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Everyone is now celebrating the Bimillennium, and very many are writing about it. Bimillennium of what? Of our era, of course: A.D. 2000. Our era is supposed to have begun with the birth of Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ was not, unfortunately, born in A.D. 1: he was born in 11 or 7 or 6 or 5 or 4 B.C. We do not know exactly when, and our sources have made no particular effort to tell us. Our era was only established by a Russian monk Dionysius Exiguus, in the sixth century A.D. – he had been asked to attack the problem by Pope John I. The theory of Dionysius (which appears, incidentally, to be based on a mathematical error) was taken up by the West, and has held the field ever since. That is why, quite illogically, we commemorate the Bimillennium today: and why governments are spending a great deal of their peoples' money to do so. But let us not, all the same, belittle this misconceived Bimillennium. For it gives a great many people the opportunity to think a lot about their lives – to turn over a new leaf, hoping confidently that their new era and behaviour will be an improvement on the past. So for that reason let us welcome the Bimillennium. But not because it is the Bimillennium of the birth of Jesus Christ, because it is not. Not that the public, as a whole, minds. Any more than it minds about the religious basis of Christmas. It is, however, in my opinion, worth recording that this religious basis exists, and that on these grounds the whole foundation of the Bimillennium is fallacious, although no doubt it will receive the most massive celebrations, and these are justified in so far as they persuade people to change and improve their lives and the life of the community to which they belong. This was certainly the case in A.D. 1000, and I hope and believe it will be the case in 2000 as well.
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References
Notes
1. Rose, H. J., Oxford Classical Dictionary (2nd ed. 1970), 1076Google Scholar.
2. Craveri, M., The Life of Jesus (1967), 45Google Scholar; SmaUwood, E. M., G&R 17 (1970), 84 f., 89 f.Google Scholar; Grant, , Jesus (1976), 71, 216Google Scholar; Gould, S. J., Questioning the Millennium: a Rationalist's Guide to a Precisely Arbitrary Countdown (1997)Google Scholar. Unknowable: Wilson, J., Jesus, the Evidence (1984), 47Google Scholar. The endeavour by H. J. Holzmann, Lehrbuch des historisch-kritische Einleitung in das Neue Testament to Place the Nativity much later, perhaps as late as A.D. 6, has not met with wide acceptance. This does not seem the place to discuss the controversial governorship of Publius Sulpicius Quirinus (Cyrenius), or the Roman census or censuses, or the Virgin Birth, or Easter, or the Massacre of the Innocents (which might not be true but tyrant-myth: Smallwood, 85). The accounts of Matthew and Luke differ from one another, and are in any case overgrown by legend: Bornkann, G., Jesus of Nazareth (1960, 1974), 53Google Scholar.
3. For Dionysius see Rose, loc. cit. McC., G. E., Encyclopaedia Britannica (1970 ed.), Vol. VII, 468Google Scholar adds the following: ‘Dionysius Exiguus, that is, Denis the Little, the surname having been adopted with humility by himself (c. 500–560), flourished as a scholar at Rome during the first half of the sixth century. Cassidorus reports that he was born in Scythia and calls him merely a monk, but tradition refers to him as an abbot. In high repute as a theologian, he was profoundly versed in the Holy Scriptures and in cannon law, and was also an accomplished mathematician and astronomer. … His greatest influence upon posterity … was his introduction of the chronology still current.’ There has also been a more recent reference to Dionysius, e.g., in Gould, op. cit.
4. Bickerman, G. F. E., Chronology of the Ancient World (1968, 1980), 81:Google Scholar ‘In AD 525, Dionysius Exiguus was asked by Pope John I to compile a new table. He used the table of the Church of Alexandria which employed the era of Diocletian … but being unwilling to reckon from the reign “of an impious persecutor”, he chose “to note the years” from the Incarnation. In his table, the year 532 ab incarnatione followed the year 247 of Diocletian (Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, , LXVII, 493).'Google Scholar
5. Harvey, A. E., Companion to the Gospels (1972), 19Google Scholar; Smallwood, , op. cit., 86Google Scholar; Encyclopaedia Brit., op. cit.; Wainwright, A. W., A Guide to the New Testament (1965), 73Google Scholar. The reasons for the mistake remain ‘somewhat obscure’: Pelikan, J., Jesus through the Centuries (1985), 33Google Scholar. The difficulties arose because of confusion about A.D. 1 and 0; cf. text. Professor Giovanni Baratta, who cautiously borrows the date 12 B.C. for the Nativity, has now spoken critically about Dionysius Exiguus.
6. ‘Our modern practice of using the B.C./A.D. dating was not devised until the sixth century’: Corbishley, T. in Longford, F., The Life of Jesus Christ (1974), 171Google Scholar. Dionysius’ table was accepted by the See of Rome and the West, but revised again and again, for example, by Bede, (Patrologia Latina, XC, 859)Google Scholar. Bickerman, op. cit., adds: ‘All ancient darings which directly or indirectly can be related to the counting of the years of Diocletian can also be converted into Julian dates.’ The reckoning of early dates backward from our era, introduced by Dionysius, is fairly recent: Rose, loc.