The Birth of Jesus of Nazareth

The time had come.

It was, as we reckon time, 6 BCE. Israel had seen better days; its independence had been lost 57 years previously, and the Israelites labored under a "half-breed" king, Herod the Idumean. The people knew the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Micah, and others, and they felt that the time of their deliverance surely must be near.

God's relative silence over the previous 400 years was ending; His angel appeared to an aged priest whose barren wife, like Hannah of old, would bear a son (cf. 1 Samuel 1). This would be no ordinary son, but a prophet-- the prophet who would prepare the way of the Messiah.

The same angel then appeared to a young engaged girl in Nazareth, a small town in Galilee, named Miriam, or Mary. She was told that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, that she would conceive a Child, and that the child would be the promised Deliverer of Israel. She was willing to bear the shame and reproach of pregnancy outside of wedlock so that God's plan could be finally achieved. The man to whom she was betrothed, Joseph, was a good man. He did not want to have her stoned, but planned to divorce her quietly. The angel also appeared to him, indicating that the Child was of God, and that the Child would deliver many from their sins.

In 5 BCE, when Joseph and Mary were away in Bethlehem of Judah to enroll in the census, the Child was born in a manger. An angel proclaimed the birth to shepherds, and Magi from the east came to give homage. Prophets of God, on seeing the Child, understood how God's plan was being fulfilled. Indeed, Jesus of Nazareth would become the greatest figure in the history of mankind. As it is written,

Now all this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying,
"Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, And they shall call his name Immanuel; which is, being interpreted, God with us" (Matthew 1:22-23).