December 5, 2002
GREAT, THE METRIC CALENDAR:
Museum abandons Christian year system: ROM's display for James ossuary uses CE instead of AD (Joseph Brean, December 04, 2002, National Post)After a long internal debate, the Royal Ontario Museum has switched from marking calendar years on its exhibits with AD and BC to the more "modern and palatable" system of BCE and CE.The new terms, already in scholarly use but often unfamiliar to the public, refer to the time after the birth of Jesus as the "common era," rather than with the religiously toned "anno Domini," which means "year of the Lord." Instead of "before Christ," the new style renders those times as "before the common era."
Dan Rahimi, the Toronto museum's director of collections management, said the intent of the change "is just to be more inclusive, let's say, in how we even describe the years.
''A lot of people accept the reality of Jesus as a historical figure but don't accept him as Christ, and to use the words 'before Christ' is really quite ethnocentric of European Christians. And to use 'the year of our Lord' is also quite insensitive to huge populations in Toronto who have other lords."
The first exhibit to display this new nomenclature is the James ossuary, a stone box believed to have contained the bones of James, brother of Jesus, the namesake of the dating system the museum is abandoning.
One would merely note that this was written on a Thursday. Aren't you just seething with anger at being forced to acknowledge the Norse god of thunder? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 5, 2002 10:08 PM
This is just weenie PC types in all their glory-- we can't offend anyones sensibilities, so we we'll just change the name to something bland, while keeping all the particulars intact.
If they find the Gregorian calendar so offensive, there are lots of other calendars to choose from. Unfortunately, they all seem to have a religious basis.
Posted X ante diem kalendis December MMDCCLV A.U.C.
And no fair for Muslims to have Monday (Moon Day). Bias!
Posted by: Gideon at December 5, 2002 11:09 PMIt has been my impression that the scholarly
use of ce/bce was not so much antireligious
as an attempt by globally-minded people
to announce their global-mindedness.
That's fine, I think, except the solution --
calling it a common era -- makes no sense
whatever. What is it that is held in common?
It reminds me of the consolidation of 4
small towns' high schools in Iowa. Each wanted
its school name to survive, of course, but
they could not agree, of course. Eventually
they named the school for the one thing they
did have in common: Interstate 35 High School.
Harry raises an excellent point. What is it we hold in "common" that sets this date as a demarcation point? Even if one doesn't except Jesus as the "christ" (literally "annointed," from the Greek), there's no denying that Jesus was a historical figure of tremendous impact.
Let's not reinvent the wheel. B.C. and A.D. have been serving fine for hundreds of years.
But, but, but ... Doesn't "C.E." stand for "Christian Era", and "B.C.E." is, obviously, "Before Christian Era"? ... In English, at least.
Posted by: Henry at December 6, 2002 9:07 AMI'm just flattened by the idea of someone whose life is so pallid, so bland, so cocooned, that he can be offended by the use of AD.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 6, 2002 10:15 AMI particularly enjoyed the "Thursday" comment.
Posted by: Michael Duff at December 6, 2002 10:30 AMI was seething before Thursday, guys, given that Wednesday is named after another Norse god, Wotan. Enough of this Nordocentrism, I say!
Posted by: Jeffersonian at December 6, 2002 11:22 AM"It has been my impression that the scholarly
use of ce/bce was not so much antireligious
as an attempt by globally-minded people
to announce their global-mindedness. "
A succinct definition of politcal correctness and intellectual sanctimony if there ever was one. It's espeically ripe coming from people who supposedly are interested in preserving history.
What's next, try again to call the Greenwich Meridian the "Common Meridian" so as to not offend the French? (Who initially refered to Greenwich Time as "Paris Mean Time diminished by 9 minute 21 seconds" so as to not recognize the true basis.)
I actually like Woten's Day, because in the Thor comic book when I was a kid Odin decided to see why Thor liked humans so much, so he came to Earth and passed as a human named: Orrin.
Posted by: oj at December 6, 2002 5:31 PM