"'At no point in world history has there ever been a single uniform dating system that's unanimously agreed to be shared by everyone,' says Dr. Carlos Noreña, a scholar of ancient history at University of California-Berkeley. 'In the Middle Ages and Antiquity, there were multiple eras jostling for recognition.'" [1]
Quoting further from the source cited above [2]:
Into this calendar chaos, a humble monk by the name of Dionysius Exiguus stepped in. “He said, wait a minute, wait a minute, why are we dating things by the founding of the city of Rome?” Noreña says. “That doesn't make any sense. Surely we can find a better event to start counting from. Of course, his choice was the birth of Christ.” Dionysius took his abacus, crunched some numbers, and figured out when Jesus was born. He wrote a letter to a bishop named Petronius detailing his plans for Year One, designating it as anno Domini (A.D.), which translates to “the year of our Lord.”
That said, Dionysius forgot to carry some ones. “The Gospel of Matthew claims [Jesus] was born in the time of Herod the Great, who died in 4 B.C.,” writes David Ewing Duncan in his book Calendar: Humanity's Epic Struggle to Determine a True and Accurate Year. “This means the birth must have occurred before this date. Other Gospels and historical sources suggest dates ranging from 6 or 7 B.C. to A.D. 7, though most historians lean towards 4 or 5 B.C. This means the year 1996 or 1997 was probably the true year 2000 in the anno Domini calendar, if one does the arithmetic without a year 0.”
While Dionysius' concept didn't take off immediately, he got some help from a monk pal who used A.D. in a few of his textbooks, which were then taught by Christian missionaries. And then, in our year 731 A.D., the historian Venerable Bede used A.D. in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. That bout of publicity coincided with the spread of Christianity and—just as the Romans spread their Year One during their era of supremacy—the concept of 1 A.D. as Year One continued. The last big holdouts were Portugal, which adopted the system in 1422, and the Russian empire, which gave in by 1700. By the 19th century, most everyone was on board.
It's worth pointing out the concept of B.C.—that is, “before Christ”—wasn't introduced until 1627, by a French astronomer. He reasoned that the world existed before 1 A.D., so decided to figure that in by counting backwards. Due to its logic, B.C. was an easier, and quicker, sell.
Having a calender the world now uses is just one of the good things that came out of the life and death of Jesus, the Son of God.
Another is the salvation of souls, even though many would disagree, but that is beside the point.
The point is that evil had allowed Eve and Adam to choose freely to love and obey God or not. In order to choose freely and to love freely, evil has to play a part. Without evil, without temptation, one will never know what to compare good to. Eve and Adam, led by evil, gave to all the pains of life. Without experiencing the pains of life and acknowledging the unending torments of Hell, one will never appreciate the eternal joys of Heaven, and will take it for granted.
Eve and Adam took perfection in the Garden of Eden for granted. They did not know how good they had it. They became proud. Eve was tempted by Satan. She wanted more. She desired power. She wanted to be like God, as do many of her descendant sons and daughters today. Like her ancestor mother, these sons and daughters believe that they deserve everything.
To believe that one is deserving is to aggrandize the ego. The bigger the ego the less room there is for the good. The converse is equally true: the deeper the humility the greater and the purer is the good.
This week is Holy Week, and it is Christ's perfect humility that perfected goodness. For this to occur, it was necessary for evil of all kinds to enter into the life of Christ, beginning with Herod who wanted the Child Jesus killed, then there was Satan in the desert tempting Christ, and so on until Christ's death on the cross.
Christ by His Humility and by His obedience to God absorbed all that was evil in man, and by His blood and wounded heart He saved man from himself.
[1] https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-year-would-be-that-of-1-million-years-past-our-lord-spaghetti-monsters-bday
[2] Ibid.
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