Bastardisms

B.C. & A.D. vs. B.C.E. & C.E.
Monday, February 14, 2005

Today, I'm going to take some time to rip into the academes of the world. Specifically, the ones that thought that it was a great idea to shift from using the initials B.C. & A.D. to using the perfunctory B.C.E. & C.E. For those of you who do not know, B.C. stands for Before Christ and A.D. is Anno Domini, which means "Year of our Lord." Whoever these liberal softies are that didn't want anyone offended by that, chose to change it to Before the Common Era (B.C.E.) and subsequently Common Era (C.E.).

A little background on the whole BC/AD numbering system. According to Wikipedia.org.

"in 525, the Anno Domini system was invented, which counted the years of the Julian calendar from the year of Jesus' birth. The transition by the Western Christian church to the Gregorian calendar, which was promulgated in 1582, corrected seasonal errors due to an incorrect leap year system, though this correction left the numbering of the years intact."

So, we see that Christianity has had a major part in affecting how we keep our records. But I have a question to put to all of those academics and non-Christians who want to change how things have been done for nearly 1500 years. "What secular event happened and was so important 2,005 years ago that it should mark the beginning of the Common Era?" Jesus' birth was estimated to be between 7 and 4 years BC. IF you ask me, then I think that we should mark the beginning of the Common Era as when the Dark Ages ended sometime in the 14th century. Or we could possibly use the period of The Enlightenment in the 18th century. That would be a more common era than starting out the C.E. at year 1.

Posted byJ. R. Guinness at 10:28 AM    

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