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Anno Mundi

 
Celtic Mythology: Anno Mundi

[Latin, year of the world]

The year since the creation of the world, according to biblical revelation, abbreviated AM. Medieval scholars were not uniform as to when this might have been. The Irish Annals of the Four Masters posited 5090 BC; e.g. 1000 BC would be 4090 AM. The influential Anglo-Saxon historian the Venerable Bede (8th cent.) suggested 3952 BC. Also widely cited were 5200 BC and 5198 BC.

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A Jewish grave stone using the Anno Mundi chronology

Anno Mundi (Latin: "in the year of the world") abbreviated as AM or A.M., refers to a Calendar era counting from the Biblical creation of the world.

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Jewish computation

Years in the Hebrew calendar are counted from the Creation year. The system in use today was adopted sometime before 3925 AM (165 AD), and based on the calculation in the Seder Olam Rabbah of Rabbi Jose ben Halafta in about 160 AD.[1] By his calculation first humans were created in the year 3760 BC.[2] The Jewish year spanning Sep 30, 2008 – Sep 19, 2009 AD, beginning and ending at Rosh Hashanah, is 5769 AM in the Hebrew calendar.

Christian computation

Freemason cornerstone with year in Common Era and Anno Lucis.

AM was also used by early Christian chronographers. The medieval historian Bede dated creation to 18 March 3952 BC. The Chronicon of Eusebius and Jerome dated creation to the year of 5199 BC.[3][4] Earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day used this date,[5] as did the Irish Annals of the Four Masters.[6]

The Etos Kosmou is the corresponding concept in the Byzantine calendar, which dates creation to 1 September 5509 BC.

James Ussher (1654) dated creation to 23 October 4004 BC according to the Julian calendar, which in the Gregorian calendar would be 21 September 4004 BC.

Related to this is the Freemasonry's Anno Lucis (abbreviated A.L.), which adds 4000 years to the AD date.[7]

References

  1. ^ p.107, Kantor
  2. ^ Genesis 2:7
  3. ^ The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman by Andrew Galloway page 69
  4. ^ Fourth Century (see 327 Eusebius of Caesarea). Archived 2009-10-25.
  5. ^ Wikisource-logo.svg Howlett, J.A. (1913). "Biblical Chronology". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Biblical_Chronology. 
  6. ^ from 5194 A.M. in the Annals at CELTUniversity College Cork's Corpus of Electronic Texts project has the full text of the annals online, both in the original Irish and in O'Donovan's translation
  7. ^ "What is the Masonic Calendar?". Library and Museum Charitable Trust of the United Grand Lodge of England. http://www.freemasonry.london.museum/faqs.htm. Retrieved 2006-07-06. 

Sources

  • Mattis, Kantor, The Jewish time line encyclopedia: a year-by-year history from Creation to present, Jason Aronson Inc., Northvale, N.J., 1992

See also

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.


 
 
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Celtic Mythology. A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. Copyright © James MacKillop 1998, 2004. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Anno Mundi" Read more