Laurentius Suslyga

Laurentius Suslyga
Born	Poland
Died	Poland
Nationality	Polish
Known for	the first to suggest that Christ was actually born in 4 BC, not AD 1
Scientific career
Fields	history, chronology
Institutions	University of Graz, Austria

Laurentius or Laurence Suslyga (Polish: Wawrzyniec Suslyga) (1570-1640), was a Polish Jesuit historian, chronologist, and an author of Baroque visual poetry. He was the first person to claim that Jesus Christ was in fact born around 4 BC, not in AD 1, as the Christian era would imply. Suslyga was thus questioning the Anno Domini chronology introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in AD 525 . Suslyga published this theory in his 1605 doctoral thesis entitled Theoremata de anno ortus et mortis Domini, deque universa Jesu Christi in carne oeconomia at the University of Graz . This tract was in turn used by Kepler to bolster Kepler's theory that the Star of Bethlehem was in fact a great conjunction of the three planets: Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. According to Kepler's calculations, this conjunction occurred around 7/6 BC. This was followed by Christ's birth 2 years later (Herod ordered the killing of all newborn boys up to 2 years of age), which fits in with Suslyga's reckoning .