What Does AD and BC Mean?

What is the meaning of BC and AD? It is commonly thought that BC stands for before Christ and AD stands for after death. This is only half correct. How could the year 1 BC have been before Christ and AD 1 been after death?

The Meaning of BC and AD

BC stands for before Christ. AD actually stands for the Latin phrase anno domini which means in the year of our Lord. The BC-AD dating system is not taught in the Bible. It actually was not fully implemented and accepted until several centuries after Jesus'.

Death.

It is interesting to note that the purpose of the BC-AD dating system was to make the birth of Jesus Christ the dividing point of world history. However, when the BC-AD system was being calculated, they actually made a mistake in pinpointing the year of Jesus' birth.

Scholars later discovered that Jesus was actually born around 6 -4 BC, not AD 1. That is not the crucial issue. The birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ are the turning points in world history.

It is fitting, therefore, that Jesus Christ is the separation of old and new. BC was before Christ, and since his birth, we have been living in the year of our Lord. Viewing our era as the year of the Lord is appropriate.

Philippians 2, 10 -11 says,. In recent times, there has been a push to replace the BC and AD labels with BCE and CE, meaning Before Common Era and Common Era, respectively. The change is simply one of semantics.

That is, AD 100 is the same as 100 CE. All that changes is the label. The advocates of the switch from BC-AD to BCE-CE say that the newer designations are better in that they are devoid of any religious connotation and thus prevent offending other cultures and religions who may not see Jesus as Lord.

The irony, of course, is that what distinguishes BCE from CE is still the life and times of Jesus Christ. Got questions? The Bible has answers, and we'll help you find them.