2006-08-12 05:06:00 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Other - Society & Culture
It means Common Era and Before Common Era. It's a replacement for the A.D. (Anno Domini or Year of the Lord) and B.C. (Before Christ) system of naming dates, but the year numbers are the same. I believe it's used mainly by people like teachers, who don't want people to sue them for mentioning Christianity in school.
2006-08-12 05:14:06 · answer #1 · answered by telcontar328 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
These are the latest terms for AD and BC respectively (CE= Common Era, BCE= Before (the) Common Era). The problem stems from when Christ was determined to have been born. More recent historical dating technology and extant records indicate that Christ was actually born at the point in time that we have (had) been denoting as 4BC (or 5BC, depending on your source). But of course, Christ can't be born before He's born (BC= Before Christ), so the CE/BCE "device' (an academic "cheat" of sorts) was created. It allows historians to continue to use the conventional numbering system while remaining historically accurate by basically attaching a caveat that says: "Yeah, I know the numbering system is off and Christ wasn't really born when when BC/AD says He was, but I'm gonna keep using the wrong numbers anyway.". The alternative, which would be absolutely impossible to implement, short of a time machine and one hell of a "search-and-replace" feature would be to redate ABSOLUTELY EVERY written piece of text that has a date in it somewhere since BC/AD was first coined.
2006-08-12 12:22:07 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
C.E.:Christ Era and B.C.E.:Before Christ Era
2006-08-12 12:09:05 · answer #3 · answered by Francine S 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
C.E. means the Common Era from 000 A.D. to present. B.C.E. means Before Common era and refers to ???? B.C. to 000 B.C., or anytime before A.D.
2006-08-12 12:11:41 · answer #4 · answered by John B 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
ce bce
2006-08-12 12:11:50 · answer #5 · answered by poogie 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋