Re: The New Year

Quoting Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>:

> On Sunday 29 December 2002 09:13 am, James Landau wrote:
> > Therefore Jesus would be born right about the
> > year 7215 by the Kankonian calendar, the Roman Empire (or at least the
> > Western Roman Empire) would fall in 7691 (that's 7,215 + 476) and
> > <u>1984</u> would be retitled <u>9199</u>.
>         Minor nit-pick: Jesus was most likely born B.C. 4-7,  but you may
> have already known that.
The concensus (if such it be) seems to be that it was precisely
6 B.C., since that coincided with a conjunction of Jupiter and
the Moon in Ares, which to ancient astrologers was the sign of
Judaea.  According to this same theory, the gospel-writer simply
confused the Roman governor Quirinius with Quintilius, who served
a decade before, in 6 B.C.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier            "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637