Monday, January 4, 2016

History of our calendar

History of  our calendar
The calendar is a systematic account of the passage of time used for the chronological organization of activities. It is a set of rules or norms that try to match the calendar year with the tropical year.
Formerly, many were based on lunar cycles, lasting use in the Muslim calendar, the date of various Christian religious festivals and on using the week (corresponding to the four lunar phases, approximately).
At present, most of the calendars are for reference cycle that describes the Earth around the Sun and are called solar calendars.
The sidereal calendar is based on the Earth's motion relative to other different stars to the sun.

Has the year always started on 1 January?
1 Mar X to 28/29 Feb X+1
1 Jan X to 31 Dec X
1 Jan X-1 to 31 Dec X-1
25 Mar X-1 to 24 Mar X
25 Mar X to 24 Mar X+1
Saturday before Easter X to Friday before Easter X+1
25 Dec X-1 to 24 Dec X
The historical year, which started on 1 January.
The civil year, which

from the 7th to the 12th century started on 25 December,

from the 12th century until 1751 started on 25 March,

from 1752 started on 1 January.
Then what about leap years?
What is the origin of the names of the months?
Named after the god Janus.
Named after Februa, the purification festival.
Named after the god Mars.
Named either after the goddess Aphrodite or the Latin word aperire, to open.
Probably named after the goddess Maia.
Probably named after the goddess Juno.
Named after Julius Caesar in 44 B.C.E. Prior to that time its name was Quintilis from the word quintus, fifth, because it was the 5th month in the old Roman calendar.
How did Dionysius date Christ’s birth?
There are quite a few theories about this. And many of the theories are presented as if they were indisputable historical fact. The following are two theories that tend to be more accepted:
According to the Gospel of Luke (3:1 & 3:23) Jesus was "about thirty years old" shortly after "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar." Tiberius became emperor in C.E. 14. If you combine these numbers you reach a birthyear for Jesus that is strikingly close to the beginning of our year reckoning. This may have been the basis for Dionysius’ calculations.
Dionysius’ original task was to calculate an Easter table. In the Julian calendar, the dates for Easter repeat every 532 years. The first year in Dionysius’ Easter tables is C.E. 532. Is it a coincidence that the number 532 appears twice here? Or did Dionysius perhaps fix Jesus’ birthyear so that his own Easter tables would start exactly at the beginning of the second Easter cycle after Jesus’ birth?
Was Jesus born in the year 0?
There are two reasons for this:
There is no year 0.
Jesus was born before 4 B.C.E.
The concept of a year "zero" is a modern myth (but a very popular one). In our calendar, C.E. 1 follows immediately after 1 B.C.E. with no intervening year zero. So a person who was born in 10 B.C.E. and died in C.E. 10, would have died at the age of 19, not 20.
Furthermore, as described in section 2.14, our year reckoning was established by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. Dionysius let the year C.E. 1 start one week after what he believed to be Jesus’ birthday. But Dionysius’ calculations were wrong. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus was born under the reign of king Herod the Great, who died in 4 B.C.E.. It is likely that Jesus was actually born around 7 B.C.E.. The date of his birth is unknown; it may or may not be 25 December.
Why do the 9th thru 12th months have names that mean 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th?
September through December were the seventh through tenth months of a calendar used by the first Romans. Ancient historian and Greek biographer Plutarch, wrote in C.E. 75, about how they became displaced to two positions higher than their names would indicate.
Why does February have only 28 days?
With affection
Ruben          January  2016