Monday, December 19, 2022

It is the 19th of December 2022. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

A happy Monday to you- only 6 more nights of sleep till Christmas- I got an email from Scott in Topeka who had a question about a beloved Christmas hymn, and I was going to answer it but found so much good stuff it has been pushed to the weekend edition- our last in a series of Christmas. Also- this week a series of articles are running on the mothership website- Christmas with the Psalms- I have written one of them, as have other good folks, so check that out.

So- Mark in Bremerton wrote, and I thought it was a useful question- so we will get to that instead. Of course, we all know Bremerton from the MXPX song “Move to Bremerton”- those guys were from Bremerton, as is Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie and the Postal Service- also Alex Smith- the Utah Ute and number one overall pick of the 49ers- and L. Ron Hubbard went to high school there. Also, blackberries. Lots of blackberries.

Ok- Mark asks, “I have a question regarding the development of the calendar. At what point did the Calendar transform into the BC / AD calendar? 

And, in the same line of thought, what were the calendars operating in the time of the Lord Jesus”

The modern business world has done a lot to flatten the variety of calendars used- even in places that have no connection to the Gregorian reforms of the 16th century that gave much of the western church a new calendar (you might remember that because it was a Pope who ordered the reforms, many protestant countries didn’t take to the new, and frankly better, calendar for some time).

So- when we go back to the ancient civilizations, they will have different ways of reckoning time. Often times the year 1 was the year of a certain king and you counted time by the lists of kings- the farthest we can go back is in the 4th millennium BC with the unification of upper and lower Egypt under the king called both Menes and Narmer.

There was a way of counting time for the Jewish people- they reckoned the creation of the world in 3761 BC (note I’m using our modern notation). They would call this year 5783.  

But after the Babylonian exile, the Jews would use the calendar of whatever kingdom had jurisdiction over Palestine. So, we know that at the time of Jesus, the Romans were ruling, and they counted time from AUC or ab urbe condita

- from the foundation of the city (Rome).

Now- everybody is counting time differently- and in the early church- while still using AUC in the west, there was no definitive calendar, and this made for a liturgical problem- the church year- especially Easter- would be celebrated at different times, and this was problematic.

So- in the 500s (what we call the 500s), a monk named Dionysius Exiguus decided to figure out what year Jesus was born so that we could make that year 1- after all, often you went for the foundations of kingdoms and kings. So- he figured Jesus was born in 753 AUC, and thus January 1^st, 754 would be 1 AD (anno domini, the year of our Lord).

But there’s a problem, he was wrong. We know that he was wrong because the birth of Jesus took place during the reign of Herod- and that Herod the Great was dead by 750. This is why sometimes a smart Alec will say, “actually, Jesus was born in 4 BC or some such- this isn’t some great own- we’ve known this since the Middle Ages- but once we adopted something, we weren’t going to mess everything up again.

In someplace, they used the reign of Constantine as year 1, and Spain used 716 AUC, the year Rome conquered Spain.

So- to recap:

Jesus was born around 750 AUC. But not after 750 when Herod died, even though the guy who invented BC/AD used 753 as Jesus' birthdate. This kind of messes up our nativity scene, but be of good cheer- it’s not important because we know exactly when it happened, but because it happened- in real-time in the days of Caesar Augustus and Herod the Great in the town of Bethlehem- somebody cue Linus.

Thanks for the question, Mark!

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary- from the prayer of Hanna in 1 Samuel:

“The Lord brings death and makes alive;
    he brings down to the grave and raises up.

The Lord sends poverty and wealth;
    he humbles and he exalts.

He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes
    and has them inherit a throne of honor.

“For the foundations of the earth are the Lord’s;
    on them he has set the world.

He will guard the feet of his faithful servants,
    but the wicked will be silenced in the place of darkness.

“It is not by strength that one prevails;

    those who oppose the Lord will be broken.
The Most High will thunder from heaven;
    the Lord will judge the ends of the earth.

“He will give strength to his king
    and exalt the horn of his anointed.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 19th of December 2022, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man for whom AUC is 1888- West Lafayette forever! He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose Rams are led into Lambeau tonight by Baker Mayfield- we won the super bowl last year… geez… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.