On 5/18/05, Richard Rabinowitz <rickyrab(a)eden.rutgers.edu> wrote:
By the way, Islamic years and solar years have different lengths.
Also, by the way, it's not exactly the number of years since Jesus's
birth, as the writers of the New Testament were racking their brains out
trying to figure what happened when - and made mistakes, of course. This
led to a monk, the one who invented the BC/AD system to begin with, making
a "best guess" on the basis of inconsistent evidence in scripture. The
upshot: now folks think Jesus was born in 4 BCE, or 6 BCE, or some such
year.
The monk was Dennis the Short, according to Stephen Gould. He goes
into the whole thing in some detail.
--
Pete, wondering if WP does