BC/AD/BCE/CE

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  • I should point out that CE has also stood for Christian Era and that is quite an old usage. "Common" or "vulgar" era seems to have been to distinguish that dating from Regnal dating (e.g., the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth).

    I took CE to be the "Christian Era" when I was in seminary, some many years ago.
  • Nick Tamen wrote: »
    ECraigR wrote: »
    Galilit wrote: »
    Of course I could tell you the sad story of the 7 year old daughter of a good friend who was sent to the local shop to buy milk. Life's like that, you know - sometimes you discover the milk in the fridge is "off". This little girl lived in another (religious) calendar and she simply couldn't understand the "Best Before" date on the milk carton. Because it was in the CE dating. So she politely asked for help and people either genuinely had no idea or took the chance to get back at her for the "life choices" of her parents - itself a topic of much discussion for a decade or so by then.

    I don’t understand this anecdote. What’s CE dating?
    I’m guessing Gregorian calendar rather than, say, Jewish or Islamic calendar.
    Galilit wrote: »
    Yes, the "usual" calendar.
    My personal opinion of that horrid incident was that the parents should have taught the children the calendar "everyone" uses but they wanted to be pure/extremist.

    Ohhh, thanks to you both!
  • I get the use of CE/BCE in any context, including seminaries, where non-Christians are members of the community (such as Jewish students and faculty), but in a sermon from a Christian preacher to a Christian congregation at an ordinary church it does not make much sense to me.
  • I get the use of CE/BCE in any context, including seminaries, where non-Christians are members of the community (such as Jewish students and faculty), but in a sermon from a Christian preacher to a Christian congregation at an ordinary church it does not make much sense to me.

    I'd guess (and this is only a guess) that the preacher uses CE/BCE in other dealings, or reads it in journals, and doesn't want to have to code switch. So s/he just uses it all the time.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    I get the use of CE/BCE in any context, including seminaries, where non-Christians are members of the community (such as Jewish students and faculty), but in a sermon from a Christian preacher to a Christian congregation at an ordinary church it does not make much sense to me.

    I'd guess (and this is only a guess) that the preacher uses CE/BCE in other dealings, or reads it in journals, and doesn't want to have to code switch. So s/he just uses it all the time.

    This is what I’d do. Also, playing to the young folk like myself, we’re all just sort of taught it in college and probably high school by now. Some of my more liberal peers may even like that it’s more inclusive and feel better about the preacher for using it.

  • PDR wrote: »
    The main reason why the idea of standard time was accepted in the nineteenth century was railway operation. Early railway operation depended on timetables and time interval running, so having the clocks on the same standard was part of keeping folks somewhat safe. The Timetable and Train Order variant of this system was still used in the USA in the 1980s, and still incorporated an element of time interval working.

    I tend to stick to the BC/AD system because BCE/CE dates tend to fuzz into each other after a while thus hindering comprehension.

    How did she write the date in her school books?

    Something else I've often wondered - why do we use BC (Before Christ - English), and AD (Anno Domini - Latin)?
  • Gee D wrote: »

    Exactly, and then someone decided that using the old naming was offensive to non-Christians. So new names were given but based on the same event.

    I'm not sure anyone would find it offensive, but it does feel a bit like cultural imperialism.

    Any universal dating system would need a start point everyone agreed on and for historical reasons we've ended up using an inaccurate estimate of when Jesus was born. In terms of significance it's no different to the world agreeing that a line of longitude passing through Greenwich in East London should be the basis of global mapping and navigation. It was convenient to agree to a way of measuring things that most countries had already adopted.
  • OblatusOblatus Shipmate
    edited December 2019
    Something else I've often wondered - why do we use BC (Before Christ - English), and AD (Anno Domini - Latin)?

    Not sure why, but all the online explanations of BC and AD that I found also point out this confusing situation. You're in good company in asking that question!
  • I have just checked and it is at least partly what I expected. AD abbreviation is 6th century while the BC abbreviation is 17th Century. There were other phrases before that such as 'ante incarnationis dominicae' (Bede). The change in culture meant a swap from Latin as the lingua franca to English as the lingua franca.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    Cyprian wrote: »
    I use CE and BCE for the same reason. I understand the Common Era to refer to the period after the point in time that has been historically and culturally acknowledged as the date of the birth of Christ, whatever else we might know today about the inaccuracy of the methodology originally used to calculate that. It refers to a commonly understood period without making any statement about the point in time.

    I understand all that, and the way in much the same point has been made by others. An essential part of my post was in asking why the birth of Christ be a determining event - after all, a majority of the world's population is not Christian.

    Because the calendar was made by Christians and the numbering system well in place before ideas like wondering what other people might want even surfaced.

    Exactly, and then someone decided that using the old naming was offensive to non-Christians. So new names were given but based on the same event.

    That's what makes it rather silly. The AD calendar is based on the perceived time of Jesus' birth. A change of names still means that the CE/BCE is still based on the perceived time of Jesus' birth.

    I will stick with BC/AD.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »

    Exactly, and then someone decided that using the old naming was offensive to non-Christians. So new names were given but based on the same event.

    And there you have it, folks.

    Except it isn't, it's a lot older than that.

    I'm new to this thread but something I discovered this week is relevant to the thread.

    I have been looking at the Gregorian calendar recently and discovered that from 1752 in England and Wales the suffix CE was used to distinguish the New Calendar (Gregorian) from the Old Calendar (Julian). We are not supposed to say Gregorian as we are Protestants. CE stands for Common Era, the era common to Catholics and protestants.

    Sorry to disappoint you all but CE has nothing to do with creeping secularism.

  • I think that the fact that European nations generally, and not just the British, were so good at trading and invading around the globe for several centuries did ensure the spread of the BC/AD dating system over other versions.

    In a European context it probably became popular as the standard alternatives for reckoning years were based on the length of reign of one's own monarch, or the pope. In international contexts it was easier to fix dates by a common standard, rather than remember how long someone had been on the throne of X, especially in cases of contested succession or a period of high monarchical turnover, and when dealing with a 'republic'. (For monarch read whatever title the Man in Charge locally had.)
  • ZappaZappa Ecclesiantics Host
    edited December 2019
    it's no different to the world agreeing that a line of longitude passing through Greenwich in East London should be the basis of global mapping and navigation.
    Gee D wrote: »

    ... it's no different to the world agreeing that a line of longitude passing through Greenwich in East London should be the basis of global mapping and navigation.

    But of course God designed the earth that way. I mean imagine if God's line of choice passed through New York (which is just some modern aberrant conglomeration of New World foreigners ) or Vladivostok (full of Putinites) or something. Thank God for God's wisdom, I say.

    [Edit twice. Pity God allowed the devil to invent BBCode though. ]
  • balaam wrote: »
    Sorry to disappoint you all but CE has nothing to do with creeping secularism.

    Unless one counts the encroachment of Protestantism as "creeping secularism." The argument has some merit.
  • I get the use of CE/BCE in any context, including seminaries, where non-Christians are members of the community (such as Jewish students and faculty), but in a sermon from a Christian preacher to a Christian congregation at an ordinary church it does not make much sense to me.

    Do the Ethiopian Orthodox count as "ordinary" for you? They have their own presumably equally Christian calender and are currently in the middle of the year 2012. I don't think there's evidence to show that their dating of the Nativity is any more or less than its more northern equivalent.

    It would seem to make sense to me for the members of "ordinary" congregations to be aware of the arbitrary nature of both the year and the date on which the birth of Jesus is celebrated. using the terms BCE and CE is one way of doing this.

    Perhaps, there is a need for a campaign to defetishise "1 A.D." and "25 December"
  • Perhaps, there is a need for a campaign to defetishise "1 A.D." and "25 December"

    Or perhaps it really doesn't matter. We seem to be stuck with what we have, and nobody has the authority to compel the world to adopt some other calendar.

    I can't see any reason to "defetishize" December 25 either. Who cares? Let the heathen rage. Everyone with three brain cells knows we have no idea when he was born, and Dec 25 is a fudge. So what?
  • mousethief wrote: »
    Perhaps, there is a need for a campaign to defetishise "1 A.D." and "25 December"

    Or perhaps it really doesn't matter. We seem to be stuck with what we have, and nobody has the authority to compel the world to adopt some other calendar.

    I can't see any reason to "defetishize" December 25 either. Who cares? Let the heathen rage. Everyone with three brain cells knows we have no idea when he was born, and Dec 25 is a fudge. So what?
    The Bookies would say that it's 364 to 1
  • Telford wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Perhaps, there is a need for a campaign to defetishise "1 A.D." and "25 December"

    Or perhaps it really doesn't matter. We seem to be stuck with what we have, and nobody has the authority to compel the world to adopt some other calendar.

    I can't see any reason to "defetishize" December 25 either. Who cares? Let the heathen rage. Everyone with three brain cells knows we have no idea when he was born, and Dec 25 is a fudge. So what?
    The Bookies would say that it's 364 to 1

    Of course that would be true of ANY day in the year, so it's rather meaningless.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    We should redo the whole date business, with year 1 being 4004 BC. That will mean a new New Year's Day of course. But do we take that as the day the preliminaries started or the day of the real work?
  • Gee D wrote: »
    We should redo the whole date business, with year 1 being 4004 BC. That will mean a new New Year's Day of course. But do we take that as the day the preliminaries started or the day of the real work?

    Perhaps we should look outward into the universe and use what everyone out there uses: stardates. Today's stardate, I'm told by one website, is 97565.7. Space: the final frontier...
  • mousethief wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Perhaps, there is a need for a campaign to defetishise "1 A.D." and "25 December"

    Or perhaps it really doesn't matter. We seem to be stuck with what we have, and nobody has the authority to compel the world to adopt some other calendar.

    I can't see any reason to "defetishize" December 25 either. Who cares? Let the heathen rage. Everyone with three brain cells knows we have no idea when he was born, and Dec 25 is a fudge. So what?
    The Bookies would say that it's 364 to 1

    Of course that would be true of ANY day in the year, so it's rather meaningless.

    Exactly. You cannot prove that 25 December is wrong.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    Perhaps, there is a need for a campaign to defetishise "1 A.D." and "25 December"

    Or perhaps it really doesn't matter. We seem to be stuck with what we have, and nobody has the authority to compel the world to adopt some other calendar.

    I can't see any reason to "defetishize" December 25 either. Who cares? Let the heathen rage. Everyone with three brain cells knows we have no idea when he was born, and Dec 25 is a fudge. So what?

    Is the 25 of December a fudge or an unsubtle deliberate bit of syncretism? One I quite enjoy, to be honest. But, being part of a tradition that doesn't formally celebrate it, I have sympathy with the the attitude of the approach taken during the English Revolution by people who definitely cared

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR_xGMMUxo9UFbS8_sD2LxC-3DhZoW0E2FCDu6P27g1TEx2Mmiz
  • The historical evidence suggests Christmas was placed on Dec 25 because that's nine months after Mar 25, the date of the Annunciation (conception of Christ), which was placed on that date as a fudge of the date of Easter, under the pagan theory that a great man dies on the date he was conceived.

    The whole "they were trying to subvert Saturnalia" has no evidence and doesn't really work seeing as Saturnalia wasn't on Dec 25 anyhow. It was introduced in the 18th century by a couple of anti-Catholics.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Lines such as "they were trying to subvert Saturnalia" don't carry much weight. They're in much the same category the assertion that connects Easter to a Norse god because the name is similar.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Lines such as "they were trying to subvert Saturnalia" don't carry much weight. They're in much the same category the assertion that connects Easter to a Norse god because the name is similar.

    Especially when there's no evidence there ever was such a Norse god. Except one line in Bede.
  • Julius Caesar’s great insight, when he decreed his calendar reform, was the practicality of having years that were as nearly as possible all the same length and that very closely matched the astronomical cycle of the seasons. The old Greek lunar calendars, that survive today in the form of the Jewish and Muslim calendars, work well enough as liturgical calendars, but for everyday affairs, not least in farming, it’s unhelpful to have years that never come even close to lasting either 365 or 366 days. They’re always at least ten or eleven days off.

    That, I think, is why the Julian arrangement of “thirty days hath September” and the rest of it has come to be universal. It’s the one that works best in practice. And once you’ve decided that, together with the seven-day week, that’s the calendar your country is going to use, you naturally also adopt the numbering of the years that comes with it. It’s understandable that the Israeli or Iranian authorities would prefer not to splash explicit references to Our Lord Jesus Christ all over their official documents, so they change the abbreviations to something neutral. Fine, nothing wrong with that. But a Christian preacher addressing his congregation in a Sunday sermon? In England? Naturally he will carry on saying “BC” and “AD”. That’s clearly the appropriate form in that context.
  • Julius Caesar’s great insight, when he decreed his calendar reform, was the practicality of having years that were as nearly as possible all the same length and that very closely matched the astronomical cycle of the seasons. The old Greek lunar calendars, that survive today in the form of the Jewish and Muslim calendars, work well enough as liturgical calendars, but for everyday affairs, not least in farming, it’s unhelpful to have years that never come even close to lasting either 365 or 366 days. They’re always at least ten or eleven days off.

    That, I think, is why the Julian arrangement of “thirty days hath September” and the rest of it has come to be universal. It’s the one that works best in practice. And once you’ve decided that, together with the seven-day week, that’s the calendar your country is going to use, you naturally also adopt the numbering of the years that comes with it. It’s understandable that the Israeli or Iranian authorities would prefer not to splash explicit references to Our Lord Jesus Christ all over their official documents, so they change the abbreviations to something neutral. Fine, nothing wrong with that. But a Christian preacher addressing his congregation in a Sunday sermon? In England? Naturally he will carry on saying “BC” and “AD”. That’s clearly the appropriate form in that context.

    At the risk of repeating myself, I would ask, why is it natural, when it is unlikely that it represents the year of birth of Jesus and indeed other Christian traditions have a different calender? Also does a Christian preacher have to be male, as your post implies?
  • I tried to keep my post concise and succinct. I hope the following answers to your questions will clear up your doubts about my meaning.

    When I wrote, “you naturally also adopt the numbering of the years that comes with it”, I was using the word “naturally” to convey the idea of “for convenience’ sake” or “to save the trouble of making needless alterations”. A ruler or government adopting the Gregorian calendar will be aware that its regular pattern of 365 or 366 days, keeping closely in step with the seasons, is beneficial to farming, business, and everyday life. It’s a good, workable, practical calendar, not necessarily perfect, but at least as useful as any other. If, however, that ruler or government were then to add, “We’re not going to use the Gregorian year numbers. Instead, we’re going to adopt a numeration of our own, taking as its starting point such-and-such an epoch-making event in our nation’s history,” I suspect that would probably be seen as an unnecessary complication, as a contrived and over-fussy solution to a problem of no real significance.

    It goes without saying that no sovereign state, no church or other religious organization, is under any compulsion to adopt this or that calendar. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is entirely free to maintain its own calendar, and the government of Ethiopia is equally free to use the same liturgical calendar for secular and civil purposes, if it so chooses. There is nothing illegal on unChristian in that.

    The fact that the year 1 of the Christian era, whether we call that AD or CE, corresponds only approximately to the birth of Christ is neither nor there. The exact date is not known and presumably never will be. Our Year 1 is a purely notional date of Christ’s birth, but that well-known fact in no way detracts from the calendar’s usefulness.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    Lines such as "they were trying to subvert Saturnalia" don't carry much weight. They're in much the same category the assertion that connects Easter to a Norse god because the name is similar.

    Especially when there's no evidence there ever was such a Norse god. Except one line in Bede.

    And of course, the name of the Feast in non-English speaking countries has no relation to Easter, iyswim.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »
    Lines such as "they were trying to subvert Saturnalia" don't carry much weight. They're in much the same category the assertion that connects Easter to a Norse god because the name is similar.

    Especially when there's no evidence there ever was such a Norse god. Except one line in Bede.

    And of course, the name of the Feast in non-English speaking countries has no relation to Easter, iyswim.

    Absolutely.
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