Day 7 - Ruth Berkner and Her Guitar

It may be that chronologically Christmas is still before us since the evidence points to Christ being born in the late winter or early spring - perhaps 4 BC. In this light, it may not be out of line to celebrate Christmas until that time. To that end I will post videos from our Christmas party, unless someone tells me stop. Today's installment is Ruth Berkner and her amazing guitar. Tomorrow, it will be another Ruth.

Please study the account below from http://bible.org/article/birth-jesus-christ:

This is from Bible.org by Daniel Wallace.

"Now it logically follows that if Jesus Christ lived (need it be said?), he must have been born. The Gospels tell us that his birth was shortly before Herod the Great died. Herod's death can be fixed with certainty.

Josephus records an eclipse of the moon just before Herod passed on. This occurred on March 12th or 13th in 4 B.C. Josephus also tells us that Herod expired just before Passover. This feast took place on April 11th, in the same year, 4 B.C. From other details supplied by Josephus, we can pinpoint Herod the Great's demise as occurring between March 29th and April 4th in 4 B.C.

It might sound strange to suggest that Jesus Christ was born no later than 4 B.C. since B.C. means 'before Christ.' But our modern calendar which splits time between B.C. and A.D. was not invented until A.D. 525. At that time, Pope John the First asked a monk named Dionysius to prepare a standardized calendar for the western Church. Unfortunately, poor Dionysius missed the real B.C./A.D. division by at least four years!

Now Matthew tells us that Herod killed Bethlehem's babies two years old and under. The earliest Jesus could have been born, therefore, is 6 B.C. Through a variety of other time indicators, we can be relatively confident that the one called Messiah was born in either late 5 or early 4 B.C"