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SolomonBlack t1_j0egwzi wrote

Reply to comment by Trovadordelrei in The Garamantes: Rome's neighbours in the Sahara. by AugustWolf22

Reason based calendars! Up with Thermidor! Vive le Revolution!

At any rate yeah this supposed ‘common era’ is even less correct because it directly applies Eurocentrism to everyone with something that isn’t the least bit held in common around the world.

If using BC/AD is that much of an issue clearly we need to adopt a new calendar from zero, a universal century or some such.

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gc3 t1_j0f6meh wrote

OK lets go to Unix time, the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970!

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masshiker t1_j0fnqoi wrote

Nobody actually knows when Jesus was born.it's just guess at this point.

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SolomonBlack t1_j0fypcl wrote

Nobody knows but it is not a guess. That would imply you could lob out almost any answer which would be very lazy (and indeed unscientific) scholarship.

Like we have references in multiple Gospels to him being born in the reign of Herod the Great so 1 AD is rather probably off because the man was already dead then. Though there is some dispute about when Herod died too. Ancient dates are hard and every nice pretty date you see comes from sorting out and connecting X year of so-n-so's reign or who was consul. And taking on faith your source remembered it right.

Meanwhile even discounting mentions of his birth Pontius Pilate was only governor of Judea for a limited period so one can work backwards from there as to what might be an appropriate age.

So Anno Domini is most likely late by a few years but probably still within a decade of whatever the real number is, which maybe isn't bad for work done in 525 on such a low key historical figure.

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