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Goodbye Jesus

What Year Would It Be Without Jesus?


Ex-COG

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I end up driving by this Christian owned gas station/oil lube/convenience store a few times a week, and I always look for the wacky signs they put up. Very strange to see things like "Jesus is the Reason for the Season...Super Big Soda-To-Go now 79 cents". It would have been more funny if they had put up "Jesus is coming again" before the soda-to-go ad. :HaHa: Anyway, today I went by and saw the query, "If Jesus hadn't been born, what year would it be?" Are they assuming that if our calendar, based on the assumed birthday of Jesus, wasn't in use we wouldn't have a numbered year? I can just see how the Christian owner is hoping people will take this: Driver; "Honey, look at that sign. If Jesus hadn't of been born, we wouldn't know what year it was!" Wife; "Oh dear, that must mean Jesus really is The Way, if we base the calendar on Him! Let's start going to church again--and let's pull in and spend some money at that wonderful Christian business!"

 

Hey, if Christianity hadn't taken hold, what kind of calendar would we be following? What year would it be?

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We've (only?) been using the current calandar since 1582. I don't know what calandar we'd use; I think the fall of Rome (if they could decide on a date :P ) is significant enough to be what the calandar fixates on, but that's just speculatory thinking. I don't think a calandar switch would be all that practical. For better or for worse, western civilization was shaped by the Church. This brings to mind an old billboard I once saw. It had Jesus, on the cross, with "BC" on his left and "AD" on his right. Underneath were the words "WHO SPLIT TIME?" -- so dramatic.

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There were plenty of calendars before the one we use now. In addition, some other countries use different calendars for formal and religious events, for example, India has one. Muslim countries have another. Not to mention, the fiscal calendars that many companies use.

 

Also, the Kurds have their own calendar in which the year starts on March 21st (which I didn't know til now, but find fascinating).

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar

 

The Aztecs also had their own calendar:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_calendar

 

So you see, there are plenty of calendars which don't revolve around the supposed birth of Jesus.

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So was *any* one using a calendar that could have continued until now and become the standard?

 

In 100BC what year did they call it? Was it different in each culture?

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It would depend on which culture or ideology came to dominate society in lieu of Xianity, and if they had a calendar system of their own.

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If you go to Calendrica (I think it requires Java) they have something like 29 different functioning calandars you can use. You can set it to any date for the past 10,000 years and see the results on all the calendars.

 

As for the original topic, didn't the Gregorian calendar replace the Julian one? If that's the case then the date today would be December 31, 2006 (according to the above web page).

 

mwc

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I thought we used the Gregorian Calender, after one of the popes, and it regulated the cycles of the Roman Catholic church. I'm not sure how good it is condsidering it loses a whole day every four years. I would think that the world at that time was in the process of expanding and new lands were being discovered, so much so that by the time the classicists of science were making discoveries in the late 18th century that the calender was already in too wide a use to change it. The US won't even use the metric system, there wouldn't be anyway we'd change to a better calender.

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If you go to Calendrica (I think it requires Java) they have something like 29 different functioning calandars you can use. You can set it to any date for the past 10,000 years and see the results on all the calendars.

 

As for the original topic, didn't the Gregorian calendar replace the Julian one? If that's the case then the date today would be December 31, 2006 (according to the above web page).

 

mwc

So from a Hindu perspective, this is the year 5108. From a Jewish perspective, it's 5768.

 

Reminds me of the song In The Year 2525...."In the year 2525, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, They may find..." The song goes on in succeeding verses and ends up projecting out to the year 10,000 and something. But even 2525 seemed like really futuristic science fiction. But if we go back to when man first started counting time in the form of lunar and solar cycles this is probably the year 10,000 something.

 

And people are still waiting for an apocalypse of some sort. :loser:

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The 6th year of the reign of His Most Holy Excellency Emporer George the Younger.

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I remember with the millenium scare craze how ridiculous I thought it was that people were stocking up on can goods and buying generators just because the calender year was changing from 1999 to 2000. Just goes to show you that people can be stupid and gullible.

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IMHO, it's not stupid to prepare for an emergency. People should have some canned food on hand anyway, because you never know what life may throw at you. But be sure you're preparing for the right reasons. Media hype of an event is not a good reason.

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As for the original topic, didn't the Gregorian calendar replace the Julian one? If that's the case then the date today would be December 31, 2006 (according to the above web page).

Yes, but what year would it be without the birth of Jesus? 2007 is supposedly based on the amount of years since Jesus was born (which was figured wrong anyway, as most sources now claim Jesus was born...what...around 6 or 4 B.C.? LOL; the Christian calendar is off anyway!). Even if we used the present 365 day, 12 month year, what would we count down from? Of course, without Jesus we have no Christianity, and that would radically change the history of Europe and Western Civilization. As Varokhar said,

It would depend on which culture or ideology came to dominate society in lieu of Xianity, and if they had a calendar system of their own.
Would Islam have spread north, thus putting us on the Islamic calendar? Or would we still be following the system of the Romans? This might be an impossible question to answer as it's all speculation, but I find it interesting. I don't think this was what the oil lube garage had in mind, though, when they asked the question!
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As for the original topic, didn't the Gregorian calendar replace the Julian one? If that's the case then the date today would be December 31, 2006 (according to the above web page).

Yes, but what year would it be without the birth of Jesus? 2007 is supposedly based on the amount of years since Jesus was born (which was figured wrong anyway, as most sources now claim Jesus was born...what...around 6 or 4 B.C.? LOL; the Christian calendar is off anyway!). Even if we used the present 365 day, 12 month year, what would we count down from? Of course, without Jesus we have no Christianity, and that would radically change the history of Europe and Western Civilization. As Varokhar said,

It would depend on which culture or ideology came to dominate society in lieu of Xianity, and if they had a calendar system of their own.
Would Islam have spread north, thus putting us on the Islamic calendar? Or would we still be following the system of the Romans? This might be an impossible question to answer as it's all speculation, but I find it interesting. I don't think this was what the oil lube garage had in mind, though, when they asked the question!

 

Didn't Islam grow out of Christianity as a new and improved religion on Christianity? So if we didn't have Christianity we wouldn't have Islam and its calendar either, right?

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Didn't Islam grow out of Christianity as a new and improved religion on Christianity? So if we didn't have Christianity we wouldn't have Islam and its calendar either, right?

I thought that Islam had its own beginning point, seperate from Christianity; although Mohammed was then influenced by what he knew about Christianity and Judaism. Islam may have existed without Christianity, but no doubt would have some changes in it.

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Well, this is painfully, glaringly obvious. If christianity weren't hogging the limelight, we would now be in the year:

 

72 AE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(After Elvis)..

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Hey, if Christianity hadn't taken hold, what kind of calendar would we be following? What year would it be?

 

My quick guess: 2,760 A.U.C. (Ab urbe condita = since the founding of The City)

 

With The City, of course, being Rome.

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In 100BC what year did they call it?

 

In damn large parts of what was The World back then, the year was 653 A. U. C.

 

Somehow, I like that Roman calender idea.

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I remember with the millenium scare craze how ridiculous I thought it was that people were stocking up on can goods and buying generators just because the calender year was changing from 1999 to 2000. Just goes to show you that people can be stupid and gullible.

 

To be fair, there was some reason to be afraid, with the Y2K bug hanging over the world like a sword of Damocles.

 

More of a dud than a bug, but at least it was a reason.

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Yes, but what year would it be without the birth of Jesus? 2007 is supposedly based on the amount of years since Jesus was born (which was figured wrong anyway, as most sources now claim Jesus was born...what...around 6 or 4 B.C.? LOL; the Christian calendar is off anyway!). Even if we used the present 365 day, 12 month year, what would we count down from? Of course, without Jesus we have no Christianity, and that would radically change the history of Europe and Western Civilization.

If I had to guess then I would say the reason the dates are close with the Julian calendar and the supposed birth of jesus is because Augustus kept the name (in honor of his uncle), but fixed its flaws about that time frame. So the epoch splitting at the same time is just a coincidence. More than likely the Gregorian calendar is the updated/revised Julian calendar and the whole tying to jesus thing was just the added selling point that we're now stuck with (rather than just calling it the Julian calendar 3.0 after some pagan).

 

Keep in mind they tried tying anything and everything to jesus in those days so it's no real surprise that when they updated the calendar that suddenly the epochs of time itself is divided in half by his birth.

 

I suspect that if there were no jesus that the Roman empire would be the same and so if we stayed with the Julian calendar we'd have just came into the year 2007 but we'd probably had gotten upgraded somewhere along the way. If that person was Roman they might have kept the Julian tradition, in which case, we'd probably be numbered exactly as we are (and even if they didn't they might keep the numbers the same just to make things easier). If they were egotistic they'd alter the numbers to suit themselves or their empire.

 

As a stupid peasant does it matter what year it is? It's the year of the fish or something. No numbers needed. :)

 

Would Islam have spread north, thus putting us on the Islamic calendar? Or would we still be following the system of the Romans? This might be an impossible question to answer as it's all speculation, but I find it interesting. I don't think this was what the oil lube garage had in mind, though, when they asked the question!

Islam is based on a lot of Jewish and xian beliefs and apocrypha. Without xianity the Jewish beliefs could still fuel the basic system but would it become what it is today? Would the Jews be the same as the xians and be Crusaders? It seems unlikely looking back now. They'd fight for Israel but probably not too much more. If Islam had similar "small" visions then they wouldn't spread either and stay in their holy land. Both could still have the conflict over a magical rock in Jerusalem but beyond that they'd likely stay apart and xenophobic. That's just my guess off the top of my head though...maybe I'll change my mind once I think about it a bit.

 

mwc

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To be fair, there was some reason to be afraid, with the Y2K bug hanging over the world like a sword of Damocles.

 

More of a dud than a bug, but at least it was a reason.

An excuse, maybe - but not a reason. Add fear mongering to a population that was already expecting a Great Tribulation and it was a potent mix for conspiracy theories. Clinton was gonna declare martial law for sure! The Y2K bug wasn't actually hanging over any one's head, in spite of what the idiots were saying. It was a heyday for Reconstructionists too.

 

Ed Yourdon, who has quite the track record in the computing industry, somehow bought into this hook, line and sinker. His books which he published on the topic were frequently referenced any time you dared to try and suggest that earth might actually survive Y2K unscathed. Was he just snookering everyone to make a buck? Who knows, but he now has a Fellowship at the Uni. of North Texas. He'll retire comfortably.

 

According to Wikipedia perhaps the most significant outage that actually occurred in America was as follows:

 

"In the United States, 150 slot machines at race tracks in Delaware stopped working."

 

The level of panic was so overblown that I think this event single-handedly moved a few percent of the population to 'leave behind' religion and stop worrying about end-of-the-world scares.

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