counting backwards

From: Damien Broderick (damienb@unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri May 23 2003 - 21:59:35 MDT

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    At 06:37 PM 5/23/03 +0100, Steve Davies wrote:

    >What I always wonder is how did they cope with counting backwards?

    What I always wonder is how *historians* cope with counting backwards? It's
    so tedious, dealing with the silly fact that the subject of your
    investigations was born in 1989 and died in 1942.

    >Maybe that early Y2K problem is why they never had a year 0

    Well, BC is before Christ, so you can't have a zero year before he's born.
    AD is year of the lord, so that starts with 1. My question is how to handle
    the final 9 months of the BC year prior to the onset of AD, since he's
    present (at least in potentia, and daily growing) but not yet out there
    doing miracles and preaching and other god stuff. Strictly speaking, 1 BC
    only had three months, and 1 AD 21 months.

    Damien Broderick



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