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From: "Laura Johnson" <>
Subject: Re: [Huguenot] The millennium lie ...
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 20:57:14 -0800


oops - here is the url for that article in the Cambria news

http://www.cambrianews.com/


Laura L. Johnson
ICQ# 13006842
Home of the Sicilian Ancestry Web Ring http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/1535


-----Original Message-----
From: Laura Johnson <>
To: <>
Date: Sunday, January 02, 2000 6:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Huguenot] The millennium lie ...


>Depends on who you want to believe - see the following article. Can't remember which newspaper it
>was in but it was from a small newpaper in PA which is online. It was posted to another list I am
>on.
>
>"Blame the madness on Dennis the Short"
>
>"There are 367 days until the new millennium starts on January 1, 2001 - NOT
>in 2000.
>
>Dennis began his career working in Constantinople for Pope Gelasius,
>translating works in the papal archives from Greek into Latin. Later, under
>Pope John I, he was still translating - this time working on Easter tables
>drawn up by Saint Theophilus. He decided to correct the dating system which
>was then using Anno Diocletani - years since the Roman emperor Diocletian.
>Diocletian was infamous for persecuting Christians. Dennis wanted to glorify
>Christ, so he worked on a dating system based on the life of Jesus.
>
>The actual date of Jesus' birth had long been lost or forgotten by the time
>he started his quest, so Dennis, in his efforts to simplify the convoluted
>19-year and 84-year Easter cycles, turned to the only sources he could
>find - Roman ones. He used them to try and backtrack. Good idea, but his
>sources were not accurate. Nor was his grasp of mathematics.
>
>Dennis also decided the eighth day after Jesus' birth (the date of his
>circumcision) should be the New Year - which is the start of year 2. (A.D.
>2 - 'anno domini,' or 'year of our Lord' although modern, non-denominational
>use is to say CE for Common Era). He chose this rather than the date of
>Conception (March 25) or Incarnation (December 25) as his marker.
>
>The birthday Dennis dated from was December 25, the winter solstice in the
>Julian calendar. This was the same date of a pagan festival called Sol
>Invictus, celebrated in Rome as the birth of the sun god. Many scholars
>believe the birth date was changed to Dec. 25 to encourage pagan converts
>(and give them a festival on the same day so they wouldn't have to buy new
>part hats...). Until A.D. 354, Jesus' birthday was actually celebrated on
>Jan. 6, but it got moved to the earlier date after Dennis. Today, many
>modern authorities argue for a spring or fall birth for Jesus, based on
>historical, literary and astronomical studies, so if they're right, Dennis'
>date for Christmas isn't even in the right season.
>
>Anyway, Dennis' year 1 should have been year 0, but he didn't know about
>zeroes (several centuries later, the somewhat brighter Arab mathematicians
>taught us about them(2). (According to some theorists, this allowed the west
>to invent doughnuts - 'dough noughts' - nought being another word for zero).
>Dennis, you see, was using Roman numerals, which have no concept for zero.
>Roman numerals are notoriously difficult to use in calculations, so we can
>excuse him a few errors (try multiplying MCMXVI by LXXXVIII and you'll see
>what I mean...). But his errors were later perpetuated and compounded by
>others.
>
>And Dennis didn't just lose a year in his calculations: he lost a year and a
>day because year 0 (his Year 1) would have been a leap year!
>
>Dennis was also a little off on his reckoning - his date for Jesus' birthday
>was four years too late (possibly even more, according to some recent
>authorities). But his mistake was never rectified even when later church
>authorities realized it. Dennis based his calculations on an erroneous
>reading of the old Roman calendar, which marked time from the founding of
>Rome (Anno Urbis Conditae, itself a date more mythological than correct).
>His reading made A.D. 1 equal to 740 AUC, so he figured Jesus was born Dec.
>25, 753 AUC. Dennis was doing his calculations in what was about 1280 AUC,
>so a fair amount of time had passed since Rome was founded.
>
>Jesus, based on the New Testament chronicles of his life, was born in
>Herod's reign. According to Flavius Joseph, a reasonably good source of
>contemporary history, Herod died shortly after a spring eclipse of the moon.
>There are three possible eclipses around that time (5 BC, 4 BC and 1 BC - or
>BCE: 'Before the Common Era' to non-Christians and the Politically Correct),
>but the consensus among Biblical historians is the March eclipse, 4 BC.
>
>Since Herod declared he would kill all the children under the age of two,
>Jesus must have been under 2 years old in 4 BC - thus between four and six
>years old on the date Dennis set for his first birthday.
>
>When Pope Gregory revised the Julian calendar in 1582, a certain number of
>days were omitted from his new calendar, which resulted in two separate
>styles of dating among Europeans for a long time. We lost 11 days from the
>calendar in 1752 when the switch was made in English-speaking countries from
>the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. So Dec. 31, 1999 is really Dec. 20 by
>the old reckoning.
>
>Many objected to losing the days from October 5 to 14 inclusive simply
>because the Pope decreed it. England (and her colonies) persisted in using
>the "Old Style" until 1752, because of religious differences - so historical
>dating through this period is very difficult at times. Thus March 8, 1735,
>Old Style is really March 19, 1736 in the New Style. (Julian versus
>Gregorian is better explained at the links listed below). Gregory also
>declared that years ending in '00' which were evenly divisible by 400 were
>leap years - the reason 2000 is a leap year.
>
>Oh, and don't forget to calculate the impact of the 90 days Julius Caesar
>inserted into the Roman calendar in 45 BCE to make the Roman holidays align
>with the seasons. Dennis overlooked these, too.
>
>
>And finally - the first of the year also shifted around a lot. Benedictines,
>for example, celebrated the year as beginning on December 25th. Before 1582,
>most calendars did not have the year starting January 1, even though the
>calculation of the moveable religious feasts acted as if it did. In England,
>the year "began" either on December 25th, or, more frequently on March 25th
>(Lady Day), until 1752 when the "New style" was adopted with January 1 as
>the start, the date we've stuck with ever since.
>
>So if you're a stickler for accuracy, the third Christian millennium
>actually began on January 1, 1997 (or if the spring hypothesis is correct,
>sometime in March or April)... or more properly on Dec. 26, 1996 (or January
>6, 1997 if we use the old date assigned - which means January 18 in the
>orthodox calendar)... unless Jesus was born in 5 BCE, in which case this
>year is really 2002... And if you calculate the days lost due to the changes
>in calendars... you easily get lost trying to figure it out.
>
>Simply put, in religious terms, the third millennium has already started by
>exact Christian reckoning, but our calendars don't reflect it properly.
>
>The US Naval Observatory, the Royal Greenwich Observatory (the world arbiter
>for time), the Encyclopedia Britannica, the U.S. Library of Congress, the
>National Institute of Standards and Technology, Arthur C. Clarke, and the
>World Almanac all state the millennium starts on Jan. 1, 2001. And they know
>better than most of us. I'd certainly trust their judgment in this matter
>over those of someone trying to sell me millennial insurance or an
>overpriced travel package to Christmas Island to see the sun rise on Jan. 1,
>2000.
>
>But even if you have the day right, what time do you celebrate the change?
>
>We recognize midnight as the local turning point between days, but it wasn't
>so long ago people used to mark sunset as the end of the day - and that was
>used in calculations about calendars. It's more logical for diurnal
>creatures, but rather slippery because the exact time changes with every
>day. For most of us with intact biological clocks and normal circadian
>rhythms, the day starts at or around sunrise.
>
>People are spending thousands of dollars to travel to the International Date
>Line thinking they'll be the first to see in the new millennium. They're
>doubly wrong: an international conference in Washington. DC, in 1884,
>established that a new "universal" day officially begins at the Prime
>(Greenwich) Meridian (zero longitude, not one!), not at the date line. So
>look to England, not the Pacific Ocean for the change. This means the
>millennium will officially start in Toronto at about 6:45 p.m., (midnight,
>Greenwich time - we're at 79 degrees west longitude, so those extra four
>degrees from the time zone marker mean about 15 minutes earlier). People
>near the International Dateline celebrating the "first" sunrise will
>actually be 12-16 hours late for the official entry of the New Year.
>
>Note, too, that location within a particular time zone is a matter of
>decision for local governments. There is no international authority to say
>in which time zone a country or municipality belongs. For political or
>geographic reasons, some countries have moved the date lines and time zone
>lines to suit their needs. The International Date Line meanders like a drunk
>to accommodate local concerns.
>
>
>Celebrating the millennium on New Year's Eve 1999 is not simply foolish,
>it's just plain wrong. It doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate the dawn of
>the 2,000th year, just that we should be correct and precise in how we label
>the party - we can ring in the last year of the millennium.
>
>Anyone with even basic math skills should understand this (with the possible
>exception of Canadian federal politicians (5), who are planning to spend
>$150 million of our tax dollars on millennial celebrations for Dec. 31,
>1999 - duh! With that sort of sloppy math, we'd better recheck their claim
>to have eliminated the deficit!). To compound this particular stupidity, the
>Royal Canadian Mint is going to release a new series of coins monthly in
>1999 supposedly leading to the first year of the new millennium - but, of
>course, they're out by a year. A representative of the Mint acknowledged it
>to me, but he said they're just going with the flow. This is the sort of
>muddled accounting we expect from bureaucrats in Ottawa who are often
>appointed to the jobs because of political connections rather than their
>intelligence, skills, wisdom or common sense. As a result, we have a
>national celebration in the wrong year. Next thing they'll declare Christmas
>is on Nov. 25.
>
>People, however, are still making plans for big parties on Dec. 31, 1999,
>just like some folks did for the year 999. And like 1,000 years ago, the
>same results will probably occur: nothing special (aside from some monster
>hangovers). It only goes to prove that our numeracy skills have hardly
>improved since the Dark Ages and that all our efforts in science and
>learning have gone for nought in the face of the imagined 'magical'
>significance of a number.
>
>We can't seem to stop the bandwagon and inject some common sense into the
>proceedings, despite all the efforts of science, logic, technology and
>common sense to correct a simple error in understanding how to count to
>1,000. Even the normally cogent CBC Radio has fallen prey to this marketing
>hype and is now saying the year 2000 is the "dawn of a new millennium" in
>news broadcasts. It's proof that budget cuts at the CBC have seriously
>affected the brainpower of the remaining few - and seriously hurt Canada's
>credibility worldwide.
>
>You can put a robot on Mars (well, NASA can, sometimes), you can cure
>disease through modern medicine, you can look into the centre of an atom,
>but the common people still cross their fingers, toss salt over their
>shoulders, read the newspaper horoscope and assume the millennium starts in
>2000."
>
>Laura L. Johnson
>ICQ# 13006842
>Home of the Sicilian Ancestry Web Ring http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Ridge/1535
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: ibf <>
>To: <>
>Date: Sunday, January 02, 2000 4:15 PM
>Subject: [Huguenot] The millennium lie ...
>
>
>>Sorry to state this. But doing genealogy most seriously, we all have to be
>>very correct with facts, also with these facts ...
>>
>>To all who still believe in this stupid millenium crap:
>>
>>Sorry, but now was *neither* starting a new decade, *nor* a new century
>>*nor* a new millennium *this* year!
>>
>>*** This second millennium will end on Dec. 31st, 2000 ***
>>
>>The proof is mathematically and that easy that my children (11 and 13)
>>understood at once:
>>
>>Considering the fact, our Christian calendar started with year 1 (there was
>>no year 0 for the numeral 0 appeared first in Indian writings in 870 and
>>came to Europe later on), the year 1 ended on Dec. 31st, 1 (simply, isn't
>>it?). So the first century ended 100 years later on Dec. 31st, 100, right?
>>Thus the first millennium ended at the *end* of year 1000, correct?
>>
>>And now the solution for all the cheated and doubting in the world (this is
>>*not* an American problem, in this case!): Our second millennium in fact
>>will end on Dec. 31st, 2000. And not now and two days before, respectively.
>>
>>Millions of people worldwide still are under this illusion, 'cause they fell
>>for this clever trick of all the commercial and sale strategists all over
>>the world who pushed this belief in order to sell their millennium's stuff
>>twice: "Oh, really? There was no millenium's change in fact? OK, then let's
>>start our sales campaign again and let's sell another millions of now true
>>millennium events, travels, parties, souvenirs ..." (and whatever nobody
>>will need but many will purchase ...).
>>
>>The only importance of the turn from 1999 to 2000 (Y2k) was the supposed Y2k
>>bug problem - not less and not more, either.
>>
>>
>>For my family and me, the last days have been a quiet, nice time and totally
>>normal New Year's Eve, pretty unaffected by any cheats. And the next one
>>will be as quiet and easy-going ...
>>
>>Anyway, thanks a lot to all your as well personal as public greetings and
>>best wishes; I wish you the same - no matter if there's a millennium or not.
>>Have a fine year 2000 and best success in genealogy!
>>
>>Juergen
>>
>>*******************************
>> Jürgen Fritsche (Germany)
>>-------------------------------
>> -
>> -
>>*******************************
>>
>>
>
>
>

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