Modern books and ancient books are incredibly different – for example, a book about a modern person would tell you what day a person was born and might skip any other details about that day, but in Yeshua’s (Jesus’s) day, people would generally say nothing about the day of the year at all but would focus on what made that person’s birth important and impressive. As a result, we know very few ancient birthdays before the time of Messiah – especially among the Jews, who focused on a person’s life, and not their birth! Around 200 CE, people got super concerned with when Yeshua was born, but before that, they really didn’t seem to care much. This week we are going to talk about the stuff that the two Biblical authors, Matthew and Luke, did want to talk about, and why it was important. We will also discuss the very interesting reasons why people at the end of the second century came up with the date of December 25th, and how it relates to Rabbi Eliezer and Jewish beliefs about the redemption of the world.
This is a really interesting article if you are interested in studying the December 25th date in more detail
And my friend Sarah has another great book out for families that is also a lot of fun for kids – teaching them about having great character and developing the fruit of the Spirit.