Common Era

"BCE" redirects here. For other uses, see BCE (disambiguation).

Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the original Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) notations used for the same calendar era. The two notation systems are numerically equivalent: "2024 CE" and "AD 2024" each describe the current year; "400 BCE" and "400 BC" are the same year.[1][2]

The expression can be traced back to 1615, when it first appears in a book by Johannes Kepler as the Latin: annus aerae nostrae vulgaris (year of our common era),[3][4] and to 1635 in English as "Vulgar Era".[a] The term "Common Era" can be found in English as early as 1708,[5] and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish religious scholars. Since the late 20th century, BCE and CE have become popular in academic and scientific publications on the grounds that BCE and CE are religiously neutral terms.[6][b] They have been promoted as more sensitive to non-Christians by not referring to Jesus, the central figure of Christianity, especially via the religious terms "Christ" and Dominus ("Lord") used by the other abbreviations.[7][8][c] Nevertheless, its epoch remains the same as that used for the Anno Domini era.

  1. ^ "Anno Domini". Merriam Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. 2003. Retrieved 4 October 2011. Etymology: Medieval Latin, in the year of the Lord
  2. ^ "Controversy over the use of the "CE/BCE" and "AD/BC" dating notation/". Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. Retrieved 12 November 2011.
  3. ^ Coolman, Robert. "Keeping Time: The Origin of B.C. & A.D." Live Science. Retrieved 11 November 2017.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference VulgarisAerae1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference 1708CommonInEnglish was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Espenak, Fred (25 February 2008). "Year dating conventions". NASA. Retrieved 24 August 2021.
  7. ^ Herrmann, Andrew (27 May 2006). "BCE date designation called more sensitive". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 10 August 2017. Retrieved 18 September 2016. The changes – showing up at museums, in academic circles and in school textbooks – have been touted as more sensitive to people of faiths outside of Christianity. ... The use of BCE and CE have rankled some Christians
  8. ^ McKim, Donald K (1996). "C. E.". Westminster dictionary of theological terms. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-664-25511-4.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Irvin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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