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I was just thinking about this the other day, what with the New Year coming..... why does the entire world live in the year 2004 if it's relative to Jesus' birth? Obviously, we'll soon be in 2005AD - anno domini - which is loosely translated as 'after Christ'... but this refers only to Christianity. So why is almost the entire world (as far as I know) living as if it were 2005 years after Christ's birth? Wouldn't the entire world have to be a Christian? Please, feel free to beat on me if I missed some important element here, thanks

actually anno domini (sp)translated is:-- in the year of the lord ---so that might offer some explanation

It does, thanks.... but that would still mean every religion's lord or leader would have come into being on Jesus' birthday. Which doesn't make sense

yeah i was gonna type something trying to explain that but im way to tired to remember all the facts id need to make sense, but basically everything we use today comes from one society or another, and the starting year of our calender just happens to be from the christian faith. The same way aquaducts come from the romans. I hope that helps some, like i said im having trouble puttin my thoughts in order this morning

oh and no harm no foul on what you thought before that AD meant, I thought for the longest time that it was BC=before christ AD=after death, and i always wondered what happened to the 33 yrs in between.........guess now i know lol

I knew AD stood for anno domini but I always assumed it meant literally, 'after Christ', because of BC Thanks though, this question's been bugging me for a while now

This is why the United Nations uses C.E., which is the proper way of putting A.D....C.E. stands for Common Era...And B.C.E. = B.C.....B.C.E. = Before Common Era

Yeah, but because of the way I've been raised, AD and BC feel better. Ce and BCE just sounds kinda weird.

Is it just me or is everyone missing the point? Maybe I am

Anyway, why does the whole world live by BC/AD or BCE/CE? It's in reference to Jesus, who is the saviour of one religion. One.

i guess the whole world adopted the roman calendar, and the roman (gregorian) calendar was aligned to the birth of christ as year 0, because the christian belief was duty at some of time in the roman empire...

Thankyou!!

*feels dumb*

I should have known that

damn, very good duron, i had something along those lines in my head but no way of me puttin it together

clapping It seemed an impossible question when I first thought of it, now it's quite obvious

Yeah....I thought I would have something to add, but it's all been covered, really

yeah especially since not the whole world measures its years in this calendar. I mean Europew and America and some more but if the otherse would actually use it then only because they were conquereds by europeans or they want to trade with the US

Most of the world then Enough to raise the query.....

WELL... That ain'T most of the world just what we western people care for.

roughly translated, "the year of our lord"

there's a bible code, dunno if it's real, but it has like 100,000 to 1 chance of being how accurate and close together it is. Anyway, it says "giant earthquake" "2010" "destruction"
in the original version before all translations. also "giant comet" "2012" and "annialation" were found in the same "matrix" Again, the possibilitys of these letters so close together in the same pattern is 100,000 to 1.

Because at one point, during the Dark/Middle Ages, Christianity ruled over almost the entire known world, and what they didn't rule(Islamic countries) they went to war with and disregarded their religion almost completely.

Anyway, since the church ruled, what they said, went. They created a calendar based on Jesus, and it stuck.

the calender was based on the Julian calender from Julius Ceaser, he wanted the year to begin on January. The Julian calender marked a year as 12 months with 365 days, every forht year was a leap year because of the almost six extra hours beyond 365 days in a tropical year (.Tropical year is the actual length of time it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun.)
The year was set by the church and started with year 0 AD (the year of the Lord) The calender was altered by pope Gregor XIII.


READ THIS

I know. You said it yourself, the year was set by the church. And it was altered by the head of the church.

Shit, Julius even has a month named after him. July.

It might be me but tons of ppl (muslim and others) don't live in the year "2005"