Below is the links CNN and telegraph news about the Pope’s confession. I extracted some quotes below. For sure we can find some errors in the Pope’s new book
Jesus of Nazareth -- The Infancy Narratives; despite of them, overall he has made many major confessions public about the date of Christ birth both in year and in day/month, December 25th is pagan, and how the current calendar was created and in error, and etc….
This is major news event.
CNN : Pope's book on Jesus challenges Christmas traditionshttp://www.cnn.com/2012/11/22/world/europe/vatican-pope-jesus-book/index.htmlIn "
Jesus of Nazareth -- The Infancy Narratives," the pope says the Christian calendar is actually based on a blunder by a sixth century monk, who Benedict says was several years off in his calculation of Jesus' birth date.
…
The pope also looks at scholarly studies of the Bible, some of which have indicated for decades that the traditionally accepted birth date for Jesus is wrong, Speciale said.
…
The 176-page volume, which comprises a brief foreword, four chapters and an epilogue, traces Jesus' life up to the age of 12, when, according to the Gospels, he was presented by his parents in the Temple in Jerusalem, the Vatican said.
The initial worldwide print run is more than a million copies, it said, with the book released this week across 50 countries in Italian, German, Croatian, French, English, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.
In the coming months, the book will be translated into 12 more languages for publication in 72 countries in total, the Vatican added.
The Vatican quotes Anthony Valle, a professor of theology, as saying the pope has been open to scientific inquiry in his own study of Jesus' life.
------------------------------------------------------
Jesus was born years earlier than thoughts, claims PopeBy Nick Squires, Rome
4:02PM GMT 21 Nov 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion...laims-Pope.htmlThe entire Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation, the Pope has declared, as he claims in a new book that Jesus was born several years earlier than commonly believed.
The 'mistake' was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus or in English Dennis the Small, the 85-year-old pontiff claims in the book 'Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives', published on Wednesday.
"The calculation of the beginning of our calendar – based on the birth of Jesus – was made by Dionysius Exiguus, who made a mistake in his calculations by several years," the Pope writes in the book, which went on sale around the world with an initial print run of a million copies.
"The actual date of Jesus's birth was several years before."
The assertion that the Christian calendar is based on a false premise is not new – many historians believe that Christ was born sometime between 7BC and 2BC.
…
Dennis the Small, who was born in Eastern Europe, is credited with being the "inventor" of the modern calendar and the concept of the Anno Domini era.
He drew up the new system in part to distance it from the calendar in use at the time, which was based on the years since the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian.
The emperor had persecuted Christians, so there was good reason to expunge him from the new dating system in favour of one inspired by the birth of Christ.
The monk's calendar became widely accepted in Europe after it was adopted by the Venerable Bede, the historian-monk, to date the events that he recounted in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he completed in AD 731.
But exactly how Dennis calculated the year of Christ's birth is not clear and the Pope's claim that he made a mistake is a view shared by many scholars.
The Bible does not specify a date for the birth of Christ. The monk instead appears to have based his calculations on vague references to Jesus's age at the start of his ministry and the fact that he was baptised in the reign of the emperor Tiberius.
…
"There is no reference to when he was born in the Bible - all we know is that he was born in the reign of Herod the Great, who died before 1AD," he told The Daily Telegraph. "It's been surmised for a very long time that Jesus was born before 1AD - no one knows for sure."
The idea that Christ was born on Dec 25 also has no basis in historical fact. "We don't even know which season he was born in. The whole idea of celebrating his birth during the darkest part of the year is probably linked to pagan traditions and the winter solstice."