Caleb Howells Makes a How-Ler

Was Jesus Really Born on December 25?
Caleb Howells | 16 Dec. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN_92VBzu14

5:49 No Jewish Year is 52 weeks. None at all. Doesn't exist.

A normal year of 12 months is 354 days. That's 50 full weeks and 4 days. (It can vary between 353 and 355)

A leap year of 13 months is 384 days. That 54 full weeks and 6 days.

So if anyone ever told you that the division of Abia came the same two weeks year after year, that's bogus.

At the end of the month Adar, the temple checked the wheat, if it was mature, to a specified point, not sure of the exact degree, the next month was Nisan of the next year. If it wasn't, there was a Second Adar. And Nisan started after that one.

When Julian the Apostate failed to reestablish the Temple, the Sanhedrin was disbanded, there was no more anyone who had authority to make the "Hillel / II Adar" test. So, Hillel II invented an alternative method for calculating Jewish years, still used today, one in which II Adar is always 30 days long, one in which you don't watch for newmoons to see when months start.

Not very far from when Christians had got fed up with asking Jews when Nisan was, in order to have Easter the Sunday after 14 Nisan. Our alternative way of calculating Nisan was in principle outlined at the council of Nicaea and would at the time on average have coincided with a Jewish Nisan. Yes, the Roman Catholic Church actually does count Nisan, it's just that this is done among clerks and the laymen are only told "Sunday the ... is Easter"

6:12 On Yom Kippur, only ONE priest does what Zacharias did. According to the Mosaic law, that was the High Priest.

Now, Zecharias was in fact not on the list of serving High Priests that we have.

However, there is a clue in the text showing what I mean:

And it came to pass, when he executed the priestly function in the order of his course before God According to the custom of the priestly office, it was his lot to offer incense, going into the temple of the Lord
[Luke 1:8-9]

It could be a simple synonym of "according to the law of the priestly office" since liturgic laws are customs. But I think St. Luke meant a custom prevailing then and there.

Here is another clue to this custom I hypothesise:

And how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him
[Luke 24:20]

Summi sacerdotes, not summus sacerdos or simply sacerdotes ... according to the Mosaic law, there is only one High Priest at a time, and he serves till he dies. However, the Romans violated this part. My hunch is, in response to Romans (already at this time, it was after Pompey de factor conquered / occupied Judea) manipulated Jewish High Priests as chess pawns, they had liturgy follow not always the nominal High Priest, but anyone could in fact (if he was a priest), at least outside Easter, do an office for which Moses required the High Priest. Any priest was a High Priest, much like in Rome any bishop, priest or deacon of an old Church is a bishop (so, the priest of Santa Sabina, being a cardinal, is usually a bishop). There you find the plural in both Luke and Mark to "summi sacerdotes", there you find someone not listed in (Antiquities? anyway) Josephus as high priest being a high priest ... and there you find a famous Christian of Asia Minor, who could be John the Gospeller, as having "worn the golden headband" (which was reserved for the High Priest).

So, this Yom Kippur, the nominal High Priest didn't officiate, he might have already done so, he might have been ritually impure, he might simply have wanted to get as many priests involved in the duties of a High Priest as possible. So the Romans couldn't have the chance of picking out a really incompetent High Priest. As, if Yom Kippur hadn't interfered with the courses, this year the course of Abia would have fallen on Yom Kippur, he drew lots for the available ones from the course of Abia. Zecharias was chosen.

6:44 Wait, are you going to count eight weeks from "the first day of the seventh month" to find the week the course of Abia was in Ezra 3:6, then apply this to every year and therefore also to the year when Zecharias served?

Sorry, doesn't work. No Jewish year is 48 weeks. Add the weeks for major festivals, no Jewish year is exactly 51 weeks either. The courses will be displaced from year to year, and more so on leap years with a leap month.

7:18 No. You DID IT!

You did misapply Ezra 3:6 to the start of the first division every year. Because, you know, the division of Abia we are talking about here is a different year from the year in which Ezra 3:6 happened. Indeed, centuries apart!

48 weeks + 3 weeks when all priests work ... that's fifty-one weeks, 357 days. So, supposing you are right about the general setup, the year after a normal one will have the courses displaced to later 2 to 4 days. A leap year 384 +/-1 day, will involve allow the third turn of it's first courses (not the first courses) to begin before the year ends.

You cannot transfer when the course of Abia was in Ezra's time to Luke 1.

Caleb Howells

@calebhowells1116

There is good evidence that the priestly divisions regularly started in the month of Tishri, the seventh month, and that this wasn’t just something that was established in the time of Ezra and then allowed to drift through the year.

We don’t have enough information to say how they accommodated the extra time in the year, but we certainly can say that they seem to have regularly started in the month of Tishri. Hence, the calculations in this video hold up.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@calebhowells1116 "good evidence" simply isn't a named source, and Biblically, there isn't.

Confer the extra quotes in a comment below my post:

https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2025/12/caleb-howells-makes-how-ler.html

@calebhowells1116 But, let's suppose you are right. St. Luke doesn't say Zacharias served in the course of Abia, he says he was of the course of Abia and served in his course.

After the exile, some of the courses had become standins for extinct lines, so he could also have been serving in a course that Abia took over.

Caleb Howells

@hglundahl The problem with that argument is that the divisions which were divided to substitute the lost divisions after the exile took the names of those lost divisions, hence why we continue to see references to them in post-exilic documents. So if Zechariah had been serving in one of those other divisions, Luke would have used its name.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@calebhowells1116 Or not, since that would anyway have been his division. His right to it being in the division of Abia.

But mainly I argue that the succession of courses was a rolling scheme, so each course had access to all feasts of the year.