ORIGINS OF BC AND AD

AD

The origins of the terms BC and AD for the Christian calendar are often credited to the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus, who lived in the middle of the 6th century. However, this is only halfway accurate.
 
First of all, Dionysius was only concerned, as were other theologians of his day (the early middle ages not long after the Fall of Rome), with the correct date of Easter. But in all of his exploring of dates and calendars, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the common designation for years as being “AD” meaning “after Diocletian.” Diocletian was a Roman emperor who persecuted Christians during his rule. Dionysius thought it was wrong that Christians should use a calendar honoring him in this way. He decided to call the years following Christ's birth as "in the year of the Lord," in Latin “Anno Domini,” so the AD would remain but it would have a new meaning centering on Christ. Then he chose AC, Ante Christum, Latin for “before Christ,”  for the years preceding Christ. Obviously, that designation didn't stick.
 
Dionysius also began trying to calculate the date for the birth of Christ. He placed this date on the eighth day before the Calends of January in the year 753 “ab urbe conditâ,” ( after the founding of Rome). Eight days later became the first day of the year, January 1 of the year AD 1. ¹So, Dionysius set Jesus' birth just before AD 1. That means He was born late in the year of AD "0," right? Well, Dionysius thought not. He made that year 1 BC (really AC to him). His calendar leaped from 1 BC to 1 AD. There is no year zero. This makes for some interesting math when you calculate time periods that span across the BC-AD bridge and usually involves adding or subtracting one year to make up for the missing 0 (a slight annoyance to history teachers and students).
 
Thus, Dionysius gave us the term AD and the designation for the year 1 on our calendar.

BC

The term BC is usually credited to Saint Bede, an English monk, who in 731 AD, used it in some of his writings. Bede simply went with the English language designation of “Before Christ.” Because of Bede’s high ranking as a scholar (he is known as the Father of English History), his designation stuck.
 
Thus, we ended up with AD standing for a Latin phrase and BC standing for one in English. Just to confuse students, I suppose.

 
New Modern Terms

The majority of scholars today no longer use the terms AD or BC, instead the terms BCE and CE have taken over from the traditional terms.  BCE stands for “Before the Common Era,” and, of course, CE is simply “Common Era.” Dionysius and Bede would be disappointed to lose the significance of dating our calendar around the event of the coming of the Messiah, the Christ. So are many Christians today. But still, if you ask any historian why the dates shift from BCE to CE at that particular point in history, he or she would have to admit that the only answer is it’s the traditional date for the birth of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. So, they can call it by the new initials, but like it or not, His birth is still the pivot upon which our history turns. They can't change that.



¹Although Dionysius did a scholarly job for his day and age, he did get things a little bit wrong. Shepherds were sleeping out in the fields mainly in warmer weather, not in winter, so probably Jesus’ birth was not in December. Also, Herod the Great, whom the wise men visited, died in April of 4 BC. So Jesus must have been born before that time.

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© Laurie J. White 

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