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Jesus Was Born in 46 B.C.

By George Michael Payne
© 2021 Excerpt from working draft: The Eternal Kingdom of Heaven

Herod became the governor of Galilee in 47 BC and later the governor of Judah
somewhere around 37 BC, and if Phasael was killed in prison around 40 BC, and if Herod sent
Phasael out to find him a virgin, and Jesus was born of the virgin that Phasael found for Herod,
then Jesus must have been born of the virgin Mary between those two dates. Additionally, if
Jesus was around 33 years old when he died, then according to this logic Jesus would have been
killed on the cross around 3 BC, one year before the death of Herod which makes sense.
Alternately if Jesus was killed on the cross somewhere around 30 AD as history teaches us,
which is 32 years after the death of Herod, then how did Herod order the death of Jesus? That
does not make sense to me. Alternately, if Christ was born around 3 BC as history teaches us,
and Herod died in the year 2 BC as history also teaches us, then Christ would have been one year
old when he was hung on the cross. That does not make any sense to me either. So in cross
referencing the extrapolation suggested by Adam that the biological father of Jesus was Herod
the Great, together with the stories of Phasael retrieving a virgin for Herod, and in matching up
the dates of Herod’s reign and death, the intersection of these reinforces each of the other stories.
It does not seem to me that what religious historians would have us believe about events around
the time of Christ were very well thought out. Additionally as a footnote in history, it turns out
Herod did eventually find and marry in 16 BC in his eighth wife, his perfect virgin whom he
renamed Pallas, after Pallus which was derived from the epithet on the Parthenon in Athens as
the temple of the goddess Athena, from the Greek word Parthenos, which means virgin.
Although Adam suggests that Herod took a virgin and had a child with her who was
Jesus, such a theory may come under scrutiny by critics so I endeavored to substantiate the idea.
The key to making associations comes through with the history of Herod relating to the myth of
what is called the massacre of innocents. As the traditional story goes, Herod as king of the
Jews heard that a child, Jesus, was born that was to become the new king of the Jews thus may
threaten his power, authority and position. In response, Herod orders that all children in the
kingdom from the age of two and below to be executed, thus theoretically the threat would be
removed. So, if I could confirm when Herod’s massacre of innocents occurred, then Adam’s
suggestion would be vindicated. With a cursory research review on the web, I found nothing that
I could confirm historically, so I researched further. One clue was a repeated logic which stated
that since Flavius Josephus, a renown historian wrote what is the definitive credible authority,
The Antiquities of the Jews in 93AD, had no mention of the event. Historians use conjecture to
conclude that since they cannot find it there, either the event did not ever happen, or that it was
of no consequence. Upon hearing these theories, I decided to read the 1871-page document
myself, and found that it actually is included within that history.
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Josephus wrote in the book XIV, Chapter 9, sections 3 and 4, about how Herod was
brought before a judicial tribunal to answer for the massacre of the innocents. That history
explains that as Herod’s father, Antipater the Idumaean, an Edomite who converted to Judaism
and whom was a tax collector for Rome, along with Herod and Phasaelus his brother, were being
accused of assassinating thieves without a trial. Upon hearing of the case against Herod, the
mothers of the slain children brought their case of injustice to Hyrcanus the high priest, who
added the charges to the Sanhedrim judicial tribunal suit. Although Antipater was not brought
before the tribunal, he suggested that his son, Herod appear before them with armed men to
protect him, and to intimidate the tribunal. When Sextus Caesar, the Roman governor of the
adjacent Syria province who was an allay of Herod’s heard about the trial, he ordered that the
tribunal delay making their ruling for a day, and then advised Herod to vacate that city. Herod
did vacate and then purchased the general position of an army from Sextus, and upon returning
to the tribunal with the army he executed the Sanhedrim tribunal council who found him guilty,
whom were going to order that Herod be executed for the massacre of the innocent’s.
From all this we can extrapolate the time period of Herod’s massacre of the innocent’s
event, thus extrapolate an approximate birth date of Jesus, plus vindicate Adam’s suggestion
about the virgin Mary and Herod. Since the trial of Herod occurred before the death of Antipater
which was 44 BC, and after Sextus came into his judicial power which was in 46 BC, then we
can deduce that the trial of Herod was between those two dates. If we assume that the date of the
trial was in 45 BC, and in knowing that Herod had all children below the age of two be killed,
and that Herod was trying to kill Jesus, then we an presume that Jesus was born around 47 BC to
45 BC. Furthermore, since Adam’s suggestion indicates that Herod had his brother Phasaelus
who died in 40 BC, retrieve a virgin for him, then this matches the dates of Josephus vindicating
the inference of Adam’s document.
Note that there is also a question that historians ask, if Herod’s supposed “myth story” of
his massacre of innocents actually did occur, then why did not the historian and confidant
Nicolaus of Damascus write about it? There are two answers, first, as Nicolaus was a friend of
Herod, his account of him accentuates only his positive. And second, his primary historical texts
of Herod include twelve books written about the last ten years of Herod’s life which was
between 14 BC and 4 BC when Herod was between 58 to 68 years old, which was thirty years
after the birth of Jesus in 46 BC when Herod was only 26 years old. Although I have not read
those books yet, my sense is that there might be some clues about the life of Jesus as an adult
contained therein, who would have been ages 31 to 41 years old when those books were written.
Since it is believed that Jesus was in Cairo until the death of Herod, there should be scant
information about Jesus if any at all.
So, if Jesus Christ was born in approximately 46 BC as these data suggest, and not
around 2-5 BC as history previously suggests, then there are a host of questions that emerge from
this new knowledge. Before we ask boundless questions around this issue, let us construct a
hypothetical timeline for the life of Jesus Christ, and ask directed questions guided with an
agenda first.
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