I just read this blog post about a point that has been bothering me. Why do we use the AD, or CE and BC/BCE time system? A Roman historian was the one who decided to change all the dates in history into the AD system.
This show the arrogance and bias of the Roman Empire https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/jan/13/how-ancient-rome-counted-years
I feel that it when we are teaching about dates in history, we should use the calendar that the historical people used themselves and then in parenthesis, put our dates.
In Jewish history this is what some scholars do. When I read about the Ba'al Shem Tov, the stories often put the Hebrew date and then the common date. This gives respect to the culture and how those people counted.
Our BC/BCE dates might be misleading and false. To quote: "The monk who calculated AD from AUC forgot that the Emperor Augustus ruled for four years as Octavian before he changed his name, and this error remains in the system. Also, as he counted in Roman, not Arabic, numerals, he did not include the years 0 BC and AD 0." italics added.
So with this information our modern calendar is plainly wrong, but I am not going to try to change it now. Changing it would add more years to my life and I don't want to be quite so old yet!
If we are going to talk about dates in China, we should use the Chinese calendar, events in the Muslim lands, the Muslim Calendar and of course Jews the world over still use the Jewish calendar. BTW, what is the Jewish year? תשע"ט or 5779!
This show the arrogance and bias of the Roman Empire https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/jan/13/how-ancient-rome-counted-years
I feel that it when we are teaching about dates in history, we should use the calendar that the historical people used themselves and then in parenthesis, put our dates.
In Jewish history this is what some scholars do. When I read about the Ba'al Shem Tov, the stories often put the Hebrew date and then the common date. This gives respect to the culture and how those people counted.
Our BC/BCE dates might be misleading and false. To quote: "The monk who calculated AD from AUC forgot that the Emperor Augustus ruled for four years as Octavian before he changed his name, and this error remains in the system. Also, as he counted in Roman, not Arabic, numerals, he did not include the years 0 BC and AD 0." italics added.
So with this information our modern calendar is plainly wrong, but I am not going to try to change it now. Changing it would add more years to my life and I don't want to be quite so old yet!
If we are going to talk about dates in China, we should use the Chinese calendar, events in the Muslim lands, the Muslim Calendar and of course Jews the world over still use the Jewish calendar. BTW, what is the Jewish year? תשע"ט or 5779!
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