In order to establish when Jesus was born in terms of month of the year, we first must know in which year he was born. The obvious answer is at the beginning of 1 AD, but this is not the correct answer.
Two lines of evidence establish that Jesus was born several years before 1 AD. One line of evidence involves identifying the star of Bethlehem in scientific terms. The other line of evidence is that of recorded, secular history.
I had long wondered what the star of Bethlehem could have been, and how any wise men would be able to follow such a star. I found the answers to my questions in an article written by Colin Humphreys entitled The Star of Bethlehem published in Science & Christian Belief in 1995.
The star was, in fact, an exceptionally bright comet that appeared in 5 BC, according to records kept by Chinese astronomers. No bright comet appeared in 1 AD.
The Chinese catalogue of comets is called the Ho Peng-Yoke. The Ho Peng-Yoke record relies on the Han shu record which was the official history of the Han dynasty. They labelled tailed comets ‘sui-hsing’ or ‘suibsing’ meaning broom. These careful records record a bright comet for 5 BC under the catalogue number 63.
The comet of 5 BC is described thus, “Second year of the Chien-p’ing reign period, second month (5 BC, March 9-April 6), a suibsing appeared at Ch’ien-niu for over 70 days.”
Ch’ien-nui is a part of the sky that would have been visible to the east in the early morning. Thus, a comet arose in the east. It appeared between the 9th March and 6th April 5 BC. It was visible for 70 days which implies that it must have been exceptionally bright for some of that time as 70 days of visibility is very unusual. It was labelled “sui” which means tailed comet.
Merry and True 