\tFor as long as there have been calendars, there have been arguments about calendars. Early on in Human history, we developed a need to measure the passing years, so that we\u2019d be able to track when to plan the crops, who\u2019s got seniority, and when we qualify for Social Security. Once we had established the length of a year roughly 365 days, it was necessary to establish some sort of arbitrary numbering system. And in different parts of the world, different systems have been developed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tIn the Western world, and for the sake of convenience and commerce, most of the rest of the world, the current year, 2003 AD is measured from the birth of Christ. The AD stands for Anno Domini, or \u201cyear of the Lord.\u201d Years before Christ are numbered in reverse, and marked with the letters BC, which mean, well, Before Christ. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tBut it wasn\u2019t always that way. The ancient Romans measured years AUC or Ab Urbe Condita, from the founding of the City of Rome, which corresponds to 753 BC. But the changeover to AD and BC didn\u2019t really happen until a sixth century monk named Dionysius established the year of Christ\u2019s birth. A century and a half later, the Venerable Bede worked to encourage the adoption of the AD\/BC numbering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tOne significant problem: Dionysius made some errors in his calculations. Scholars tell us that Jesus Christ was most likely born between 7 and 4 BC. So, although all our modern dates are at least indirectly in reference to the Savior\u2019s birth, that date is off by several years. A reminder, perhaps, that all we do is in relation to this central event in human history. Even if our reckoning is a bit off.
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For as long as there have been calendars, there have been arguments about calendars. Early on in Human history, we developed a need to measure the passing years, so that we\u2019d be able to track when to plan the crops, who\u2019s got seniority, and when we qualify for Social Security. Once we had established the length of a year roughly 365 days, it was necessary … Continue reading AD and BC<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts-of-faith","tag-facts-of-faith"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5FUlW-6C","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":411,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions\/411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/corporalworks.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}