Met at the Mountain

“oh but you’re all hairy & have big noses” we aren’t, but I sure as hell am & I think that’s very sexy of me 🤷🏻‍♀️

it was so important it deserved its own post!

Translation: Parents aren’t making the conscious effort to help their children develop necessary skills and letting iPads raise them.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS 2002, dir. Peter Jackson

We invited our friend Monét X Change for a fin-tastically fun game we’re calling Shecosystems. We asked a series of questions to help determine which ocean ecosystem she’s most aligned with. Watch ‘til the end to find out whether she’s more kelp forest or deep sea. 🌿⚫

As they shouted out with glee,

"Unholy Drink Cloaca

It was invented by one person for a specific purpose - to have a universalizable way of establishing historical dates, rather than having to deal with dynastically based date systems. And it was a really good idea. This is not surprising, since Bede is basically the father of Historiography. He also is the guy who gave us the notion of Primary Sources. Bede is amazing.

When a guy revolutionizes the entire way calendaring is done, he has the right to set his zero point wherever he pleases.

People have pointed out that one problem with CE notation is that it presents itself as neutral when it is exactly the same system as AD. What exactly is "common" about this era? The zero point doesn't become neutral just by effacing its source.

(Also BCE is nonsense. Just use negative numbers)

It makes sense for scholarly tradition to not want to be tied to a specific religion. But scholarly tradition is very enthusiastic about being tied to earlier scholarly tradition. The convention of AD was established by a scholar for a scholarly purpose. We know his name. We know what he was doing, and why, and how. And he was doing it better than anybody else. That is worth honoring.

Rather than pretending that it's a neutral system, acknowledge that it's not. It's not some naturally occurring "common era," it's the system developed by Bede, centered around dates that were important to him personally (but which he intended to be universally applicable).

I have been informed that Bede notation may in fact have been first devised by Dionysus the Humble of Scythia to calculate the date of Easter more accurately. But my broader point stands.

As one of the historians I follow on YouTube pointed out, the point of CE as a notation for Bede Notation was not to "neutralize" the notation, and it actually was specifically because Anno Domini DID have a meaning to people outside that Dominus, namely the Jewish population.

As Bede notation, or the AD system, became the standard for European uses the Jewish population realized that they needed to shift their secular calendar to use the same system rather than trying to conflate the Hebrew Calendar to the current date.

HOWEVER, and this is the part that people trip up on, there is a problem with that. As I'm sure you know, but some reading this will not, Anno Domini means "In the year of our Lord's reign" and refers to the year that, at the time, was the best estimate for when Jesus Christ would have been circumcised, thus being blessed by God and therefore his reign over all creation beginning. Now, again this is something that I' sure you are well aware of, but some people reading this might not be, the fundamental difference between Christianity and Judaism is that Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Isaiah, the redemption of the Lineage of David, and the final Passover Sacrifice who ended God's covenant with Aaron and spread his blessing and mercy from just applying to the Children of Israel to all the peoples of the nations who would follow him. The Jewish people, however, believe that the prophecies of Isaiah have yet to be fulfilled, that the terms of the prophecy were literal and could NOT have been fulfilled at all by Yeshuah the Nazorean, and that if he is thought of in any capacity by the Jewish faith it is as, at best, a heretic. But certainly not a king who reigns over all.

SO, if a Jewish person were to use the AD notation in their contracts, or records, or any form of text, it was seen as carrying an implicit declaration that he was the prophesized Mosshiah. So instead, of saying "it is the two thousand and twenty sixth year of the reign of our Lord" they would instead say "it is the two thousand and twenty sixth year of a common calendar used among multiple peoples."