The Doc wrote:BTW, 3BC, 2BC, 1BC, 0, 1AD, 2AD, 3AD.
No, there was no year 0. The year before Christ's birth was 1 BC, the year after was 1 AD.
... 3 BC 2 BC 1 BC 1 AD 2 AD 3 AD .... 2005 AD
See, for example:
http://www.legionxxiv.org/dateyeartime/
[Is this too long of an off-topic post ?]
Two thousand years ago, the Year One arrived; but no one knew it, either then or for several centuries thereafter. The 12 months we call 1AD came and went as just another year. To the Romans - who ruled what was then considered the civilized world, and whose civilization would one day be the basis of our own - the year was 754AUC "Ad Urba Condita" ("From the Founding of the City") - 754 being the number of years since Romulus is said to have founded "Rome". Among Rome's Greek subjects, who marked time in four-year units between Olympic Games, the year was merely the first quarter of the 195th Olympiad. Meanwhile, the Chinese saw it as nothing more than the second year of the reign of P'ing-ti, a boy emperor who would die five years later at the age of 13. But to a sixth century monk in Rome, the year ranked as one of the greatest in all history.
Our current numbering of years was instituted around 526 AD, by the Roman and Christian Monk Dionysius Exiguus, aka "Dennis the Little"; based on his estimate of the year when Christ (aka Joshua bar Joseph) had been born. Described as a native Scythian, not much is known of Exiguus; other than he had a great reputation as an avid astronomer and mathematician. The date of Christ's Birth was not considered important until the 2nd Century and up until the time of Exiguus the date of the Resurrection of Christ, (which became associated with the Spring Festival of Easter in the 2nd Century), was still considered more significant than his date of birth; so Exiguus was commissioned by Pope John "The First" to develop a better and more rational method for the annual reckoning of the proper date for Easter. The calendar then in use, dated from the accession of the Roman Emperor Diocletian in the year now called 284 AD. But Diocletian had persecuted early Christians, and Dionysius Exiguus had said in a letter to a friend, that he "preferred to count and denote the years from the Incarnation of Our Lord".
By adding together the number of years that the prior Emperors of Rome had reigned, Dionysius Exiguus calculated that Jesus' Birth had occurred 532 years before in the Roman Year 753 AUC (Ab Urba Condita - "From the founding of the City" of Rome); which Exiguus termed as "Anno Domini Nostri Jesu Christi" (Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ's Birth). The Roman year 753 AUC became what we now term as the year 1 BC, with the year 1 AD beginning one week later after December 25th, on January 1, 754 AUC. Exiguus retained the date of December 25, which had already been decreed as the date of Christ's Birth by Emperor Constantine in 1071 AUC - 318 AD and had previously been celebrated as the Festival of Mithras and the Dies Natalis Solis Invictus (Day of the Birth of the Invincible Sun). Dionysius, however, was off by a few years in his calculations; as the postulated date of Christ's Birth is now considered to have occurred on April 17, 6 BC, about two years prior to the death of Herod, Governor of Judea, in 4 BC, as documented in the Holy Scriptures.
At that time in the Spring of 6 BC (when the shepherds would have logically been in the fields tending their flocks), the planet Jupiter (Star of Zeus) had been rising "In the East" as a morning star, in the constellation of "Ares The Ram", (which to ancient astrologers represented the Kingdom of Judea), and was passing very near to the Moon, and was finally eclipsed by the Moon on April 17, 6 BC. Also at about that same time, Jupiter was passing very close to (in conjunction with) the planet Venus - so close that they were observed to nearly touch each other. These rare and impressive stellar phenomenon were interpreted by the people of the region, and particularly by the "Maji of the East", who were knowledgeable astronomers (and from whom we get our word "Magic"), as an indication for the Birth of a King or a person of great importance in Judea. Exiguus' new Christian Era based Calendar of 526 AD was not then universally adopted and gradually came into use over time. The BC "Before Christ" and AD "Anno Domini" designation of years did not come into general use until the "Late Middle Ages" (1500's).
A "Year-Zero" was not utilized by Exiguus, as at that time in the Western world, counting was done with either Roman Numerals or "fingers", or using the original version of the Abacus developed in Rome (see ABACUS below); neither of which included the concept of a quantity for "Nothing" or the number value of "Zero". Therefore, the sequence of years runs 3BC, 2BC, 1BC, 1AD, 2AD, 3AD, etc.
