Last night lying in bed I got to thinking about dates and what they used prior to Christ. So I looked to see what Cecil said. I read it. It led to the natural discussion on when decades start. Cecil’s contention is that since 1 was the first year… yada yada yada, you know the rest. But he didn’t establish that 1 was, in fact, the first year. Was it? Doesn’t A.D. mean ‘After Death’? So wouldn’t that be the year after Christ died? I’m confused.
“A.D.” doesn’t mean “After Death”; it means “Anno Domini”, Latin for “in the year of the lord”.
And no matter what you take it to mean, there wasn’t a year 0.
“Decades” are rough markers. Historians generally agree that, in cultural and poltiical terms, the American “1960s” ran from 1963 through 1974, more or less.
Okay. Here’s a follow-up. When was the year of our lord? Was it the year he was born, the year he died, or some other year in his life? And (showing my real ignorance, but hey, that’s why I’m here) if he was born in December (which I don’t believe he was but I forget when experts say he was born), does the whole 11 months prior to that become year 1?
It’s just a number. At some point, by some guy’s not so accurate reckoning, Jesus was said to be born in what we now call 1 A.D. If he were born at any time during the year, it’s still the year of his (His) birth. So it’s still the first Year of “Our Lord.”
Where is the debate?
I dunno. But if you go and read the Straight Dope archives, there seemed to be one. I guess, though, if you have all the answers, nothing’s a debate. I’m new here. Maybe I should have posted this in another forum. I do apologize for wasting your time.
Jesus was apparently born in 4 B.C., according to modern historians. Really.
I don’t know how that works either.
But we don’t calibrate our calendar based on our best estimate of when Jesus was born, and change the calendar when that estimate changes. Long long ago some monk tried to figure out when Jesus was born, and called that date 1 A.D, the first year Anno Domini. That dating system became pretty common all over Europe, although there have been many others. For instance, the Muslim dating system that starts from when Muhammed fled Mecca (Islamic calendar - Wikipedia), the roman system that counted from the legendary date of the founding of Rome (Julian calendar - Wikipedia), or the Jewish system that supposedly dates from the creation of the creation of the world (Hebrew calendar - Wikipedia).
But our dating system became entrenched a long time ago. We aren’t really basing our dating system on when Jesus was born, we’re basing our dating system on a number made up by some monk. We don’t care whether Jesus was or wasn’t born in 1 AD, we just care that a particular year has a particular number associated with it. We’re not going to call next year 2013 instead of 2009 just because we now think Jesus was probably born in 4 BC. We don’t care. Next year will be 2009 because this year is 2008, and this year is 2008 because last year was 2007, and the year before that was 2006, and so on.
guyman, you have not wasted anyone’s time. (Anyone who objects to the question could simply exit the thread and move on.) It is true that we usually put follow-up questions to Cecil’s columns in the Comments on Cecil’s Columns forum, but it will not be a serious effort to move it.
As it happens, most of the questions that you and others have raised, here, have been answered by Cecil in the following coumns:[ol]
[li]What will they call the class of '00? [/li][li]Why is BC an English abbreviation while AD is a Latin one?[/li][li]What year numbering system was used in the time of Christ? [/li][li]What did the census at the time of the birth of Christ accomplish?[/li][/ol]
As long as you are not repeatedly posting questions about Cecil’s columns in Great Debates or MPSIMS, we can probably “forgive” a single errant posting location. I am going to move this thread, (since there seems to be no debate), but feel free to post any follow-up questions in this thread.
Tom~, your #4 link there goes to the same column as your #3 link.
Herod the Great was still living when Jesus was born and he died in 4 B.C., so Jesus was born no later than that year.
Huh. I did not know that.
Every year is the year of our Lord, It is the year of His birth and year of His death, and every year from His birth until now and forever until He comes again to take the believers home.
That is the doctrine.
And yet my computer insists today is Tuesday, December 16, 2008. Go figure.
sailor, if lekatt wants to make off-topic and erroneous remarks, I suspect that it would be better ignored than hijacking this thread to debate it.
Sorry I fail to see what is erroneous. “Year of our Lord” is a common reference and lekatt is right that it refers to every year since, and not just the first one. People say, “In the year of our Lord 1538.”, or whatever. It doesn’t seem to me that lekatt said anything incorrect. Just a knee-jerk response to something innocuous. Can you at least explain to me what is erroneous about lekatt’s statement?
June 17th, 2 B.C., to be precise. Of course, that’s Australian time. So it could very well have been June 16th in the North Hemisphere.
“Year of the Lord” is a phrase used to identify a date, regardless how Christians might view the period of time that Jesus lives, (presuming he still lives as a human subsequent to the resurrection. However, as a phrase (incorrectly) identifying a date, it has no place in any doctrine of any Christian system of belief. His interjection was an irrelevant semantic game and erroneous. guyman’s question clearly attempted to identify the starting point of the reckoning, and lekatt’s post was also a non-answer.
This hijack is now at an end. If you wish to continue a discussion of the topic, open your own thread somewhere.
[ /Modding ]
As Cecil wrote in one of the columns tomndebb linked to,
As far as I can tell, “CE” and “BCE” are becoming increasingly common, and are the stardard way of refering to dates nowadays in most scholarly writing (not just archaeology).