What is the meaning of the term BC and who came up with it?

Answer 1

BC is the term for Before Christ, and AD is for anno domini 'the year of our lord', that is we use an arbitary year as zero, with BC before and AD for after. This year is supposed to mark the birth of Yeshua bar Yusuf - or Joshua ben Joseph or Iesous Christos today known as Jesus. Unfortunately the zero year chosen was a miscalculation by Dionysuis Exiguus , a Sythian monk living in Rome in the first half of the Sixth Century AD. It was adopted in England by the Council of Whitby in 664, and later became widespread in the Continent. Reality is that the gospel Matthew ascribes it to a couple of years before Herod the Great's death (say 6 BC) and gospel Luke to Governor Quirinius' census (6 AD). Perhaps a reasonable average of the contradicting accounts, but not a real date. As most countries and cultures have adopted that zero year dating system, for sound rational administrative and business reasons, it is becoming increasingly usual to use the expression Common Era, rather than the religious phraseology which is irrelevant and potentially offensive to the majority population of the Earth which is not Christian. So dates are expressed as BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era). While some hard line religionists insist on the triumphalism of trying to force their own religious expressions onto others and retain the BC/AD terms, good sense and a sense of proportion dictates against trying to push the three quarters of the world's people who are not Christian into using Christian terminology.