I said I wouldn’t post further on this topic, but Pax.
Reading through this thread I can’t find anywhere where people got heated yet clearly several people perceive that it did. It is well to remember that when we write we know what emotions we write with. Once it is simply text, however, those emotions are lost and the reader will resupply emotions and those are quite likely to differ from those intended.
I am sure I have said this before but it is worth repeating that it is a good rule to assume that anything that you read was written with much more friendly intentions than you perceive.
daivid, excellent points. I have enjoyed this discussion and hearing from the those who hold different views from my own.
I think it may be helpful to acknowledge what we all agree on and where the differences emerge in our thinking. I think that all of us agree on these three things: 1) freedom of religion is a fundamental right for a healthy society 2) the current system of counting years is European and Christian in origin 3) the BCE/CE tag does not change the European/Christian origin of the system.
Now, where we disagree is on the actual harm that the BC/AD tag creates, and the extent to which the BCE/CE tag alleviates that harm. I’ll summarize my reasons for why I think the underlying ideas behind the BCE/CE tag are wrong:
-If the BC/AD tag is bad because it has religious ties, then discussing the origin of the system is also bad because it entails religion. Therefore, if a student in a public school asks about the reasoning behind the system, the question cannot be answered. If the question is answered, that seems to imply that the harm of exposing the system’s religious roots (the reason for dropping BC/AD) was exaggerated; and if the question isn’t answered, that seems like damnatio memoriae.
-I understand that those from other religions may feel like “outsiders” with the BC/AD tag, but at the same time I can imagine a young Jewish boy who learns the BCE/CE system and grows up to find out that it’s really a “Christocentric” system (quite literally) might become angered and feel that he has been lied to about the extent to which Christianity does indeed pervade Western society.
-Lastly, if the BC/AD tag is bad because it has a religious association, and the BCE/CE tag is a “solution”, then one cannot logically say that it’s fine for someone to use either one. The idea implies that the BCE/CE tag is morally superior to BC/AD, doesn’t it? If I say that using the BC/AD tag offends people and creates a religious hegemony and a neutral solution has been found in the BCE/CE tag, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you still use the BC/AD tag, does that make sense?
Pax in disputatione. Politi sumus.
I think this misses the point. There’s no reason why religions should not be discussed in a public school, as a phenomenon of human history, human values, and human behavior. In the French system, which I think should set the example in this regard, different religions are discussed in history class and to some degree in French class (also called “Philosophie” at least in high school, I’m not sure if that’s the case for younger students). It becomes problematic when one religion is given priority or taken as default. Students and teachers are not allowed to sport manifest religious symbols in France (big crosses, veils – though I’m not sure this is always strictly respected), but even more importantly, every student has the right not to become marked as a member of a particular religion. The last point is very different from the situation in Finland (the country where I live), where kids in public schools have compulsory religion teaching and are separated in groups during religion lessons, so that everyone knows whose family is “normal” (Lutheran) and who is a weirdo (Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, witness of Jehovah, atheist, etc.).
Every French school must display this poster conspicuously:
http://cache.media.education.gouv.fr/file/Horaires-reglement/43/5/charte_de_la_laicite_393435.pdf
AD=“year of our Lord” is problematic, because it makes Christianity default, much more than “Common Era” or even “after Christ”, which just make an arbitrary year the starting point of our time reckoning. (And in passing I’d note that not only is the birth year of Jesus unknown, but a good case could be made that he never lived all; I don’t necessarily believe so – I’m agnostic on that point – but the evidence for him even existing is sparse and contradictory.)
χαῖρε φίλε Παῦλε.
Mk. 8:27b: Τίνα με λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι;
λέγουσί σε μὴ εἶναι. 
This is a Catholic joke, told to me by a priest friend of mine and translated into English (sorry Mark, no Greek!)
There are a Dominican, a Franciscan, and a Jesuit who receive the news of the discovery of a tomb with the body of Jesus inside.
The Dominican: This gives a big theological headache, but we can revise it here and square it up again.
The Franciscan: Great! We’ll build a sanctuary around the place, organize tours, and get a lot of donations!
The Jesuit: Wow! There really was a Jesus after all!
As far as I know there is a very firm scholarly consensus about the historicity of Jesus, i.e. that Jesus existed as a historical figure. The opposite view (that he didn’t exist) seems to be a fringe position.
See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
For what it’s worth, I’m in the AD/BC camp for all the reasons already given in this thread. I’m glad we don’t (yet) have this kind of self inflicted wound/ dilemma in Dutch.
That’s not exactly what I said. A good case could be made that he did exist after all. What I don’t understand is how you can build a scholarly consensus on something where there is simply not enough evidence to build upon. As far as I know, the historical events and persons that appear in the NT don’t match very well with non-Biblical sources, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that none of it happened. In the end, it depends on whether you decide to believe or not. I just wanted to emphasize how arbitrary this year-reckoning is from a non-Christian viewpoint. (And maybe provoke you just a bit…)
Was it this BCE in 19th century Russia?
Is OUTRAGE!
The reason why the year of Jesus’ birth is so moot is that we have two contradictory accounts of Jesus’ birth. The one thing they have in common is that they both answer the question: “Given that Jesus came from Nazareth, how come Micah predicted the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.” Mathew starts Mary in Bethlehem so Jesus is born then and then ensures the family are driven out by Herod. Luke starts Mary in Nazareth and has to move Mary to Bethlehem in time for the birth.
If Jesus was an imaginary person he would have been imagined from the start as a Bethlehemite. It is only because he was real person with a real history that he came with inconvenient facts that needed to be explained away.
That’s a very good point. John the Baptist for one seems to be something of an embarrassment and his relationship to Jesus required an explanation. On balance existence seems more likely than non-existence, but surely the evidence isn’t conclusive. And of course, probably for over 99% of the people alive at that time there’s no surviving evidence they ever existed. My statement was sort of a provocation anyway.
The general consensus of NT scholarship (which includes agnostics and atheists) is that his existence is a solid historical fact. There are a number of reasons for this: 1) the earliest NT writings are dated to around the mid 50s which puts them very close to his life and at a time when his contemporaries would still be living 2) the gospels have some “embarrassing” stories that imply a real tradition of events rather than a cleverly crafted story of a god-man 3) there are a few references to him by non-christian writers, i.e. Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus. The Josephus passage is widely recognized to have interpolations, but the basic reference to Jesus is considered authentic and original 4) the early opponents of Christianity never doubted Jesus’ existence. There’s only one qualified scholar I know of that doubts his existence, most of the chatter about Jesus never existing on the internet comes from people unqualified to judge (that’s not a shot at you, Paul, I’m talking about the various websites one can find). Now, whether you accept the miraculous events told in the gospels is another thing, but the existence of a 1st century rabbi named Jesus that was crucified by the Romans because of some sort of dispute with the Jewish religious authorities is pretty solid.
On the topic of BCE/CE, I thought of an analogy yesterday that I think could be used for this situation: the BCE/CE tag on a dating system that is Christian in origin can be likened to taking an old church and turning it into a public school and redecorating it and changing the name. It has been “re-purposed” for secular use. I would accept that analogy and I think it can be thought of as a “re-purposing” rather than a “whitewashing of history”.