> > From: > "Juan Buhler" > I think you have it backwards, Tom. The birth of Jesus is based on the > calendar, not the other way around. No, the dating system is based on the year of Jesus birth.
It was created by the Roman Catholic Church so they'd have an accurate calendar for calculating holy days. The discrepancy comes from when they changed from the Julian to Gregorian calendars. The Julian calendar was a reform adopted by Julius Ceasar while he was Dictator of Rome (in approx 46 BC), also used for calculating holy days. The Julian calendar continued in use during the Roman Empire and after its collapse until Pope Gregory XIII proclaimed the Gregorian calendar in "1582" AD. As far as I know, the reason to think Jesus was born in 4 BC is because it's more accurate with the historical dates for the emperor Agustus's (Octavian) census of the Jews, which took place after the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC. Jesus was supposedly born in Bethlehem because Joseph had to go there to be "enrolled" And there was an astronomical conjunction in 6 BC, where Jupiter was "in the east" i.e. a morning star, in close conjunction with Venus in the constellation of Ares; indicating the birth of a king to ancient astrologers.** But because the Roman priests working 1600 years or so later had difficulty reconciling the Julian calendar, the number of years since the supposed year Jesus was born was slightly off in their calculations; short 3 or 4 years, figured as 1582 years, when it was in fact somewhere between 1585 and 1588 years. I don't think anyone really knows for certain. The reason they changed the calendar was because over time the Julian calendar was drifting out of sync with the seasons; the "date" of the equinox, used for computing when Easter will come, was not the physical day in the year when the equinox actually occurred. By the time of the calendar change was made in "1582" the physical date of the equinox was coming about 1-1/2 months earlier than the calendar date. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
