The shepards watched their flocks (in December?)

Usually modern critical bible scholars insist Jesus must have been born in the spring, since the shepherds would not be out with the flocks in the winter time, and often pointed out that lambing occurs in the spring, not the winter. Which is true in Europe and the Americas. Born in Spring, so there would be tender new grass for their mams to eat.


but TeaAtTrianon blog links to Alateia blog, who points out that no, that the sheep found in the Levant were not European sheep or modern sheep, and their lambing cycle was different, so they often produced lambs in the winter...and so the idea that Jesus, the Lamb of God, was born at the time of the lambs who were sacrificed in the Temple had a lot of symbolic meaning.

well, theology and sheep are not my strong points, so let's look at sites about sheep breeding to see if the claim is true.

(Photo by Michael Willis)

that photo is from this NewZealand article.

wikipedia article.

FAO.org article on these sheep. (Food and Agricultural organization of the UN).

the problem is rain and food, not the cold per se: they mate in summer, and give birth five months later, when the winter rains ensure enough grass for their moms to eat.

In Awassi flocks of the Bedouin and fellahin, the breeding season is to a large extent determined by the condition of the grazing. The ewes come into heat only when the spring and summer grazing has restored the weight lost during the preceding period of drought and brought them back to a fair condition. The mating season lasts approximately from June to September, so that the lambs are born when there is enough pasture for the ewes in milk and for the young lambs...

elsewhere in the article they note:

The mean gestation period in an Awassi flock in Lebanon has been reported to be 149.5 days for male lambs and 148.6 days for females.

and earlier in the article they describe the shepherd and their flocks:

Badawy shepherd with full paraphernalia

Bedouin and fellahin shepherds know nothing of tent or house but live entirely in the open together with the flocks under their care.

They are working 365 days a year, from 13 to 16 hours a day. Their work includes shepherding, watching at night, care of sick animals, training of bell-wethers, shearing, weaning of lambs, and tying the ewes up for milking which is usually done by the women.

...  During the lambing season, lambs born in the field and still too weak to follow their dams are carried by the shepherds to the tents or villages where they remain for a few days until strong enough to join their dams at pasture.

another fact I didn't realize: unlike western sheep, which are mainly used for wool or meat, these sheep are also used for milk.

And they note in some areas, the migration of sheep into the mountains in the hot summer, and the migration back to the lowlands in winter.

That, at least, I am aware of: In Idaho, our shepherds (often of Basque ancestry-another factoid) would come to our office asking for prescriptions for several months of medicines to take with them into the hills.

NYTimes article on Herding sheep in Basque Country (Idaho).

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just a side note: Were the shepherds who visited the crib local (poor) Jewish men, or where they (pagan) Bedouin?