calendar

Bede on the Problem of 1 AD

“The Venerable Bede Translates John” by James Doyle Penrose (1862-1932)

The Venerable Bede on reconciling ancient calendars and how he thought our 2 B.C. should really be 1 A.D.

Bede convincingly argued that our present 1 A.D. was incorrect by three years. What we understand as 2 B.C. is the correct year for Christ’s birth. He uncovered the fuzzy Church logic that created this problem. He cited a miscalculation that happened between 550 and 650 A.D. This error has caused calendar headaches ever since.

The Venerable Bede was an eighth-century monk who made a strong effort to collect all the calendar systems he knew about, whether historical or contemporary to his time, and reconcile them into one dating system. This endeavor sounds easy by today’s standards, but it was a massive undertaking.

If any discussion revolves around developing the yearly calendar system, his writings should be consulted. This study focuses on his works as it relates to Christ’s birth, but other pertinent dates fall in as well.

How did he arrive at this conclusion? He did it by comparing different calendar systems and then developing two new time systems – one of them closely parallels the A.D. system in use today.

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A Chronology of the Herods

Charting the dates and lives of the Herods concerning the birth of Christ and making sense of the differences between competing histories.

Herod the Great was a living character described by the Bible narrators about the birth of Christ,1 therefore the reign dates of this leader and his family are of particular value.

a picture of Herod the Great
Herod the Great, founder of a family dynasty in the Middle East.

However, there are different timeframes in the significant historical sources, especially between the first century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus and several ancient church accounts. This work aims to define what Josephus and the church authorities wrote on the subject, compare the dates, find common patterns, and, hopefully, reconcile the differences.

The original writers of the Gospels never related time in relation to the Herod dynasty. This omission was likely done on purpose because the Gospels were for a universal audience that viewed the Herod family as minor players in a big act. Neither did the Christian writers want to parallel the Herods with time because they were so cruel and barbarous. This action would be too honorific.

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