From: Steve Davies (steve365@btinternet.com)
Date: Sat May 24 2003 - 15:16:27 MDT
> 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.
I know, it's hard but we manage somehow. (I was thinking about "1066 And All
That" actually).
>
> >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.
>
Seriously, there are "infancy narratives" for JC and other saviours that
work exactly that way, with miracles performed before birth and learned
arguments about it. YCMIU. For the calendar the problem is that for normal
types such as us you only reach age 1 after a year so while you are 1 you're
actually in your second year. The calendar (and JC presumably) is 1 at the
starting point. This all comes from letting a monk up in Tyneside sort out
the calendar - you can't trust these Geordies to do anything!
Steve Davies.
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