Magdlyn

:grin:

mens_sana

Ancient calendars were dated variously, from the founding year of a city, from the initial year of a king's reign. If a city was conquered and "rededicated," a new founding date was used. If a kingdom was conquered, the year of the new reigning king was used. Consequently, there was no universally recognized dating system, that is, none other than the Olympic year — for those who had interest in Olympic years. So the BC/AD business made things a lot easier for an awful lot of people. That the BCE/CE usage is based on the BC/AD, and is nothing more than a politically inoffensive way of doing things should not offend anyone — unless the person offended is a KJV-Onlyiest. :devil1:

spin

Origins of what? BC and AD? There is no concealment. You just go to an encyclopaedia. You must be joking.

That is, it's a christian date but it isn't.

Somewhere later on you talk about diversions.

Let's call the Oneday, Twoday, Threeday, Fourday, Fiveday, Sixday and Sevenday. (Notice the similarities?)

It's not my affront. I've already mentioned where problems arise.


Because your dangling AUC was certainly not serious. You won't play any more because you know you've shown enough rump already.

The system in all its arbitrariness is just fine because people use it. The terms are inappropriate for many people.

OK, let's do a survey. How many people of Jewish background for example, find BC and AD acceptable? How many non-religionists? Hands up out there.

My cat's name is Shitbags. The people at the cattery won't call her that. It's not that it is a slur, but that they don't want to use it as it is to them unacceptable. (Shitbags isn't hampered: she runs the house.)

What is the problem that you cannot see that christian nomenclature can be perceived as unacceptable?

You are only half honest. You advocated, if one changed the name they change the system as well.

The number of days in the week in Roman society was based on the number of planets. You know, seven? Sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jove, Venus, and Saturn. The order of names is based on the fall of hours named after the planets as well. (I can get a reference to Dio Cassio, if you want.)

Actually that was never its name.

There is no inherent reason for maintaining the name. It has at least potential of offense to non-christians, as has been noted by the scholars who now avoid the terms. You are not calling a spade a spade: you are calling it an instrument of Jesus and wanting everyone who uses English to do so.

I haven't had any rational reasoning from you to justify the forced maintenance of a christian nomenclature to something that is used by all including non-christians.

You have merely obfuscated the issue by accusing others of what you are doing.

So now you are using personal interpretations of words to complain about the significance of the neutral term.

Pot straining hard to find a kettle.

What is the relevance to a Jew of AD? You are just being insensitive, nothing less. I bet you think it's all right to call the Hebrew bible the "old testament". Sheesh. :huh:


spin

Ben C Smith

If the purpose of BCE/CE is not to hide the Lord and the Christ lurking behind BC and AD, what is the purpose?

Do you think the Romans accurately pinpointed the exact year of the founding of their capital city? Do you think any difference makes AUC a non-Roman system?

At this point I cannot even tell whether or not you are joking.

Yes, you mentioned that AD and BC might cause offense. That is what I meant by affront.

What does this mean?

Do you mean they might be offended by the terms? (See the discussion of affront above.)

I use the Gregorian calendar. It gets its name from a Pope (yes, a Catholic Pope, doubtless religious) named Gregory. If I am anti-Catholic, shall I call it the Common Calendar? No more Gregory XIII. (If you want to recall its original name or who decreed it, consult an encyclopedia.)

Then use a different system.

I commented that I would find a slur unacceptable. You reply by referring to your cat, whose name you say is (also) not a slur. I do not follow your argument.

If the nomenclature is unacceptable, then the system it is naming, which system depends in its very essence on a Christian calculation, ought to be unacceptable. It is not as if somebody took a neutral item and named it after Christ; the very item itself is Christian, your diversions on the 4 year miscalculation notwithstanding.

(This is also the difference between the issue at hand and a lot of other names; in this case the name describes the system. Tuesday is just a name, since that day of the week does not lend itself in any real sense to being called that. But a system predicated on the life and times of Jesus Christ and the name of that system go hand in hand. The only reason for keeping the system and changing the name is to obscure the origins.)

I have consistently said I prefer to keep the system as it stands, name and all. I have also consistently said that, if the name be changed, then it would be more honest to change the system too. How exactly is that only half honest? Which half did I lie about?

It was a mispronunciation, right?

City names are also not quite equivalent to what we are talking about. I will call a city whatever its residents call it (or as close as I can, since I am not good at clicks and guttural stops and such).

(See our discussion of affront above.)

I am calling a dating system based on the life and times of Jesus an instrument of Jesus, yes. That is calling a spade a spade. That is what that expression means. If you did not know that before, now you know.

I am not, I repeat, not in favor of forcing anybody to do anything.

First, on an public level. I am not in favor of legislating (whether by force of actual law or by decree from some august body of professors and scholars) that anybody use or not use either the BC/AD system or the BCE/CE system. I do not think official force should be used at all.

Second, on a personal level. I am not in favor of applying peer pressure or such to get things either changed or maintained.

What I am doing is arguing (persuading, not forcing) that the name change is an act of concealment unbecoming to scholars.

This is now the second time you have used the language of force of what I am advocating; it is inappropriate, and I will not abide it again.

Please explain. What am I doing that I have accused others of doing?

Answer the question: What does the Common Era mark off? What is it the era of? What started it? What will end it?

I usually call it the Hebrew scriptures or such, since I believe that term to be more accurate. However, I do not avoid the term Old Testament in a Christian context (for example, in discussing the development of the canon).

I appreciate you bringing this example up, since it is a good illustration of calling a spade a spade. Consider these two sentences:

1. Augustine knew his Old Testament very well.
2. The rebels in the Jewish war would have known of the prophecy from the Old Testament.

The second sentence is, I believe, misleading and less than accurate, since the Jewish rebels would not have had any notion at all to call their sacred texts by that name. But there is not one thing wrong with the first sentence; that is indeed how Augustine would of thought of the Jewish scriptures.

I want to return to one of your statements:

Your answer to me, when I pointed out the chauvinism of this remark, was:

That, I am afraid, does not answer the charge of having made a chauvinistic statement. You think you detect chauvinism lurking behind my desire to preserve the name intact with the system, and you are welcome to harbor your incorrect judgments, but I do not have to think anything about this statement of yours; its chauvinism lies on the surface. (And please note that, in the spirit of dialogue, I am calling the statement chauvinistic, not its crafter.)

Your statement suggests that mythical names (such as those from which Thursday and Friday derive) are fine to keep precisely because the ones espousing those myths (religionists, to use your term) have not done recent damage. This characterizes religionists as ones who do damage. It paints the religious, one and all, with the same brush; that is chauvinism.

If you do not yet see it, try this out for size; imagine a future in which the Jewish race/religion/lifestyle has died out. Now read the statement in light of the Spanish term sábado (the term both for sabbath and for Saturday):

The sabbath (as name for a day of the week) is an old religious superstition. The Jews [those who used to celebrate the sabbath] have not done any damage to anyone in years.

There the chauvinism should be unmistakable even to you; the statement characterizes Jews, one and all, as ones who do damage, just as your statement painted religionists, one and all, as damage-doers.

Here is another one of your statements from some time back:

This one appears to characterize religious people as folks who botch biblical studies. I called this statement unnecessary when you made it the first time round; now I am going to call it prejudiced.

Ben.

spin

You are having an exceedingly difficult time understanding a simple problem. It's not to hide anything. It's to use neutral terminology.

It's irrelevant Ben C.

It doesn't matter. It would work though, wouldn't it, assuming Oneday is what is now Monday, Twoday is Tuesday...? You wouldn't have any problem of changing the name of these would you if they were deemed unacceptable?

So I guess you can understand that for some it is the case and others potentially the case.

You introduced AUC into the discourse without any seriousness. You then beat a retreat ("I politely bow out") because of the lack of seriousness, thus showing rump.

OK.

I don't refer to it.

No need. A different nomenclature is sufficient and everyone communicates without affront.

Unacceptable doesn't mean that it must be a slur.

Non sequitur. There is nothing to support the "ought". It is just some date. How it was derived is irrelevant to its use as a reference point.

As I just said, how the reference point was derived is ultimately irrelevant. The single thing that is important is that people use the same reference point so that they can understand each other.

I don't care about the origins. People, as I said, can look it up. It'll be in any encyclopaedia.

You have not made a coherent rational reasonable case for your apparently blind desire to maintain the nomenclature which you would certainly find unacceptable if you were say Jewish.

That's the origin. There is a similar case with Ceylon.

The point made was that names are changed without such caffuffle as you are making with a name change to BCE/CE. Did you make a caffuffle with Centigrade to Celsius?

There was no discussion. You merely imputed that the nomenclature was a personal affront to me. You wish to overlook the fact that a large section of scholars in the field prefer to use BCE/CE. Still you have the cheek to put it onto me as simply a personal affront.

It isn't based on the life of Jesus. The date is bogus on that account. Someone messed up. It's wrong. It is absurd as I have pointed out, as in Jesus was born four years before he was born.

You are advocating for no apparent reason other than perhaps some form of unplumbed conservatism that we shouldn't change the nomenclature, though changing nomeclature per se is not a problem, for if a term were a slur, you'd use a different one and if when other names were changed you followed the new usage where possible, depending on your memory...

How would you do it then, if you were in the position to change it?

And, I think, you are simply wrong. Conceal what? That the reference point has a meaning to christians? Who wants to conceal it. All I want is that we use a less colored nomenclature and you have given not a single meaningful reason for not doing so. You are complaining that it is a concealment?? You can trumpet it however you want, but why expect people to use a biased nomenclature?

The implication is that you would fight hammer and tongs to keep a nomenclature that you know would be offensive to some and irrelevant to others. I'm sorry, not force. You are not in a position to force. You would do everything in your power to prevent the change of the name I gather from your incoherent explanation of what and why.

To reconstruct some context:

Hopefully you'll agree (at least in private) that you have obfuscated the issue of the nomenclature, especially when you have shown that you are happily willing to change other names in other circumstances. Your conservatism isn't based on the maintenance of old names per se. The date itself is not important to you, because in itself it indicates nothing special.

So, the answer to your question is that you are obfuscating the issue.

To many people, the time between an arbitrary point and the present. This year is 2007. It's not 2007 plus anything. It's when one has to talk about before the 2007 years of this era that something needs to be done so that one can reference it. Who cares what started it as long as everyone uses the same reference point? If anyone wants to know they go to an encyclopaedia, just as they do to find out what started WWI. The question "what will end it?" is inconsequential to the using of the reference point.

Calling it the "Old Testament" is a slur on the religious literature of the Jewish people. It's not "old" anything to be seen in conjunction to a "new" (improved) collection. But you can happily use two two distinct references to the literature depending on the context you are in, but you cannot use two different references to the period from an arbitrary date in history.

Is there really some reason why you said this? So Harry Truman thought it was ok to call certain people "niggers". Few today would want to use that term -- at least in the way he did -- and most of us would disparage that usage. "Augustine knew the Hebrew scriptures very well" conveys basically the same information as #1 without causing any affront. Why do you think modern translators have insinuated "and sisters" into sentences which just had "brothers"? It was thought that the language did something undesirable in our day and age. In that case the language excluded half the population. In the case of the "Old Testament" one wants to remove the cultural dispossession and the sleight that the phrase embodies.

You are mistaken. Amongst other things you are confusing generic with universal quantification. When one says "people don't use it that way", that should be clearly generic, for it should seem to you that perhaps some do. It is not a generic reference, yet you are trying to hammer out a universal reference from nothing. The people who are trying to impose creationism and intelligent design on schools are doing damage in our society. This doesn't mean that all christians are trying to impose the rubbish. Plainly not all christians would enforce BC/AD if they had the chance, as many christian scholars use BCE/CE. This is analogous to "biblical archaeology" where christians had done damage to the field of archaeology -- not all christians, as you might want to believe is implied, for some archaeologists who were christians didn't indulge in "biblical archaeology".

We should take it up with the Spanish.

Your grammar is slipping. "[W]ho botch them" is a defining clause. You have proven my point once again: Pot straining hard to find a kettle.


spin

Ben C Smith

It is also to create an era that holds no meaning; that, for me, is the problem.

If, just by chance, some momentous historical event had occurred in year 1 that was worthy of dating an era from, I would not disfavor changing the name from BC/AD to some term that reflected that momentous event. I am all for meaning.

Referring to the Roman date of founding:

You have made a case that BC/AD is actually not really Christian because of the 4-year-or-so discrepancy; but the actual date of the founding of Rome is irrelevant to whether AUC is a Roman system? How are you reaching this conclusion?

I wrote before:

I would not actually be in favor of changing Wednesday to Threeday just because some religious group drew offense from the Norse god Odin. However, changing the name of a weekday is not the same as changing the name of a system whose name describes that system (to a name which now describes precisely nothing).

Please acknowledge that you recognize the difference between naming a day of the week after X or Y and naming a system after the very date it was intended to calculate.

I introduced it as an example; you immediately took it as an actual suggestion, then as a suggestion lacking seriousness. It was, I repeat, an example.

Okay, but I am still not seeing the relevance to our discussion. I find neither the BC/AD system nor the BCE/CE unacceptable in the sense of slurs, naughty words, or any such things. I find the BCE/CE system inaccurate and obfuscating.

This is the kind of talk on your part that kicked off this debate. Whether you think I am right or wrong about BCE/CE, you ought to be able to see that my judgment is not blind. How can you be missing that?

Frankly, I have never considered centigrade and Celsius. I do not know what went into any change made in that area, nor do I blink upon finding either one of these terms in print. There is an extent to which I, a nonchemist and nonphysicist, will tend in my admitted ignorance to use chemical and physical terms just as the chemists and physicists use them.

I am not at such a disadvantage in the debate on BC/AD.

I did not mean only to you. I meant that the name change appears to be based on (the possibility or actuality of) offense; that appears to be its sole motive.

And I am saying that I do not think a positive statement should normally be taken with offense, and that, if it is, I do not think hijacking the system under a different name, eschewing the name that actually describes the system, is the answer.

I say this knowing full well that most scholars who use the BCE/CE system do so without malice, without prejudice either for or against Judaism or Christianity or any others. I am not accusing scholarship at large of those things; however, some of your statements seem to lean in that direction.

Please identify the statement(s) of mine in which I blatantly overlook the majority usage.

In your case, it may well be. But I am judging only your statements, not you personally.

[QUOTE]It isn't based on the life of Jesus. The date is bogus on that account. Someone messed up. It's wrong.[/QUOTE

How can you say all this and still think that the AUC thing is irrelevant? I will ask you again: Even if the Romans did not in point of fact pinpoint the exact year of the foundation of the city (presumably by Romulus himself!), is the AUC system still Roman? Compare: If the Christians did not in point of fact pinpoint the exact year of the birth of Christ, is the BC/AD system still Christian?

Wrong again. I am against, for example, the use of the term Indians to describe the Sioux, the Iroquois, and so forth. The former term was apparently based on the mistaken notion that the European explorers had reached India. The Sioux are no more from India than I am, and I do not favor the old, conservative usage in this case.

This is yet another example of you having absolutely no idea where I am coming from. I have never seen the like.

That is correct. If changing the nomenclature is the more accurate thing to do, I am all for it.

Changing BC/AD to BCE/CE does not improve accuracy, even granting the full force of the 4 year discrepancy in the former, since the latter invents an era that has no meaning at all.

Indeed I would. I am against slurs, which explains my attempts to persuade you not to use slurs against the religious.

Everything would, of course, depend not only on my memory but also on my knowledge of the situation from others. I am not an expert in every field; I tend to use the term Beijing because that is what I hear. (But I still call the culinary dish Peking duck. You?)

Persuasion.

The reason I gave was that the Common Era has no meaning. I know that the Victorian Era generally coincides with the reign of Queen Victoria and that the Era of Good Feelings coincides with the broad (and brief) dissolution of partisanship after the War of 1812; what I do not know is what meaningful entity, however hazy, the Common Era coincides with.

This is a misuse of the term bias. It is not bias to call something what it in fact is. Calling our current calendar Gregorian or Julian is not bias; those names describe something about the calendar itself (namely its origin). Calling the dating system BC/AD is not bias; that is in fact the rationale behind the system in the first place.

And thankfully so. I am against force in most of its forms.

Everything in my power? Not at all. I would persuade; that is all. (I would not even vote either for or against it, since voting carries behind it the force of law.)

What do you think my conservatism in this case is based on? Can you accurately summarize my view?

Let me attempt to accurately summarize your view (and I welcome correction or nuancing): You believe that it either potentially or actually offends some that our common dating system is named after the advent of Christ; therefore, in order to avoid offense, you prefer to change the name, supposing that a name devoid of much actual meaning is better than a name with a potentially or actually offensive name.

Edit at will; but can you summarize my view in like manner?

I am not certain what you mean here.

The date at issue in the BC/AD system is not arbitrary, even if it is not exactly correct.

An illustration may be fitting here. Imagine students taking a math test dealing with the addition problem 45 + 65. One student answers 110; another answers 100; yet another answers 398.

The first two answers are not arbitrary; the first one is correct, while the second is clearly traceable to a simple failure to count the carried ten. The answer of 100, while clearly a mistake, is equally clearly a nonarbitrary answer to the addition problem, since the teacher can very easily trace the source of the mistake. The third, however, is both incorrect and arbitrary; the teacher will probably have no idea how the student came up with 398, and indeed it was probably a wild guess based on nothing whatsoever.

The BC/AD system is similar to that second example. Yes, the exact date is wrong, but it is still a clear attempt to date the birth of Christ. It is not arbitrary.

The BCE/CE system, on the other hand, is indeed arbitrary, since nothing remains to date the beginning of the era from.

Yes, I certainly would disparage that usage myself. I would call each group by whatever name that group preferred to call itself. I see nothing more accurate about the N-word than the other, more accepted ways of referring to those of African ancestry.

I do not think that Augustine knowing his Old Testament should cause any affront. If we quoted Augustine, we would certainly run across that term. We are summarizing the view of a Christian; it ought not surprise anybody that patently Christian terms might occasionally surface.

This is a good debate, but there are some nuances that come into play here that I think would distract from the current debate. There is, for example, some debate on exactly how inclusive or exclusive the Greek term for brothers was compared to the English word.

I at present am not sure where I stand on that debate; but I can tell you that my decision(s) would be based on which term(s) I felt most accurately conveyed the meaning of the original text.

I agree with you.

I agree.

Not even I would enforce BC/AD, even if I had all the chance in the world. (I am a pretty good Libertarian.) Nor, however, would I use the BCE/CE system.

I can see your point here; nevertheless, there seems to be something a bit insidious in a phrase like the religious who do damage. I am certain that some Jews are greedy, but I would find the phrase greedy Jewunacceptable, at least without some serious nuancing. Never mind the offense that could be taken; it is the accuracy of the implications that springs to my mind. If all humans can be greedy, what purpose does it serve to link the term in some way to only one group? Likewise, if all humans can do damage to society or to a field of inquiry, what purpose does it serve to link the term to religionists?

Why link religionists in particular with botching at all, if all humans are capable of botching things? Your statement appeared to advocate removing religious people from biblical studies based at least in part on their religion. IOW, a program set up on the basis of your statement would seem to have two tests: (A) Is the scholar religious? (B) Does the scholar botch things? No account is taken of nonreligious scholars who might botch things.

Ben.

spin

Ben C.

The only thing important for most people is that there is a common reference point for dates. It could just as well be the date that Antiochus III's uncle Bob decided to grow a moustache. It doesn't matter for dating purposes. It just needs to be the same point.

You claimed that "the BCE/CE system inaccurate and obfuscating", but you haven't made a case in my eyes for why you see BCE/CE as either.

You have resolutely refused to see that using "before christ" and "anno domini" could be unacceptable to anyone who is not a christian.

But you have said: Not even I would enforce BC/AD, even if I had all the chance in the world. (I am a pretty good Libertarian.) Nor, however, would I use the BCE/CE system. This is at least a concession.

As I can't see you making your position any clearer to me, nor I to you, I don't think we can get very much further, do you?


spin