Pope Benedict XVI waves to the faithfuls as he leaves St. Peter's Basilica at the end of the Christmas night mass in Vatican City on December 25, 2011.
Benedict XVI is a scholar and a traditionalist, as well as being Pope — which can cause a ruckus when the pontiff decides to weigh in on some of the more tendentious aspects of Catholic scholarship. Benedict wasn’t saying anything new when he asserted in a new book that Jesus was not born exactly 2,012 years ago, but in fact four to six years earlier. Nor was it a surprise to Christian scholars that his book, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, blamed the error on a 6th century monk named Exiguus, who probably miscalculated the year in a document that was taken as — well — gospel. (Benedict also noted that it was unlikely that oxen and sheep attended the birth of Christianity’s savior.) Issued by a pope, however, the assertions were a book publicist’s dream. Benedict insisted he wasn’t against tradition; he was simply pressing the real human life and historicity of Jesus against those who would mythologize him. However, there were tenets that Benedict said remained sacrosanct. Christians must believe that Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit—and not sexually—and born of the Virgin Mary. That, the pontiff stated, isn’t open for argument.