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What is the meaning of BC and AD? Print E-mail
What is the meaning of BC and AD?

The terms B.C. and A.D. are the abbreviations for the years before the birth of Christ and the years since.  It is erroneously thought that “A.D.” means “After Death”.

B.C. stands for “Before Christ” which is commonly known.  

A.D. stands for “anno domini” or “The year of our Lord” in English.  “After Death”  would make no sense since Christ died at the age of 33.  He therefore died in the year 33 A.D.

Although your study Bible might contain footnotes and references to specific years, the BC / AD system was not implemented until centuries after the birth of Christ.  Most of the dates in the Bible are references to the number of years that a king reigned or when he died.

The year 0 B.C. is not believed to be accurate.  There were errors made in calculating the dates on our Gregorian calendar that we use today.  Most experts believe that Christ was born sometime between 6 B.C. and 4 B.C.

The Bible does not stress the importance of the year, nor the date on the calendar of the birth of Christ.  What does divide history and indeed the whole human race is the work that Christ accomplished on the cross.

Hebrews 10:12  But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,

In more recent times, the scientific community has tried to do away with naming the years after Christ.  The newer secular abbreviations for dividing history have been renamed to CE and BCE.  Although the new terminology does not change any numbers of the years, it changes the names of the time periods before and after Christ.
  • CE stands for "Common Era”  “Common” means that convention states we use the Christian dates to measure years.  
  • BCE stands for "Before the common era."

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Jim, Unregistered
If God, Jesus and The Holy Ghost were all one in the same, why did Jesus pray to God on the cross?
 Posted 2012-04-07 22:49:20
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