A book on the origins of the Christmas holiday came out earlier this year, Jozef Naumowicz's The Origin Of The Feast Of The Nativity In The Patristic Perspective (Berlin, Germany: Peter Lang GmbH, 2024). A section of the book describing the author refers to Naumowicz as "a member of the Committee of Historical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the author and editor of many publications in the field of ancient Christianity and patrology, as well as the editor of the Library of the Church Fathers series." He argues that the December 25 date for Jesus' birth and the celebration of his birth on that day aren't found in any source prior to the Council of Nicaea, but he also argues that the date and the holiday weren't influenced by paganism in any significant way. So, he assigns a late date to the holiday, but denies that it's pagan or an attempt to compete with paganism. I disagree with him on the first point, but agree with him on the second. I'll explain why I disagree with him in this post, then I'll cite some of his comments where I agree with him in a later post. The book is worth getting for his material on the pagan influence issue, even if you disagree with him on the dating of the December 25 date and the holiday.
I'll address the evidence for the pre-Nicene timing of the December 25 date in reverse chronological order:
- Naumowicz acknowledges that the celebration of Jesus' birth on December 25 was widespread in the fourth century, found in the Roman church shortly after Nicaea and in other Western and Eastern sources later in the century. He also acknowledges that March 25 (the date of Jesus' conception under a December 25 birthdate scenario) was prominent in pre-Nicene Christianity when Christians were choosing dates to assign to other events, like creation and Jesus' death. And he acknowledges that it was common in the pre-Nicene era to assign multiple events within an individual's life to the same date (e.g., being born and dying on the same day of the year).
Given all that Naumowicz concedes on these points, we should ask whether it's likely that at least one pre-Nicene source assigned Jesus' conception to March 25 and/or his birth to December 25, even if that source is no longer extant. We know, from the Bible and ancient Jewish and Christian extrabiblical sources, that it was common in Jewish and Christian circles to think of life as beginning at conception. And there are connections between conception and other events that pre-Nicene sources dated to March 25. The creation of the universe is reminiscent of Jesus' humanity coming into existence. Similarly, the coming to life in the context of Jesus' resurrection is reminiscent of the coming to life in the context of conception. Given the number and variety of events the pre-Nicene Christians assigned to March 25, such as creation and Jesus' resurrection, it seems unlikely that nobody assigned Jesus' conception to that date. Not only is that true in the more abstract context I just referred to, but it's even more likely when you consider how popular it was to assign Jesus' conception to March 25 in the fourth century and beyond. Some degree of pre-Nicene acceptance of that date for the conception provides a better explanation for the widespread acceptance of it later on and the belief those later sources held regarding the antiquity of their view. As I'll argue below, I think we do have some extant examples of pre-Nicene sources supporting a March 25 conception and/or a December 25 birthdate. But even without such sources, it seems likely that one or more individuals in the pre-Nicene era held that view.
- Some comments Augustine made about the Donatists seem to imply that they accepted the December 25 date for Jesus' birth before Nicaea. In a post on the December 25 date that I wrote several years ago, I quoted Susan Roll's comments about "the implication underlying Augustine's reproach to the Donatists that they fail to celebrate the (apparently newly-imported) feast of the Epiphany with the mainline Church, but with no mention of any Donatist failure to celebrate Christmas, which would date the latter feast before the split [between the Donatists and mainstream Christianity] in 311." (Toward The Origins Of Christmas [The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1996], 102) Naumowicz rejects that argument on the grounds that Augustine was focused on Epiphany and can't be shown to have had Christmas in mind when he made his remarks.
The appeal to Augustine is an implicit rather than explicit argument. That weakens its significance. But an argument doesn't have to be maximally strong in order to have some value. The relevant passage is Augustine's Sermon 202, which you can find on page 91 here. Here are some reasons why I think an interpretation of Augustine like what Roll outlines makes more sense than Naumowicz's interpretation:
* The shepherds' visit to Jesus on Christmas day is mentioned just before the reference to the Donatists, so Augustine clearly had Christmas on his mind to some extent in the nearby context. And Augustine delivered many sermons on Christmas. It's unlikely that he would go out of his way to mention the Donatist failure to celebrate Epiphany while never mentioning their failure to celebrate Christmas in so many other contexts. Augustine's silence about a Donatist failure to celebrate Christmas occurs in a context in which Christmas had just been mentioned, and his silence about such a Donatist failure is also found in many relevant contexts outside this one sermon.
* His comment about the Donatists in the Epiphany sermon would have been strengthened if he mentioned that they not only don't celebrate Epiphany, but also don't celebrate Christmas. If they're wrong on Christmas, that provides further reason to doubt them on Epiphany. After all, he's discussing how "It's what you would expect, that the Donatist heretics have never been willing to celebrate this day [Epiphany] with us". A failure to celebrate Christmas would demonstrate Augustine's point that "it's what you would expect". Yet, he doesn't mention any failure to celebrate Christmas. Instead, he mentions some other reasons why the Donatist failure to celebrate Epiphany is to be expected.
While it's possible that Augustine passed by all of these opportunities to criticize the Donatists in the same kind of way in which he criticized them about Epiphany, even though they were susceptible to such criticism because of a rejection of Christmas, and it's possible that he passed by an additional argument he could have cited in the relevant section of Sermon 202 (their rejection of Christmas), we shouldn't just be asking what's possible. The issue, rather, is how we best explain Augustine's behavior. A Donatist acceptance of the December 25 date for Jesus' birth offers the best explanation. Naumowicz comments that Augustine "did not have to mention the Nativity" (p. 78 in his book cited above), but that misses the point. It's a matter of what the best explanation is, not what Augustine had to do.
- Julius Africanus is sometimes cited in support of the December 25 date. Naumowicz acknowledges that Africanus is one of the pre-Nicene sources who used the March 25 date, placing both creation and Jesus' resurrection on that day. But Naumowicz thinks there's insufficient reason to conclude that Africanus also placed Jesus' conception on March 25. See here for Tom Schmidt's argument that Africanus placed the conception of Jesus on March 25, with the implication of a December 25 date of birth. Naumowicz appeals to Africanus' likely lack of interest in a day of the year for Jesus' birth (in spite of having interest in the birth year), a lack of any reference to March 25 for Jesus' conception or December 25 for his birth in any of Africanus' extant material, and the unlikelihood that certain later sources wouldn't have cited Africanus' comments if he'd said something about a March 25 conception or December 25 birth. Schmidt addresses some of those issues in his article linked above, and Naumowicz doesn't interact with Schmidt's comments.
I think Africanus likely believed that Jesus was conceived on March 25 and born on December 25. Here are some of my reasons:
* The context of Africanus is evidential in both chronological directions. He wrote between Hippolytus (a Roman source who advocated the December 25 birthdate) and the popularity of the December 25 birthdate in Rome and elsewhere in the fourth century, so both the Roman context before him and the context in Rome and elsewhere afterward add some weight to the conclusion that he held to the December 25 date. There's a lot of potential for Africanus to have been influenced by the December 25 sources who came before him and to have influenced the ones who came after him. He read widely, traveled widely, and spent some time in Rome. He was involved in the building of a library in Rome for one of the emperors, for example. Given when Africanus and Hippolytus lived and the overlap in their time in Rome and the overlap in their interests, including on issues related to the timing of Jesus' birth, there's a lot of plausibility to their having interacted with one another to some extent. Africanus wrote about issues related to the book of Daniel. Considering how early Hippolytus' commentary on Daniel was written and its popularity, Africanus probably consulted it, among other ways in which the two men could have influenced each other. Much of what Africanus seems to have believed about relevant issues, such as an interest in dating Jesus' conception, not just his birth (see below), aligns well with what we see in Roman and other sources who held to the December 25 date.
* Africanus seems to have placed both creation and Jesus' resurrection on March 25, which provides us with evidence of his interest in that date and his acceptance of the popular idea that significant events often happen on the same date (March 25 in this case).
* Africanus refers to how the incarnation occurred a particular number of years after creation. If exact years are involved, meaning that both events happened on the same day, just as creation and the resurrection happened on the same day, then it looks like Africanus assigned the incarnation to March 25. A few points can be made in favor of concluding that exact years are involved. The use of exact years in dating the resurrection gives us precedent for the use of exact years in dating the incarnation. And the incarnation, like the resurrection, is a significant enough event that it seems to warrant the sort of parallel with creation that Africanus assigned to the resurrection. Furthermore, there's some conceptual likeness between the incarnation and the resurrection and the incarnation and creation, as I explained earlier. All three involve the initiating of life, for example. Additionally, a later source who had Africanus' work and discussed it, says the following just after referring to Jesus' resurrection on March 25: "So Africanus, in conformity with apostolic tradition, reckoned the divine Incarnation in the 5500th year, but he was in error by two years in dating the Passion and the Resurrection of the Savior, calculating this in AM 5531." (p. 289 here) So, the incarnation is being set beside two other major events in Jesus' life, one of which is the resurrection, which was dated to March 25. That doesn't require that the incarnation happened on March 25, but it increases the plausibility of that scenario. It wouldn't be possible for both the death of Jesus and his resurrection to be assigned to the same day, but the incarnation and the resurrection could be. Regarding the passage I just quoted, which comes from George Syncellus, Philipp Nothaft wrote, "Syncellus, probably paraphrasing Annianus, expressly faults Africanus for his 'error' of two years, but he never mentions any divergence between himself and his predecessor when it comes to the calendar dates of Christ's conception and resurrection." ("Early Christian Chronology And The Origins Of The Christmas Date: In Defense Of The 'Calculation Theory'", Questions Liturgiques, 94 (2013), p. 264, found here) Syncellus dated the conception and resurrection to March 25. Given that and the other factors involved, like what's mentioned above, I think Africanus' acceptance of a March 25 date for the incarnation makes the most sense.
* The next question is how Africanus defined the incarnation. It could be thought of in terms of conception or birth. Given early Christian beliefs about life beginning at conception, abortion being murder, etc., as discussed in a post I linked earlier, dating the incarnation to the time of conception makes more sense. However, people don't always take positions that make the most sense in light of their other beliefs, and there are social conventions that involve using birth as a time marker for the beginning of life (e.g., birthday celebrations). Still, given that dating the incarnation to the time of conception makes more sense in the abstract and the fact that Christianity's most foundational sources on the incarnation address the subject that way (e.g., Luke 1:31-44), it seems more likely that Africanus had the conception of Jesus in mind. And there's further evidence for that conclusion in the following comments from Africanus:
"And from their remaining Hebrew histories, they have handed down a period of 5500 years up to the advent of the Word of salvation that was announced during the sovereignty of the Caesars." (p. 25 here)
Because of the timing involved and the language Africanus uses to describe the event in question ("the advent of the Word of salvation that was announced during the sovereignty of the Caesars"), we know that he's referring to the incarnation and probably Jesus' conception rather than his birth. The concept of incarnation ("advent") makes more sense as a reference to conception than as a reference to birth. And the language of something being "announced" makes more sense in the context of the conception than in the context of the birth (the annunciation to Mary in Luke 1). The birth is part of what was announced to Mary, but the conception was mentioned to her first and was the event of more significance at the time. Africanus' comments seem to make more sense with a focus on the conception than with a focus on the birth.
To sum up, it looks like there was a lot of potential for Africanus to be influenced by the Roman tradition of a December 25 birthdate and to have influenced later sources. And it looks like that sort of influence did occur (the combination of relevant beliefs that's so similar to what we see in Hippolytus and later December 25 sources: the high view of Jesus' conception, the high view of March 25, etc.). It also looks like there's sufficient reason within Africanus' belief system, without considering Roman influence and his influence on later sources, for him to have concluded that Jesus was born on December 25 (a high view of Jesus' conception and a belief that other events of a similar nature that he viewed highly occurred on March 25). Furthermore, what George Syncellus (who had access to Africanus' chronography and made use of it) said about Africanus makes the most sense if Africanus held to a March 25 conception date.
Whatever you make of the evidence pertaining to Africanus, keep in mind that you can be skeptical or agnostic about Africanus' acceptance of the December 25 birthdate of Jesus, yet still accept the likelihood that other pre-Nicene sources accepted the December 25 date. These are independent lines of evidence. It's not as though sources like the Donatists and Julius Africanus are dependent on one another in this context. You can accept the one without accepting the other. I think it's likely that Africanus believed in the December 25 birthdate. Even if you were agnostic on the issue, though, the plausibility of his acceptance of the December 25 date should caution you against concluding that nobody accepted that date during the timeframe in question. Furthermore, even if you don't think Africanus held to the December 25 date, it should be acknowledged that he held to multiple views that are closely related to and were involved in the popularizing of December 25 (a high level of interest in Jesus' conception, identifying it as the time of the incarnation, directly dating the conception, not just implying its date through the dating of Jesus' birth; assigning multiple significant events to March 25, including one or more events in Jesus' life; assigning creation and Jesus' resurrection to March 25, events that involve the initiation of life, which Jesus' conception also involves).
- Hippolytus has been thought to support the December 25 date in multiple ways, such as in an explicit reference to the date in his commentary on Daniel. Naumowicz says more about Hippolytus than about the other relevant pre-Nicene sources, but even his treatment of Hippolytus goes into much less depth than Schmidt's. I've linked Schmidt's material before, which you can read here. In a later article that focuses on two of Hippolytus' works (his Canon and Chronicon, but not his commentary on Daniel, which is included in the first article), Schmidt offers updated argumentation on those two sources. See here for a 2022 article for Biblical Archaeology Review, which briefly summarizes the evidence for a popular audience. And here's a YouTube video he participated in concerning that article just linked. He's also published English translations of some of the relevant Hippolytan works in book form: Hippolytus Of Rome: Commentary On Daniel And "Chronicon" (Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2017); Hippolytus Of Rome's Commentary On Daniel (Piscataway, New Jersey: Gorgias Press, 2022). The arguments about Hippolytus and December 25 are too large and complicated for me to get into everything here. You can consult Schmidt's material mentioned above for more information. Naumowicz doesn't interact with some of Schmidt's arguments. But Naumowicz does acknowledge the quality of Schmidt's work, at one point referring to how it's "enriched" our understanding of the issues related to Hippolytus (p. 46).
Naumowicz admits that the large majority of manuscripts of Hippolytus' Daniel commentary, including the earliest one, have the December 25 birthdate. But he thinks that date is a later interpolation. He appeals to the earliest manuscript, which has the December 25 date and an unclear reference to a date in March or April (which Naumowicz thinks is April 2). Naumowicz appeals to the principle of favoring more difficult readings in the manuscript record over less difficult readings.
However, the criterion of difficulty is just one line of evidence among others. There are multiple lines of evidence for the authenticity of the December 25 date as part of the original text of Hippolytus' commentary, so those lines of evidence could outweigh (and, I'll argue, do outweigh) any appeal to the criterion of difficulty.
Naumowicz's view of the passage is highly problematic:
* In his first article linked above, Schmidt provides some potential reasons why somebody may have added the reference to a day in March or April to the manuscript in question under a scenario in which the December 25 date was already present. Explaining the one manuscript Naumowicz appeals to in a way like what Schmidt suggests is easier than explaining the absence of the April 2 date and the presence of the December 25 date in so many other manuscripts and the presence of December 25 even in Naumowicz's preferred manuscript.
* Why think so many people copying Hippolytus' work, enough to put the December 25 date in such a large number and variety of manuscripts, had a motive to corrupt the text in such a manner? The April 2 date Naumowicz believes to be part of the manuscript he's appealing to is found elsewhere in Hippolytus, as Naumowicz acknowledges and as I'll discuss below. (Hippolytus seems to have been inconsistent about the date of Jesus' conception, putting it on March 25 at one point and on April 2 at another point, though both are consistent with a December 25 birthdate.) That other Hippolytan source that mentions April 2 didn't have its text changed, and even the one manuscript of the Daniel commentary that Naumowicz cites doesn't leave out the date in question, but instead includes it along with December 25. Other dates for Jesus' birth that are inconsistent with December 25, such as the ones discussed by Clement of Alexandria, a contemporary of Hippolytus, weren't taken out of those documents. Are we to believe that there was such widespread interest in changing the text of one document written by Hippolytus accompanied by such a lack of interest in changing the text of so many other documents with similar material? I think Naumowicz is arguing that the April 2 reading of the passage in Hippolytus' Daniel commentary is the more difficult reading in the sense that it went against the later widespread belief in a December 25 birthdate. But other documents also had birthdates for Jesus other than December 25, and the text of those documents wasn't changed.
* Naumowicz dates Hippolytus' Daniel commentary to the opening years of the third century. And he claims that we don't have reason to think anybody was advocating a December 25 birthdate before the Council of Nicaea. Therefore, he can't appeal to a corruption of the text prior to Nicaea. If anybody was adding the December 25 date to Hippolytus' text before Nicaea, then that person would be somebody who advocated the December 25 date during that timeframe. It follows, then, that if Naumowicz is going to sustain his view concerning the absence of the December 25 date before Nicaea, he's going to have to maintain that the text of Hippolytus' commentary on Daniel wasn't corrupted until later. But that would mean that the document circulated for more than a century without the December 25 date. That period of more than a century would include the opening years of the legalization of Christianity under Constantine, with all of the opportunities for copying Christian texts, translating them, and distributing them to more people. If the Daniel commentary was disseminated under those circumstances, and the corruption process didn't begin until after Nicaea, it's unlikely that the corruption would be so widespread in the manuscript record. The authenticity of the December 25 reference offers a much better explanation of its widespread presence in the textual record (and elsewhere, such as in the external sources influenced by Hippolytus, as discussed in Schmidt's article).
* The immediate context provides support for the originality of the December 25 reference. Just after the discussion of Jesus' birth, Hippolytus refers to Jesus' death on March 25. That places Hippolytus among the pre-Nicene sources who used the March 25 date. His interest in that date in the context of Jesus' death increases the potential for his interest in it elsewhere, such as when dating Jesus' conception. The passage under consideration here doesn't allow for a March 25 birthdate, but a March 25 conception would align with the March 25 date for Jesus' death. It would also align with Hippolytus' dating of creation to March 25, as discussed in Schmidt's article. And Hippolytus mentions creation in the context immediately surrounding the reference to Jesus' birthdate. Given the prominence of March 25 in two other contexts mentioned nearby, creation and Jesus' death, a connection to March 25 in the context of Jesus' incarnation would make more sense than an absence of a connection. The December 25 date provides a connection, since it involves a conception on March 25. It's possible that Hippolytus mentioned two contexts involving March 25 without thinking the incarnation, which he also mentions, has any connection to March 25. But a March 25 connection for the incarnation would provide more continuity and help explain why he chose to highlight the events he highlighted (creation, Jesus' incarnation, Jesus' death). In fact, given that the mention of Jesus' death on March 25 is so easily avoidable in the context Hippolytus is addressing, it seems to make the most sense that the March 25 connection to creation and the incarnation is what led him to bring up the death of Christ on that date. Furthermore, notice that the argument I'm making here is applicable to every manuscript of Hippolytus' Daniel commentary that we have, even the minimal manuscript J in Schmidt's article. It isn't just the text of the large majority of the manuscripts that supports the authenticity of the reference to the December 25 birthdate. The surrounding context in every manuscript supports it as well.
* Naumowicz argues that the corrupted text in Hippolytus' Daniel commentary originally referred to April 2 as Jesus' birthdate, and Naumowicz says that the April 2 date matches the birthdate in Hippolytus' Canon. However, Schmidt argues that the passage in the Canon is referring to Jesus' conception, not his birthdate (with Hippolytus being inconsistent about the conception date, as I mentioned above). Naumowicz acknowledges that we've been "enriched" (p. 46) by Schmidt's research on Hippolytus' language in this context, research that led Schmidt to conclude that Hippolytus is assigning Jesus' conception to April 2 in his Canon. Naumowicz goes on to refer to how other sources, like Clement of Alexandria, seem to have been more interested in Jesus' birthdate than the date of conception, but an appeal to other sources doesn't adequately address what Schmidt argued about Hippolytus' interests and Hippolytus' use of the language. Naumowicz seems to be trying to weaken the force of Schmidt's argument by bringing up other sources, but those other sources are less relevant than the data we have from Hippolytus. (And Schmidt cites some other sources as well, not just Hippolytus, so both sides can appeal to evidence outside Hippolytus to support their position.)
* Schmidt argues (probably correctly) that there's support for the December 25 date in Hippolytus' Chronicon, and Naumowicz's response is inadequate. He acknowledges that there's a significant chance that the nine months referred to in the passage in question distinguishes between Jesus' conception and birth, but then Naumowicz appeals to the focus on Jesus' birth in other sources, like Clement of Alexandria. But bringing up the interests of those other sources doesn't adequately address the evidence we have for Hippolytus' interests. A reference to Jesus' conception in the Chronicon (probably on March 25) best explains the text. And the reference to Jesus' birth there makes the most sense if it's on December 25. The passage doesn't make sense if you read it with Naumowicz's reasoning and dates in mind. He keeps appealing to what other sources said when Hippolytus or some other pre-Nicene source seems to have expressed a view that supports a December 25 birthdate. But there's not sufficient reason to expect Hippolytus to have agreed with those other sources on the points under consideration. The evidence that he held views supporting a December 25 birthdate is weightier than the evidence that he would agree with the other sources in question. When there's so much evidence that Hippolytus had interest in Jesus' conception and the date of it, placed it on March 25, and dated the birth to December 25, it's inadequate to respond by mentioning that other sources didn't express that sort of interest in Jesus' conception, didn't date Jesus' birth to December 25, etc.
* Something else that should be taken into account is that Hippolytus is a Roman source. There's widespread acknowledgement, including from Naumowicz, that the Christmas holiday was already well established in the city of Rome as early as the first half of the fourth century. Support for the holiday from one or more earlier Roman sources would help explain that later situation. In other words, Hippolytus' support of the December 25 birthdate meets the criterion of coherence by helping make sense of what we see in the fourth century.
No comments:
Post a Comment