Re: Telling time (wasRe: The English/French counting system (WAS:number systems fromconlangs))

At 02:52 PM 9/16/03 -0400, you wrote:
>Mark J. Reed scripsit:
>
> > > I have never yet learned why the Orthodox liturgical year
> > > begins in September.
> >
> > It's a continuation of the Jewish tradition that the year
> > begins with the fall harvest; it's the same reason that
> > the Jewish New Year is celebrated, and the year number changed,
> > on Tishri 1 in the fall, even though Tishri is counted as
> > the 7th month of the Jewish year.
>
>Specifically, the Byzantines decided that the date of Creation was
>1 September, and ran their Anno Mundi year-counting system forward
>from 5509 B.C. (Julian, obviously).  The Orthodox churches naturally
>kept the same year periods, even when adopting the (originally Latin)
>basis year of 753 A.U.C = 1 A.D.
Thank you for the explantion.  You know, every once in a while I will come
across, in modern Orthodox printed material, a date given in Anno Mundi.  I
believe that the Russians were still using Anno Mundi, in ecclesiastical
contexts, if not otherwise, into the 17th century.  And I do seem to
remember that the Russian Primary Chronical was dated in Anno Mundi.

Isidora