Yeah, my head hurts when I try to visualize an integer line without zero, BC (before coffee), so I was probably off a year, anyway.
I used the 7 BC date, as that was the most recent I had heard. That was from Brent Walters, professor of religion at San Jose State University, but he was far from conclusive on it. He just did a fun radio program that was basically "The truth about Christmas and Hanukah!" Dave -----Original Message----- From: Frank King [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, December 24, 2011 10:15 AM To: Dave Bell Cc: 'Frank King'; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: Proceedings for Future of UTC meeting Dear Dave, Hmmm. Hard to comment on this... > "... Jesus was only 7 years old..." Given the absence of zero, 2011 years ago takes us to 1BC. There is a little uncertainty but current best estimates of the date of birth seem to fall in the range 6BC to 4BC which would make the age between 3 and 5 years. I guess we agree that not a whole lot was going on! There is a well-known sundial near where I am sitting which has an inscription that uses A.S. instead of A.D. Brookes and Stanier say that this stands for Anno Salvationis but I feel that Anno Salutis is also a candidate. Both mean In the Year of Salvation and I wonder whether using A.S. might cause less distress to those who need smelling salts when they read A.D.? No doubt someone can tell me how common it is to see A.S. on sundials? We can be fairly sure that you don't often see B.C. on sundials, at least not as the date of manufacture :-) Felix Nativitas Frank --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
