What is B.C. or A.D.?

We’ve all heard the these acronyms that divide time as we know it. But what do they mean and why do we have them?

I got into a discussion today about history, the age of the earth, and the infallibility of the continually proven accuracy of the Bible. This caused me to rabbit trail (something I do often) into researching our timeline divisors a bit more closely.

When I was young, I used to hear people say that B.C. meant “Before Christ” and A.D. meant “After Death”. I always thought that was weird because…what happened to the years Jesus was alive and on the earth? Did they live in a non-year time warp when time wasn’t time? When just one day flowed into the next without being recorded as time? And yet people obviously aged because Jesus turned 12 years old and began His ministry at about 30 years old. What I was led to believe (whether through misunderstanding on my part, miscommunication on their part, or just simply best-intentioned ignorance) left a big 33 year hole in the calculation of time.

OK. So let’s break it down and clear the mud.

What my young self was told about B.C. and A.D., was only partly true: B.C. does stand for “Before Christ”. However, A.D. stands for Anno Domini, which is Latin for “the year of our Lord”. You see, a man who was a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (sometimes called Dennis the Small) of Scythia Minor began the use of A.D. It is surmised that he used historical documents to track back to the date when Jesus was born.

Obviously, Dionysius rightfully felt that a new era had begun. This new era was marked by God Himself taking on the form of mankind, to be born and grow up and minister here on earth, to reach us face-to-face, in a personal way. Dionysius was apparently convinced it was such a monumental and important occasion that all time should be measured by it.

The B.C. notation for the previous era, did not come into practice until hundreds of years later. Yet even the B.C. era is calculated in reverse order as a countdown to the birth of Christ.

And here we are.

We’ve come from a time in history when God was reverenced and monumentally important , so much so that even time is divided by His coming in the flesh, to today when people are trying to remove God from everything, including B.C. and A.D. and replace them with inert vague non-offensive (to non-Christians) P.C. verbiage.

The funny thing is: no matter what generic terminology is used to tweek, modify, edit, or change the descriptors of our two time eras, the determining dividing factor will always be the birth of Christ.