Happy 2010 or 2014 or 2017 or ….

A quiz question once asked “If you were digging in the garden and found a coin dated 4 B.C. would it be genuine?” Of course the answer was no. One could not have B.C. before A.D. so beware the forgery. Everyone knows B.C. stands for Before [the birth of] Christ and A.D. stands for Anno Domini, or, the Year of Our Lord but when did B.C. and A.D. become accepted usage for dating the years?

It didn’t happen immediately. In fact it wasn’t until over 500 years after Christ’s birth that Dionysius Exiguus decided to count back the years to find Christ’s possible birthdate. His first problem was deciding exactly when Christ was born. Luke’s Gospel stated that Christ was born at the time of the Great Census conducted on behalf of the Roman Emperor, Augustus. That date was known. So Dionysius counted the number of Consuls and Emperors that had reigned since that day and the number of years they had reigned and he came up with the date 532 A.D. In the Roman Calendar, years were identified by naming the Consuls or Emperors who held office so you would have years listed as the 3rd year of the reign of Tiberuis, the second year of the reign of Claudius etc. Now the Romans liked to fiddle with their calendar and both Consuls and Emperors would add or subtract days and even months to please their own egos, which was why Julius Caesar tried to fix things with his Julian Calendar. It didn’t really stop the fiddling completely though. As a result there was a mistake of between four and ten years made in the calculations of Christ’s birth (Depending on the expert you believe). By the time the mistake was realised it was much easier to change Christ’s birth and death dates than all other dates, so Christ is listed as living in 4 B.C – 29 A.D or variations of same in the more astute biographical dictionaries. Various countries at various times adopted Dionysius’ dating system but it was not generally used until centuries later. In England, The Council of Chelsea ordered that it be used in 816 A.D. Gradually, with the rapid spread of trade and communications which have occurred since the Industrial Revolution most countries have adopted this numbering system and either use it exclusively or in conjunction with their own calendar systems.

Nowadays, the politically correct brigade have taken hold and I am seeing the old B.C./A.D. being replaced more and more with B.C.E (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), but I don’t agree and will resist until I shuffle off to that big Library in the sky.

So what other years are we living in? Well if you are Jewish it is 5769-5770, Buddhist it is 2553 and Muslim it is 1430. The Hindu’s have a variety of years depending on where they live in India, all used in conjunction with the Gregorian Calendar.

So Happy 2010, 2014, 5770, 2553 and 1430. I hope it is a good one for us all.