Why we're still A.D. after all these years

By Daniel Deagler

Rosh Hashanah, the day of judgment, begins the Jewish High Holy Days, a 10-day period known in Hebrew as the yamin noraim ("days of awe") and culminating with Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Rosh Hashanah, literally the "head of the year," is the New Year's Day of the Jewish calendar; at sundown tonight, the year 5771 will conclude, and 5772 will begin.

At this time, according to Talmudic tradition, God sits in judgment of his people. The names of the righteous are entered into one of three books, the names of the wicked into another. Into the third go the names of all those folks who are not really wicked but could use some improvement.

During the 10-day period, these underachievers are expected to atone for their shortcomings and, on Yom Kippur, to reflect and fast. Those who are sincere in their atonement can then consider themselves free of sin and forgiven by God. As for the wicked, well, they'll eventually get theirs. (The similarities to the Catholic sacrament of penance are striking, but that's not surprising when one considers where Catholicism and every other denomination of Christianity came from.)

The coming year is 5772 because, according to rabbinic tradition, it has been five thousand seven hundred seventy-two years since the creation of the world. This particular dating system is known by its Latin name, anno mundi, which means "in the year of the world."

Pinpointing the moment of creation using biblical clues is not an easy task. During the time of the Patriarchs, roughly defined as before the great flood, the Bible says people enjoyed really, really long life spans. Adam lived to be 930, Seth 912, Enoch (only) 365, Noah 950, and Methuselah 969. (Though Methuselah's name is famous, the Bible doesn't tell us much about him beyond his impressive longevity: "And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.")

Estimating the length of an average generation based on this crew was pretty problematic, and there were various calculations floating around different Jewish communities. Order was finally imposed in A.D. 1178 by the great Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah, which established a standardized system. The Maimonides Code is used by Jews worldwide today.

Just as the fasting and reflection of the High Holy Days have parallels in Christian sacraments, there are similarities between the great rabbinic scholars whose commentaries became the Talmud and the medieval scholar-monks who handwrote and illuminated sacred texts, preserved classical learning in an age of illiteracy (at least in Europe), and created tables calculating the date of Easter.

The fruits of the labor of one monk in particular are still with us every day. In (what would come to be called) the year 525, a respected monk named Dionysius Exiguus, whose name can be translated as "Dennis the Short," was given the job of extending the Easter tables into the future. The tables he was working from were based on a dating system used in the Church of Alexandria called the Diocletian Era. Dennis didn't want to base his tables on a system named for an emperor who persecuted Christians, so he called the year he was writing in the 525th year since "the incarnation of our Lord, Jesus Christ."

It was not until two centuries later, after St. Bede the Venerable used Dennis' dating system in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People"), that the anno domini ("in the year of our Lord") system was widely adopted in Europe.

Dennis' method of determining the year of Christ's birth was better than that used to figure out the date of creation, but it was not perfect. For example, the King Herod who, according to the Gospel of Matthew, murdered the innocents in reaction to Christ's birth, is known to have died in 4 B.C. - which means the anno domini system has Jesus of Nazareth being born before Christ.

The A.D. system nevertheless became and remains the world's standard, probably because no one has ever presented a better one (though not for lack of trying; see: French Revolution.) Non-Western and non-Christian countries use the system, too, because the global economy runs on it. Even today's Jerusalem Post will have the year 2011 on top of its front page, right next to 5772. It only has to be the "year of our Lord" if you want it to be.

May health and happiness find all of God's children in the year that some of God's children call 5772. L'shana tova!