BCE/CE

I thought it might interest some of the posters to this Forum to know that BCE/CE don't "really" mean Before The Common Era/Common Era, but that they "really" mean Before the Vulgar Era/The Vulgar Era. Additionally, the terms BCE/CE are deceptive and a fraud.

I am sure that you will be as fascinated and informed as I was concerning these insight as contained in a discussion now going on in the Christianity forum on Librarything. http://www.librarything.com/topic/138752
Why not join in and add your contributions?

True, the C stands for Common - Vulgar doesn't start with a C -, but you can also read it as "Christian". That it was misused, or at least misunderstood - and I agree with you there - is another matter.

P.s.: For those of you interested in these matters I advize The Calendar

1 > Your arguments in that thread are thoroughly bizarre.

Sheesh, I didn't bother - just responded to the OP as is.

He's a bit of a weirdo isn't he. Not that I mind weirdos - I'm one myself (in quite another way though).

~ 3-4

I would be delighted to hear any of your observations on how the terms BCE/CE are used in recent (the past hundred years or so) texts on ancient history.

Could you give me those observations, with references? I would be most grateful, as I certainly wouldn't want to seem to be a "weirdo" to any of you scholars.

Thoroughly bizarre, and weirdly unable to grasp the argument. Nobody is asserting common means "vulgar" except as vulgar means "commonly used." Nobody is asserting that they are frauds. (What would "fraud" even mean in such a context?) I can't decide if it's made up or misunderstood, but either way this is argument touched with insanity.

As to your second point, Tim, see Posts 11 (and the webpage referenced therein) and 34 in the referenced thread. Guess you missed those in your careful reading and analysis of what was being said.

As to the former, I don't have a clue what you are babbling about. I am simply repeating in the OP what Os has said in the referenced thread, but perhaps you missed those posts as well?

Get over it man. CE / BCE just means that for conveniance sake people are willing to take that date - otherwise totally arbitrary - as point zero. No more, no less.

The date as such is very unlikely to be correct, check out Herod the Great dying 4 years BCE (so, at least 4 years before the massacre of the innocents supposedly took place). But that isn't really the point. You could choose any point in time you might like - and since so many of us have become accustomed to "Christian" count - okay, fine. I could also start using dates from the foundation of Rome (Ab Urbe Condita) or any other system - it doesn't matter.

And that's the real point: It doesn't matter.

>8

Agreed. I think it should be used in popular contexts simply because people know it, and comprehension is important. If one were doing it again, you'd not use a 6th century system that got its starting date wrong. But we're not doing it again, any more than we're rethinking 360. Dionysius the Short and the Sumerians won; let's deal with it.

Anyway, the most commonly-used system in the world is used by computers and is Unix Time, which begins January 1, 1970. The rest, as they say, is just display.

Have a good 1341087906, peeps.

Exactly. Try explaining people that those monks missed a year and that, therefore, it's only 2011 this year - not 2012. Not going to happen and it's, ultimately, not that important.

P.s: > 9: Hold on, computers are just tools. You wouldn't leave a thing like that up to a screwdriver, would you?

>10

Worse, we aren't even quite sure of the right answer!

You wouldn't leave a thing like that up to a screwdriver, would you?

Not the tools, but the people who made the tools—programmers! Woo-hoo.

Actually, LibraryThing stores some month dates, like popularity, in "ltmonth," the number of months since January 2005. (LT's first data is from June, but that seemed fiddly.) We store it that way because it fits in a tinyint, which takes up two bytes, not the four bytes a Unix Timestamp requires. When keeping track of the popularity of tens of millions of works for every month, every byte helps. However, it means LibraryThing has a 2047 problem. But that's around when I kick the bucket anyway.

you're talking to yourself.

You look mahvelous!

> 11: Tim: you're talking to yourself.

5 > I never claimed to be a scholar.

What's funny is that your interpretation would invalidate or weaken about every argument for BCE/CE I've ever heard. Maybe I'll bring you up next time someone tells me I should switch.

Switch from what to what - naughty naughty ;-)

14 > Switch from BC/AD to BCE/CE, of course. I wouldn't want arguments for my current preference undermined, would I?

(Since lawecon seems apt to leap to the conclusion that people who prefer BC/AD are Christian fundamentalists or dogmatics, it can't hurt mentioning I'm an atheist. I'm somewhat bemused by suggestions that BCE/CE is more respectful towards me.)

~13

Interesting, how would the conversation go? Would it be:

"BCE/CE refer to a distinction before and after there were Christians, or at least the possibility of Christians. That is why both terms turn around "common." "Common" implies two or more. A time period can be "common" only if there are two or more."

"That interpretation would invalidate or weaken about every argument for BCE/CE I've ever heard."

"Say what?"

~15

My goodness, I apologize for you not being part of the club. Part of the thread that you may not have read addresses that point relative to Muslims.

Of course, none of that has anything to do with what the distinction BCE/CE means or why it turns around the term "common," but I guess the lesson of the other thread is that relevance doesn't matter in one of these discussions.

#9 Have a good 1341087906, peeps.

1234567890 since that Computer Epoch isn't that long ago.

RE #5 "weirdo" : I shouldn't have said that. My apologies.

Granted : of course there is some cultural bias in using the system - it reflects the current dominance of the western world.

I'm not sure, but I think I personally started using BCE/CE as a student. By now, it's just what I'm used to. I don't prefer it over BC/AD out of principle - I just happen not to use those *. The fact remains that we still use the underlying dating system. Well, why not? This one is convenient because it's widely understood. To me it's something like how we keep time. There's no objective reason to use the Greenwich meridian, but it's as good as any other.

(* Maybe because in my native Dutch the equivalent VC/NC never caught on in the first place.)

Now if only we could persuade Americans to do away with pounds, miles, gallons, etc. and adapt to commonly understandable measurements ;-)

17 > Which point is allegedly addressed in the discursion about Muslims? (And yes I read it - it was part of the reason I characterized your arguments in that thread as thoroughly bizarre.)

As for relevance, I remain to be convinced that your ideas have any relevance to the bulk of BCE/CE users, or to the origin of the designations.

16 > No, it'd go something like this:

They: You should switch to BCE/CE, because BC/AD excludes non-Christians.

Me: According to online expert lawecon, the "Common" Era refers to Christians and Jews only, so if BC/AD is exclusive, BCE/CE excludes almost as many people, the vast majority of non-Christians not being Jewish.

They: Why on earth should I care what that nitwit thinks?!?

~21

The point about Muslims addressed in posts 30, 41 and 44 in the other thread and alluded to above.

Thank you for the compliment. Given the IQ of most Librarything posters I've run across, I rather agree with your observation. I'm certain that most of them would feel much more comfortable with a good space opera sci fi book.

For the dozenth of so time, I never made any claims about the "origins of designations." That was Os' hobbyhorse. Generally, I could care less from what obscure other terms a ordinarily used "designation" today arose. I do, however, care about the meaning of such designations - today, particularly when other people are making up things about how they are used.

If you had read the other thread you would know the above, and you would know that the OP in this thread is sarcastic concerning a topic which I presumed experts in ancient history would find as amusing as I found it. Apparently not. I guess the Librarything mentality is universal within Librarything.

~22

There you go, you could figure it out. Now go away and play with your bouncy red ball.

#11 We store it that way because it fits in a tinyint, which takes up two bytes which is one ‘word’ of storage. Going back to #9 about the 360, there is the radian which is not to be confused with the degree¹ which I understand at least one climate scientist has done.

---

¹ It'd be nice to have the <sup> and <sub> HTML tags allowed.

As to the #21–#24 ding dong, if you walk through
a multi-faith cemetery you might find more ways
people have used to mark time.

23 > You're not even trying, are you? What point made in #15 is supposedly addressed in said messages? As for the rest of the post, you're repeating yourself.

26 > More ways than what?

Lots of dating schemes have been used through history (few of which are likely to be found in any given multifaith cemetery), but what's that got to do with posts 21-24?

>25

How did you get it to sup without the sup?

HAHA This is the weirdest LT thread I have ever read. I'm not sure what the point is in the argument if there is one but I guess all dating is arbitrary but we must have points of reference so we pick one or another. I like BCE/CE simply because it corresponds to the common BC/AD without the religious implication. I do get a kick out of those who read implications into various "dates" like the year 2000, as if these numbers really meant anything beyond the reference point assigned by someone

Ancient History seems to be the place for controversy these days.
Whatever happened to the "Recent Books of note" thread-the one where the "there are no facts in history"guy was? I clicked on "ignore this thread" and now I can't get it back to see what's going on.

not sure if this is the one you mean, but here's the most recent "New History Books of Note" thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/59165

Superscripts without sup

¹ I found it on this page: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/bylanguage/mathchart.html#super

Robert

That's more than cool; it's cool²!
Thank you!

#28
beyond #32
escape to the Unicode character repertoire at code point as ‘&#number;’

To you all: I don't know what it all means, but I just couldn't put it down! It took me back to my working days listening to the computer techs. Thank you :-)