Ravenwood - 04/26/05 07:30 AM
The PC police are trying to change our calendar. They think that using the age old system of B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (anno Domini) is offensive to non Christians. They are attempting to change the terms to B.C.E. (Before Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era). I guess that for now the life of Christ would still divide the eras. Personally, I would call B.C.E. 'Before Christian Era' and C.E. 'Christian Era', just to piss off the PC nazis. Besides 2000 years ago isn't exactly what I would call 'common era'.
In trying to justify the change, either the scholors or the Washington Times seem to have fallen for the 'After Death' misconception when talking about A.D..
Although most calendars are based on an epoch or person, B.C. and A.D. have always presented a particular problem for historians: There is no year zero; there's a 33-year gap, reflecting the life of Christ, dividing the epochs. Critics say that's additional reason to replace the Christian-based terms.Didn't these guys ever go to Sunday school? It is true that there is no year zero, but there is certainly no 33-year gap. 1 B.C. is the year before Christ was born. A.D. 1 is the year after Christ was born. The 33 years of his life are A.D. 1 to A.D. 33. The only gap is a leap in the numbering, and every year of time is technically accounted for. And switching the labels around doesn't solve anything. To fix the timeline, we'd all have to relive a year. (This year would be another 2004, and George W. Bush would have to re-run for re-election.)
Of course if any of this were really a problem for historians, they must really hate daylight savings time and leap year.
Category: Fall of Western Civilization
Comments (8) top link me
That's the Wash. Times' error, not the scholars. I'd recommend whoever came up with that one go back to school ... and not a public school.
The CE/BCE shit is at least 20 years old. I suspect it was invented by archeologists digging in Egypt or Turkey, who didn't want to offend local bureaucrats to whom the birth of Christ is hardly the most important event in history.
And by the way, you do know that Jesus wasn't born in 1 AD? The last King Herod died in 4 BC, so if the story about his soldiers hunting baby Jesus is true, the dates are off by at least 4 years. Not to mention that it's peculiar that no historian took note of the slaughter of thousands of babies when there wasn't even a war on. The first recorded census of the region (by a Roman governor) was after 5 AD, so if the story that Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem for a census is true, the date is off even further in the opposite direction. Both stories can't be true unless time travel is involved. (Add that to your list of miracles!)
Posted by: markm at April 26, 2005 12:29 PMI see it as more secularism being applied to everyone. They want to do everything they can to remove all Christianity from any book that they are re-writing a very basic and true reading from our calendar system. (Which is universally known in the western world and was developed by the R.C. Church.) As for throwing a fit about not determining when the first year begins, or 33 year period is a moot point. Since the thousands of years we have had a calendar system a period of a few years or decades is just a very insignificant blip.
As for MarkM's thoughts. There's a lot of variables that can account for that. Miss-translations, different calendar systems, innaccuracies in the archaeologist field work. People in this day and age constantly get dates and time periods wrong, I can see the same thing happening 2,000 years ago. And twice so for those investigating events that happened 2,000 years ago.
Posted by: Rhett at April 26, 2005 1:02 PMI thought A.D. stood for "Anno Domino," the Year of our Lord.
CE and BCE have been around for a while in archealogy - also BP (before the present).
I think that "Anno Domino" means 'In the year of our Pizza'
Posted by: Ravenwood at April 26, 2005 4:18 PMWow Steve, you must really be jonesing for some pizza!
Posted by: Steve Scudder at April 27, 2005 3:47 AMFirst, Persnickety is mostly right, it's Anno Domini, the years of our lords.
More importantly though, I too would have a problem with using BC and AD if they actually were about Jesus. In fact, that dating system was begun by Julius Caeser, a contemporary of Jesus, and the BC was before Caeser (ie before the emperor), which is why Anno Domini means the years of our lords (emperors). Christianity co-opted that dating system, like so many other Pagan customs, and converted it to Before Christ.
Also, I've seen and used all of BC/AD; BCE/CE; and BP and frankly, all are useful in different situations. Talking about the Han Dynasty's dates in terms of dead Romans (or Western religious figures, if that's what you want to believe) doesn't make much sense to me.
Posted by: Pasty at April 27, 2005 10:55 PM"and BP" ...the gas station? heh.
Posted by: Ravenwood at April 28, 2005 6:18 AMhow baked were u when u came up wit that thought buddi!?
lmao
sars
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