The Birth of Christ

2,000 Years Ago

Agnus DeiS_1CHRIST , represented here as the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, was born in Israel, just over 2,000 years ago. At the core of his teaching is the idea of a God of love and forgiveness, who is best served by selfless humility and the service of others, exemplified in his own life and sacrifice. 1,718 years later, close to the spot where the sundial records the passing hours, Nano Nagle is believed to have been born. In her life and work she followed Christ’s example with a diligence and zeal that has been to the benefit of many and an inspiration to generations.

The time of Christ can seem very remote to us, but in the timescales of the cosmos, it is very small. Most of us have been close to others 50 years older than ourselves. We need only 40 overlapping lives to link us by word of mouth across 2,000 years ago. This closeness is represented by the forty linked hands that surround the sundial.

 

THE COMPLEXITIES of administering a state created the need for writing. This in turn allowed memory to be preserved in books. This was the greatest advance in human culture to date, allowing knowledge and ideas to be communicated across time and space.

Through the written word, the ideas of a small group of middle-eastern tribes spread around the world, giving rise to the three great monotheistic religions.  The Jews, also known as the ‘People of the Book’, consolidated the core of their religious tradition into the five books of Moses, the Torah (the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy in the Christian Old Testament) probably around 500 B.C.

Through the teachings of Christ, the core ideas in these books spread throughout the Roman world and beyond in the early centuries of the Christian Era. In the sixth century, Judeo-Christian monotheism was at the heart of the Islamic inspiration, which accepted the Torah, along with the Christian Gospels, as being the authentic revelation of God, though corrupted by the alterations of men.