Millenium Fever -- is there a cure?

system · June 15, 1999, 1:50am

Of course, it must be mentioned that:

the B.C./A.D. system (which established the Year 1 A.D. as being in the Roman year 750 A.U.C.) wasn’t invented until the 6th century;
this B.C./A.D. calendar didn’t even start to catch on until the 9th or 10th century; and
even then, the B.C./A.D. calendar that caught on was the Julian Calendar, not the modern Gregorian Calendard (which wasn’t invented until 1539).
So if you really wanted to use the same calendar that was actually in use in the West 2000 years ago, today’s date (14-Jun-1999 by the Gregorian calendar) would be some time in May of the year 2749 A.U.C… Not even close to a millennium boundary.

system · June 15, 1999, 6:13pm

Well no, actually I want to use the calendar that we are currently using; not the Gregorian, or the Mayan, or the Egyptian.
It boggles my mind. You can tell people “You know, the 20th Century actually started in 1901” and they’ll say “Really, wow, that’s interesting.” But for some reason when it comes to the 3rd Millennium everybody starts going goofy over semantics, and suddenly it’s “well, technically a new millennium starts every 1/100th of a second, so shut up you dull pretentious idiot” (I paraphrase here).
Weird. Anyways, to reiterate: the 21st Century AND the 3rd Millenium, as measured by our current calendar (calendrical?) system, do not begin until January 1st, 2001. This is not an opinion, this is not a perception, this is a solid mathematical fact.
(And I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondle!

system · June 15, 1999, 6:16pm

And in the above message, I think I meant “not the Julian” instead of “not the Gregorian”. Don’t you hate it when your sarcasm gets undermined by stupidity?

system · June 16, 1999, 6:33pm

Oh, one more thing.

“The Millennium” most commonly referred to the Bibilical period of 1,000 years during which Satan would be imprisoned (Revelation 20:2-7). This 1000-year period was not supposed to begin in any particular year; it was merely supposed to begin after other events leading up to it had occurred.

Medieval biblical scholars sometimes took the verse “For one day with the Lord is like a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8) literally, and figured that, since Genesis said the world was created in “six days”, the timespan from the creation of the world to its eventual destruction in Revelation should be precisely 6000 years. Using this “logic”, they figured that every thousand-year boundary must be marked by some major event; therefore Jesus must have been born exactly 4000 years since the creation of the world; therefore the Second Coming must happen exactly 2000 years after the birth of Christ. Thence, the term “millennium” became associated with a calendrical period of 1000 years.

Then again, these guys also assumed that Jesus was born in 4 B.C. (since that was the year Herod the Great died, and he had to have been alive for the “Slaughter of the Innocents” described in Matthew to have occurred). So, by their reckoning, the Second Coming (and the ensuing Biblical Millennium) should have started in 1997.

system · June 16, 1999, 6:49pm

Oh, one more thing.

“The Millennium” most commonly referred to the Bibilical period of 1,000 years during which Satan would be imprisoned (Revelation 20:2-7). This 1000-year period was not supposed to begin in any particular year; it was merely supposed to begin after other events leading up to it had occurred.

Medieval biblical scholars sometimes took the verse “For one day with the Lord is like a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8) literally, and figured that, since Genesis said the world was created in “six days”, the timespan from the creation of the world to its eventual destruction in Revelation should be precisely 6000 years. Using this “logic”, they figured that every thousand-year boundary must be marked by some major event; therefore Jesus must have been born exactly 4000 years since the creation of the world; therefore the Second Coming must happen exactly 2000 years after the birth of Christ. Thence, the term “millennium” became associated with a calendrical period of 1000 years.

Then again, these guys also assumed that Jesus was born in 4 B.C. (since that was the year Herod the Great died, and he had to have been alive for the “Slaughter of the Innocents” described in Matthew to have occurred). So, by their reckoning, the Second Coming (and the ensuing Biblical Millennium) should have started in 1997.

system · June 16, 1999, 6:51pm

D’OH! I see what Jeff Alberts means about the system behaving a little wonky. The first copy of my last post didn’t show up at all, so I submitted it a second time – and, as you can see, there are now 2 copies of it. Bleah.

system · June 17, 1999, 6:19am

Glad to see it wasn’t just me, Tracer!

Anyway, Phantmwise is really proving my point by pointing out the silliness or celebrating any point in time merely because everyone else is. My only point in this whole thing is how people can be lead like sheep into believing something that is blatantly not true. And to answer a question posited earlier, something to the effect of why do I care if people celebrate the “millennium”? Generally I don’t care, but I’m painfully aware of the truly STUPID things people do in the name of celebration, often times going as far as killing other people, and most of the time going as far as destruction of property not their own. The numerous riots that have occurred over the years after basketball championships are perfect exemples. So, to answer the question, I don’t care as long as I don’t get dragged into it without my consent. If somebody comes to break my wondows, Mr. Ruger will be waiting for them, Natural Selection will occur once again.

Jeff

system · June 17, 1999, 6:22am

By the way, Gawain, I thought you were Majikthise

system · June 17, 1999, 4:58pm

And of course, all of this is aside from my original point. Fine, if people insist on celebrating the new millennium a year early, enjoy yourselves. You’re wrong, but enjoy yourselves. MY beef is that THE STRAIGHT DOPE has hopped on the bandwagon (along with the governments and educational institutions, I might add), and contributing to the spread of this misinformation.
I think they ought to be ashamed, and Ed Zotti should personally get on a Concord on New Year’s Eve and fly across the time zones apologizing to the crowds.

system · June 22, 1999, 6:41pm

>>MY beef is that THE STRAIGHT DOPE has
>>hopped on the bandwagon (along with the
>>governments and educational institutions,
>>I might add), and contributing to the
>>spread of this misinformation.

Man, you’re right - this is maddening. It’s just like that time in the 6th century when they said “it’s not the year 750, it’s the year 1”. That one really chapped my hide. Or that whole Leap Year thing… what the heck were they thinking?

Point is, given the astounding irreverance we have shown towards following the rules of any version of the calendar, why on earth make a stand that this particular rule should be followed to the letter? You readily admit that our calendar system has been changed numerous times, yet you see another change and seek to call us all stupid because we’re going with it? Hmmm…

system · June 24, 1999, 5:17am

Because it is not a change, it is an ERROR! A mistake! A blunder made by people who assume that because a whole bunch of numbers are changing, it must mean something. No official Time-standard-keeping body has stepped forth and said “We’re changing the calendar again, everybody! From now on, we are retroactively inserting a Year 0 before Year 1 A.D. in our current calendar so that the changing of the centuries and millenniums will coincide with years that end in a bunch of zeroes.”
If somebody does that, I’ll shut up about it, but that has not happened; our calendar has not changed, today is not Saturday, this is not the month of February and next year is not “the” millennium no matter how much you want it to be (it may be “A” millennium but if you’re going to go by that argument, so is today, and tomorrow, etc.)
You are perfectly free to celebrate anything you want, including a period of time divisible by 1000 since the year 1 B.C. if you so choose. But somebody says “millennium” to me, I’m going to make the natural assumption that they are referring to a period based upon the beginning of the A.D. cycle that we are currently using. Unless you can provide a compelling reason that I should disregard the math and make the completely arbitrary decision that they are referring to some other period of time?
Come on… anybody from the Straight Dope staff out there care to take a stand on this and set us all straight?

system · June 23, 1999, 7:51pm

>>No official Time-standard-keeping body has >>stepped forth and said “We’re changing the
>>calendar again, everybody! From now on, we
>>are retroactively inserting a Year 0
>>before Year 1 A.D. in our current
>>calendar so that the changing of the
>>centuries and millenniums will coincide
>>with years that end in a bunch of zeroes.”

Nope, they sure haven’t. Did they do this for all of the other calendar changes?

system · June 23, 1999, 9:10pm

Depends on what you mean by “millenium”, don’t it?
(a) If you reckon time from the year 1 BC as the start year, then the millenium change happens on 12/31/99 or 31/12/99, as you choose.
(b) There was a year zero, it was just a very short year, from Dec 25, 1 BC (Jesus’s birthday, you ignoramus) to Jan 2, 1 AD (Jesus’s circumcision date). It was decreed by Herod the Great, actually not until the year 1 AD, since he was confused by the calendar change anyway. If there hadn’t been a year zero, imagine how confusing it woulda been to change your calendars from 1 BC to 1 AD overnight! The insertion of the year zero between the two (even if a short year) resolved the problem, and probably led the path to Daylight Savings Time.
© Millenium, mishmenium, the thing that I think it neat is that all those checks and application forms and whatnot dated 19__ will be useless as the odometer clicks off some zeroes. Regardless of what you call it, that’s worthy of celebration. Hasn’t happened for … um… 99 years. No, no, wait, for 100 years. No, no, wait.
(d) Our counting and calendar system are already screwed up, since the 1900s are the Twentieth Century. I never understood that part. Why weren’t the 100s the First Century, woulda saved lots of headaches later? Hey, if we had the 1300s and the 1200s, what did they call the years 1 - 99, anyway? The zero-hundreds? That seems more important that what we’d call the decade from 2000-2009, seems to me, we got a whole century (well, approximately) with no name at all. Friggin’ calendrists, have no mathematical flexibility.
Hand me another beer, willya?

system · June 24, 1999, 12:58pm

>Nope, they sure haven’t. Did they do this for all of the other calendar changes?
Well, Greenwich probably wasn’t involved at the time but yes, there was generally a major leader, a pope, etc. who made the decree. It wasn’t just an unruly mob of people who reckoned the calendar to be a democracy that they could outvote.

>(a) If you reckon time from the year 1 BC as
>the start year, then the millenium change
>happens on 12/31/99 or 31/12/99, as you
>choose.
But why would I decide to reckon time from the year BEFORE the first year of our calendar? Don’t seem right to me.

>(b) There was a year zero, it was just a
>very short year, from Dec 25, 1 BC (Jesus’s
>birthday, you ignoramus) to Jan 2, 1 AD
>(Jesus’s circumcision date)…
I sense some tongue-in-cheek here. I can’t go along with the notion that they were standing around in the year 1BC saying “I can’t wait until that Jesus bloke is born so we can party in the new calendar” (and hey, just think how big THAT part would be, going from BC to AD and starting to count forwards!) Also, had they even invented the concept of zero then? I know the Romans had a tough time with it, judging by my clocks.

>(d) Our counting and calendar system are
>already screwed up, since the 1900s are the
>Twentieth Century… Friggin’ calendrists,
>have no mathematical flexibility.
My point exactly. The calendar is just numbers and they don’t care about what’s convenient or what’s “neat”. Technically, even your statement about the 1900s is 2% incorrect as 1900 was part of the 19th century and 2000 will still be part of the 20th.

Okay, the soapbox is starting to crack under my weight. I think we’ve all figured out where we stand. Some of us are dull mathematical purists, some of us are bad at math (and/or spelling), and some of us are just looking for a good time and @*$! off with you and your Year 1/Year 0 crap.

Happy New Year everybody.