What are BC and AD?

[SolyWack 482]

Oh boy this is super diffucult to ask because im pretty sure no matter how i ask, it will be confusing.

 

So I know BC means "Before Christ" and AD means "Anno domino", which means "year of our lord", or something similar.

 

So thats not what im asking. Im asking what are these terms actually called. Like what is the putting 2 letters after a date in time called?

[Pone 141]

I believe its called Christian Era Notation, and the use of BCE/CE is Common Era Notation, but I may be wrong

[Shanks 10,816]

I believe its called Christian Era Notation, and the use of BCE/CE is Common Era Notation, but I may be wrong

That is true though they are both pretty much the same thing except with different letters in other words BCE (before the common era)=BC (before Christ) and CE (common era)= AD (Anno Domino). Common Era notation has recently come into favor after the observation that there are some historians/archaelogists ect... that are in fact not Christians. The really interesting thing is that even though the year 0 is commonly viewed as the end of BC and beginning of AD that this is a miscalculation and that Jesus was estimated to have actually been born 2-3 years before that. It just goes to show you that there is no known perfect system of measuring time though there are some that are more accurate than others.

[SolyWack 482]

Thank you both of you, those were the answers i was looking for.

[I used to be a stranger 7,993]

By many thinkers it's an arbitrary stamp to dictate time passage since one could have easily set the tare for the Earth's epoch when we landed on the moon or when the last Ice Age [probably] ended. But considering the fact that modern time measurement (International Standard Time) is a scientific evolution derived from older models (The Gregorian Calendar; 1 year = 365.2425 days, circa 1582AD, Julian Calendar; 1 year = 365.25 days, circa 46BC) which were rooted in [religious] events dictating what would be "Year 1".

Personally I have no qualms with placing the Gregorian prediction of Christ's birth as "year 1".

Edited July 5, 2015 by Blue