When did historians replace BC with BCE, what does it mean, and why did they start using it?

Question

While watching the History Channel I've noticed that the term "BCE" has been used in place of "BC". What does this mean? Is it a different measurement of time, or yet another stab at some sort of "Political Correctness"?

Answer 1

bc - before christ
bce - before the Common Era (introduced since not everyone is a follower of JC )

Answer 2

BCE is "Before the Common Era" with CE (which replaces AD) meaning "Common Era". I have texts that still use BC & AD into the early 1990s, but most everything from those same publishers is using BCE & CE by the early 2000s so my best guess is that it came into popular usage in the mid to late 1990s around the same time that "political correctness" swept through every other aspect of life. If you have a BC or AD date, you can safely just substitute BCE or CE for those and the date will be the same.

Answer 3

BC is Before Christ BCE is more politically correct since it stands for Before Common Era

Answer 4

BCE is a more politically correct term. It means before common era. BC meant before Christ. I think mostly it was replaced to stop using religious reference to time periods.

Answer 5

It started to be commonly used in the 1990s It is politically correct because it replaces Before Christ with Before Common Era. However, I then do not know what they would use to signify the end of BCE and the beginning of CE (Common Era).

Answer 6

CE=common era
BCE=before common era

It's to remove religious connotations from a calendrical system that has become used globally.

Anno Domini implies that this era 'belongs' to the christian god. Something non Christians see as arrogant presumption.

There is no universally agreed upon date for the birth of the historical Jesus, assuming there ever was such a person. The figures range from 3 BC/BCE to 4 AD/CE which makes the naming of the epochal divide arbitrary.

Personally I think we should scrap the lot of it and reckon the epochal dates from verifiably dated historical events. We should reckon this era from either the first moon landing in 1969 AD/CE or the first detonation of a nuclear bomb in 1945 AD/CE.

Answer 7

Yes I think it's political correctness so as not to offend faiths other than Christianity. BCE means before common era.

Answer 8

The term BCE - often meaning "Before Current Era" - has been adopted fairly recently (in the past 30 - 50 years) as a response to demands for scientific rigour in the fields of history, archaeology, anthropology, paleontology etc. It is used instead of BC - which stands for "Before Christ" - for two reasons; one, because science is essentially secular (i.e. not religious) and not all cultures follow the Julian calendar (B.C/A.D), and two, because it is more accurate (and easier to understand) to say that something existed 2000 years BCE (as in 2000 years ago) than to say that it existed in the year 6 A.D., which is an arbitrary date anyway, due to changes in the calendrical system over the centuries.

Answer 9

BC stands for before christ, BCE stands for before common era. They started using it to be politically correct for everyone who doesn't believe in christ. Either way it means before 2,006 years ago.

Answer 10

BCE=before common era
BC= before christ

It's a way to be more objective and not leniant torward one religion.