AD vs BC?

[patrick457]

So there are no Christian scholars today? Or are Christian scholars just marginalized?

Depends on what you mean by ‘Christian’.

Depends really. A lot of scholars get irritated about the BCE and CE thing because changing the initials is meaningless if the base number system remains the same. In either system, it is still centered around the life and death of Christ. A truly neutral system would be based off of the last ice age or something like that.

This is really kind of my main gripe with the BCE-CE system. Not so much because there’s some evil cabal out there who are somehow trying to ‘remove Jesus from the calendar’, but because (1) it’s a very half-baked euphemism (Why not just call it ‘Christian Era’ or something?), and (2) the BC(E)-AD/CE system is hardly ‘common’, from a universal perspective. It might be in the Western world, but you still have some people/religions who have their own distinctive calendars. Heck, it’s not even the calendar system of some Christian Churches!

When did they discontinue using B.C. and A.D. do you know?

‘Common Era’ was first used in a 1708 book called The History of the Works of the Learned: there’s a single reference there to “the fourth Century of the common Era.” Before that, you can also find people from the 1600s-1700s sometimes referring to the vulgaris aerae, “Vulgar (i.e. common, ordinary) Era” - in this case, the term was used to distinguish the BC/AD system from the regnal dating systems typically used in English law. (An alternative term is “Christian era.”)

In the 19th century, Jewish writers began to adopt the ‘Vulgar/Common Era’ (VE / CE) terminology. On the one hand, they don’t believe that Jesus is Lord, and hence the term “Year of Our Lord” really has no meaning for them (in fact, you might say it’s kind of blasphemous from a Jewish perspective); but at the same time, they were using / had to use the Gregorian calendar just like many people in the Western world. So apparently as a compromise they made use of the VE/CE term. And then the usage spread from there among secular writers.

 

[patrick457]

Some era systems Christians in Europe and Asia had traditionally used:

Regnal year: Counts years in terms of the number of years of the reign of the current monarch (“in the X year of so-and-so’s reign…”) Really the oldest type of dating system.

Consular year: Counts years in terms of whoever was the Roman consul for that year. (Two consuls were elected together, and both were usually in office for a single year.) Historically the more common dating method used by Romans.

Ab urbe condita (A.U.C.): Begins with the traditional date of the founding of Rome, 753 BC. It wasn’t actually used much by the Romans as one would think.

Indiction cycle: Originally a fifteen-year agricultural tax cycle: in this system years are denoted as being either “year one of the indiction” or “the 2nd indiction.” It eventually became a general dating system throughout parts of the Mediterranean by the late 4th century.

Seleucid Era: Begins with the year 312 BC, when Seleucus I established himself in Babylon, marking the official beginning of the Seleucid Empire. Used in the Middle East until the 6th century AD. Oriental Christians kept on using it until the 10th century.

Pompeian Era: Used by Hellenistic cities in Roman Palestine and begins in 63 BC, when Pompey conquered the region. Was still used in the area even shortly after the Muslim conquest.

Spanish/Hispanic Era (Aera Hispanica): Begins in 38 BC, the official start of Roman rule in Hispania. Was used in what is now Spain and Portugal up until the 11th-15th centuries.

Anno martyrum (A.M.): Used by Alexandrian Christians since the 4th-5th century; still used by the Coptic Church. A variant of the regnal year system, this system begins from the start of Diocletian’s reign (AD 284/5). (Dionysus Exiguus actually seems to have formulated the AD system in response to the anno martyrum system; he didn’t like the idea of basing the years from the reign of an emperor who persecuted Christians.)

Incarnation Era: A system devised by a 5th-century Alexandrian monk named Annianus, beginning with the year Annianus believed Jesus was born, AD 8. (So the year 2015 would be 2007 in this calendar.) Still traditionally used by Ethiopian Christians.

Armenian Era: Begins in AD 552, the year in which Armenian bishops convened a council in the city of Dvin (aka Tiben) to reform the calendar and to declare their repudiation of the council of Chalcedon. (Some sources say though that the council occurred in 554 or 555 or even 551.)

Anno mundi / Etos kosmou (Byzantine Era): Begins with the supposed year God created the world (calculation based on a literal reading of the Septuagint), 5509 BC.* Was traditionally used by the Eastern Churches and Orthodox countries since the 7th century up to the 1700s, when the BC-AD system and the Gregorian calendar was adopted by some segments.

• Early Christian writers (all of whom are basing their calculations on the Septuagint) proposed a range of dates but they all usually fall somewhere in the 5000s (usually the 5500s) BC, for symbolic/theological purposes.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Depends on what you mean by ‘Christian’.

This is really kind of my main gripe with the BCE-CE system. Not so much because there’s some evil cabal out there who are somehow trying to ‘remove Jesus from the calendar’, but because (1) it’s a very half-baked euphemism (Why not just call it ‘Christian Era’ or something?), and (2) the BC(E)-AD/CE system is hardly ‘common’, from a universal perspective. It might be in the Western world, but you still have some people/religions who have their own distinctive calendars. Heck, it’s not even the calendar system of some Christian Churches!

‘Common Era’ was first used in a 1708 book called The History of the Works of the Learned: there’s a single reference there to “the fourth Century of the common Era.” Before that, you can also find people from the 1600s-1700s sometimes referring to the vulgaris aerae, “Vulgar (i.e. common, ordinary) Era” - in this case, the term was used to distinguish the BC/AD system from the regnal dating systems typically used in English law. (An alternative term is “Christian era.”)

In the 19th century, Jewish writers began to adopt the ‘Vulgar/Common Era’ (VE / CE) terminology. On the one hand, they don’t believe that Jesus is Lord, and hence the term “Year of Our Lord” really has no meaning for them (in fact, you might say it’s kind of blasphemous from a Jewish perspective); but at the same time, they were using / had to use the Gregorian calendar just like many people in the Western world. So apparently as a compromise they made use of the VE/CE term. And then the usage spread from there among secular writers.

thank you Patrick.

 

[patrick457]

Just to add a bit of random stuff to the last post.

AD 2015 would be:

Byzantine calendar (5509 BC): Anno Mundi 7523-7524
(The year begins on 1 September)

Ethiopian Creation Era (5492 BC): Amete Alem (Anno Mundi) 7494

Hebrew calendar (3761 BC): Anno Mundi 5775-5776
(The civil Jewish year begins on 1 Tishri, Rosh Hashanah, which could fall somewhere during September to October)

Ab urbe condita (753 BC): AUC 2768

Seleucid Era (312-311/311-310 BC): AG 2325-2326/2326-2327

Pompeian Era (63 BC): 2078 PE

Spanish Era (38 BC): Era 2053

Ethiopian Incarnation Era (AD 8): Amete Mihret (Year of Mercy) 2007-2008
(Ethiopian New Year is on Gregorian 11 September; 12 September during leap years. Note that AD 8 is exactly 5,500 years from 5492 BC - it was a common belief among some early Christians that Jesus was born somewhere in between 5,000 or 5,500 years from the creation of the world, which ties in with the belief that the world is preordained to last for only 6-7,000 years.)

Anno martyrum (AD 284-285): 1731-1732
(Coptic New Year is on Gregorian 11 September; 12 September during leap years)

Indiction cycle (AD 312-313 - Indictio 1): Indictio 8-Indictio 9
(Historically, the beginning of the indiction varied; the original Byzantine version began on 1 September, but in the West, St. Bede’s version, which began on the autumn equinox - 24 September - also began to be commonly used from the 8th century. There was also the ‘Papal’ indiction which began on either 25 December or 1 January.)

Armenian calendar (AD 552): 1464

 

[CatholicWhovian]

Some era systems Christians in Europe and Asia had traditionally used:

Regnal year: Counts years in terms of the number of years of the reign of the current monarch (“in the X year of so-and-so’s reign…”) Really the oldest type of dating system.

Consular year: Counts years in terms of whoever was the Roman consul for that year. (Two consuls were elected together, and both were usually in office for a single year.) Historically the more common dating method used by Romans.

Ab urbe condita (A.U.C.): Begins with the traditional date of the founding of Rome, 753 BC. It wasn’t actually used much by the Romans as one would think.

Indiction cycle: Originally a fifteen-year agricultural tax cycle: in this system years are denoted as being either “year one of the indiction” or “the 2nd indiction.” It eventually became a general dating system throughout parts of the Mediterranean by the late 4th century.

Seleucid Era: Begins with the year 312 BC, when Seleucus I established himself in Babylon, marking the official beginning of the Seleucid Empire. Used in the Middle East until the 6th century AD. Oriental Christians kept on using it until the 10th century.

Pompeian Era: Used by Hellenistic cities in Roman Palestine and begins in 63 BC, when Pompey conquered the region. Was still used in the area even shortly after the Muslim conquest.

Spanish/Hispanic Era (Aera Hispanica): Begins in 38 BC, the official start of Roman rule in Hispania. Was used in what is now Spain and Portugal up until the 11th-15th centuries.

Anno martyrum (A.M.): Used by Alexandrian Christians since the 4th-5th century; still used by the Coptic Church. A variant of the regnal year system, this system begins from the start of Diocletian’s reign (AD 284/5). (Dionysus Exiguus actually seems to have formulated the AD system in response to the anno martyrum system; he didn’t like the idea of basing the years from the reign of an emperor who persecuted Christians.)

Incarnation Era: A system devised by a 5th-century Alexandrian monk named Annianus, beginning with the year Annianus believed Jesus was born, AD 8. (So the year 2015 would be 2007 in this calendar.) Still traditionally used by Ethiopian Christians.

Armenian Era: Begins in AD 552, the year in which Armenian bishops convened a council in the city of Dvin (aka Tiben) to reform the calendar and to declare their repudiation of the council of Chalcedon. (Some sources say though that the council occurred in 554 or 555 or even 551.)

Anno mundi / Etos kosmou (Byzantine Era): Begins with the supposed year God created the world (calculation based on a literal reading of the Septuagint), 5509 BC.* Was traditionally used by the Eastern Churches and Orthodox countries since the 7th century up to the 1700s, when the BC-AD system and the Gregorian calendar was adopted by some segments.

• Early Christian writers (all of whom are basing their calculations on the Septuagint) proposed a range of dates but they all usually fall somewhere in the 5000s (usually the 5500s) BC, for symbolic/theological purposes.

How did you get so much time to research? I feel humbled.