Do we know anything about this monk other than that he invented the BC/AD system, his name was Dennis, and that he appears to have been a short guy?
On Wed, 18 May 2005, Skyring wrote:
On 5/18/05, Richard Rabinowitz rickyrab@eden.rutgers.edu wrote:
By the way, Islamic years and solar years have different lengths. Also, by the way, it's not exactly the number of years since Jesus's birth, as the writers of the New Testament were racking their brains out trying to figure what happened when - and made mistakes, of course. This led to a monk, the one who invented the BC/AD system to begin with, making a "best guess" on the basis of inconsistent evidence in scripture. The upshot: now folks think Jesus was born in 4 BCE, or 6 BCE, or some such year.
The monk was Dennis the Short, according to Stephen Gould. He goes into the whole thing in some detail.
-- Pete, wondering if WP does _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l