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Jesus was born in June: Australian scientist
Neither December 25 nor January 7, but June 17 is Jesus Christ's real birthday, says an Australian astronomer who used a computer software and St. Matthew's Gospel as a reference point to calculate the new date. The astronomer's research coincides with Quranic verses on the Messiah, which suggest that Mary gave birth to Jesus during the summer season.

Christians may be celebrating a different date from the actual one Jesus was born on according to Dave Reneke, news editor of Sky and Space magazine, who recreated the night sky around the time of Christ's birth using a complex charting software that allowed astronomers to map the night sky as it would have appeared more than 2000 years ago.

" We traced the movement of planets back 20 centuries. And it revealed the exact date of Christ's birth as June 17 in the year 2BC. "
Dave Reneke, Australian astronomer
"It is like a digital map where we can move forward in time as well as backwards," he told AHN in Australia.

Dave Reneke said he figured out the puzzle of the Bethlehem star. He explained that the 'guiding star'--one of the Bibles most enduring symbols--that led the three wise men to a stable in Bethlehem where Jesus was born was most likely a conjunction of planets Venus and Jupiter.

Together they formed a bright single 'beacon of light' suddenly appearing in the sky, which would have been visible to the naked eye across the eastern dawn sky as the two planets moved across the constellation of Leo on June 17, 2BC.

Previous theories speculated that the celestial phenomenon mentioned in the Bible was a supernova or even a comet. "We traced the movement of planets back 20 centuries. And it revealed the exact date of Christ's birth as June 17 in the year 2BC," he told the UK's Daily Telegraph. "December is an arbitrary date we have accepted for Christmas but it doesn't really mean that is when it happened," he said.

Matthew's gospel and the Quran agree
Reneke's reference point, Mathew's gospel, coincides with Quranic references to the birth of Jesus Christ as both texts place the event in the summer season.

While Mathew's gospel placed the nativity at somewhere between 3 B.C. and 1 A.D, allowing Reneke to locate the planetary movement to an accurate date in 2BC, the Quran notes that Mary went into labor during the summer time as she was instructed by the Angel to eat dates, summer fruit, from a nearby tree after giving birth to Jesus.
Posted by: Fred 2008-12-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=257767