Watching a television program the other night they mentioned the following facts about our current calendar that got me wondering about the timing of the supposed "end of time"

In 523 AD, Dionysius Exiguus was given an assignment of making calculations for Easter.  At that time, the years were counted from the reign of emperor Diocletian.   Dionysius decided he would start the calendar from the birth of Jesus, instead of the reign of Diocletian.   Dionysius tried to fix Jesus' birth at December 25, 753 AUC (since the founding of Rome) I think they said that he counted back thru the emperors and subtracted the years of their reigns and decided that the current era started on January 1, 754 AUC and made that 1AD. 

The time before 754 AUC was considered to be Before Christ (BC), with no year 0.

So when Was Jesus Born?

Everyone says that Jesus Christ, the son of God in the Christian faith, was born on December 25, 0000.  This isn't true for two reasons. 

1 There is no year 0

Romans numerals have no number zero..  Dionysius had our present year start on January 1, AD 1, which was one week after what he believed was Jesus' birthday.   Since there was no 0 AD, and since 1 AD immediately followed 1 BC, a person who was born in 20 BC and died in 20 AD would have been 39, not 40, when he died. 

2 There is also evidence that Jesus was born before 4 BC -

Dionysius' calculation of Jesus' birth was wrong.  The Bible tells us that Jesus was born during the reign of King Herod the Great, who died around 4 BC. So it is more likely that Jesus was born around 7 BC, although the date of his birth is unknown.  Even whether or not he was born on December 25 is an old mystery, as there is speculation that he was born in August based on the computer simulations of when the star the 3 Kings would have followed happened. 

So when people refer to 2010 or 2012 as the end of times are they going strictly by the calendar we use - or are they going by what it should be? Should this January 1 be 2005 or should it be 2011 or even 2012 if you add the year 0. Do we have 5 years to go to the end of times or 7 years to 2012 or are we already safely past the 2010 deadline and only have to worry about the 2012 deadline.

Or is it all a bunch of hooey and maybe the Mayans calendar ended in 2012 because they didn't feel like going any further or their civilization ended before they went any further. And alternately was 2010 a number picked from a hat as a nice round number?

Ok, I have previewed this post about 10 times and changed it to try to make it make sense - hopefully I succeeded -- if not blame lack of sleep and needing more coffee. Not to mention I have a headache from trying to figure AU, BC, AD dates.


jm

Different civilizations have different ways of calculating time, and there's no evidence that the planet actually cares what year it is. To the Chinese, 2004 is actually 4702. To the Jews, this is 5765. To the Moslem world, this is 1475 (dates begin at the birth of Mohammad.)

For the ancient Athenians, it's about 2500 years after the reign of the First ARchon. To the ancient Romans, it's about 2700 after the Founding of Rome. It's been about 6 billion years since the Earth coalesced ("was born."

So who knows what year it is? It's simply a social and political way of counting time. Don't let an artificial set of numbers spook you -- remember, we went through all of this during the Y2K scare and we'll go through it again in 2012... and after nothing happens THEN, then we'll get another round of people predicting another Ominous End of the Earth in a few years after that.

And for the Aztecs (the ones whose calendar folks are getting spooked over) it would be a certain year in the time of a certain ruler... and time to carve a new calendar.

[edit on 24-12-2004 by Byrd]

I thought that 2012 was the American translation of the Mayan calendar's end date... Am I wrong...

Originally posted by Syntax
I thought that 2012 was the American translation of the Mayan calendar's end date... Am I wrong...

You're correct... in the sense that "December 31st" is our calendar's end date. When it passes, the world does not end. Instead, we get a new calendar.

I am seriously thinking of packaging "end of the world" survival kits.

People are flipping out over incorrectly translated dates, teachings, writings, and the mayan calendar. There is no gain in telling people the truth, only in supplanting fear. I am beginning to realize what the dark ages were about.

hmm, what should the survival kit hold....;

1 each copy of Mayan calendar, Injection molded polyethylene, for people to track the end times.

1 each copy of david ickes writings, to form basis for a new civilization

1 each box of twinkies, frozen dinners, quart of freeze dried Tang

1 each crate of Bathroom tissue

1 each latest year of playboy.....for the articles, there must be some intellectual property left to carry us forward.

Originally posted by justme1640


So when people refer to 2010 or 2012 as the end of times are they going strictly by the calendar we use - or are they going by what it should be? Should this January 1 be 2005 or should it be 2011 or even 2012 if you add the year 0. Do we have 5 years to go to the end of times or 7 years to 2012 or are we already safely past the 2010 deadline and only have to worry about the 2012 deadl


jm

the 2012 end of cycle is not linked to the scriptual 'end-of-times'

the 2012 Mayan calandar date corresponds to an Astronomical phenomena,
which is the winter solstice sun (dec 21st, 2012) rising,

BUT when it rises, it will transit the imaginary Galactic Plane at the point in the sky which has the star configuration known as 'the tree of life'...and this 'cyclic' event will happen again in around 250 million years from now.
[its amazing these stone-age peoples somehow had a series of timing systems that our computerized scientific community could only compute
in this 'last generation']

so byrds statement is properly, we get a new calendar !

I hope you all read far enough to realize that I think the whole "end of times" is a bunch of baloney -- I was trying to point out that there are different ways of marking the passage of time and that the current calendar we use is probably inaccurate to boot. But my attempt to get the facts correct and make a humorous point at the same time apparently went over like a lead balloon.

And btw toomaker -- I think the survival kit should have 2 boxes of twinkies not one Not only do they never go bad but the sugar rush from just one will keep you going for week.

jm