Perhaps no other group of Christians is as concerned with the date of Christ’s birth, resurrection, and ascension, as churches dedicated to restoring the faith, worship, and practice of the New Testament. An unknowable number of tracts, sermons, and Bible studies have focused on doing away with every tradition of man that has been added to the church since the day of Pentecost in the year AD 33. So why does our smarty-pants preacher say the events of Acts chapter two happened in AD 30? The answer comes at the intersection of the infallible word of God and the calculations of a fallible man.
The Bible tells us some things about the dating of Jesus’ life. The Bible does not record the day or month in which our Savior was born. But we are told, “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age,”-Luke 3:23. Add three years to thirty; because of the three annual feasts of Passover recorded in the gospels (John 2:13; 6:4; 13:1), and you have Jesus at 33-years of age when he ascends into heaven (Acts 1:1-11). Peter preaches the first gospel sermon a few days later on Pentecost and the church is established (Acts 2:38, 47). If we assume our current calendars are correct, the church of Christ was established in AD 33. Take that ya snot-nosed whippersnapper!
Well hold on there pardner! There are three little words doing a lot of work in that argument. Everything in the first two-thirds of the paragraph above is solid biblical information. Things go off the rails a bit when we run into the phrase, “If we assume.” The abbreviation AD comes from the Latin phrase anno Domini, which means “the year of the Lord.” The problem is, the man who established the date for our calendars got it wrong. And the Bible tells us so.
Here is where the fallibility of man comes in to play. Nearly 500-years after Christ’s resurrection, a monk named Dionysius Exiguus, calculated he was living, “525 years after ‘the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ1.’” Dionysius’ date caught on and eventually all calendars in the West described events as being “Before Christ” (BC) or Anno Domini (AD). However, Dionysius was not an inspired man and his dating system was off by at least four years. If we use Dionysius’ date for the birth of Christ, it comes four years after the historically-recorded death of Herod the Great. The Bible clearly puts the virgin birth, “in the days of Herod the king,”-Matthew 2:1 (Luke 1:5). So, who is right, God or man?
God’s word tells us Herod was alive and tried to kill Jesus as a baby (Matthew 2:13-19). Herod died in 4 BC. That means Jesus was born around 4 BC. Another quirk of Dionysius’ calendar is that he did not include a “year zero.” Consequently, if Jesus was born in 4 BC, he would have been 33 in AD 30. The biblical math of our Lord being thirty in Luke 3:23, ministering for three years (Passovers), ascending to heaven, and the church being established the same year is absolutely correct. We just have to correct the error of a man who lived half a millennium after the events of Acts chapter two, to establish the first day of the church of God. The most probable date for Peter first using the keys to the kingdom of heaven, is AD 30.
Having said all this, what calendar year contained the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is a matter of little to no importance. What does matter is, “Do we believe in and serve as Lord, Christ Jesus the Son of God who rose from the dead and reigns by the will of an all-powerful God? Lord strengthen our faith.
1 Sauter, Megan. “When Was Jesus Born-B.C. or A.D.?.” biblicalarchaeology.org. 17 Dec. 2019. Accessed 10 Sept. 2020.
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