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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Troodon, post: 357136, member: 4626&quot;]It&#039;s also worth noting that the notion of using dates based on how many years it&#039;s been since Christ was born didn&#039;t even arise until early in the 6th century.&nbsp; It was then that some monk wrote the current pope with his reasoning of why he thought it was precisely 535 years ago that Christ was born.&nbsp; The pope liked the idea so much and was convinced enough of the reasoning that he made it the official calendar, effectively for the entire Roman Empire, it being officially Christian at the time.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some historians and Biblical scholars disagree that the date is precisely accurate though... based on historical context given in the gospels (mentioning of the current Roman emperor, governor of Judea, and mention of the census, etc.) and also comparing certain Biblical events that can be confirmed to a specific date by lining them up with secular historical texts, Christ could have been born as early as 4BC or as late as 6AD.&nbsp; The best evidence based on the date of the census, which the governor of Judea conducted right after Judea was annexed into the Roman Empire, would give the date as actually 4BC.</p><p><br /></p><p>Religious events as the basis of dating the year is actually pretty widespread.&nbsp; The Jewish calendar year is based on the estimated creation of the Earth as based on geneaology back to Adam.&nbsp; Would start about 4004 BC if certain passages were interpreted literally (someowhat problematic as many old Hebrew words for units of time can be translated a number of ways, but there you go).&nbsp; Thailand and a few other predominately Buddhist countries base their calendar on the birth of Buddha, estimated to be about 500 BC.&nbsp; The Islamic calendar used commonly in the Middle East and other predominately Islamic countries is based on the estimated birth of Mohammed in the 6th century (however that calendar is a lunar calendar, based on the moon making 12 rotations around the earth, so it is moving somewhat faster than the solar calendar; thus the years don&#039;t precisely line up.)</p><p><br /></p><p>The Christian calendar is by far the most popular, being the common calendar in most of the world, even places with few Christians.&nbsp; Often you&#039;ll see CE (common era) and BCE (before common era) used where people prefer not to use the more specifically Christian terms AD (anno domini, the year of our Lord) and BC (before Christ).&nbsp; To each their own, but they&#039;re still essentially continuing the count of years since Christ was born, which is probably about 4 years off lol...</p><p><br /></p><p>(And yes, there was no year 0... the year after 1BC was 1AD.&nbsp; Glad Doc Brown didn&#039;t actually try to travel to Dec 25, 0000... hate to find out what would happen then lol... though he&#039;d have other problems, such as ending up in California, not Israel, and that Christ was probably not born on Dec 25 either... shephards wouldn&#039;t be outside watching their flocks by night in the middle of winter, the sheep would be in a barn... but that&#039;s a whole &#039;nother discussion lol...)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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