-Caveat Lector-
diane carman
Doomsday prophets in for disappointment
By Diane Carman
Denver Post Staff Columnist
Dec. 9 - The Concerned Christians who were arrested in Greece as well as
dozens of other groups preparing for the apocalypse on the first day of the
new millennium could be in for a disappointment.
If historians and Biblical scholars are to be believed, the 2000th
anniversary of the birth of Christ happened about four years ago. In terms of
end-of-the-world prophecies, Jan. 1, 2000 is no more ominous a date than
April Fool's Day.
Cancel the Middle East Armageddon tour package.
As all those who dither about whether the new millennium actually occurs this
January or next will tell you, the Gregorian Calendar is a real piece of
work. For one thing, the actual date of the birth of Christ, which is the
theoretical basis for this whole deal, was almost a random selection. The
Romans picked Dec. 25 because before the birth of Christ, many worshipped the
sun and that was already a day of celebration since it was the shortest day
of the year. Later, astronomers realized that a solar year actually was 365
1/4 days long, so they recalculated, and Dec. 22 became the new date for the
shortest day of the year. By that time, 1,200 years had elapsed, however, so
there was no point in going into such mundane details with the
Christmas-celebrating faithful.
As for the year of Christ's birth, that was tricky, too. Using old documents
that were based on a variety of ways to calculate months and years in ancient
cultures, Christians in the 6th century estimated that Christ was born 753
years after the founding of Rome.
That conflicts with the Bible, though, which says his birth was during the
reign of King Herod, who died in the Roman year 750.
"They just slipped up by a couple of years,'' said University of Colorado
history professor Steven Epstein. "Counting backwards like that, you'd
naturally lose track.''
Then to top it all off, the inventors of the Gregorian Calendar in the 16th
century were into Roman numerals and didn't know about zero. It didn't exist
as a concept in those days, so they figured the date of Christ's birth as
year one.
That wasn't a problem back then, but our subsequent embrace of the zero digit
tends to louse up everybody's calculations. Even with all the guesswork
involved in determining the year of Christ's birth, starting with year one
instead of zero can't help but confuse your average modern-day prophet of
doom.
New World Order worriers aside, there's plenty of controversy about the
meaning of time and how it's measured.
Asians following the lunar calendar will celebrate the dawning of the year
4697 on Feb. 16. Jews celebrated the new year of 5760 on Rosh Hashana.
Muslims, meanwhile, didn't start keeping track of years until A.D. 622, so
they're behind in the count.
And Native Americans, who for generations based their calendars on the sun
and the stars, have a more cosmic approach to the whole thing. Many believe
they moved through several worlds before this one, so doomsday planning seems
like a complete waste of, well, time.
I couldn't agree more.
Diane Carman's commentaries appear Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail:
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