Year: 2023

The Hebrew calendar, which is still in use to this day, is based on the Anno Mundi (“in the year of the world”) premise. Anno Mundi dates events from the beginning of the creation of the earth as calculated as best as possible through scripture.

Ancient civilizations derived their calendars based on the reign of kings or the cycles of the seasons as set by their various gods. In Mesopotamia one would have dated an event as “five years from the reign of King Shulgi”.

In Egypt, it would have been “three years after the last Opet Festival of Ramesses who was the second of that name”. Or perhaps “In the tenth year of the reign of Ramesses who triumphed at Kadesh”. This method of dating was continued by the Romans who counted their years according to three different systems in different eras including from the founding of Rome, and by emperors who ruled at a point in time.

It was Julius Caesar who reformed the calendar and renamed the months during his reign from 49-44 BCE (Before Common Era (BCE) or before Christ (BC)). This calendar remained in use, with periodic revisions, until 1582 CE (Common Era). This is the same as AD (anno Domini), which means “in the year of the Lord” in Latin. In 1582 CE, Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar which is also still in use in the present day. Christians used the Anno Mundi calendar and the Roman calendar in the early years of the faith. In 525 CE, a new concept in dating was introduced by a Christian monk named Dionysius Exiguus (470-544 CE) which provided the foundation for the move to the BC/AD system.

Dionysius Exiguus invented the concept of Anno Domini (“in the year of our Lord”) or AD time in an effort to stabilize the date of the celebration of Easter. While he was working on this problem, Christians of the church of Alexandria were dating events from the beginning of the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian (284 CE). Ironically, this emperor often persecuted members of the new Christian faith. Dionysius Exiguus’s goal was to bring the eastern and western churches into agreement on a single day on which all Christians would celebrate Easter.

This goal had been decided upon by Constantine the Great at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, but that goal had not yet been achieved. Dionysius Exiguus ultimately succeeded in changing the system of dating years from the Roman system and the Alexandrian system. This new system is centered on the Christian era starting with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. This choice also eliminated another Christian problem, which was the dating historical events based on the reign of an emperor who had killed so many Christians. [1]

The only problem with this dating system was that no one actually knew when exactly Jesus of Nazareth was born. Dionysius Exiguus himself did not know when Jesus was born, and his system made no claims or credits for dating that event definitively. He seems to have arrived at his calculations through a reliance on scripture and the known history of the time to create a Christian calendar which would be acceptable to both the western and eastern churches of the time for the celebration of Easter.

Dionysius Exiguus never made the claim that he knew the date of Jesus’s birth.  He did not begin his quest to reform the calendar for the purpose of accurately dating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  He did it in accordance with the wishes of the pope of the time who wanted Constantine’s vision realized.

The Easter celebration of the resurrection was considered the most important celebration of the church. Constantine, and those in power who followed him, wanted Easter observed by all churches on the same day. It was Dionysius Exiguus’s job to make that happen. He tried to do this by making a new calendar system which involved calculating the date of Jesus’s birth. This was the means to his desired end, not the target end in itself.

The Bible does not specifically identify the year when Jesus was born.  It does, however, provide sufficient information to identify a relatively narrow range of dates. There is no true proof or agreement with Christian theologians on this matter. It is complicated and difficult to understand. One version of the deduction path to the time of the birth of Jesus Christ goes like this:

It was after Archelaus began to rule in Judea in 4 BC when Jesus returned to Israel from Egypt and settled in Nazareth. Before taking Jesus from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover feast when Jesus was twelve years old (Luke 2:42). The Bible says that Joseph and Mary “went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover” (Luke 2:41)- every year.” This means that at least three prior Passover visits to Jerusalem before the visit mentioned in Luke 2:41 that took place when Jesus was twelve years old. If there had been only three prior Passover visits and the one mentioned in Luke 2:41 is the fourth, and if Archelaus began to rule in Judea just before Jesus settled in Nazareth, four years would have passed since Archelaus’ rule began in 4 BC, so the year would have theoretically been 0 AD. There is however, no such thing as a “zero” year. In this system, the year Christ was born is 1 A.D., and the year preceding it is 1 B.C.

Since Jesus is indicated as being twelve years old at this time, it would mean that Jesus was born in 12 BC. If there had been four prior Passover visits and the one mentioned in Luke 2:41 is the fifth, five years would have passed since Archelaus’ rule began in 4 BC, so the year would have been 1 AD. Since Jesus is indicated as being twelve years old at this time, it would mean that Jesus was born in 11 BC. Similarly, if there had been 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 prior Passover visits, Jesus would have been born in 10 BC, 9 BC, 8 BC, 7 BC, 6 BC, 5 BC, 4 BC, respectively. Since the “census” mentioned in Luke 2:2 took place in 8 BC, Jesus was born between 8 BC and 4 BC.[2] There are other versions of this calculation out there, but the results are similar[3].

The BC/AD system is fundamentally flawed in that it misrepresents the birth of Jesus by approximately 6 years, depending on your sources. The year of Jesus’s birth differs depending on which Gospel one reads. While the Gospel of Matthew states in chapter 2:1 that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, the Gospel of Luke states in chapter 2:1-2 that Jesus was born during the first census of the rule of Quirinius, governor of Syria. According to ancient sources, the date of this census is about 6 CE. The Bible is internally inconsistent regarding the year of Jesus’ birth.[4]  6 BC is most often considered the best educated and defensible guess as to the year of Jesus’s birth.

Fixing the date on which the Easter was to be observed and celebrated triggered a major controversy in early Christianity in which an Eastern and a Western position can be delineated. The dispute, known as the Paschal controversies, was not definitively resolved until the 8^th century. Christians observed the day of the Crucifixion on the same day that Jews celebrated the Passover offering which was the 14^th day after the first full moon of spring. Resurrection, then, was observed 3 days later, regardless of the day of the week.

In the West, the Resurrection of Jesus was celebrated on the first day of the week, Sunday, when Jesus had risen from the dead. Consequently, Easter was always celebrated on the first Sunday after the 14th day of the month. Increasingly, the churches opted for the Sunday celebration, and the Quartodecimans (“14^th day” proponents) remained a minority. In the end, it was the Council of Nicaea in 325 that decreed that Easter should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox (March 21). Easter, therefore, can fall on any Sunday between March 22^nd  and April 25^th .[5]

The first full moon of April (the pink moon) is always the 3^rd full moon of the year. Jesus was resurrected on the 3^rd day after his crucifixion and that is what the Easter feast is all about. This year (2023) the first April full moon in the western hemisphere occurred on Thursday April 6^th and Sunday the 9^th is Easter Sunday, 3 days after the first full moon of April. The number 3 is a huge deal in Christianity and this Easter’s line up of the number 3 does not occur very often, making this year’s Easter celebration just a bit more special.

Happy Easter to you!

[1] LiveScience.com. Keeping time: The origin of B.C. and A.D.  Robert Coolman , Owen Jarus.  January 14, 2022

[2] Bible Verse Study. When was Jesus Christ Born? Author not cited. 2022

[3] Biblical Archeology Society. When Was Jesus Born—B.C. or A.D.? How the divide between B.C. and A.D. was calculated.  Megan Sauter. December 4, 2021

[4] World History Encyclopedia. The Origin & History of the BCE/CE Dating System. Joshua J. Mark. March 27, 2017

[5] Britannica. Easter Holiday. Hans J. Hillerbrand. April 7, 2003

Wilderness is essentially defined as an area undisturbed by human activity as a naturally developed ecosystem. The universe therefore is a wilderness; at least it is to us. As we move into the extraterrestrial wilderness, it is important to reflect upon our history as humans and our handling of our mother earth wilderness in terms of historical paradigms.

There was a time in history when “wilderness” on earth was a dark, dangerous and scary place. It was the place where monsters, wolves, and magical creatures lived. Outer space is our next and possibly our final wilderness. Over time, wilderness on earth became something to be conquered and controlled by humans. The conquest and control of wilderness on earth eventually got out of control and we learned that our earthly wilderness is something of great value and deserved protection from our impacts upon wilderness areas. We realized that wilderness has intrinsic value in and of itself. It is imperative that we pay attention to this lesson as we are in the infancy of our exploration of the universe and learn from our history in this regard.

Roderick Nash argues that wilderness is a basic ingredient of American civilization in his book; Wilderness and the American Mind. According to Nash; from the raw materials of the physical wilderness Americans built a civilization, with the idea or symbol of wilderness they sought to give that civilization identity and meaning.  Wilderness on earth currently enjoys widespread and growing popularity and respect. Ancient biases against the wild are deeply rooted in human psychology and in the human compulsion to understand, control and transform the environment in the interest of survival, and later, of success. Wilderness was the unknown, the disordered, and uncontrolled. A large portion of the energies of early civilizations was directed at defeating nature and controlling it for our benefit.

The origins of European and American thoughts about nature and wilderness can be traced back to Greek philosophers, as well as to the principles provided by the Judeo-Christian tradition, that came to dominate Europe. The conceptual separation of humankind from the natural world received much attention in classical Greek philosophy and came to provide an important influence upon the development of European wilderness values. A major contribution of Greek philosophy to European thought was the application of reason. Whatever the Greeks borrowed from either the ancients or their contemporaries, they transformed through their commitment to reason. Greek rationalism is often presented as a unique vantage point from which to view the evolution of the European mind towards civilization. The historical documents that survive show a clear break away from primitive attitudes into progress and elementary science, from myths into disciplined acquisition of knowledge about the universe.  There is within the Greek tradition, a tension between the Dionysian and Apollonian worldviews. The Apollonian, after the Greek god Apollo, represents a calm, reasoned, and structured form of art while the Dionysian, after Dionysus, is a deeply emotional and ecstatic one.

The result shows humankind turning its attention inward, away from the world that surrounds it, and towards self-conscious reason. Although human life was lived among an ever-changing and material world, Socrates identified this as a problem for the soul to overcome.

Knowledge, and a rational understanding of a wise course of action, depended on forms from outside of nature. Socrates argued that everything for mankind seemed preordained and that nature was provided by the gods for humanity’s use. Plato continued in the Socratic tradition in viewing nature as something that could be acted upon by humans and maintained that humans could improve upon nature. Aristotle expresses the idea of purpose in nature, including the relation of plants and animals to the needs of man. According to Aristotle: In like manner we may infer that, after the birth of animals, plants exist for their sake, and that the other animals exist for the sake of man, the tame for use and food, the wild, if not all, at least the greater part of them, for food, and for the provision of clothing and various instruments. Now if nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain, the inference must be made that she has made all animals and plants for the sake of man.

The fusion of Greek rationalism with Judaic and early Christian thought provided the genesis of the idea of wilderness that has come to rule Western civilization for the past two millennia. We are compelled to recognize that Christianity is not one specific thing, but a combination of historical determinants, including human nature and the agricultural revolution, which together introduced a historically unprecedented direction to human relations with wild nature. The natural world came to be conceived as valueless until humanized. Judeo-Christian faith claimed nothing from nature, for God alone was important and human attention shifted from the intuitive, mystical, and physical to the supernatural and transcendental. Early Christian thinkers readily accepted this worldview that desacralized nature and placed humankind above nature without hesitation. What was important to these thinkers was humankind’s personal relationship with God and not with the physical world which surrounded it.

With the advent of the scientific revolution came the perception of the world and universe as machines that could be simply understood if broken down into their component parts. Capitalism and democracy coalesced with machine technology to effect the conversion of nature into simple components in an economic formula, devoid of any intrinsic value, which has market value only. Modernism completes the intellectual divorce of humankind from nature and defines nature and wilderness in terms of man’s designs upon it. It is this “modern” tradition that the Europeans brought with them to the New World that helped to define the foundations of its dominant social paradigm.[1]

The universe beyond earth is our next wilderness and just look at what we are doing to it right out of the gate. The night sky is a shared wilderness. On a dark night, away from the city lights, you can see the stars in the same way as our ancestors did centuries ago. We can see the Milky Way and the constellations associated with stories of mythical hunters, sisters and journeys.

But like any wilderness, the night sky can be polluted for the sake of nothing more than monetary gain and political power.  Since Sputnik 1 in 1957, thousands of satellites and pieces of space junk have been launched into orbit. For now, satellites crossing the night sky are largely a curiosity. But with the advent of satellite constellations containing hundreds or thousands of satellites, this could change.

The recent launch of BlueWalker 3, a prototype for a satellite constellation, raises the prospect of bright satellites contaminating our night skies. At 64 square meters, it’s the largest commercial communications satellite in low Earth orbit, and it is very bright. While spotting satellites in the night sky has been a curiosity, the increasing number of satellites in orbit means pollution of the night sky could become a serious problem.

On a clear night, particularly near twilight, you can see satellites travelling across the night sky. These satellites are in low Earth orbit, just a few hundred kilometers above Earth and travelling almost 8 kilometers every second. Apps and websites allow us to identify or predict the arrival of particular satellites overhead, and it is genuinely interesting to see the International Space Station travelling by; understanding that on that speck of light there is a crew of astronauts.

In the past few years, the pace of satellite launches has accelerated. SpaceX has made satellite launches cheaper, and it has been launching thousands of Starlink satellites that provide internet services. Roughly 50 Starlink satellites were launched into orbit by each Falcon 9 rocket, and they initially produce a bright train of satellites. These initially produced UFO reports, but are now sufficiently common to not be particularly newsworthy. Once the Starlink satellites disperse and move to their operational orbits, they will near the limit of what can be seen with the unaided eye.

These satellites are bright enough to produce trails in images taken with telescopes. The trails overwrite the stars and galaxies behind them, which can only be remedied by taking additional images. Short transient phenomena, such as a brief flash from a gamma-ray burst could potentially be missed. Starlink is the largest satellite constellation in service, with thousands of satellites in orbit, others are planned.

Amazon’s Blue Origin plans to launch more than 3,200 Project Kuiper satellites, and AST SpaceMobile plans to launch 100 BlueBird satellites (and perhaps more). The recently launched BlueBird prototype, BlueWalker 3, has produced genuine alarm among astronomers.

While BlueWalker 3 was initially quite faint, it unfolded a 64 square meter communications array which is roughly the size of a squash court. This vast surface is very good at reflecting sunlight, and BlueWalker 3 is now as bright as some of the brightest stars in the night sky. It is possible the operational BlueBird satellites could become even bigger and brighter.

At its brightest, BlueWalker 3 is brighter than all but a few stars in the night sky.  Large numbers of satellites this bright could be a problem — a big problem. If there were thousands of satellites this bright, sometimes you would be unable to look at the night sky only seeing bright satellites. We would lose that sense of wilderness, with an almost constant reminder of technology in our sky. This would have a massive impact on professional astronomy for the purpose of short-term financial gain.

Brighter satellites do more damage to astronomical images than faint satellites. Furthermore, many of these satellites broadcast at radio frequencies that could interfere with radio astronomy, transmitting radio waves above remote sites where radio observatories scan the heavens.

For now, under dark skies, we can see the Milky Way as people have seen it for millennia. What happens next is uncertain. The International Astronomical Union has communicated its alarm about satellite constellations, and BlueWalker 3 in particular. The approval of satellite constellations by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has had relatively little consideration of environmental impacts. This has recently been flagged as a major problem by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, but whether this leads to concrete change is unclear.

We may be on the edge of a precipice. Will the night sky be cluttered with bright artificial satellites for the sake of internet or 5G? Or will we pull back and preserve the night sky as a globally shared wilderness with intrinsic value also?[2]

[1] University of Montana. McGovern, Patrick Joseph, “Paradigms and the politics of wilderness preservation” (1993). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 5583. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/5583

[2] Space.com. Michael J. I. Brown, Associate Professor in Astronomy, Monash University\. BlueWalker 3, an enormous and bright communications satellite, is genuinely alarming astronomers.  January 8, 2023. This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.