Was Christ born in AD, BC or neither?

Question

Suspend religious views for the answer. TIME is like ordinal numbers; BC negative backwards, AD positive forward from the birth of Christ. The "middle" of the numbering system is 0 which is neither positive nor negative. Where is the break between 1 second AD and 1 second BC?

Answer 1

Wait, I am confused too. If the year was 0 when Jesus was born.......then that means the year 0 was a day long!! Then suddenly it was the next year.......

Unless it was the year 0 that broke the difference between AD and BC but that could have been a BIG quawinkadink that Jesus was born then.

So honestly I am guessing when Jesus came out of the womb, but I don't know for sure.

Answer 2

One thing we know is there was no "Year 0". Aside from the generally accepted notion that he was actually born in 4 BC, his birth year would have started out as a "BC" year, but ended up as an "AD" year. If he really were born in December, it would have been a BC year right up to the point where he popped his head out, and then the ENTIRE year changed to "AD". You cannot have a year split between BC and AD. The logic for this comes from the Internal Revenue Service, which has decreed that if you have a child born up to 11:59:59:59:59PM on December 31, it is deemed that you have the kid for the entire year for purposes of deductions and exemptions. So, according to the IRS, Mary and Joseph could have claimed Jesus as an exemption for the entire year, making it an "AD" year right from the beginning, albeit after the fact.. "AD" means 'Year of the Lord' so the year in which he was born became the first AD year.

Same thing with BC and AD, only here it is a bit trickier, because before the advent of AD, BC did not exist. So BC and AD came into being the minute he popped out, and he would have done that in an AD year, even though the theory is he was born in 4 BC, which would have rendered 3,2, and 1 BC irrelevant and nonexistant. No one walking around in 1BC would have known it was 1BC until they suddenly found themselves in 1AD, and then the previous year would have been 1BC, but by then it was already past.

Answer 3

The years are numbered using an ordinal number system, also known as counting numbers. Therefore, the first year of his life would be defined as year 1 (not year 0) AD. There is no year 0 in this system. 1 A.D. comes immediately after 1 B.C. Jesus would have been 1 year old at the END of year 1. Thus, the first century finished at the END of year 100.

We are not sure of his exact birth date. When I was following discussions about this, the most probable months were April and October. April from descriptions in the story (the shepherds, the empty manger, etc.) and October for astronomical reasons (the "Star"). However, other months are also possible, with December being one of the least probable.

The end of December has always been a time of festivities for thousands of years before year 1. In the days after winter solstice, it becomes apparent that the days have finished getting shorter and have started getting longer. Fires were lit to chase away the darkness of the long night (today's version is Christmas lights, menorahs, etc.).

In Rome, the year started in March because that is when armies could leave for war. The latest they could come back is December and that is when the military year ended. Decem means 10 in Latin: December is the 10th month.
Celebrations of husbands and sons returning home and, often, of victories; distribution of war prizes and "souvenirs".
I have a feeling that, in the rest of Europe, the return of the Roman armies to Rome marked a period of "Peace on Earth".

In the 4th century, when the Christian Church was made the official religion of Rome, they tried to quelch these festivities (Saturnalia). When it was clear that they couldn't, they superimposed a religious holiday to the pagan one, making December 25 the "public" birthday of Jesus (in the same way that the "public" birthday of the British Queen is celebrated on a day different than her real birthday).

Once the Christian church was well established, a monk calculated how many years had elapsed since Jesus's birth. A generation ago, most people thought that he might have been wrong by up to 6 years. However, recent information indicate that he could have been quite accurate.
Therefore, if you use this monk's results AND a date of December 25 as the birthdate, then Jesus was born at the end of year 1 B.C., and year 1 of his life corresponds to year 1 A.D. in our calendar.

PS: In those days, in Rome, the year began in March. That is why February is the short month and gets the extra day at leap year. After that, the Christian Church decided when to begin the year (after 6th century, there was always a person appointed to keep the calendar accurate and, one of the important functions of the job, to calculate the date of Easter).

The years began on December 25 for a while, then March 25. For a long time, the year began on Easter Sunday. At other times, it was April 1 (when it was changed from that date, the people who continued to celebrate the new year on April 1 were called April fools). Finally, it was brought (back) to January 1.

January is named after Janus, a two-faced god (not two-faced in a bad sense: Janus could see in both directions -- he was the god of doors, and gates -- and, figuratively, he could see past and future). Janus is therefore a natural to oversee the gate separating the old year from the new.

2nd PS: The monk's name is Dionysius Exiguus. The AD calendar came out in what we now call Year 525 AD. So, if you want to be very technical about it, there was no such thing as a year 1 AD. That year was (probably) the Roman year 754 AUC. But then, even the Romans did not commonly use AUC (Ad Urbe Condita = since the foundation of the city).

Answer 4

There are many fine answers, and many poor answers here. To summarize, there was no year zero. Jesus was born sometime in the BC epoch, presumably between 1-5BC. The exact date is not well known, but by looking at historical records (who the rulers were at the time), this is the best we have. Also, modern authors usually use "incarnation" as a synonym for "conception," but authors in previous centuries used it as a synonym for "nativity." To the best of our knowledge, the shepherds and wise men did not show up in the nativity until quite some time, perhaps months or years, after Jesus was born.

For more information, and some clarity on the AD issue, see the link below.

Answer 5

Using the Gregorian calendar (which of course was not used back then), December 31, 1 BC is followed by January 1, 1 AD. Back then, they would have named years after the Roman Consul that took office in it. If trying to chronologise it, they would have typically counted years since the founding of Rome.
January 1st was considered the beginning of the calendar year.

The calendar was originally set up to assume the date of Jesus' birth to be December 25, 1 AD. In fact, historians believe the date to be around 2 or 3 BC based on events like the death of Harod the Great and the Census of Quirinius.

Answer 6

Jesus wasn't born in the year 0, and he wasn't born on 25 December. If you take all accounts from Roman history, he was born somewhere between 3 and 7 BC. Both the year 0 and Christmas day were set centuries after his birth.

25 December is a date set in the 4th century, and took advantage of excising Roman holidays. According to the Gospels' story of Jesus's birth, the shepards were out in the fields and therefore in the open. No way in winter in Israel. His birth was probably in spring and summer.

But the date is not what the Bible tries to tell us. They are irrelevant to the fact that Jesus was born as the Savior to bring peace and joy to mankind.

Answer 7

Well, if you connsider that he was born on the 25th of december, year 0, then you draw the conclussion that he was born Anno Domini.the only moment that you could say that was neither ad or bc is 00:00 on the 1st of january, year 0. But Jesus was born later than that.
On the other hand, iv'e heard that the year of his birth eas calculated wrong (because of the julian calendary), and he was actually born sometime during year 6 bc. Makes you wonder, huh?

One more thing: AD stands for Anno Domini (year of our Lord) and BC for before Christ, if you were wondering...

I fell I need to clarify some things: the AD period started in the year that Jesus was born, on 1st of january, not when he was born, on 25th of december, because the year changes on the 1st of january.

Answer 8

There is no year 0. The calculation was done, the year labelling performed such that the year after 1 BC was 1 AD.

(For T Time above, AD means Anno Domini, which means "year of the lord", there is no relationship to death at all...)

Answer 9

There is no year 0. Since Christmas, the birthday of Jesus, is traditionally on December 25, Jesus is said to have been born Dec 25, 1 BC.

Answer 10

Jesus was born in the period we now call BCE (the time "before common era", not "before Christ"). The exact date is still under scrutiny by the most scholarly of theologians. But my research dates the birth of Jesus between 33 and 4 BCE. You won't be able to get closer than that since most of the written history regarding his life has been greatly distorted by time. And, a great deal has been totally excluded from any accurate recorders.