Talk:Ante Christum natum

Not verified
For lack of a better tag, I am adding the "not verified" tag to the article. The article states that "ante christum natum" is Latin for "before the birth of Christ". Ignoring the lack of the genitive case for "of Christ", the article implies that it was used in Latin to denote what became the English term. I have consulted many Latin texts and have never seen "ante christum natum". Instead, no single term was used in Latin, and of those, the vast majority referred to his incarnation, not his birth. For example, Bede invented the concept of labeling years "before Christ" about AD 731 in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (I.2), where he used ante incarnationis dominicae (before the Incarnation of the Lord). Furthermore, the Latin terms were never abbreviated. I suspect that the original anonymous editor (81.178.127.223) of the article thought that his invented term was obvious. If some proof that this term was actually used in Latin texts is not forthcoming, I will request that the article be deleted. — Joe Kress 21:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Because Gimmetrow found ante Christum so quickly, I conducted my own Google search for ante Christum natum and ante Christi natum (grammatically correct Latin) and found several more non-Wikipedia uses. Thus I conclude that it is a modern Latin term, because it is not found in the medieval and Renaissance Latin texts that I consulted. — Joe Kress 01:10, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Is there a source which uses "ante Christi natum"? Just wondering about this after someone changed the translation; the google hits are pretty minor (14 vs. 25000 for the other form), and seem to be either other wikis or wiki mirrors. Gimmetrow 21:29, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Ante incarnationis dominicae makes no sense to me. Are you sure Bede didn't say ante incarnationem dominicam? What are his exact words? Rwflammang 19:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Bede's exact words are: "Uerum eadem Brittania Romanis usque ad Gaium Iulium Caesarem inaccessa atque incognita fuit; qui anno ab Urbe condita DCXCIII, ante uero incarnationis dominicae tempus anno LXmo, functus gradu consulatus cum Lucio Bibulo, ..." (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, book I, chapter 2) I took the liberty of not mentioning "uero". His usage could be termed "ecclesiastical Latin" which deviated somewhat from classical Latin. Moreover, note that the title of his book in "The Latin Library", Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum, deviates from the usual title, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which is the title both I and Wikipedia use. Individual scribes probably used their own version of Latin whenever they copied it. — Joe Kress 00:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the full quote. It looks like good classical Latin to me. The key word that was missing was tempus; you were right to leave out vero. The full grammatical phrase is ante incarnationis dominicae tempus. I'll update the article. Rwflammang 14:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

What's ungrammatical about ante Christum natum? The lack of a genitive shouldn't be an issue, this is just an idiomatic use of a Latin participle, like Caesar occisus terruit cives, "the murder of Caesar terrified the citizens". See Gavin Betts' excellent Teach Yourself Latin. Rwflammang 19:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've seen the abbreviations a.Ch.n and p.Ch.n used for BC and AD in Latin forums on the internet. I had been under the impression somehow that they stood for ante Christi natalem and post Christi natalem. Sorry, I don't recall the details. Rwflammang 19:46, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Thus: removed those "these terms were not used" parts. --IP, 09:38, 25 November 2014 (UTC), corr. 21:13&21:41, 25 November 2014 (UTC)
 * In books.google.de/books?id=nRzmSJwn_YcC&pg=PP10 from the year MDLXXXX = 1000+500+50+10+10+10+10 = 1590 one can read "Francofurdi VII Id. April anni a Chr. n. MDXC. [= 1000+500+(100-10) = 1590]". (Maybe Christo nato, Christi nati)
 * In books.google.de/books?id=LUNp1Ms_2CgC&pg=PA30 ("romanae historiae scriptores graeci minores [...]") from MDXC [= 1000+500+(100-19)1590]: "ann.a.Chr.n." + "AN. CHR. MDXC" on title page
 * In books.google.de/books?id=JYJEAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA351 ("epitaphia augustana vindelica"; listing abbreviations, those they most likely were somewhat common) from MDCXXIV [= 1000+500+100+10+10+(5-1) = 1624]: "AN.P.CHR.N. Anno post Christum natum"

Birth Vs. Conception
The sentence, "Most comparable early Latin terms referred to Christ's Incarnation or conception, not his birth nine months later", seems to imply that using a.Ch.n or p.Ch.n would not be accurate. But it seems to me that since the conception and birth occurred during the same year, this distinction is academic. Rwflammang 14:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, the distinction is acuurate, and academic. But we strive to be an accurate, and academic encyclopedia.  The fact that it is inaccurate is significant, because it proves that ACN is a "modern Latin" abbreviation, and not an authentic one. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * It would seem to me easier to just state that it is a "modern Latin" phrase. I think we all agree on that. The exact date of the annunciation seems a very tangential piece of information. (Doesn't this article have enough obscure abbreviations without "O.S." too?) The key idea is that early writers used the incarnation as a point of reference, but this phrase came about sometime later (18th century?) when the nativity had become more prominent. Gimmetrow 17:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

As if Latin "incarnatio" (gen.sg. incarnationis) is supposed to mean "conception" (in the sense of "fertilization/fertilisation, impregnation"). Especially, when "conception" and "9 month" sound like "Joseph impregnated Maria"... --IP, 21:13, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Removal of AD statement
I am moving the following statement here for discussion:


 * The original calculation of the corresponding term Anno Domini by Dionysius Exiguus in 525 was reckoned from the assumed date of the Annunciation (March 25 1).

This statement is not supported by a citation, furthermore, I consider it unclear and incorrect. Gustav Teres of Oslow University, in his article "Time Computations and Dionysius Exiguus" in Journal of Historical Astronomy v. 15 p. 185 deduces that Dyionysius started his calculation with the year of the founding of Rome a.u. 783, which was the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar. St. Luke's gospel (3:1 and 3:23) says that Jesus was baptised by John the Baptist and started his ministry during "the fifteenth year of the rule of Emperor Tiberius", when he was about 30 years old. Subtracting 30 from 783 gives a.u. 753 as the year of Christ's Incarnation and birth.

Whether you think this reasoning is correct or not, I think the statement should still be removed, because the article Anno Domini is a much more appropriate place to discuss such issues than this article. --Gerry Ashton 22:47, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * You say this statement is incorrect. But it is 100% correct.  Dionysius, like Ananius before him, calculated Anno Domini from the Annunciation, not the actual Nativity. You can read about it here: New Year as well as the other articles you just named.  Why exactly do you think it is "incorrect"? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 22:54, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Are aCn and pCn based on a January 1 New Year? If so, I see this text, introducing ideas about annunciation and nativity New Years, as at best confusing. The year count would be identical to BC and could be referred to another article, per Gerry Ashton. The main interesting thing is that the phrase is aCn rather than aCi. Gimmetrow 02:30, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

(unindent)Codex Sinaiticus asks why exactly do I think the statement is incorrect. I have several issues.
 * 1) As stated above, Teres argued that Dionysius's calculations are based on an Incarnation year and birth year of a.u. 753, which is 1 BC, not AD 1.
 * 2) The phrase "calculation of the corresponding term Anno Domini" could be interpreted to mean the calculation that Dionysius carried out to figure out the year in which Christ was conceived or born, but the rest of the sentence makes little sense with that interpretation.
 * 3) I don't understand what it means for a calculation to be reckoned from a date. This is hazy at best, nonsense at worst.

If Codex Sinaiticus could explain what this statement means, with examples, we could then consider whether it has any place in this article, and if so, how to phrase it. --Gerry Ashton 04:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I cannot understand the sense behind this theory you cite, since Dionysius definitely started Anno Domini off with the date he thought was the Annunciation (March 25), and not one year after the date he thought was the Annunciation. It doesn't make any sense to me at all. If that's what some experts have "determined" and want everyone to think, then whatever - at least you can source who it was who had this theory. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 04:30, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The article Dionysius Exiguus states "Because Dionysius did not place the Incarnation in an explicit year, competent scholars have deduced both AD 1 and 1 BC. Most have selected 1 BC...." It would be nice if Wikipedia articles did not disagree with each other. Unfortunately, the Dionysius Exiguus article does not cite a source to support the idea that most scholars have selected 1 BC. Teres also mentions that Dionysius distinguishes between the civil, ecclesiastical, and liturgical year. So I don't know that we can flatly state that Dionysius considered the year to begin on January 1 or March 25; it may have depended on context.


 * If he considered the year to begin on March 25, that would make his Paschal tables rather awkward. Consider the year 535. If it started on March 25, then there would be two Easters that year, one near the beginning of the year on April 2, and one near the end of the year on March 22. Yet his table says the Easter falling on March 22 belongs to the year 536. If the first day of the year is considered either to be January 1, in accord with the Roman calendar, or the first Sunday in Advent, in accord with the Western Catholic liturgical calendar, the problem of two Easters in the same year is avoided. --Gerry Ashton 04:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

(Unindent) Like Codex Sinaiticus, I believe the statement is 100% correct. It just seems obvious to me that Dionysius Exiguus intended 1 Anno Domini to be the year of Christ's conception and birth. Unfortunately, I can't prove this based on what Dionysius actually said. And, nutty as it seems, there are plenty of people who believe he intended 1 BC to be the year of Christ's conception and birth, as any internet search on the topic will reveal. So if you want to make the above statement, you'll have to allow the competing statement to be made. Both statements will need references, of course, but such references would not be too difficult to find. It seems to me that a discussion of these two claims (1 AD vs. 1 BC) would not add much improvement to this article; such a discussion would be better suited to the articles on Dionysius Exiguus and, perhaps, Anno Domini. See also the talk page Talk:Dionysius Exiguus. Rwflammang 13:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you, I haven't tried to reproduce Teres' calculations myself, but note the use of the following verbs applied above in Gerry's description of Professor Teres' theory... "deduces"... "argued"... Teres "deduces that Dionysus started his calculations in the year A.U. 783"...  Of course, Dionysus did not mention this in his own calculation, so it must be left to Teres to deduce this as "fact", mainly in order to support the incredible view that Anno Domini starts a year after he calculated the Annunciation and birth in 1 BC ... Then again, you wrote above that "Teres argued that Dionysius's calculations are based on an Incarnation year and birth year of a.u. 753, which is 1 BC, not AD 1."  I appreciate your caution in not writing that Teres "proved" any such thing.  ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Since others in this discussion have used words like "nutty" and "obvious" let me state what seems reasonable to me, a person who cannot read Latin and has very little experience with medieval or ancient documents. One system for naming years was the year in the reign of the emperor. One option is to advance the year number on the date the emperor took office, but this would upset the calendar whenever a new emperor took office on an arbitrary date. Another system would be to always start the year on January 1, and use the year number of the emperor's reign for the entire year. So,using the Julian calendar, Emperor Diocletian's reign is conventionally considered to start sundown August 28, AD 284. One option would have been to consider the year that started on January 1 about 4 months after his taking office to be the year Diocletian 1 until December 31, about 16 months after his taking office. I don't know if this logic was actually applied or not, but it would have been convenient.


 * Dionysius was in somewhat the same situation. March 25 would be an inconvenient date to start the New Year, because some years would have 2 Easters and other years none. The Roman civil year starting on January 1 was still in use. I understand that one of the councils of Tours decided that starting the year on January 1 was an ancient mistake, and it should start on March 25, but that was after Dionysius did his work. So it would have been convienient for Dionysius to consider the civil year to run from January 1 through December 31, and using modern terminology, the Annunciation would have occured March 25 civil year 1 BC. I would be delighted to have someone to topple my house of cards with good citations. This still leaves open the possibility that the Annunciation could have occured New Year's Day, March 25, annunciation year 1 AD.--Gerry Ashton 16:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

1 AD vs. 1 BC
I wrote the bulk of Dionysius Exiguus. His actual words and an English translation are at Cyclus Decemnovennalis Dionysii - Nineteen year cycle of Dionysius, which I referred to in the article. Here is Dionysius' statement:

First Argumentum. On the years of Christ. If you want to find out which year it is since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, compute fifteen times 34, yielding 510; to these always add the correction 12, yielding 522; also add the indiction of the year you want, say, in the consulship of Probus Junior, the third, yielding 525 years altogether. These are the years since the incarnation of the Lord.

From 153 BC until AD 541 consuls took office on 1 January, so here Dionysius refered to the 1 January to 31 December consular year, which is a named, not numbered, year. Dionysius bases his calculation exclusively on the indiction (I also wrote that article), a cycle of fifteen years, referring to the consulship of Probus Junior as the third indiction. This implies that he regarded the indiction as coincident with the consular year. The year of the indiction began on several different dates depending on who was writing. But the papal indiction did begin on 1 January, although I'm not sure whether that was true as early as the time of Dionysius. Dionysius' calculation is utterly useless for determining the year of the incarnation relative to any other calendar.

He only used his numbered years to tabulate and calculate Easter. He never used them for any historical purpose, except for his tangential reference to the incarnation, so their limits are somewhat unknown. This vagueness allows the possibility that his numbered years also coincided with consular years. Nevertheless, both Easter and the incarnation occurred in spring, so it can be argued that his numbered years began in spring. By using 'spring' I avoid the 'awkward' fact that Easter can be as early as 22 March, yet the incarnation had occurred on 25 March ever since 25 December was chosen as his nativity in the fourth century. Dionysius never mentioned AUC years, which were only used by a few Roman historians and on at least one monument (Julian calendar). Most Romans used the consular year. Georges Declercq in his book Anno Domini severely criticized Gustav Teres for interjecting AUC years into his argument.

I have already cited Georges Declercq as the one and only scholar I am aware of who argued that Dionysius placed the incarnation on 25 March AD 1. He did that by ignoring the above statement of Dionysius, instead basing his argument on the structure of Dionysius' Easter tables. In particular, AD 1, like AD 533, had luna XIIII (Nisan 14) on 25 March. Nisan 14 is the date of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John (18:28, 19:14). Early Christian writers believed that the creation, the incarnation, and the crucifixion all occurred on 25 March. Most scholars have argued for 25 March 1 BC based on Dionysius' use of "years since the incarnation of the Lord". Given that he wrote that the consulship of Probus Junior was 525 years since the incarnation, then 524 years earlier would still be 1 year since the incarnation, inevitably placing the incarnation one year earlier, which we now identify as 1 BC. Scholars making similar arguments include Theodor Mommsen (writing in German during the late nineteenth century), Charles W. Jones in "Development of the Latin ecclesiastical calendar" within Bedae Opera de Temporibus (1943), and Gustave Teres, "Time computations and Dionysius Exiguus", Journal for the history of astronomy, 15 (1984): 177-188 (the last two already referenced in Dionysius Exiguus).

Dionysius did not number or otherwise identify the year of the incarnation. AD 1 is a modern designation for one possible year. If he had wanted to, he could have called the year before year 1 as year zero because he did state that the first epact was nulla or zero, contrary to 'common knowledge' that the number zero was unknown to any European before the eleventh century, when its symbol (0) was introduced.

It doesn't matter to me whether or not the year of the incarnation is in this article. I only insist that if it is, that both possible years for the incarnation be given.

— Joe Kress 02:32, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * A nice clean overview of a messy issue, Joe. Thank you. I do take issue with your statement that Declercq ignored Dionysius' statement regarding the 524 years. I simply don't think that the Latin word abs carries the same force or exactness as the English since, and Declercq realized this. And while Dionysius used zero as an epact in his tables, I see no reason to assume that he started counting years at zero, which would be an unusual practice (I think) in the 6th century. Obviously, there are plenty of people who disagree with me, or think it irrelevant. Anyone interested in seeing how murky this issue realy is need only google "1 ad" "1 bc" born to see a whole mess of complicated arguments. It's too bad Dionysius never really spelled out what he meant. But I suspect he did not because he saw no need to; he, like me, thought the right answer was "obvious". Rwflammang 14:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * This is very interesting, and I don't feel qualified to speak on every aspect of it. The quote that Joe gave on what Dionysius himself actually said is especially useful.  Note that D. explicitly stated it was 525 years after the Annunciation, not 526.  That's about the only definite statement. One would think that this would at least nail down how he calculated AD in relation to the Annunciation.  But, we have just seen it demonstrated that with a little magic, we can take that as a starting point, then add a number here, substract a number there, and come to the conclusion that he also calculated that the Annunciation was 526 years before that same point.  Amazing. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 15:53, 17 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Joe Kress wrote "Given that he wrote that the consulship of Probus Junior was 525 years since the incarnation...." The problem is that consulships started in January and ran through at least December 31, if not a few days into January of the next year. So even if "since" is an appropriate translation of the Latin, it could mean 525 complete years plus some days from the Annunciation on March 25 until the beginning of Probus Junior's consulship, or exactly 525 years from the Annunciation until the March 25 that occurred during Probus Junior's consulship, or 525 years from the Annunciation until the unstated date that Dionysius sent his letter. A messy issue indeed. --Gerry Ashton 17:24, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

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