AD does not mean “After Death.”  It is an abbreviation for “Anno Domini,” which is a Latin phrase meaning “in the year of our Lord,” referring to the year of Christ’s birth.  BC means before Christ. So at the time of this writing, 2011 AD is intended to signify that it has been 2,011 years since Christ was born.¹I say “intended to signify,” as it is not actually 2,011 years since Christ was born, as there was a minor error made in calculating the exact year of His birth when the BC/AD system was developed. Second, if you think about it logically, as was discussed in class that day, 1 BC could not be directly followed by 1 AD if AD meant “After the Death of Christ.”²There was no Year 0, and that is why purists state that the 21st century really began on January 1, 2001  That would mean that Christ was born, then He immediately died, and we know that’s not the case.

It is important to note that even though the BC/AD system of dating has Christ as its central focus, it is not found in the Bible.  It was not actually developed until 525 AD, when the entrance of Christ into the world was recognized as being the turning point of history, and our calendars were made to reflect that.³The Julian Calendar (named after Julius Caesar) and the Gregorian Calendar (which was an improvement upon and superseded the Julian Calendar in 1582, and is still the most widely used calendar system in the world today).

Regarding the use of BCE and CE, these are more recent developments.  In most usages, BCE stands for “Before the Common Era,” and CE stands for “Common Era.”  BCE is used in place of BC, and CE is used in place of AD.  The word “Common” in both instances refers to the date employed by the most commonly used calendar system, the Gregorian Calendar.  The years are the same, only the designations are different.  For example, 400 BCE is the same as 400 BC, and 2011 CE is the same as 2011 AD.  There is another less frequent meaning in use for the “C” in the new BCE and CE designations, in that the “C” stands for “Current,” the implication being that there is yet another era still to come.  Many Christians do not like either of these changes, but they can, of course, interpret the letter “C” in the BCE and CE designations as referring to “Christian” or “Christ’s” without taking offense in what many see as an attempt to delegitimize or eliminate Christ from the calendar.