The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 4) — Page 34
CH. 19 MARYAM Judaea. This is the time when according to the Quranic verse under comment Jesus was born and when his mother Mary was directed by God to "shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree; it will cause fresh dates to fall upon thee". Thus the Gospel of Luke inadvertently has lent wonderful support to the Quranic view about the birth of Jesus having taken place in the month of August or September which is the season of fresh ripe dates in Judaea. Moreover, there is ample and very reliable historical evidence also to show that Jesus was born in the month of August or September. In his "Dictionary of the Bible" Dr. John D. Davis, under the word "year" writes that dates become ripe in the Jewish month of Elul; and in Peake's "Commentary on the Bible" (page 117) we have that the month of Elul corresponds to the months of August- September. Furthermore Dr. Peake says, "J. Stewart (When did our Lord actually live?) arguing from Angora temple inscription and a quotation in an old Chinese classic which speaks of the Gospel story reaching China A. D. 25-28 puts the birth of Jesus in 8 B. C. (Sept. or Oct. ) and the crucifixion on Wednesday in A. D. 24. " an PT. 16 Judaea, and not on 25th December as the Christian Church would have us believe. And that is the view expressed by the Quran. One more fact in this connection demands careful examination. Sometime before Jesus' birth Joseph had taken Mary to Bethlehem, a town about seventy miles to the south of Nazareth, the native place of Joseph and Mary. Luke states that Joseph did so because with Quirinius as governor of Syria, Augustus Caesar had ordered that all should go to Bethlehem to be enrolled in the city of David (Luke 2:1-4). But history does not support this statement of Luke. No census was ever taken in the year of Jesus' birth nor was there any governor of Syria of this name at that time. According to Josephus, one of the greatest of all Jewish historians, the first census ever to be taken was held seven years after Jesus' birth and the governors of Syria ten years before his birth till Herod's death were Stiplus Wardus, Sentiris and Titnis (Enc. Brit. under "Chronicle"). It seems incredible that in the face of such reliable historical evidence Luke should have invented this story of the census. There must have been some very compelling reasons for him to do so. It appears that in a desperate search for an excuse to explain why Joseph and Mary undertook such a long and arduous journey to Bethlehem in the latter's extremely weak state of health and her pregnancy, Luke seems to have stumbled over the fact of a census From the above statements of the two Encyclopaedias supported by quotations from the "Commentary on the Bible" by Dr. Arthur S. Peake, M. A. , D. D. , the fact becomes quite clear that Jesus was born in the Jewish month of Elul which corresponds to the months of August-having taken place in that town which, September when dates ripen in in fact, had been held seven years 1948