AW: Year 0

Mark Wright nicodemuslegend at yahoo.com
Tue Feb 18 21:10:29 CET 2003


Stefan Persson <spe at inducks.org> wrote: 

<That depends on what you mean with B.C. and A.D.: "n
years before/after Christ" or "year n before/after
Christ."  In the former case, there would be two years
0 (one before and one after Christ), but in the 
latter case there would be none.>

Perhaps I'm missing some nuance of your meaning in the
translation, but as I read it, this is simply wrong on
all important counts.  First of "B.C." does indeed
mean "Before Christ," but "A.D" means "anno domini",
latin for "in the year of our Lord" (which, off-topic,
is why you'll see academic and other circles
perferring BCE and CE, where CE means "common era",
realizing that not everyone in the world recognizes
Christ as "Lord."  I myself do, but this is in the
interests of completeness and inclusivity).  Some have
erroneously thought AD meant "after death", but there
is certainly no "after Christ."

And there is NO year 0 by any of these calculations. 
No year 0 BC, no year 0 AD, nor any year 0 using the
CE scales (which are actually exactly the same, just
substituting BCE for BC, and CE for AD.)  The years
work as follows: 2 BC, 1 BC, AD 1, AD 2, AD 3, etc.

For my next trick, I can talk about how none of these
dates were used at the time, but came about centuries
later, but this is really getting off topic.

My two cents,
Mark Wright 


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