things that we see in the sky and he created them according to Genesis to mark times and seasons, days, the passage of time, which of course they knew meant the flow of human history, what happened on earth. Again, this as in heaven, so on earth sort of thing going on as well. That's what we're talking about. So let's be clear right up front with what I'm, you know, the context of what I'm gonna be saying and the context that isn't there, which is this modern silly notion of astrology as we think of it. Now, there have been sort of Christian writers and thinkers that have really been into this heavily and they're gonna go places that I don't. Things like people like Seiss and Bollinger and even D. James Kennedy more recently thought that you could sort of map out the Romans road, the whole plan of salvation and the stars and the Zodiac constellations. I don't believe that. But again, what we're gonna be talking about is related to that. So just before we get started here, I should mention, again, I mentioned it just a few minutes ago, but just to emphasize it, what I'm gonna do today, people who've read the portent are, there's gonna be some familiarity here. But again, you're gonna get more detail. I actually do have an astronomer that I work with on this, we correspond a lot. So for readers of my fiction, the Mantello character, he's real, he's not a Catholic priest. And in the second book, the character who sort of plays the Mantello role, he's not that guy either. He's not a kid from Pakistan. So there is a touch point with reality here and Trey and I had a meeting with him in San Antonio where listeners of the podcast, those interviews, pretty recent, back toward the end of November. So not even a month ago. And it was sort of a show and tell, here's what I do, here's how I do what I do. So this guy is real, doesn't wanna be named, doesn't wanna be photographed. So we're not gonna do any of that. But just so that you know, this isn't Mike doing astronomy. I don't know anything about astronomy in any sort of technical sense. I understand what he does. And I know a decent amount about astrological lore in ancient texts, and specifically Jewish stuff, Jewish, Judeo-Christian stuff. So that's the point of overlap there. Now, again, in reversing Hermon, you're gonna get what we're gonna do today. If you want the documentation, I'm not gonna read through every footnote, although I will read through a couple in this episode. But if you want the documentation, you want the primary sources and the secondary literature, you're gonna have to get the book. It's gonna be out in February or March. Again, this is just one chapter of the book. And I should remind listeners as well, we're giving away three of these. Again, when the time comes, we're giving away three reversing Hermon books. So you want the documentation, you're gonna get it there. But I will mention three articles in our episode today that if you want those articles, and two of them specifically address criticisms of the view that I'm going to articulate, which is tied to dating the death of Herod in 1 BC, a lot of New Testament scholars would say, oh, that's impossible, it can't be. Josephus puts it at 4 BC, and that's why we have Jesus born in 6 BC. Okay, none of that is valid. Okay, there's been a good deal of research establishing that there were different dating systems and you can have a 1 BC date for Herod. And critics of the view that I'll articulate don't seem to have found these sources or maybe don't want to find them. So you will get those, they're not publicly available, they're not on the internet, but I will put them in a protected folder. And I will give the link to that folder in the newsletter. So if you're a newsletter subscriber, you'll get that stuff if you're not, you won't. So let's jump in here to the content of the episode, the guts of it here. And I think, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I think this is gonna go down as one of those episodes that's gonna be pretty popular in the history of the podcast because it's just really interesting. I think people are gonna be fascinated by it if you haven't heard it, certainly, even if you have, there's gonna be other details here that you're gonna get a bonus. Now, for me, I began to take this seriously, really after two things. I read Ernest L. Martin's book, The Star that Astonished the World, and I found it pretty compelling. Again, it knew there were problems and you go out and you look for other research to sort of solve the problems. You follow Martin's rabbit trail as far as you can. In my case, I was fortunate again enough to have an astronomer, somebody who had their head into all this to help. There are still issues that need to be worked on and looked at a little more carefully, but the fundamental issues, I think it's fair to say have been resolved, but there are other things, again, that it's like anything else, you tweak it as you go. But it wasn't, Martin's book was sort of the first entry point, but the second thing that really drew me in as a scholar was Paul's use of the Old Testament in Romans 10, and this is where I'm gonna start. So if we go to Romans 10, again, this is a familiar passage to most Bible students. A lot of people have even memorized parts of this passage. This is the chapter that talks about whoever calls in the name of the Lord will be saved, Romans 10, 13, but if you start in verse five, you get the context for that. It's actually quite interesting and takes us into, believe it or not, this topic of astral prophecy. So Romans 10, verse five, for Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will ascend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim. Verse nine, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, for with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now here's verse 14, so I just read verse 13, of the passage everybody knows, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Here's verse 14. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news, but they have not all obeyed the gospel, for Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed and who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. So Paul, I'll just stop there before I read the next verse, which is the springboard verse, verse 18. Paul talks about the necessity of calling on the name of the Lord to be saved. Then he says, well, how are they gonna do that if they've never heard? And for them to hear, you gotta have someone preaching and so on and so forth. The problem is not everybody knows this, or so we think. Not everybody knows what's going on here. And so when Paul says, sets this up, you think that that's just kind of it. Paul's gonna say, look, this is why we're here. This is why we preach. We gotta get people out there. We gotta evangelize. And he does all that and he says all that. But then he asks this question. Again, this is the kicker for me. This is what drew me in. Verse 18, but I ask, have they not heard? And you expect Paul to say, well, of course they haven't heard. That's why I'm saying we gotta be preachers. But that isn't what he says. Verse 18, but I ask, have they not heard? Indeed, they have. Four, and then Paul quotes an Old Testament passage as his proof text that people everywhere have indeed heard about Jesus. Which you think, what in the world? And here's the passage he quotes. Their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the end of the world. Now, Paul is clearly describing the necessity of believing in Jesus for salvation. That's easy from Romans 10. Again, lots of people have memorized that. But in order to believe in Jesus, people have to hear about him. Again, very obvious. Paul then raises the expected problem. Not everybody has heard about Jesus and he gives an unexpected answer. He says they have heard. And you think, what in the world? Where? How? Okay, what's going on here? Now, the passage that Paul quotes from the Old Testament is Psalm 19.4. Now, what Paul does here is he quotes from the Septuagint translation of Psalm 19.4. Again, the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. For Paul, everyone had heard or should have heard about the coming of Jesus because, quote, their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. Well, whose voice is Paul talking about? If you go to Psalm 19, you find out he's talking about the heavens and the objects in the heavens. Let's read Psalm 19. First four verses. Again, this is also a familiar Psalm. The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. Now, you'll notice there, the fourth verse, their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. I'm reading from the ESV and the ESV has in that verse adopted the Septuagint reading. Their voice goes out through all the earth. Now, some of your Bibles may follow the Masoretic text here. Okay, we'll get to that in a moment because it says something different. It actually is gonna mean the same thing but it will say something different. Now, there are a number of terms in those first four verses that convey the idea that the heavens communicate information. Just think about what we just read. The heavens declare, the sky proclaims, the cycle of days and nights pours out speech and quote reveals knowledge. The heavens have a voice and speech and words that can be heard since their message quote goes out through all the earth. Again, it's very clearly attributing communication and the dispensing of information to the heavens. That's just a transparent reading of Psalm 19 and that's what Paul is tracking on. The key question though, is how did Paul think the heavens communicated the coming of Jesus? Now, what I don't think Paul is saying here, I'm gonna disagree with Sice and Bollinger and Kennedy. Again, that you could get the whole story of the cross in the heavens. I don't believe that. These writers are well-known. They've attempted to argue that the starry sky and specifically the zodiac constellations lay out every detail of the work of Christ in the gospel. Again, I don't believe that. I think that goes way too far. What I do think Paul was thinking though, is that the stars specifically communicated the arrival of a divine king. So in that sense, Paul believes it is possible for the news about Jesus coming to be known to everyone. In other words, everybody should have known that a divine king had been born because the heavens declare or to quote specifically the fourth verse that Paul quotes in Romans 10, 18. Their voice, again, the voice of these heavenly objects, these celestial objects goes out through all the earth. And their words to the end of the world. And people could have and should have known that much that a divine king had been born. So that's what I think Paul is tracking on. Now, let's take this a little further. Paul's task, and he's doing it in Romans 10, in the gospel was to explain what the coming of this divine king meant. The mystery that Paul referred to as the plan of salvation, or Jew and Gentile united together, same savior, all that sort of thing. It is fallacious though, to presume that the starry heavens could actually explain the way of salvation to someone when Christ himself sent the apostles in the world to preach the gospel. And there was a reason he did that. If looking at the heavens was sufficient for evangelism, why would Jesus send out apostles? So again, I'm disagreeing with Seis and Bollinger and Kennedy here. The sky has far greater and more immediate coverage. So why bother doing that? Moreover, the message of the traveling apostles was not how to read the heavens. They didn't tell the story of the sky, which is gonna be told in a specific passage, we'll get to in a moment. But that's not what they do. They talk about the work of Christ on the cross. So again, there's a distinction there. Finally, the notion that the gospel message could be understood through the stars conflicts with the fact that the disciples themselves didn't understand the cross event until well after the ascension. I mean, even in, you know, we've talked about this passage before in Luke 24, there isn't Christ is standing in the room and they still don't get it. Okay, well, if the heavenly event of the birth and the signage in the stars was supposed to present the gospel, they should have been able to understand that. So again, I'm disagreeing with important Christian writers on this that are gonna be familiar to a lot of listeners. So there's, you know, what I'm not saying and what I am saying is that I think what Paul is tracking on is that there was there were celestial events, celestial signs that could have and should have telegraphed to everyone that a divine King had come to earth. Okay, and specifically, you know, we're gonna get the story of the magi that factors into this. So that's what I think Paul is doing. Now, Paul, I don't think though, as well, I don't think Paul is thinking specifically of the star in Matthew two. And by the way, that term in Matthew two is a term used of a wide range of celestial bodies. So it's not a star only, like we think of it, it could have been a planet. And I'm gonna agree with most astronomers that it was Jupiter, you know, Jupiter's retrograde motion. We'll get to that briefly in a moment. So, you know, that lone object, okay, that lone object, the star, by itself wouldn't telegraph anything. You say, well, what do you mean? The magi looked up there and they could figure out what it meant. Yeah, because what they were looking at had a celestial context to them. And that's what we're gonna be talking about in a moment. So this celestial object in Matthew two, the star of Bethlehem, whatever that was, and its behavior, its movement, if you're just looking at Matthew two, you don't have the context for understanding what that is. In other words, you can't, if you were just, if you weren't a magi, one of the magi and you saw that thing in the sky, you wouldn't think anything of it because you lack sort of the astronomical, the wider context. You don't really know exactly what you're looking at. You can see something, you know, in the sky. You can see it, maybe, you know, change directions if you, you know, went off and did something, came back a few minutes later, a few hours later, you can do that. But you don't have the astronomical context because this isn't what you do. You're a shepherd or you're something else. Well, the magi understood the bigger picture. They could single out this object and understand what it was meaning because they knew the wider context. And so as we transition, you know, to what this context was, the question is, is there anything in the New Testament that might give us that context, that might give the star of Matthew two, the context that the magi had that would inform, you know, an ancient sky watcher that this particular object that's mentioned in Matthew two marked the birth of a divine king. And there is indeed, there is a context for that in the New Testament. It's found in a passage that few New Testament scholars associate with the birth of Jesus, which is ironic, especially since this passage says what it says in conjunction with the birth of the Messiah. And you can say, well, that sounds kind of insane. How do people miss it? Well, they miss it because, well, for a number of reasons, but since it's in the last book of the New Testament and that isn't part of the birth narrative in the gospels, people don't make the connection. But the connections are there if you just read the text for what it actually says. In other words, if you let the text say what it says, and sometimes believe it or not, the text just means what it says. So Revelation 12 is the passage I'm talking about, specifically the first seven verses or so. And again, I'm gonna be quoting a lot from my book here and some sources I use in the book. And I will telegraph those when I get to that point. There are gonna be a few that I especially touch base with, Martin's book, The Star that Astonished the World, which is available free online, by the way. And also Beal's commentary, his massive commentary on Revelation. Now, an important note here before I read Revelation 12, none of what I say or frankly of what Martin said should be construed as Old Testament messianic prophecy. What Revelation 12 describes in terms of astronomy, reading it as an example of astral prophecy, what Revelation 12 describes in terms of astronomy was not prophesied in the Old Testament anywhere. Revelation 12 does not quote the Old Testament when it comes to the messianic birth in the context of the celestial imagery that it gives. In other words, the signs here in Revelation 12 are not part of the Old Testament messianic prophetic complex. What we have in Revelation 12 is, I think, a record of what the magi saw in a wider lens that was codified by John well after the birth of Jesus. So John would have to have had a source. That source is ultimately unknown. I'd guess that he got his material, which would involve dates and events from Jesus' early childhood, at least from eyewitnesses to the magi visit and perhaps a few details from Mary. We don't know where John got his source, but we know he had to get it somewhere because he wasn't present there and he wasn't one of the magi. Now, it's unreasonable to presume, in my view, that John concocted the material after the fact, even though Revelation 12 was written well after the birth. And I think that for a couple of simple reasons. Number one, the date produced by reading Revelation 12, the way we're gonna read it, coincides perfectly with important calendrical items that are part of Jewish messianic expectation. And number two, the date produced is quite workable. I would say completely workable in the context of the entirety of the rest of New Testament chronology. So in other words, you couldn't arbitrarily pick a day, time, and year, or arbitrarily pick something going on in the heavens that happened not when you're writing, but at some other point. You couldn't arbitrarily, unintelligently pick something like that and get lucky that the scene you're picking in the sky, you're making this up after the fact, just to write something about Jesus that is gonna mystify readers and draw attention to his birth. You can't just pick that and get lucky that the thing you picked works everywhere else, chronologically and calendrically, in terms of events of Jesus' life, not only that, but all the other events of the New Testament. Because this date that Revelation 12 produces does that, it works. It fits in with everything else. So I think it's a real stretch to say, oh, John just got real lucky. He's just a highly intelligent guess. Now, I think he had a source for this, and what he writes in Revelation 12 becomes again part of that book and it harkens back to what's going on. So I can't really prove that this is what the magic I saw, but I think this is, it makes a lot of sense if this is indeed what the magic I saw, because the best explanation for the star, the celestial object of Matthew 2, is gonna be part of the celestial setting that we get when we read Revelation 12. So it gives it a context, so here we go. Now, here's Revelation 12, it reads as follows. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and 10 horns and on his head, heads, excuse me, seven diadems. Verse four, his tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast into the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth so that when she bore her child, he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days. Now, it's quite clear that the signs in the heavens here in Revelation 12, what John is specifically looking at. And he says, I looked up at the heavens and saw, okay? They're indisputably astronomical. Sun, moon, and stars are specifically mentioned. The specific signs though require some attention. Let's take the woman first. The woman is the key figure, the logical starting point for interpreting Revelation 12 astronomically. And there are scholars who do this. The probably the major work on this is Bruce Malinus' genre and message of the book of Revelation. He takes the whole book of Revelation, the whole book of Revelation basically as astral prophecy. I would agree with Malinus' critics. Biel is one, Dave De Silva is another that he sort of takes this a little bit too far. He doesn't, he sort of takes it so far that he ignores the book of Revelation's use of second temple material and even the Old Testament. So, again, Malinus sort of jumps to shark care a little bit with his emphasis. But I think his basic approach is sound. Now, since the woman clearly gives birth to the Messiah, okay, there's this quotation from the Psalms. The one who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron, it's very clearly messianic. The woman gives birth to the Messiah. And then the Messiah is taken up to heaven. That's a reference to the ascension. So you get here in Revelation 12, the birth of the Messiah and the ascension. And then the woman gets persecuted and has to flee into the desert. Since those are the factors, scholars agree that verses two through six, and I'm quoting Biel here, quote, reveal that this woman is a picture of the faithful community, Israel, which existed both before and after the coming of Christ. Unquote. Israel, of course, is described as the virgin of Zion in the Old Testament and produces the Messiah in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Again, this is just one-on-one sort of stuff. 2 Kings 19, 21, Isaiah 37, 21, Jeremiah 14, 17. Again, the virgin of Zion. Again, Israel is the virgin of Zion. Now more specifically, when it comes to the actual birthing of the Messiah, Mary comes to mind as the Jewish girl who gives birth to Jesus. But virgin Israel best fits both parts of the description of the woman in Revelation 12. In other words, if it was just the birth, then we might be thinking exclusively of Mary. But since we have the birth, the ascension, and then it even subsequent to the ascension, ascension Israel fleeing into the wilderness, okay? The woman fleeing into the wilderness, Israel actually fits better. So the virgin Israel is actually sort of a better paradigm for reading Revelation 12. But we're not excluding Mary, because she was a virgin, according to the New Testament. Virgin Mary gives birth to the Messiah, we get that. So both things are going on, but Israel is sort of the primary reference here. Now I have a footnote in the book quoting Beal at this point. I'm gonna read some of that, it's pretty long, but I'm gonna read it. Where he describes, again, he elaborates on this imagery. And here's his quote in the footnote. Verse six is saturated with a rich diversity of Old Testament Jewish and early Christian background. The woman flees from the dragon after the deliverance of her son. She flees so that the dragon will not annihilate her. This is not a mere literal escape, whether of Christians fleeing the Roman siege Jerusalem in 8066 or of a remnant of Christian Jews being protected from a future great tribulation. As in verses one and two, the woman represents the community of faith, though now it is not that of the Old Testament epoch, but the Messianic community after Christ's resurrection and his ascension, again referred to in Revelation 12. The woman is now on earth and not in heaven, because she now represents the true people of God on earth. She escapes into the wilderness for protection because there's a place prepared by God for her. The flight into the wilderness is a collective illusion primarily to both the Israel's exodus from Egypt and the anticipated end time exodus, which was to occur during Israel's latter day restoration from captivity. Again, he goes into all sorts of passages for that. The same pattern of flight is observable with Elijah and Moses, again, who symbolize the church in Revelation 11. Isaiah and other prophets, again, do the same thing. You get, this is very rich Old Testament imagery, in other words. And so, again, it points back to Israel as the Virgin of Zion, okay? So we've got both Mary and Israel, Israel the primary refer point. Now that was Beal, back to, again, our own work here. Additionally, the connection to Virgin Israel is important, giving that the signage would have to be decipherable to Jews at the time of Jesus' birth. And at that time, Mary's circumstances would have been entirely unknown. The meaning of the Virgin and the 12 stars around her head is evident in Second Temple period Jewish literature as well as later rabbinic thought. So even the 12 stars, which, if we look at this astronomically, obviously the Virgin is gonna be Virgo and Virgo does have 12 stars around her head and all that. But if you look at it textually, specifically in terms of Jewish literature, the 12 stars around the head are going to be references to, a reference to the 12 tribes of Israel. And so the woman, again, is Virgin, Zion, Israel. Now here, Beal, again, has devoted considerable attention to the ancient Jewish and Old Testament context for women. He writes in part elsewhere, again, that verses two and six reveal that this woman is a picture of the faithful community, which existed both before and after the coming of Christ. This identification is based on the Old Testament precedent in which the sun, moon, and 11 stars represent Jacob, his wife, and the 11 tribes of Israel. That's Genesis 37.9, that was Joseph's dream. They bow down to Joseph, who represents the 12th tribe and the 12th star. The depiction could also reflect the portrayal in Jewish writings of Abraham, Sarah, and their progeny, sun, moon, and stars. Again, this is second temple Jewish literature, the Testament of Abraham. Again, applies the same imagery to Abraham, Sarah, and their children. Jewish exegetes believe that the sons of Jacob were likened to stars in Genesis 37 to connote the indestructible nature of Israel. As stars appear far from earth and immune from destruction by any earthly forth, so also the true Israel was ultimately indestructible. Beal quotes the Midrash Rabah and Genesis 9 there, Targum Neofiti does the same thing in Genesis 50. And the 12 stars represent the 12 tribes of Israel. Philo and Josephus both talk about that in their explanations of Exodus 28 and 39. Again, they use the imagery of the crown, the sun, the moon, the 12 stars to describe the vestments of the Israelite high priests. Since the priests represented the 12 tribes who are the 12 stars, I mean, basically the whole point I'm gonna leave Beal here is there is a rich tradition within the second temple and of course the Christian and the rabbinic community later on that identify Israel as the virgin Zion and align her with this sort of vision, okay, the virgin with the 12 stars. So when John uses it, this would have been completely familiar to Jewish readers, completely familiar. And if you're looking at the sky, again, Virgo is the obvious reference point. Now, the idea that the woman is a constellation is made plausible when one looks closely at the text. Look at the rest of the description here in Revelation 12. The description that the woman was clothed with the sun is stock astronomical language of the day for the sun being in the midst of a constellation. While the sun is in the woman, the moon is at her feet. For this situation to occur, the constellation of the woman must be an astronomical language on the ecliptic, the imaginary line in the sky that the sun and the moon follow in their journey through the Zodiac constellations. And here I'm gonna go back to Psalm 19. Remember when Paul quotes Psalm 19 as his proof text that, hey, everybody should have known a divine king was born. He says their voice goes out through all the earth. Okay, he quotes the Septuagint. In other words, the stars, the celestial objects of Psalm 19 are communicating something here. And of course, in Paul's mind, that something is the birth of the divine king, the Messiah. The Maseridic text reads their line goes out through all the earth. And some of your translations might have that. Well, the line would be a reference to the ecliptic. And that takes us right back to this point that I was just discussing, that if you look at Revelation 12, this is a constellation Virgo, the Virgin, the sun is in her midst, the moon is at her feet. And that means, again, if you're gonna align those things, that means that we need to start paying attention to Virgo. And Virgo is on the ecliptic, the imaginary line through which the constellations follow through the sky. Again, the Maseridic text would align very well with what we're talking about here, not just the Septuagint reading. Now I have a quote here from Martin about this that I wanna share with you. He says, the apostle John saw the scene when the sun was clothing or adorning the woman. This surely indicates that the position of the sun and the vision was located somewhere mid body to the woman between the neck and the knees. The sun could hardly be said to clothe her if it were situated in her face or near her feet. The only time of the year that the sun could be in position to clothe the celestial woman called Virgo, that is to be mid body, in the region where a pregnant woman carries a child, is when the sun is located between about 150 and 170 degrees along the ecliptic. This clothing of the woman by the sun occurs for a 20 day period each year. This 20 degree spread could indicate the general time when Jesus was born. So now we're starting to link what's in the sky and what John is describing with time, with real time during the year. That's the end of Martin's quote that was from chapter five. The constellation of the Virgin giving birth to the Messiah would of course have been viewed as quite coherent by the Magi, especially if they knew about Isaiah 714. Again, they're from Babylon, Persia. Again, there's lots and lots and lots of Jews there, starting with the exile. Daniel himself, again, part of this wider tradition of quote unquote wise men. To me, it's unthinkable that the Magi would not have been exposed somewhere to Jewish learning and specifically the focal point of Jewish learning is the scriptures. So again, this is not very difficult to imagine that if the Magi knew of Isaiah 714 and linked it to the Davidic dynasty, this idea of a virgin Virgo, and we're gonna see a few signs in a moment here that telegraphed to the Magi very clear that a divine king was being born inside Virgo. Part of the signage associated with Virgo being clothed with the sun between the head and knees here, that they would look at that and go, boy, there's that thing in the Old Testament that read this virgin shall conceive and maybe we ought to go look at that. Oh yeah, boy, it was a sign for Ahaz, the Davidic dynasty, and boy, oh boy, oh boy. I mean, in other words, this isn't hard to do the math for the Magi if they had known the verse and I think there's more than a reasonable expectation that they did know the text. But even if they were ignorant of Isaiah 714, the astrotheological linkage would still make sense to them since the sign we know as Virgo had strong associations with other ancient quote, unquote, mother goddesses, okay, figures that would produce divine kings. So even if they were totally ignorant of Isaiah 7, what they would have been looking at, okay, would have still, would have been a neon sign for divine royal birth, okay, and we're gonna pick up a few of the other signs there in a moment that would make that clear. But the fact that they go to Bethlehem tells you, again, that they were familiar with the Hebrew scriptures. Now the detail that the moon was located under the feet of the woman, Virgo, must not be forgotten in all of this. The sun must be in the Virgo constellation while the moon is simultaneously at her feet, okay, somewhere at under the feet, you know, somewhere there. That condition has to be present for John's vision to be accurately interpreted astronomically because of the moon's, quote unquote, behavior relative to the ecliptic and Virgo in any given year, the 20 day window narrows to roughly a 90 minute period in which to astronomically pinpoint the birth of the child of Revelation 12, which is the Messiah, which was Jesus, okay, so we'll get to that. Let's talk about the child a little bit. Revelation 12.5 is very explicit that the child is Jesus, the promised Messiah, quote, she gave birth to a male child, one who was to rule all the nations with the rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God into his throne, reference to the birth and the ascension, okay. Now this description is an allusion to Psalm two verses seven through nine, which prophesied that the Messiah would defeat God's enemies and be installed as ruler over all the nations, okay. The Psalm allusion is coupled with a description of an ascent of the child up to God in his throne. In short, John's wording here in the immediate context is designed to create the impression that it appeared as if the devil had won the day, he's the dragon's right there waiting to kill the child when it's born, the child's gonna be killed and devoured, but the resurrection and of course the ascension, the ultimate return to the right hand of God resulted in victory for the Messiah, for the child and the dragon was therefore defeated. So John again is combining in just a space of a few verses all these elements, but the child very clear who that is. Now the dragon, third figure, the dragon, the scholars of the book of Revelation have long noted the connection of the dragon to Old Testament terminology for the sea monster that symbolized chaos. Again, this is very well known. I even have a motion graphic video on my website, my YouTube channel about the chaos theme of the sea monster. Again, this is, again, Old Testament 101. As Osborn notes, this is Grant Osborn now from in his commentary on Revelation, Osborn notes this, throughout the ancient Near East the sea monster symbolized the war between good and evil, between the gods and chaos. Obviously, in similar fashion to the meaning of abyss in chapter nine, Revelation nine one to two, this builds on the fact that for the nation surrounding the Mediterranean basin, the sea meant unfathomable depths and the chaos of death. Thus Leviathan or the dragon came to represent all the tears of the sea and thus the presence of evil and death. It also signified nations that stood against God and his people because the nations, this is me now talking, this is an Osborn, the nations become agents of chaos, agents of destruction, agents of destroying the order God wants, which of course includes this thing called Israel and a Messiah because we want to restore Eden. Okay, so again, this is well known imagery. Now there are two major candidates for the dragon with respect to constellations. Malinah, again, in his book on Revelation explains it this way. The second sign is the fire colored dragon. The color red locates it in the southern sky. The fact that the dragon's tail sweeps away a third of the stars of the sky further points to a location generally lacking in stars compared to the other sky locations. This again is in the south in the region of the abyss, which is another constellation. The question we might pose now is, which constellation does John label as the red dragon, the dragon in the south? Obviously it is not Draco, which is found at the North Pole. Bull, that's Franz Bull, another author, Malinah's quoting, opts for Hydra. Immediately above Hydra and accompanying it are the constellations of Korax and Crater, which have seven and 10 stars respectively. Korax was seven corresponding to the number of heads in Revelation 12, lies closer to Virgo, on the other hand, Lehman Nietzsche, another author, argues that the prototypical dragon of the sky is really ancient Scorpio, originally a larger set of stars than the present constellation. It was truly gigantic, even by celestial zodiac standards. Since it originally consisted of two modern zodiacal signs, Libra and Scorpio, Libra would form the claws of the Scorpio in the ancient world. Now that's the end of Malinah here. So you have two options. Now, just some opinion of my own. Hydra has the advantage of matching the description of the seven heads atop the dragon, Revelation 12, 3. It's also conceived as a sea serpent, imagery that matches descriptions from Revelation, like Revelation 13, 1, the beast that emerges from the sea, which in turn come from Leviathan material, the Old Testament, namely Isaiah 27, 1. However, Hydra is not precisely on the ecliptic. So we have to ask ourselves, does that matter? It's adjacent to the ecliptic and only slightly below the woman. In other words, Hydra is not positioned directly under the feet of the woman waiting to devour the child as soon as it emerges from the woman, but it's close. Now the ecliptic problem is resolved if we opt for Scorpio as John's reference point. But that said, the text of Revelation 12 only has the dragon present. It stood before the woman. It doesn't really say it has to be directly under the feet. So both options are sort of workable and possible. Again, pick the one that you like. I have a bit of a disagreement here with my astronomer friend. So, you know, we're still, he might win me over, who knows? But anyway, you got two options there. Now the combination of signs, all this, the woman, the sun in her midst, the moon at her feet, the dragon, whether it's adjacent to her at her feet or directly under the feet. This collection of signs is not especially rare, but there are other celestial portents, celestial things going on in this scene that are not mentioned by John in Revelation 12, but that were nevertheless present during the time of Jesus' birth, during what John is describing. And these other things would have been taken as indications of the birth of a divine king to both Jews and Gentiles. So they're, one of the problems that you get with people trying to use Revelation 12, like to plot the second coming, which I think is ridiculous, is they'll go with Revelation 12, but they'll miss the other things that if you put the elements in Revelation 12 into an astronomy program, and I've done that, lots of other people have, and you get that picture, there will be people who only take what's actually recorded in Revelation 12 as their reference point. What I'm suggesting, and what lots of other people suggest as well, is that, hey, you gotta actually look at the sky, because the magi aren't, when they're looking at the heavens, they're not just seeing what's in John, John's writing in Revelation 12, they're seeing everything, because they're looking at the sky. And there are other things that are gonna be in the scene, the recreated scene, and if you just plug it into astronomy program, that are gonna just stick out, and that are gonna be meaningful in deep ways to both Jews and Gentiles when it comes to the birth of a divine king. So let's talk about those. So this collection in Revelation 12 isn't rare, although, to be fair, there's only a handful of dates in real time that could accommodate them in the context of New Testament chronology for the birth of Jesus. But those dates narrow to one date. Once other astronomical events that occurred at the same time, which are not noted in Revelation 12, are added to the celestial profile. One of these extra events is, in fact, the leading candidate for explaining the star seen by the magi in Matthew 2. Now, what I'm gonna cover here is just the basics. Martin, in his book, actually has a bunch of other things going on in the sky that, again, solidify the really one best date for the birth of the Messiah. But I'm just gonna hit, again, some of the main points here. The constellation directly above the head of Virgo. This is stuff not mentioned in Revelation 12, but if we're looking at the sky like the badge I did, that constellation above the head of Virgo, the very next one in the zodiac, is Leo, the lion. Now, the lion was the symbol associated with the tribe of Judah, from which the Messiah would come. The association arose from Genesis 49, 9 and 10, where Jacob blessed Judah, referring to him in Leonine terms, while prophesying that a ruler would come from his lineage. Here's Genesis 49, I'll just read it, verses 9 and 10. Judah is a lion's cub. From the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down, he crouched as a lion, and as a lioness, who dares rouse him. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples, in other words, the nations. So this is where the lion of Judah imagery comes from. It's part of the Torah. The Lion King Association is confirmed in Revelation 5, verse 5, quote, one of the elders said to me, weep no more, behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered. Now the constellation Leo then was associated by Jews, Jewish astrothelogens, if you wanna call them that, with royalty. The constellation of Leo is also important to Gentiles. It was the chief or head sign of the Zodiac and had special importance in astrological circles. Now that is a quote taking from Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, if you read through their Sun, Moon, and Stars article, you're gonna find that. Leo was considered a royal constellation since it was dominated by the star Regulus. Regulus would have also been in the picture, again, the recreation of the circumstances of Revelation 12. So the star Regulus was known by astrologers as the king star. It was big and bright, okay? So we have the king constellation, all right? The king constellation, Leo, Lion of Judah, and the star Regulus in that constellation, in Leo. The status of Regulus and Leo is important because on one of the possible dates for the messianic birth, it came into conjunction with Jupiter. As the largest planet, Jupiter was considered the king planet in astrothelogical thinking of the first century. As a result, the constellation Leo, the messianic sign of the Lion of Judah, to Jews who read the heavens, literally here, had two conjoined signs of a royal birth within it. So in other words, if you're the magi, and again, you're familiar, but obviously with Gentile, religious astronomical thinking, and you're familiar with the Hebrew scriptures because hey, you go to Bethlehem. If you're looking at this sign, you've got a version with 12 stars, the sun in her midst, the moon at her feet, the dragon, okay, and then above that, you've got what Leo, the Lion, it's the symbol of the tribe of Judah. And within that constellation, you have Jupiter, the king planet, and Regulus, the king star overlapping. They're conjoined at this moment. Remember, we're talking about a 90 minute window where all these things are there. So the combination of astronomical signs produces a unique set of circumstances, which can only be counted for by one date that matters in the sweep of New Testament chronology. And this date, as we will see, I'm just gonna say it here, but we'll talk more about it. This date has dramatic significance in the Jewish calendar. According to all of these signs taken together, and Martin again in chapter five has even more, according to all these signs in the heavens, the date of Jesus' birth, the birth of the Messiah, was September 11th, 3 BC. Now when we hear September 11th, that just creeps us out because of the context of that date in our own time. Now there would be a whole separate show to talk about. You know, was September 11th, 2001, sort of a shot across the bow in terms of cosmic evil, you know, for the fate of the earth and humanity and all that stuff. I think there's something to that, because again, I'm a supernaturalist, but I'm not gonna go there in this episode. For this episode, we wanna talk about the original September 11th date, like in the birth of this Messiah child in Revelation 12. If we take the chapter, for exactly what John says, I looked up at the heavens and saw, okay, an example of astronomical prophecy, astrothiology, astral prophecy, whatever label you wanna give it. Now Martin, again, back to Martin in his book, I'll just read you one footnote, because again, he has a lot of other information there that can be borne out by an astronomy program. As Martin deals in details in chapter five of his book, reading Revelation 12 this way correlates precisely with the chronological testimony of Luke concerning the timing of the birth of John the Baptist and his father's that is Zechariah's priestly duties at the temple, where the angel met him to announce John's birth. The primary objection to this date, to the September 11th, 3 BC date, is that it violates the accepted date for Herod's death, which most scholars put in 4 BC. You know, you have to have Herod dying after the birth, because remember, the magi come, it's one or two years later depending on how old you think Jesus is at the time of the birth. They don't come, we have the three magi visiting the manger, okay, that is not what the scripture says. They come later, the terminology for the child changes in the narrative, but again, this is very well known. You could find this almost anywhere online or in most books that discuss what we're talking about today, we don't even know there were three, we just infer that there were three because of the gifts, but the magi come later than the actual birth event, okay. And after that is when Herod dies. So, you know, there's basically two years later, Herod dies, so he can't be dying in 4 BC if Jesus is born in 3 BC. It has to be Herod dying in 1 BC. So that requires that Herod die in 1 BC now, elsewhere in my footnote I say, despite the objections of many, to the September 11 3 BC date on these grounds. A 1 BC date for Herod's death is indeed possible and it's actually quite plausible. For recent research into how a 1 BC date for the death of Herod is historically coherent, I'm gonna give you two sources. Now I've mentioned these on my blog, if these are not publicly available and frankly one of them is really hard to find, but if you subscribe to the newsletter you will have access by virtue of a link to a password protector, not a password, well yeah, protected folder and you can read them yourself. There are two fundamental articles here. One is by Ormond Edwards, it's called Herodian Chronology. It's from the Palestine Exploration Quarterly, volume 114 issue 1, 1982. And the second one is by Andrew Steinman, much more recent, when did Herod the Great reign? It's in the scholarly journal Novem Testamentum, volume 51, which is 2009. Now the former article, Edwards, focuses on numismatics, that is coins, Herodian coins, as evidence for reconsidering how Herod's dates are calculated and understood in terms of various calendars. And he comes out, he even has his several charts in the article, but he shows, hey, you're using Herodian coins, one BC will tell you what calendar you're using and all that kind of stuff, it works. The latter article by Steinman casts a much wider net than Herodian coins. So he has a lot more data leading to a one BC death for Herod, while also chronicling the problems with the four BC consensus. So the standard accepted date for Herod's death actually has its own problems, but you typically don't hear that because everybody just sort of just accepts it. So I would recommend both of those articles and a one BC Herod death date is not an insurmountable problem by any stretch for the view that I'm articulating here. So back again to the subject matter, let's talk about Jupiter. Again, we have Jupiter, Regulus, Conjunction in Leo. Jupiter is important because it is, you can read a lot of astronomers here, the best explanation for the quote unquote star of Matthew two, whose movement or perceived movement was tracked by the Magi. Jupiter's well known for what astronomers call retrograde motion, the appearance of movement back and forth in the night sky. Jupiter's first conjunction with Regulus began on September 14th, three BC, in the year that we're talking about here, three BC. And it continued through September 11th, three BC. And then on December 1st, three BC, Jupiter stopped its normal course through the fixed stars and began its annual retrogression or backward motion. In doing so, it once again headed toward the star Regulus. Then on February 17th, two BC, the two were reunited. So it's moving around a lot between three BC and two BC. So again, astronomers have known this for a long time. The again, perception of Jupiter's movement for just about everybody who kind of tracks on this thing is the best explanation for the star and Magi too. So you have, again, all this going on between, well, just before the Messiah is actually born, and then on end of the time when the Magi are going to start their journey. And it takes quite a while to get to Bethlehem. So during that whole interval of time, Jupiter's doing stuff. And so this just becomes the best candidate for what the Magi saw in reference to Matthew too. The timing is right. The Magi embark on their journey a year or so after Jesus was actually born. And this is what they're looking at. Now, I have another footnote here about the terminology in Matthew 2.11. So in Matthew 2.11, the child Jesus is referred to with the Greek term Pideon as opposed to breathos in Luke 1.41. While the former can be used of an infant or toddler, the latter is only used of newborn infants or children in utero, so either one of those. And that comes from the entry in the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology. Now, Martin points out that the account in the New Testament said the Magi saw the star rising above the eastern horizon because they're at a location east of Jerusalem. And in August 12, 3 BC, Jupiter rose as a morning star, which soon came into conjunction with Venus. If the Magi began their own journey toward Jerusalem near this time, this apparent westward motion of Jupiter each day would have indicated to the Magi to proceed in the same westward direction toward Jerusalem. Martin follows this by noting that the Magi could have been, quote unquote, following Jupiter in the example as it was setting. The Bible says the star, quote, went ahead of them, unquote. Upon reaching Jerusalem, the Magi were told to look toward Bethlehem for the newborn king, or they could have known like a 5-2. Again, they probably don't know that because of what they ask. Herod, hey, where's the king of the Jews? It just depends how you take the conversation, what you think they knew or didn't know, are they being cryptic, are they poking for information, what's going on? So you can read it different ways. But anyway, all of this occurred when the New Testament says the star, quote unquote, came to a halt in the heavens. That's Matthew 2.9. And Jupiter stopped its motion and stood over where the young child was. In a word, the celestial body became stationary. Martin references Kittle's theological dictionary for this point in commenting on the passive form of the Greek word for the star's behavior, the Greek there is estate. Kittle quotes from Schlatter's commentary, which is in German. In translation, it says, in distinction from estate, estate implies that the star halted, unquote. Again, you can look at that. And if you have Kittle's theological dictionary, the New Testament, you can look it up. Martin has done some homework here. He's not just making it up, but he's aligning the language quite coherently with the behavior of Jupiter. Now, so that brings us to the point where we've talked about the sign of Revelation 12, the signs that John gives us. If you're looking at the sky, then you have these other things going on. And I've narrowed our discussion to the Jupiter-regulus conjunction in Leo. Again, Martin has more if you want it. That gives us a birth of Jesus on September 11th, 3 BC. However, that date is also the day of trumpets, or was also the day of trumpets. And it has a connection to Noah's flood. And so here we're gonna drift into the reversing Hermon sort of stuff. The astronomical context of John's description of what he saw in the heavens in Revelation 12 puts the birth of Jesus on September 11th, 3 BC. Again, that part, we know, we can see that. Just put it in an astronomy program, you're gonna get that. The literary context of Revelation 12 is of relevance here. Immediately preceding Revelation 12, John described the heavenly appearance of the temple and the Ark of the Covenant, Revelation 11 at 19. The Ark was the central symbol of God's presence with Israel. The birth of the child in Revelation 12 was John's way of saying that the presence of God had indeed returned to the earth in the form of this child, the Messiah. New Testament scholar Greg Beal notes the significance of this juxtaposition, the Genesis 11 and the Genesis 12. The reference to the Ark in the temple and the reference is given in Revelation 12, verse seven. These signs, Beal writes this. A trumpet was to be blown on Tishri 1, which in the rabbinic period can be viewed as the beginning of the new year. God's eschatological judgment of all people was expected to fall on this day. The new year trumpet also proclaimed hope in the ongoing and ultimate kingship of God in God's judgment and reward according to people's deeds and in Israel's final restoration. That's Beal, page 620, and he actually alludes to the Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 16 for that information. Now, incredibly, again, we've left Beal now, this is me. Incredibly, the astronomical reconstruction of the circumstances of Revelation 12, one to seven that produces a September 11, 3BC date for the birth of the Messiah was also the beginning of the Jewish new year in 3BC, Rosh Hashanah, Tishri 1, the day of the trumpets, the feast of trumpets, and Tishri 1 was also the day that many of the ancient kings and rulers of Judah reckoned as their inauguration day. This procedure was followed consistently in the time of Solomon, Jeremiah, and Ezra. And if you want proof of that, you can look at Theel, Edwin Theel, mysterious numbers of the Hebrew kings, page 28, 31, 161, 163. I would say this is a powerful piece of evidence for the astronomical reading of Revelation 12, one through seven as celestial signs of the birth of the Messianic king. Again, there are just too many coincidences here. There's too many things that are coinciding and aligning neatly. Jewish tradition also held that the day of trumpets was the day that commemorated the beginning of the world. And this was Jewish tradition, in other words, the very first day of the human calendar. As Jewish historian Theodore Gaster writes, quote, Judaism regards New Year's Day not merely as an anniversary of creation, but more importantly, as a renewal of it. This is when the world is reborn, unquote. That's from Gaster's festivals of the Jewish New Year. Although it might sound odd, this tradition is part of a matrix of ideas that link Tishri 1, which of course is September 11th, 3 BC, the birth of the Messiah in that year. It links Tishri 1 to the sin of the washers, the flood of Noah, and the Nephilim. Say, how in the world? Well, let's examine that for a few minutes. The first step toward discerning these connections is to understand the Jewish calendar, at least insofar as it relates to our topic. The ancient Israelite, Biblical, and Jewish calendrical circumstances are like our own in that multiple calendars are in play. I mean, we use more than one calendar. In modern Western civilization, it's common to have a calendar that maps the seasons, one that maps the school year, one that maps the fiscal year. Again, all three calendars would cover 12 months, but their beginning points would differ and we get that. Today, the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, occurs on the first and second days of Tishri. Anyone who's Jewish or has Jewish friends knows, however, that this New Year's Day and the New Year's Day, we celebrate according to the modern Gregorian calendar are of course not the same. Jewish Rosh Hashanah occurs in the fall season, somewhere in September and October. The first month of the year is Tishri and that occurs in the fall. Fall was of course the season of the harvest, an important idea to which we will return in a moment. Exodus 12, one and two though, suggest that the first month of the Israelite calendar in more ancient times was not Tishri. After the Israelites escaped Egypt, the first month was aligned with the Passover. That's Exodus 12, three. In order to commemorate the new beginning of the Israelite nation after the Exodus from Egypt, the calendar of Exodus 12 detached the first season of the calendar from the agricultural harvest. Remember that the New Year began in the fall in the quote unquote original calendar and in Exodus 12 it gets changed so that the New Year aligns with the Passover. So the first month of the new calendar, the one that starts in Exodus 12 is Nisan and you have a reference to that in Esther 3.7. Now these two calendars, the agricultural calendar that had Tishri as the first month is the oldest in Israelite history predating the Exodus. The biblical text contains hints of this older calendar in certain passages that describe the ending of the year. Exodus 23, 16, Exodus 34, 22. Whereas Tishri marked the fall season, the end of the year was marked by the feast of in-gathering. The fall harvest in-gathering, they're different things here. The important point for our purposes is that the most ancient Israelite calendar began with Tishri, which fell in the fall season with a harvest after the rains had produced the fall crop. As Gastur noted, this month was considered a memorial of creation. Why? Well, the answer's simple. Genesis has Adam and Eve placed in a lush garden, eaten because of the availability of food for Adam and Eve, the creation must have begun in the harvest season. This is how the Jews reasoned this tradition. And so the earliest Hebrew calendar began the year in the harvest season. Hence the first month, Tishri fell in the fall harvest. This logic produces the idea that the Israelite New Year signaled a renewal of creation. Now again, if this is in your head and you're thinking Tishri won, if you go back to the September 11th, 3 BC, not only do you have the birth of Messiah, Tishri won, which is the inauguration day of kings, but that day also meant a renewal of creation. Again, it was new life in simplest terms, but it's more than that even. In her fascinating scholarly essay, and I'm also gonna put this in the folder. So if you subscribe to the newsletter, you're gonna get this article too. Dr. Ellen Robbins wrote an essay called The Pleiades, the Flood and the Jewish New Year. Robbins is a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. She is not a hack, she's not Billy Bob on the internet, okay? This is not Christian Middle Earth stuff. This is Johns Hopkins University. And she's gonna map this whole thing out in Jewish tradition. Again, what we do here in the Naked Bible Podcast is we don't speculate and call it teaching. Yeah, I take you to actual academic sources. So here we go. Now Robbins details how this ancient calendrical thinking factored into the interpretation of the flood story, including its preamble about the sons of God and the Nephilim. Let's start at Genesis seven, okay? So we're working to how September 11th and Tishri won and the signs in the sky and the inauguration of the king and the renewal of creation, how all of that also maps over to the Jewish interpretation of the flood, including the sons of God and the Nephilim. That's where we're going here because when we understand that, we're going to see how in the Jewish mind, this date, this event on this date, which can be mapped astronomically with precision. And it works all the way through, okay? We're gonna see how a Jew who understood these things would have looked at their Messiah as the one who would reverse the impact and the terrible effects, not just of Genesis three, not just the fall, but of what happened before the flood. And that was part of bringing on the flood, this disaster. Okay, the sons of God event of Genesis six and the Nephilim. It was all one content matrix for them. And again, we are so ignorant of this kind of stuff that we just miss so much material, so much theology that's lurking in the biblical texts. That it's just a cry and shame. Again, this is why Naked Bible Podcast exists. This is why we write what we write. This is the goal to try to help you think about your Bible the way the ancient people thought about it. So that when they wrote, the original writers wrote, you can read it to understand what they wanted you to understand. Okay, so you could think their thoughts after them and not somebody else's thoughts. Not a reformer at the Catholic church. Okay, fill in the blank. Okay, we're concerned about what the writer wrote and what he intended you to know and to think. That's what we're doing here. So let's go back to Genesis seven, Robin's article. Again, linking this to the tradition and how the Jews understood the flood. In Genesis seven, we read this. Noah was 600 years old when the flood of waters came upon the earth. And Noah and his sons and his wife and his son's wives went with him into the ark to escape the waters of the flood of clean animals and of animals that are not clean and of birds and of everything that creeps in the ground two and two male and female went into the ark with Noah as God had commanded Noah. And after seven days, the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the 600th year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the windows of the heavens were open. That's Genesis seven portion there. Let me give you the exact verse references here. It's Genesis seven versus six through 11. Now, according to this passage, Noah had already turned 600, catch the wording there. Noah had already turned 600 when the flood began and it began in the 600th year of Noah's life in the second month. Noah had already turned 600 by the time of the second month. Just keep that in your head. As the floodwaters were subsiding just after the dove was released from the ark for the last time, Genesis eight provides this chronological note. This is Genesis eight, 13 through 16. In the 600th and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried from off the earth and Noah removed the covering of the ark and looked and behold, the face of the ground was dry. In the second month, on the 27th day of the month, the earth had dried out. Then God said to Noah, go out from the ark, you and your wife and your sons and your son's wives with you end of quote. Now the math here is pretty transparent. Barely over a year after the flood began, Noah and his family left the ark in the second month of the year. Noah had turned 601 by the time he had left the ark. Why is this noteworthy? Well, because Jewish tradition took this chronology to mean that Noah's birthday was Tishri 1, first month. This is the same day. Again, if you have been taught this as a Jew and you're tracking with all the rest of the stuff that we've talked about in this episode, this would be the same day as the birth of the Messiah, Jesus. So to a Jew, to many Jews, they would have believed that the Messiah, Jesus and Noah shared a birthday. And if we take Revelation 12 as indicating the celestial signs present at his birth, then the Messiah born on Tishri 1 would inevitably have created mental and theological associations between Noah and Jesus. There are other details about the chronology of the flood that given the idea that Jesus and Noah shared a birthday, would have moved ancient Jewish readers to associate the Messiah with the prologue to the flood story, Genesis 6.1 through 4. The second month of the year, the month when Noah and his family emerged from the ark after the flood had swept the earth clean of its wickedness and the awful Nephilim was marked astronomically by the heliacal appearance of the Pleiades. And this is from Robin's article. A star's heliacal rising quote is a phenomenon where a star is first visible in the morning sky. On this day, a star will only appear briefly and be barely visible. Since if you had looked a day earlier, it was too close to the sun for visibility. That comes from the archeoastronomy page of the University of Maryland. The cluster of stars known as the Pleiades is important for all this because in the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew term for the Pleiades is Tima. It's mentioned three times in the Old Testament, the name is 5.8, Job 9.9, Job 38.31. It is always paired with Orion. Hebrew term there is Kaseel. Since its position in the sky is close to the Orion constellation, not surprisingly, Orion was considered a giant in the ancient world. And this last reference, Job 38.31, is significant in light of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In one Targum of Job, the Targum is an Aramaic translation, okay? In one Targum of Job, discovered at Qumran, Job 38.31 reads, quote, "'Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, Kima, "'or loose the cords of Orion? "'But instead of Kaseel, the Aramaic has Nephila.'" Okay? This last term, the Aramaic word for Orion, is the Aramaic noun from which Nephilim derives. Again, I've talked about that in the Unseen Realm. Okay, Nephila is giant, right there. So again, how does all this contribute to the New Testament thinking of reversing Hermon? Well, what I've been reading from here is chapter four of the new book, Reversing Hermon, in the previous chapter, chapter three, what, when you get the book and read it, that's the chapter where I sort of dump far more than I do in Unseen Realm, the stuff about the Mesopotamian Apkalu. The Apkalu story from Mesopotamia is the context for Genesis 6.1 through 4. The Apkalu, again, before the flood, they're fully divine. After the flood, they're divine and human mixed. And they are the reference point for Genesis 6.1 through 4, so that if you interpret Genesis 6.1 through 4 in any other way, like this nonsense about the sons of Seth, okay? Then you're ignoring the original context for the material. It's just that simple. You either wanna interpret the Bible in context or you don't, so make your choice. So I go through all the stuff with the Apkalu and then I hit this birth narrative stuff that we've been talking about and so I'm gonna try to summarize this just for the few points here. The Mesopotamian Apkalu context for Genesis 6.1 through 4 is really important because it's preserved, that context is preserved point for point in the Second Temple period, in Second Temple literature, specifically first Enoch and a few other things, like the Book of the Giants, okay? In Mesopotamian astronomy, Orion was referred to, get this, as the true shepherd of Anu. Anu was the chief god of the heavenly realm, the sky. That's what Anu means. The shepherd motif was associated in the ancient Near East with kingship. Orion therefore, the giant therefore, was Anu's chosen king. But this Nafila, this giant, wasn't the true shepherd king for the followers of Yahweh, the true God. So again, there's an immediate theological polemic going on here. The shepherd imagery is overtly messianic. Again, a quote from Andrew Hill here, his history of Israel article on the United market. This is one of the IVP dictionaries he writes, the king took on numerous idealized roles as leader of his people, including the idea of royal adoption. The deity adopts the king as his son and the shepherd of the people, 2 Samuel 5-2, 2 Samuel 7-7. David became the model of the ideal king, you know, the ideal shepherd. And the prototype of the Messiah as the ultimate shepherd king. References there, Jeremiah 33-15, Ezekiel 34, 23-24, Ezekiel 37, 24 and 25. Again, this is well known messianic, kingly imagery. The theological messaging of all this is pretty startling. A Messiah whose birth on Tishri 1 was followed in the next month by the rising of Pleiades Orion. And that would have signaled the arrival of Yahweh's shepherd king to combat, to oppose Anu's shepherd king. Again, hearkening back to the original context of Genesis 6-1 through 4. If you were a literate Jew and you understood because you had read Second Temple material like Enoch and the Book of the Giants and some other stuff, if you had read that material and you knew, again, the original context for Genesis 6-1 through 4 and you knew how that fit into the flood. You knew how to read Genesis 6-1 through 4 and you knew how to read the flood account and the flood account was associated with Noah obviously and Noah's birthday was Tishri 1 and now we have the ultimate shepherd king born on the same date. What would you have thought? I'll tell you what you would have thought. You would have thought that this is the person who is going to reverse the effects. He's gonna be the ultimate Noah. He's Noah on steroids, okay? He is going to be the ultimate bringer of the judgment, not just in this case of a flood to wipe out the Nephilim because that didn't entirely take care of the problem. This shepherd king, this new Noah will take care of the entire problem. It is a sweeping solution to the effects of the sin brought on by Genesis 6-1 through 4 and of course, in all the Second Temple tradition and again, this aligns well with the Mesopotamian material. It was the watchers who corrupt humanity. This is why going back to the beginning of the episode if you ask the average Christian, hey, why is the world a episode of pray? Genesis 3 of the fall. If you ask that to a Jew, it's Genesis 3. That's the first problem. Genesis 6, why would they say Genesis 6? Because they believe that the knowledge, the stuff that humans used to basically corrupt themselves, warfare, okay? Even astrology is part of this, seductive arts they associated with cosmetics, all this stuff. Basically the self-destructive things that people do each other, they were taught and encouraged and given the tools to corrupt the entire human race by the watchers. That is the tradition in the Second Temple period. And so when you have someone come along to be the new Noah, the signage cannot be missed. This is the one who's the solution for all that crap. He's here. This is what you would have been thinking, okay? So on Tishri 1, traditional day of Noah, or birthday of Noah, the heavens telegraph in 3 BC, the identity of the better Noah, the ultimate Noah, Jesus of Nazareth, born as he was from Noah's own bloodline. That's Luke 3.36, with the birth of Jesus, the permanent reversal of the ancient pact of the watchers to corrupt humanity sealed on Mount Hermon had begun. And that is why the date matters. It matters because of the theological imagery, the theological telegraphing that went with it. But we miss all of that. We miss it because of what we do with Genesis 6. We throw that into the tank. We're ignorant of, again, how the corruption of humanity would have been parsed in biblical terms. And again, we isolate things in Genesis 3. We don't factor in Genesis 6 or the Babel event. And as I detail in reversing Hermon, the Babel event is a huge deal when it comes to the Genesis 6 Nephilim stuff. There are connections there. Again, this is a matrix of ideas that they would have had in their head. And this is how they would parse all this stuff. So when was the Messiah actually born? Again, I think we're told that. I think we're told that in Revelation 12. I think that Paul knew this and understood it. And when he says in Romans 10, 18, look, yeah, we still need to go preach. I'm the apostle of the Gentiles. We got to tell people what happened at the cross, but people should at least have known. Everyone should know. They could have known, they should have known that the Messiah had come. The divine royal deliverer had come. You say, how in the world Paul? Are you an asset or something? Where are you getting that? I'll tell you where I'm getting it from Psalm 19. Okay, their voice has gone out through all the earth. Whose voice? Read Psalm 19. Again, it's the message of the stars. So it's actually a coherent set of ideas that goes into this talk about, you know, Jesus' birth. And again, I don't really, if you do any reading, you're gonna find out, well, why was it aligned in December 25th and why did the church do this and that? You know, go read that. Okay, they had their reasons for doing that. Pragmatic as they were. But if you really wanna know, and you really wanna know how it fits and what it meant and the picture that it gives you, this is what you should be tracking on. Now, before we wrap up, I wanna say two other things, two final thoughts, just again, for the sake of having them on record. Again, critics of the September 11th, 3 BC date focus only on the Herod problem, which has been resolved. Go find, go get the sources and read them. A one BC date is entirely workable. The critics don't consider all this other stuff. I mean, there's just a truckload of it. All this other information that dovetails with Revelation 12 and the date it produces, it's coherent and meaningful to both the Jewish and a Gentile audience. The critics don't think about that stuff. They either avoid it or they're ignorant of it. No other date produced textually, traditionally, astronomically, accounts for all of the data. Therefore, no other date can account for the imagery and the symbolism and the theology. If you wanna attack the September 11th, 3 BC date, then, show me another date that accounts for all of it. That's your challenge. Okay, I would suggest to you that you're not gonna find one. Secondly, friends, people who are friendly to all this information, they're not critics, need to realize again, and I'm repeating this from earlier, realize again that none of this was Old Testament prophecy. It derives from the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, then that book looks backward at the circumstances of the birth of Jesus. As such, the September 11th, 3 BC date should not be construed as fulfilled prophecy since the date and the assemblage of signs weren't prophesied anywhere. It can't be a fulfillment because it wasn't prophesied anywhere. Now that's significant for two reasons. A, there's no biblical suggestion that this set of signs, and again, this set is even wider than we've talked about here, was predicted by any New Testament passage as a harbinger of the return of Christ. There is nothing like that in the New Testament. There's no verse that says we should be looking for a mimicking of this stuff to know when Jesus is gonna come back. That is contrived, that whole idea is contrived. None of what we've covered here today, for example, is ever associated with a phrase like the son of the son of man. There's no verse that connects this stuff to that phrase, and other phrases. To make such connections and predictions is isegesis and is irresponsible. Secondly, B, that all this could fall into place and not be predicted in the Old Testament should tell us pretty clearly that God can do what he wants, okay? This factors into my eschatology that God's just gonna do what he wants, okay? His hands are not tied by the biblical text that he inspired. That is, God can do things in real time without a script. So to pretend that we know what's going to happen in the future, as though the New Testament was a script that God had to follow exclusively is foolish. Yes, God isn't gonna violate his own word, but no, he isn't a slave to what's written. He won't go against it, but he can go beyond it. It ought to be clear after this episode that what happened the first time around, okay? Again, all this stuff, this is what happened the first time around, that that's probably the way it's gonna happen the next time around. So let's not play the fool by setting dates using astronomy or anything else. Well, Mike, I was gonna ask you, you kinda poo-pooed it, but are there any other dates that are solid candidates as the Jesus's real birthdate? But I know there's several out there and you said to go look them up, but can you briefly touch on just to, you know? No, I'm not gonna give dates. I won't even give them in my fiction because of what people will do with it. Now you, in San Antonio, when we were with, let's just call him Mantello, he floated two sets, and he favors one and I agree with this part of it. I don't necessarily always agree with why he thinks what he thinks. There are parts of his argument that I don't buy, but one of those sets is the one I think is the best for a mimicking of the wider set of circumstances. But again, who cares? Let's say that that's the right one. There isn't a single verse in the New Testament that says, oh, by the way, when the Lord returns, the stuff that happened in the sky at his original birth is gonna happen again. There's nothing that says that. What you get is you get very, very broad terms, the sign of the Son of Man or signs in the heavens. And you have to willfully marry those phrases to Revelation 12 because Revelation 12 doesn't look back and quote anything in the gospels. The gospel texts had existed by this time, okay? At least a couple of them. If you take the, even if you take the early date for Revelation, you got a couple, if you take the late date, well, basically you're gonna have your gospels. So there was every opportunity to make those connections or make that statement and frankly, even in the gospels themselves, but they don't do that. Now, is God free to do that? Well, sure. Again, God can do what he wants. He's not gonna violate the script, the biblical text, the information that he's given in the New Testament, but he can go beyond it. Okay, his hands are not tied. So again, I think it's very unwise. I think it's irresponsible to say, oh, well, here's what all this stuff's gonna happen. And hold on, I gotta write a book now that where I can predict the second coming so that I can make lots of money. Because that's basically what people do. I think it's irresponsible. I think it treads upon Jesus' own statement about the day of the hour no man knows. And people can say, well, yeah, but you can know the year, maybe the month. Well, yeah, if you knew when the event was, I guess you could, but again, we're not told to make these connections and no New Testament writer ever specifically does. So again, I'm not going to sell speculation as exegesis like others do. I don't do that. And I know on the podcast, it's hard to visualize some of these astronomy alignments, but seeing it as we got to, it's really neat to see how the stars and the planets line up and how it all fits together. Yeah, what I got most out of the meeting, and I've corresponded with Mantello for years, but what I got most out of the meeting was sort of how he thinks while he's looking at something. In other words, just sort of thinking out loud, kind of like showing his work, to use that metaphor, how he'll set something up on a screen and move it degree by degree. And again, looking at very specific things that he assigns importance to because of star lore. Again, because of the way a Gentile or even a Jew, what they would have been thinking when they're looking at that particular thing. There's one specific element of his approach that I don't buy. And it's actually not an astronomical item, it's something else. But that's what I got out of it. Just being able to sort of inch your way through degree by degree and then looking for very specific things, knowing that, okay, if I was a Jew that had this worldview, what would I be thinking? If I was a Gentile who had this worldview, what would I be thinking? Again, that was very instructive. So I'm actually, I should say that, well, maybe I shouldn't. I guess now that I said I should, I have to. I actually have another book that's specifically on astral prophecy that's a lot wider than the birth stuff. It's about a half done. I don't know when I will get back to that because I'm basically gonna be out of commission from January through May and it's either gonna be that or the next novel. So it's kind of like sort of there, 30, 40% of it. But there's a lot to do here that is quite interesting. This approach, again, if you're thinking like a magi, let's just call it, you're following through with the magi. There are other events in the New Testament like the resurrection, like the ascension, like Pentecost where the symbology, and we get references to like eclipses and other vague stars in the heavens, kind of things going on with these other events, but to actually sort of try to think their thoughts after them, it's kind of startling, some of the things that emerge from that approach. And does it mean anything? Well, it meant something in real time at those events. Does it mean anything for later? Like who knows? Again, we're just not told to track on any one of these specific things, but we can look back and look at sort of a real time situation and using this approach, how would a Jew or a Gentile who understood this, how would it have been meaningful to them in the context of the gospel, in the context of the events of the cross, and in the context of the whole story of Jesus that people like Paul were out there preaching? How would it have been useful to communicate biblical theology to that audience? And there are some very clear ways where that would have mattered. And I can't stress enough how great astronomers the Magi were. They even knew what was going on in the daylight. They knew what was up there when you couldn't even see it and how they tracked it 24 seven. Right, and if people want to know how they did that, it's called math. It's called being able to track things and making records of things and then doing math. They knew days and hours and minutes and they tracked celestial objects through the year. I mean, there are immense mathematical tables like in cuneiform tablets for astronomy. They knew quite a bit. They weren't just dependent on what they could see at any given point because they had mathematical tables that they could calculate where things were and when they'd show up again where they could see them. So they, again, they had a really good grasp certainly by the first century, building on the older Mesopotamian stuff, people like the Magi, by that time again, they know the world's round and they know all this. Again, it's just more math. They can do this work that we sort of think, we pat ourselves in the back and think it's modern knowledge. Well, I guess to some extent it is. It's more precise maybe by a few seconds or something, but it's not like they were just to use the pun. It's not like they were in the dark about all this. They knew a lot of stuff that would surprise a lot of people. All right, Mike, well, that's another good show. I think it's gonna be one of our most popular ones. And I wanted to remind people that you brought up, we're giving away three books at the beginning of the podcast. And the way we're doing that is if you post anything on social media about the podcast, just getting the word out there and encouraging people to listen to the Nekka Bible podcast. If you post something on social media, Facebook, Twitter, whatever you use, I will find it. I will pick three random winners and we will send you a signed copy of Mike's upcoming book coming out in February, March. So that's how you can win the book. And also Mike, trend scripts are coming back. Yeah, we're thankful to Brenda, who lives in Ohio for stepping up to the plate. She does a really nice job with the transcripts. She's picking off the older ones that were missed. I think I'm trying to remember the numbers. I think it's anywhere from like 117 through one. Oh, I can't remember what it, but if you get some of the more recent ones too, you'll be able to see the transcripts will look a little bit different. And they actually have a little more detail so that I think they're more usable because she told me that she wanted to create them the way she could conceive of people using them, like with time marks and stamps and stuff like that. So I'm sure that's gonna be helpful to some people, but we're grateful that she has the time and the talent to do it. Absolutely. So we're almost caught up. So she's working hard to get us caught up. So we certainly appreciate that. And then Mike, next week we're gonna do a Q&A. So be ready for that. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss for this episode? Well, just remind people if you wanna get the articles, the three articles that I alluded to today, you gotta subscribe to the newsletter and you would look for the articles by Edwards and Robbins and then the one by Steinman. So the link you'll get in the newsletter is gonna lead to a folder that has more than those three articles in it. But for this episode, it's Steinman, Robbins and Edwards for the three. All right. Well, Mike, I just wanna wish everybody a Merry Christmas and you and yours as well. Yep. Thank you. Thank you everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.ermsh.com.