[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

[Carl Peterson]

I'm one of the Christians who feels that BCE is more appropriate (though I
still use BC/AD in common conversation). My reason, however, is that if one
looks at the historical context of Jesus' life (things like the reign of
Herod), you'd find that he was actually born approx. 4-6 BCE, which if we
use BC/AD convention means that Jesus was born a few years "Before Christ."
So, I support BCE more from a standpoint of language precision. By using
(B)CE for the date convention, it removes tying the dating system to a
specific event, such that any evidence which might effect the actual timing
of events does not invalidate the system.

Carl

On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied
> > religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of
> > users supported BC, while the other half did not.
>
>
> While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines -
> many
> people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the
> half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV.  The problem with
> accepting
> a POV in dating systems is that we would have to support ALL dating
> systems.  Only supporting BC/AD and BCE/CE is to codify systemic bias.
> However, adding other dating systems isn't easy, because lunar calendars
> (for example) don't match precisely with solar ones.  So if we allowed a
> user to pick a preferences of say, the Islamic calendar or the old Russian
> calendar, many year-only dates would become ambiguous.
>
> However, you have a
> > point, NPOV means BCE.
>
>
> BC means "Before Christ", and that (obviously) refers to Jesus of
> Nazareth.
> So if you say "before Christ" in reference to him, you are asserting that
> Jesus is the Messiah (Christ is the Greek version of the
> word).  Similarly,
> if you say "in the Lord's year" and the reference is unequivocally to
> Jesus,
> then you are asserting that Jesus is Lord (which, in this context, has
> come
> to mean God)
>
>
> Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
> > Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the
> > calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be,
> > if he existed when he supposedly did).
>
>
> As above, Christ means Messiah, so you can't separate the two.  On the
> other
> hand, BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) meet the requirement
> of NPOV by describing the current state of affairs in which the dating
> system is based around the birth of Jesus, without actually asserting that
> he is the Messiah or God.
>
>
> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
> > violates
> > > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is
> the
> > > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does
> what
> > the
> > > NPOV policy asks.
> > >
> > > On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like MoS
> > > > anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
> > > > regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings)
> shouldn't
> > > > go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too much
> > > > content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
> > > > list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
> > > >
> > > > On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > > > > > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > I am simplifying greatly ;-)
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > - d.
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