Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: rock@sun.com (Bill Petro) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Calendars (was Re: Christmas) Message-ID: Date: 11 Sep 89 05:47:39 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 39 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu !hwt@bnr-fos.uucp (Henry Troup) writes: >In article kolassa@ysidro.uchicago.edu (Kolassa) writes: >> >>I think the above is correct; however, the number of days by which the >>Julian and Gregorian calendars disagree should be increasing. Does anyone >>know why the Jan 6 date is fixed, or know that my explanation is >>wrong? >> >>John Kolassa >On average, the two calendars slip one day further out every 72 years. >However, as the difference occur on the calculation of leap years at >the last year of the century, the slip occured all at once once in 1900, >and the next slip is 2100 AD. (2000 AD is a leap year by both systems, >I think). "Everyone knows" Jesus must have been born on December 25, A.D. 1, but it is not quite that simple, and certainly this date is wrong. Herod the Great (who killed all the babies in Bethlehem younger than 2 years of age) died in the spring of 4 B.C., and the king was very much alive during the visit of the Wise Men (Magi) in the Christmas story. Therefore Jesus would have been born before this time, anywhere from 7-4 B.C. (Before Christ, or before himself). Why then is our calender about 5 years off? It was a sixth-century Roman monk-mathematician-astronomer named Dionysis Exeguus (Dionysis the Little) who unknowingly committed what has become history's greatest numerical error in terms of cumulative effect. In reforming the calender to pivot around the birth of Christ, he dated the Nativity in the year 753 from the founding of Rome (753 a.u.c.), when in fact Herod died only 749 years after Rome's founding. The result of Dionysis' chronology, which remains current, was to give the correct traditional date for the founding of Rome, but one that is at least 4 to 7 years off for the birth of Christ. Bill Petro {decwrl,hplabs,ucbvax}!sun!Eng!rock "UNIX for the sake of the kingdom of heaven" Matthew 19:12