The ruins of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, in Greece.
Photo by Napoleon Vier, NL \u00a0(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I published the article below in the Provo Daily Herald<\/em> on 1 December 1999:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The approach of the year 2000 has led to much reflection, speculation, and arrant nonsense.\u00a0 For some it has become an excuse to celebrate the \u201cparty of the millennium.\u201d\u00a0 Some fear the economic and social chaos of the Y2K bug.\u00a0 Others expect the apocalypse; hundreds are flocking to Jerusalem to prepare for what they believe to be the imminent return of Christ.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFew stop to ask if the coming New Year\u2019s day will actually be the beginning of year 2000.\u00a0 The answer depends on how you cut the calendrical pie.\u00a0 Each great religion and civilization has had its own method of reckoning time and formulating calendars, based on different assumptions, practices, calculations and beliefs.<\/span><\/p>\nYear One of the Roman calendar was 753 BC, the traditional date of Rome\u2019s founding. Greeks often calculated from the first Olympic games in 776 BC.\u00a0 Muslims commence their reckoning from Muhammad\u2019s arrival in Medina.\u00a0 In the Christian calendar, this corresponds\u00a0to 622 AD, which would seem at first glance to make 2000 AD correspond to the Muslim year 1378.\u00a0 However, the Muslim calendar is based on twelve lunar months and is eleven days shorter than our solar year, meaning that our 2000 is the Muslim year 1421.\u00a0 For the Chinese, the Christian year 2000 is actually year 4698.<\/span><\/p>\nMany, including ancient Christians and Jews, began their calendars with the anno mundi<\/i>, the year of the world\u2019s creation.\u00a0 For the ancient Maya, this occurred in 3113 BC.\u00a0 One might expect Jews and Christians to agree on the year of creation, based on biblical chronology.\u00a0 However, differing assumptions, gaps, overlaps and manuscript variants have produced many rival calculations.\u00a0 For the rabbis, creation occurred in 3760 BC, making AD 2000 earth\u2019s 5760th year.\u00a0 For Greek Orthodox Christians, the year of creation was 5508 BC.\u00a0 Catholic Dante almost concurred, believing the world was created in 5198 BC.\u00a0 Many Protestants follow Archbishop Ussher\u2019s calculations, accepting 4004 BC as the year of creation.<\/span><\/p>\nWho, then, devised the calendar we now use, which calculates this coming year as the 2000th since the birth of Christ?\u00a0 Our current chronological system was established by the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus in the early sixth century AD.\u00a0 He calculated the annunciation of the birth of Christ as occurring on 25 March, 1 AD \u2014 that is, nine months before the birth of Christ, which was celebrated on December 25th.\u00a0 The annunciation, rather than the birth of Christ, was considered to be the moment of God\u2019s incarnation (as a fetus in the Virgin Mary\u2019s womb).\u00a0 March 25th, the vernal equinox, was also thought to have been the first of the seven days of creation, and, for centuries, many countries celebrated it as the Christian New Year.<\/span><\/p>\nUnfortunately, however, Dionysius seems to have erred in his calculations.\u00a0 Modern research demonstrates that Herod the Great died in 4 BC.\u00a0 And since Jesus was born before Herod died (Matthew 2:1), it is fairly certain that Jesus was born in or before 4 BC, and, therefore, that the 2000th year since the birth of Jesus was actually 1996.\u00a0 The real dawning of the third Christian millennium appears to have occurred while few noticed \u2014 four years ago.<\/span><\/p>\nMatters are further complicated by the fact that the Roman Julian calendar \u2014 created by Julius Caesar in 46 BC \u2014 erred slightly in calculating leap years.\u00a0 By 1582, the astronomical vernal equinox, used to determine Easter, was occurring ten days ahead of the calendar\u2019s March 25th.\u00a0 Convening a body of astronomers, Pope Gregory XIII revised the faulty\u00a0calculations and ordered ten days surreptitiously removed from the calendar in order to return it to proper alignment with the astronomical seasons.\u00a0 He also shifted New Year from the ancient Christian March 25th to the Roman 1 January.\u00a0 This Gregorian calendar is still used today and is the basis of our modern calculation of New Year\u2019s Day, although some Greek Orthodox, rejecting the Pope\u2019s authority, retained the old calendar.\u00a0 (It is now thirteen days behind ours.)<\/span><\/p>\nGiven the variables, calculating the two thousandth year after Christ precisely becomes problematic.\u00a0 In any case, if we accept Dionysius\u2019s placement of the birth of Christ at 25 December, 1 AD, the two thousandth year actually begins in 2001, not 2000.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I published the article below in the Provo Daily Herald on 1 December 1999: \u00a0 The approach of the year 2000 has led to much reflection, speculation, and arrant nonsense.\u00a0 For some it has become an excuse to celebrate the \u201cparty of the millennium.\u201d\u00a0 Some fear the economic and social chaos of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[623,8268,8292,8295,8277,8289,8280,2950,2938,8274,210,8271,8283,8286],"class_list":["post-82668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-calendar","tag-calendars","tag-dionysius","tag-exiguus","tag-gregorian","tag-gregory","tag-hijri","tag-islamic","tag-jewish","tag-jullian","tag-maya","tag-month","tag-orthodox","tag-year"],"yoast_head":"\n
Sacred Calendars and the Millennium<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" I published the article below in the Provo Daily Herald on 1 December 1999: The approach of the year 2000 has led to much reflection,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/02\/sacred-calendars-and-the-millennium.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sacred Calendars and the Millennium\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" I published the article below in the Provo Daily Herald on 1 December 1999: The approach of the year 2000 has led to much reflection,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2020\/02\/sacred-calendars-and-the-millennium.html\" \/>\n<meta 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![\"Zeus's](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/05\/Olympia_-_ruine_Zeustempel.jpg\")
<\/a>