Nativity

    From Wiki Maria Valtorta

    Logo template other.png See also: The Shepherds of the Nativity, Magi ("the Magi kings"), Massacre of the Holy Innocents.


    The Nativity - Lorenzo Monaco

    According to the work of Maria Valtorta, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judah (Judea), on the 25th of Kislev.[1] This date corresponds to the beginning of the joyful feast of the dedication of the Temple which Jesus calls Encénies. In the contemporary Jewish calendar, it corresponds to the feast of Hanukkah or the feast of light. 

    It is assumed that he was born in the year –5 of our era, but Maria Valtorta does not specify this. Studies on this subject have given rise to two schools dating Jesus’s life differently.  

    Jesus is from the line of David through his adoptive father, originally from Bethlehem, and through his mother, as Scripture suggests.[2]

    His birth is that of men, but Mary, his Mother, preserved her virginity. His birth was beatific.

    The "December 25"

    In the Jewish luni-solar calendar, the 25th of Kislev can literally be translated as December 25 in our calendar in that this month falls within a range from mid-November to mid-December. This may be what Dionysius Exiguus did in the 6th century when he established, in 532, the Annus Domini (Year of the Lord) used to determine the dates of Christ's life. A calculation that still underpins our calendar and the Christian era. 

    This date is highly symbolic in more ways than one, not because the Church wanted to use symbols (which it does not even exploit) to emphasize the date of Christmas, but because God intended to reinforce the earthly meaning of his Mission with these symbols surrounding his Incarnation.

    The 25th of Kislev is indeed the date of the Purification of the Temple by Judas Maccabeus in 164/5 BC, exactly three years after Antiochus Epiphanes had profaned it.[3] Seeking to forcibly Hellenize Palestine, he erected an altar to Baal, promoted the sacrifice of pigs, and ultimately banned the Torah by persecuting those who observed his law. On official coins bearing his image, one could read Theos Epiphanes (God revealed). A blasphemy! It was too much, and the Jews rebelled under the leadership of the Maccabee brothers.[4]

    Therefore, Jesus was born on the anniversary of the restoration of the profaned Temple. The term Encénies that Jesus uses in Maria Valtorta is found in rabbinical literature as designating the new inauguration of the altar of offerings in the Temple. This term later entered Christianity to designate the dedication of a Church.

    What is the year of his birth?

    Maria Valtorta says nothing about it. She only transcribes visions of the time. Thus, when Jesus says "I am thirty years old," his year of birth is evidently known to his interlocutors.  

    However, if Jesus’s life can be dated precisely, it is thanks to the thousands of details sprinkled throughout the work.  

    He would therefore have been born on the night from Tuesday, December 10 to Wednesday, December 11 of the year –5. The gap between this date and the official start of the Christian era results mainly from the interpretation given to Luke's statement "in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius." For some, this is the effective reign of Tiberius in August 14 AD; for others, it is when he was officially associated with Augustus for the government of the empire, i.e., August 11 AD.

    From this range arose different hypotheses placing his birth between the year –4 and year –2. Progressive historical discoveries, compared with the Gospel indications, further scattered the estimates. 

    It was the gathering of all these data and their confrontation with the chronological and astronomical data in Maria Valtorta’s work that successively challenged Jean Aulagnier and then Jean-François Lavère.

    The former published his work in "Avec Jesus, au jour le jour"[5], and the latter in his various publications. He also summarized his argument in a downloadable book.[6] 

    More recently, Liberato Di Caro[7], an Italian researcher, offered a different dating based on the "vision of Gadara," a rare astral configuration described in detail, which Professor Van Zandt of Purdue University (Indiana) dates precisely to March 13, 33, while Jean Aulagnier dates it to February 26, 29. 

    Based on this observation, Van Zandt and Liberato Di Caro extrapolated a different timeline. This hypothesis has been tested against historical markers but not yet against the data from the work.

    Is he really the "Son of David"?

    The Gospels emphasize the Davidic descent of Joseph.[8] But it is known he did not intervene in Jesus’s conception. It is not specified that Mary was also of royal lineage. Some authors therefore concluded that the "Son of David" was a symbolic kinship.

    This is not so, because Scripture explicitly says, several times[2] that David is God’s ancestor. The Virgin Mary is also of this descent and it is in this capacity that, becoming an orphan, she was educated in the Temple and that, according to Jewish law, her husband was chosen from her tribe.

    Didn’t Scripture say that the Christ must come from the lineage of David and Bethlehem, the village where David was from?[9]

    The Vulgate specifies "semine": from the seed of David.

    In "The Gospel as it was revealed to me"

    • The Census Edict.[10] 
    • Description of the manger.[11]
    • The event of the Nativity.[12]
    • The ADoration of the shepherds.[13]
    • The ADoration of the magi.[14]
    • The flight into Egypt.[15]
    • A Woman from Bethlehem, because of the massacre of the innocents: "Cursed be the fools who, in drunkenness, saw angels in the clouds, heard voices from Heaven."[16]
    • Memory of the holy Family taken in by Anne.[17]
    • I say it again, my Mother knew no other unions and had no other children. Unviolated Flesh, which I myself did not tear, closed upon the mystery of a tabernacle-bosom, throne of the Trinity and the Word Incarnate."[18]
    • Memories of the first days of Jesus in Bethlehem recounted by the shepherds.[19]
    • Beatific vision of the Nativity by one of the shepherds.[20]
    • "I am the Eternal Encénie, Peter. Do you know that I was born precisely on the 25th of the month of Kislev?"[21]  
    • Account of the Nativity later told by Jesus.[22]
    • Memories of Jesus and Mary.[23]

    In fundamental Christian texts

    In the Bible

    In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census should be taken of the entire world. This first census took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 

    Everyone went to be registered, each to their own town. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to register with Mary, his betrothed, who was pregnant.  

    While they were there, the time came for Mary to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.  

    There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 

    But the angel said to them, "

    1. ↑ Kislev
    2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 See in this regard the entry on the Davidic lineage of Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary and thus the grandfather of Jesus.
    3. ↑ 1 Maccabees 1:54-64
    4. ↑ 1 Maccabees 4:52-59
    5. ↑ Éditions Résiac.
    6. ↑ Jean François Lavère, dating, downloadable book
    7. ↑ I cieli raccontano {it}.
    8. ↑ See notably the genealogy in Matthew Matthew 1:1-17.
    9. ↑ John 7:42
    10. ↑ EMV 27
    11. ↑ EMV 28
    12. ↑ EMV 29
    13. ↑ EMV 30
    14. ↑ EMV 34
    15. ↑ EMV 35
    16. ↑ EMV 73.2
    17. ↑ EMV 74
    18. ↑ EMV 100
    19. ↑ EMV 103
    20. ↑ EMV 109
    21. ↑ EMV 132
    22. ↑ EMV 136
    23. ↑ EMV 207
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