What Does AD and BC Mean?
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What does AD and BC mean? If you think BC means "Before Christ," and AD, "After Death," you'll want to watch this video!
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- What is the meaning of BC and AD? It is commonly thought that BC stands for before Christ and AD stands for after death.
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- This is only half correct. How could the year 1 BC have been before Christ and AD 1 been after death?
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- BC stands for before Christ. AD actually stands for the Latin phrase anno domini which means in the year of our
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- However, when the BC -AD system was being calculated, they actually made a mistake in pinpointing the year of Jesus' birth.
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- Scholars later discovered that Jesus was actually born around 6 -4 BC, not AD 1.
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- That is not the crucial issue. The birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Christ are the turning points in world history.
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- 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
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- Lord. Viewing our era as the year of the Lord is appropriate. Philippians 2 10 -11 says that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
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- Lord, to the glory of God the Father. In recent times there has been a push to replace the
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- BC and AD labels with BCE and CE, meaning before Common Era and Common Era respectively.
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- The change is simply one of semantics. That is AD 100 is the same as 100
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- 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
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- Jesus as Lord. The irony, of course, is that what distinguishes BCE from CE is still the life and times of Jesus Christ.