How did we measure days, months, and years before Christ?

Question

How did we arrive at the dates 500BC or even 2000BC if there were no official callenders at the time?

Answer 1

Christ would not have recognized the calendar named after him.There are two distinct features of a calendar: year length , etc., and the arbitrary zero point from which you count the years. Christian era was introduced by Dionysius Exiguus about AD530. Christ's birth year was calculated to fix the zero point. As recent research has shown , Christ was not born in zero AD but about 4 BC. Christmas and Easter are pre-Christian festivals incorporated into the calendar; they represent winter solstice and spring equinox respectively.

This caledar , the current version of which is properly called Gregorian calendar , is a continuation of the Egyptian calendar , which had an accurate solar-year length , and months decoupled from the moon. There are two more popular calendars. (1)The luni-solar calendar was first introduced in Ancient Iraq. Its year consists of 12 or 13 lunar months. ( Jewish , Indian ,Chinese calendars are luni-solar.(2)The Hejira calendar comprises 12 lunations , and is decoupled from seasons.

Answer 2

Luke tells us that at the time Jesus was born, Quirinus of the governor for the first time and Herod the Great was alive. Monks in the Middle Ages (when the division was first created) did not have a records to show them when Herod died, and only records that showed when Quirinus was governor the second time. They set the date based on when Quirinus was governor the second time. Since then, additional discoveries have documented that Herod the Great died in the spring of 4 BC, and Quirinus was governor the first time from 6 to 4 BC. When the monks created the original division (600 years after the actual birth), they were wrong on the date the selected. But at that time it had been in use for several hundred years so they never bothered to correct the error. So the date is off by somewhere between 4 and 6 years.

Answer 3

Take a look at the Jewish calender. If you look at the year you will see we are in the 4600's according to it. Time is measured by whatever point in time is important to them at the time. I think year 1 A.D. is supposed to represent something like the 12th year of Christ. His Bar mitzva age. The Romans also had a calender that started with the theoretical beginning of the Roman Empire. The Aztecs had a calender. So did the Egyptians. In fact every civilization has had its own calender. People want to have a way of measuring time in a way that they can identify with. It's part of what makes us human. B.C. is a way to keep track of time before the current Julian calenders year one starts.

Answer 4

Calendars date back long before Christ.

The Egyptians had them, as did the Romans. The Asian civilizations have also had calendars dating back centuries before Christ.

Also, there is a Jewish calendar that predates the Christian calendar. There were numerous official calendars and the Christian calendar simply was adapted to the old Roman calendar with some changes.

Answer 5

http://www.chabad.org/holidays/jewishnewyear/default.asp

http://www.chabad.org/holidays/jewishnewyear/calendar_events.asp "5767=2006"

According to this site, we are in the Jewish year 5767. The Jewish calendar is referenced as A.M. (Anno Mundi, "year of the world," or year since the world's creation).

The Roman calendar was referenced by A.U.C. ("ab urbe condita," or "from the founding of the city" [that would be Rome]).

The Oriental calendar uses terms from the Chinese zodiac (e.g., Year of the Dog).

http://www.chinapage.com/newyear.html According to this site, the Year of the Dog began on Jan. 29, 2006. This page also says that there are 3 ways to express dates in the Chinese calendar, and it is the Chinese year 4703. I'm not sure what the beginning point of the Chinese calendar is.

Answer 6

that system of dates that we are using now wasnt actually implimented till a much later time.

each people group back then had a different way of keeping time... a lot of times it was based on whoever was ruling at the time. ie: the third year of king _____. sorta make sense?

Answer 7

back then during 500 bc the people did not consider themselves to be living in 500 bc in fact they probably didnt even care. 500 bc is just a number created centuries after to reference history.

Answer 8

Ummm. there is a great misconception here. I think they used "CE" common error.. They say IE 1000000 years BCE (before common error) and so on.