The AD\/BC or CE Question<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michael Ostling, at History Today, probes once again into the faith orientation of how we date things. To say it is AD 2011 is to post a date on the basis\" \/>\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\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/30\/the-adbc-or-ce-question\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The AD\/BC or CE Question\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michael Ostling, at History Today, probes once again into the faith orientation of how we date things. 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{"id":20765,"date":"2011-09-30T11:02:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T16:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/?p=20765"},"modified":"2011-09-27T19:09:17","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T00:09:17","slug":"the-adbc-or-ce-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/30\/the-adbc-or-ce-question\/","title":{"rendered":"The AD\/BC or CE Question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Michael Ostling<\/strong><\/a>, at History Today, probes once again into the faith orientation of how we date things. To say it is AD 2011 is to post a date on the basis of the Christian faith and the Christian dating system; to say \u201cCE\u201d is to post a date without reference to a faith.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Should we have \u201cCE\u201d or \u201cBC\/AD\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What year is it? This most basic of historical questions yields no universal answer. For Orthodox Jews, counting from the putative creation of the universe, the October 2009 issue of\u00a0History Today<\/em>, where this article first appeared, was published Anno Mundi 5770. According to the Muslim lunar calendar, dating from Muhammad\u2019s Hijra (flight or emigration) from Mecca, it is now ah 1430. Persians, Mayans, Jains, even Freemasons, all have their own eras. But it is the Christian era, counting \u2018the years of the Lord\u2019 from the birth of Christ, that is now ubiquitous in business, politics and historical writing. In that system, it is 2009 \u2013 but should one say ad 2009 or, as is increasingly common among scholars, 2009 CE \u2013 2009 of the \u2018Common Era\u2019?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Ostling, at History Today, probes once again into the faith orientation of how we date things. To say it is AD 2011 is to post a date on the basis of the Christian faith and the Christian dating system; to say \u201cCE\u201d is to post a date without reference to a faith. What do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe AD\/BC or CE Question<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michael Ostling, at History Today, probes once again into the faith orientation of how we date things. To say it is AD 2011 is to post a date on the basis\" \/>\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\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/30\/the-adbc-or-ce-question\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The AD\/BC or CE Question\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michael Ostling, at History Today, probes once again into the faith orientation of how we date things. 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