The Architect's Library

Weighing

Dating the Birth of Jesus

The Narrowest Defensible Window, with the Cost of the Alternatives

This work fixes the narrowest defensible window for the birth of Jesus by encoding each primary datum as a constraint, running the variable space out twice (freestanding and coupled), and recording for each outcome the price the rival chronologies carry. The result: Herod's year of death 4/3 BC as the cheapest reading, with spring 4 BC as the season of death; the winter of 4/3 remains possible but is less likely. Birth window 6-4 BC, with 5 BC the most robust cell; the season of birth undecided on the sources.

  1. Part I — The work

    1Method: the gates, the marks, the rubric, and what "constraint" means here
  2. 2The degrees of freedom: counting rule, year-beginning, epochs — what they do and who chooses which knob
  3. 3The constraints on Herod's life, and the cost accounting of the three chains
  4. 4Matthew 2 as a constraint: the interval between birth and death
  5. 5The legates of Syria, the coins, and what Luke 2:2 does and does not date
  6. 6The season: four candidates, four accounts
  7. 7The church fathers as a class of witnesses
  8. 8The logigram: run A
  9. 9Run B, and what the birth window owes the baptism axis
  10. 10Conclusion: the narrowest defensible window, and the cost of the alternatives

  11. Part II — Apparatus

    IRationale for the conventions
  12. IISources cited
  13. IIIAuthor register per axis
  14. IVRegister of constraints and sources

  15. Appendices

    Appendix AThe tables
  16. Appendix BThe code (logigram.py)
  17. Appendix CThe kill matrix
  18. Appendix DNot seen