Citing O. Pederson, wikipedia tells us (at the moment) that CE is "The year numbering system used with Common Era notation was devised by the Christian monk Dionysius Exiguus in the year 525 to replace the Era of Martyrs system, because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians.," so it is apparently really of Christian origin.
Despite that, I want to offer a logic to support this numbering system from a Jewish point of view. As Jews we use a numbering system based on a Medieval extrapolation of the amount of time that has occurred since creation as extrapolated from the Hebrew Bible. There are many culturally specific numbering systems, Islam, the French Revolution and the Khmer Rouge among others, launched new numbering systems. Particular to Jewish history is the shift from Biblical Judaism to Rabbinic Judaism. This shift happened in the same general (but broader) time frame as the life of the historical/mythological Jesus. The rise of Rabbinical Judaism has certain very specific moments of importance, particularly the Destruction of the Temple and the redaction of the Mishnah. One could argue that the Judaism that we practice today (regardless of movement) could easily be marked from these dates just as well as from the moment of creation. The Christians have chosen a date not that far off from the earlier of these two dates. We could insist that close is not good enough. Deborah Lipstadt rightly points out that there are cases there can't be reasonable compromises. However, in this case, where we are dealing with made up numbers and not some actual fact, there is room for compromise. We can take Common Era to mean the beginning of Rabbinic Judaism and let the Christians think of Jesus. This is the essence of ecumenicalism I think. When Mashaich comes we can all set our clocks by God's system, but until then... All the best, Henry > > Admittedly, CE/BCE is built on Christian terms, but I think they are still > more religion-neutral than the previous practice of using BC and AD. > > The alternative would be to use years as constructed by Orthodox Jews. > These would not be understandable by any outside of that community. Plus, > they would not agree with the Muslim understanding of time. >From what I > can > reckon, the use of the commonly-understood numbers for time plus CE or BCE > is the most religion-neutral way of describing time. > > It appears I have already lost this bet with RDA, so this is probably > whistling in the wind. ;-) > > > Buzz Haughton > [email protected] > __ > Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual > author > and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries > (AJL) > ================================== > Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: > [email protected] > To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: > https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran > Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: [email protected] > Ha-Safran Archives: > Current: > http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html > Earlier Listserver: > http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html > AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org > -- > Hasafran mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran > Henry Hollander. Bookseller 843 Twenty-Fourth Avenue San Francisco, CA 94121 415-831-3228 tel [email protected] http://www.hollanderbooks.com ALL KINDS OF JEWISH BOOKS
__ Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the Association of Jewish Libraries (AJL) ================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: [email protected] To join Ha-Safran, update or change your subscription, etc. - click here: https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran Questions, problems, complaints, compliments send to: [email protected] Ha-Safran Archives: Current: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.service.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html Earlier Listserver: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org -- Hasafran mailing list [email protected] https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/hasafran
