BC or BCE?
"Senate Bill 506 prohibits any school board from adopting a textbook that uses CE and/or BCE in place of AD and BC respectively in reference to historical dates."
Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau analysis of a bill
by Senator Tom Reynolds (R, West Allis)
The calendar used in America, Europe, and most of the world divides all of history into two eras, with the dividing point at the Year Zero some 2,006 years ago. ( If you think Y2K caused problems, just imagine the fuss over switching from negative to positive counting of the years back then!) The transformative event that marked the change of era was the birth of a Jewish baby boy in Bethlehem, presumably named at his bris "Yehoshua ben Yosef" and subsequently known as Jesus Christ (1).
Ancient historians used the reigns of kings to identify a particular time; for example, the Book of Daniel begins " In the third year of the reign of King Yehoyakim....." Later Jewish writers established a system for numbering years based upon Biblical chronology, with the first year commencing in Genesis 1. That chronology is known by the Latin abbreviation AM for Anno Mundi (Year of the World). For example this is written on the Fourth of Shevat, 5766 AM.
About 1,500 years ago the Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus invented a new chronology beginning with the birth of Jesus, which he called Anno Domini (Year of the Lord) or AD. The years before his birth became known (in English) as Before Christ (BC) and were numbered in reverse order.(2) For example, a popular movie about cave-people was titled "One Million BC" (3).
Meanwhile, the Muslims developed their own chronology in which the transformative event was the Hegira (Journey) of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. The Muslim year is now known as AH for After Hegira. (4).
Since the Jewish chronology includes all of recorded human history, it is easier to use than either of the other two. There is no counting backward, and the time from one year to another can be found by one simple subtraction. Also, since the Jewish year commences on Rosh Hashonoh, about the same time as schools open, the current academic year can be identified by the one number " 5766" rather than the cumbersome " 2005-06" .
Even so, Jews and Muslims, as well as those from other non-Western traditions (Mayan, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) engage in business and academic research in Western Civilization, and so must accomodate themselves to the calendar in which it is now 2006. Jewish scholars in recent times have replaced the overtly Christian designations of Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) with the neutral terms "Common Era" (CE) and Before Common Era (BCE). This practice then spread to non-Jewish historians, who also preferred a more religiously-neutral designation.
Senator Tom Reynolds, a devout Roman Catholic right-winger, wants to stop this trend dead in its tracks with the bill cited above. The effect of this bill would be to give the history taught in Wisconsin public schools a distinctly Christian slant, which is why every Jew in the State should be on record against it. The Wisconsin Jewish Conference will consider opposing the bill Sunday, Feb. 5, at 10:30 AM at Temple Shalom, Fox Point.
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(1) Jesus is simply a Greek form of Yehoshua.
Christ is an Anglicized form of the Greek "Christos", which means "The Annointed One", a literal translation of the Hebrew "Moshiach". The use of Greek religious terms distinguished early Jewish Christians from normative Jews who used only Hebrew and Aramaic for ritual purposes. (See Glazerbeam of 8/10/05CE for details.)
(2) Modern Christian scholars have determined that Exiguus erred by about four years, so that Jesus is now said to have been born in 4 BCE. (To say he was born in 4 BC sounds really absurd.)
(3) This film was popular for showing Raquel Welch fighting another cave-girl while wearing a brief bear-skin outfit. Since anthropologists say that Homo Sapiens (modern Man) has only been around for about the last 40,0oo years, whatever female hominids might have been alive 960,0000 years earlier did not look much like Raquel Welch.
(4) The last Shah of Iran changed the nation's calendar in 1975 so that Year Zero was the creation of the Persian Empire, rather than the Hegira. The powerful Shiite clergy considered this change an insult to Islam. Within five years, the attayolahs deposed the Shah.
Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau analysis of a bill
by Senator Tom Reynolds (R, West Allis)
The calendar used in America, Europe, and most of the world divides all of history into two eras, with the dividing point at the Year Zero some 2,006 years ago. ( If you think Y2K caused problems, just imagine the fuss over switching from negative to positive counting of the years back then!) The transformative event that marked the change of era was the birth of a Jewish baby boy in Bethlehem, presumably named at his bris "Yehoshua ben Yosef" and subsequently known as Jesus Christ (1).
Ancient historians used the reigns of kings to identify a particular time; for example, the Book of Daniel begins " In the third year of the reign of King Yehoyakim....." Later Jewish writers established a system for numbering years based upon Biblical chronology, with the first year commencing in Genesis 1. That chronology is known by the Latin abbreviation AM for Anno Mundi (Year of the World). For example this is written on the Fourth of Shevat, 5766 AM.
About 1,500 years ago the Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus invented a new chronology beginning with the birth of Jesus, which he called Anno Domini (Year of the Lord) or AD. The years before his birth became known (in English) as Before Christ (BC) and were numbered in reverse order.(2) For example, a popular movie about cave-people was titled "One Million BC" (3).
Meanwhile, the Muslims developed their own chronology in which the transformative event was the Hegira (Journey) of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina. The Muslim year is now known as AH for After Hegira. (4).
Since the Jewish chronology includes all of recorded human history, it is easier to use than either of the other two. There is no counting backward, and the time from one year to another can be found by one simple subtraction. Also, since the Jewish year commences on Rosh Hashonoh, about the same time as schools open, the current academic year can be identified by the one number " 5766" rather than the cumbersome " 2005-06" .
Even so, Jews and Muslims, as well as those from other non-Western traditions (Mayan, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) engage in business and academic research in Western Civilization, and so must accomodate themselves to the calendar in which it is now 2006. Jewish scholars in recent times have replaced the overtly Christian designations of Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) with the neutral terms "Common Era" (CE) and Before Common Era (BCE). This practice then spread to non-Jewish historians, who also preferred a more religiously-neutral designation.
Senator Tom Reynolds, a devout Roman Catholic right-winger, wants to stop this trend dead in its tracks with the bill cited above. The effect of this bill would be to give the history taught in Wisconsin public schools a distinctly Christian slant, which is why every Jew in the State should be on record against it. The Wisconsin Jewish Conference will consider opposing the bill Sunday, Feb. 5, at 10:30 AM at Temple Shalom, Fox Point.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Jesus is simply a Greek form of Yehoshua.
Christ is an Anglicized form of the Greek "Christos", which means "The Annointed One", a literal translation of the Hebrew "Moshiach". The use of Greek religious terms distinguished early Jewish Christians from normative Jews who used only Hebrew and Aramaic for ritual purposes. (See Glazerbeam of 8/10/05CE for details.)
(2) Modern Christian scholars have determined that Exiguus erred by about four years, so that Jesus is now said to have been born in 4 BCE. (To say he was born in 4 BC sounds really absurd.)
(3) This film was popular for showing Raquel Welch fighting another cave-girl while wearing a brief bear-skin outfit. Since anthropologists say that Homo Sapiens (modern Man) has only been around for about the last 40,0oo years, whatever female hominids might have been alive 960,0000 years earlier did not look much like Raquel Welch.
(4) The last Shah of Iran changed the nation's calendar in 1975 so that Year Zero was the creation of the Persian Empire, rather than the Hegira. The powerful Shiite clergy considered this change an insult to Islam. Within five years, the attayolahs deposed the Shah.
posted by Gerald S Glazer at 9:46 AM
2 comments
