In the ancient world, were years counted in reference to the birth of Christ?
dating and chronology
The word chronology derives from the Latin chronologia, which in turn comes from the Greek chrónos meaning 'time', and lógos, meaning 'discourse'. It refers to a system for organizing and classifying events based on their sequence in time, which is divided in a regular manner. To apply it, one must know how to measure time.
Measuring time means being able to date events, which involves:
- Using and understanding dates by knowing the system used for numbering years;
- Being able to arrange dates in chronological order;
- Knowing the different ways centuries and millennia are indicated.
- The Jews is 3761 BCE (the creation of the world);
- The Greeks is 776 BCE (the first Olympic Games);
- The Romans is 753 BCE (the founding of Rome);
- The Muslims is 622 CE (the start of Muhammad's preaching);
- The Christians is 1 CE (the birth of Jesus Christ).
Today, we use BCE (Before Common Era) / CE (Common Era) for dates instead of BC/AD: it refers to exactly the same event as BC/AD. The use of common era in place of AD first appears in German in the 17th century CE and in English in the 18th. The use of this designation in dating has nothing to do with removing Christ from the calendar but only everything to do with accuracy when dealing with historical events and including people of all faiths in discussions of history.
Roman numbers
The years before Christ are counted backward. Rome was founded in 753 BCE: was 754 BCE the year before or after the founding of the city? Since we count backward, the higher the number indicating the date, the further back in time we are from the birth of Christ. Therefore, 754 BCE is the year before the founding of Rome.
When no specific notation is given, it is understood to mean after Christ (CE). For example, 1769 means '1769 years after Christ', and centuries follow in this sequence:
… > 2nd century BCE (200–101 BCE) > 1st century BCE (100–1 BCE) > 1st century CE (1–100 CE) > 2nd century CE (101–200 CE) > … > 6th century CE (501–600 CE) > …
Similarly:
… > 1st millennium BCE (1000–1 BCE) > 1st millennium CE (1–1000 CE) > …
Time was also measured by generations. In some places, it was dated according to the eponymous names of magistrates or priests (whose name marked the year), in others, by lists of kings and the years of their reign, or by eras (local eras, Olympic eras, monarchical eras, dynastic eras, sacred eras, and so on). For example:
- Among the Egyptians and Babylonians, who celebrated New Year festivals, each year was named after the most significant event (the year of the flood, the victory, the census, the invasion, etc.) or after the name of the king, with the years of his reign counted from the day he ascended the throne;
- Among the Athenians and Romans, the year began with the inauguration of the eponymous magistrate, the archon, or the consul.
Dionysius Exiguus (Scynthia, 5th-6th century)
The custom of counting years after the birth of Christ (CE) was introduced by the monk Dionysius Exiguus, in Latin Dionysius Exiguus, known as "the little one," a nickname he chose as a sign of humility toward Saints Dionysius the Areopagite and of Alexandria.
Dionysius (ca. 470–544) was born in the province of Lesser Scythia (modern-day Dobruja, located between the lower Danube and the Black Sea) and lived in Rome, where he became a member of the Curia in the late 5th and early 6th centuries, a few decades after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 CE). He was a learned man, an expert in Sacred Scripture, astronomy, mathematics, and Greek.
In his time, years were counted starting from:
- The founding of Rome (753 BCE),
- The ascent to power of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (248 CE),
- The beginning of time as calculated from the ages of the Biblical patriarchs.
Anno Domini is short for the Latin phrase anno ab Incarnatione Domini nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ") or anno ab Nativitate Domini nostri Iesu Christi ("in the year of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ"). These two interpretations of AD arise from the fact that the date of Jesus' birth, originally set by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215) in the twenty-eighth year of Augustus's reign, was placed by Dionysius in the 754th year ab Urbe condita (from the founding of Rome). According to Christian doctrine, the moment of Jesus's Incarnation is his conception, not his birth. However, since tradition holds that Jesus was born on December 25th, both conception and birth occurred in the same year (the conception is celebrated on March 25th, the Feast of the Annunciation, exactly nine months before Christmas).
In numbering the years from the birth of Christ, there was no year zero. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans had a symbol or a word for zero. The concept of zero was then unknown in Europe and was introduced only in the 13th century, eight centuries later. Therefore, Dionysius counted directly from 1 BCE to 1 CE. Dionysius thus established that the year preceding 1 CE (the year Jesus was born according to his calculations) was 1 BCE. However, according to his mistaken calculation, Jesus was born on December 25th of 753 BCE (the supposed year of the founding of Rome, ab Urbe condita) instead of 749. Today, most scholars believe that Jesus's birth should be placed between 7 and 4 BCE, based on the interpretation of the Gospels, meaning a few years before Dionysius's calculated date.
Essentially, Dionysius devised a chronological system that linked events occurring after the birth of Christ to that event. For events preceding it, he counted from the creation of the world as conventionally determined.
Dionysius's numbering system spread throughout the Christian world, initially in Italy, then in the Frankish and English kingdoms by the 8th century. By the 10th century, it was known across Western Europe.
The custom of counting years before the birth of Christ (BC) was introduced in the 18th century to unify the reference point for dating. In reality, centuries earlier, the Venerable Bede had already partially used a BC dating system, but it had not gained widespread use.
A depiction of the Venerable Bede (on CLVIIIv) from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493
Last update: September 30, 2024
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