When Was Jesus Born?

A new book by Pope Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, has caught the attention of the media and, consequently, has generated quite a few questions. In the book, the Pope acknowledges what scholars have long known; namely, that our current dating scheme is off by anywhere from 4 to 6 years. To put a finer point on it, Jesus was not born in AD 1 as most assume (since AD is a Latin abbreviation for Anno Domini, “the year of the Lord,” it is assumed that Jesus would have been born in the year AD 1, the first “year of the Lord”); Jesus was likely born sometime around 4 to 6 BC (“Before Christ”). How can that be?