[Allen Tice]

Jesus was born [7] years earlier than thought, claims Pope. Linked article (below) quote:

"The 'mistake' was made by a sixth century monk known as Dionysius Exiguus or in English Dennis the Small, the 85-year-old pontiff claims in the book 'Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives', published on Wednesday."The calculation of the beginning of our calendar – based on the birth of Jesus – was made by Dionysius Exiguus, who made a mistake in his calculations by several years," the Pope writes in the book, which went on sale around the world with an initial print run of a million copies.
"The actual date of Jesus's birth was several years before."

The assertion that the Christian calendar is based on a false premise is not new – many historians believe that Christ was born sometime between 7BC and 2BC.
But the fact that doubts over one of the keystones of Christian tradition have been raised by the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is striking."

My main assertion had nihil to do with omitting Diocletian. It was that the arranger of the current calendar could NOT multiply or divide using Roman numerals.

That calendar arranger, Dionysius Exiguus, added up a lot of seven year intervals and goofed because the available records were rather sketchy.

Multiplication and division are almost impossible using Roman numerals : calculations like that were done on the abacus and then written out using M C X V I L D. What he thought was the year 525 was in reality the year 532 (or possibly 531).

This date fits with eclipse records, coins, and the widespread stone census records of the second (2nd) of Augustus's three (3) pedestrian speed "censuses of all the world" that began in 8 BC (There is confusion in one of the accounts with a local census.)

The accounts were written down using recollections of very old people roughly at the time Vesuvius exploded and buried Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Up staged by the current Pope! Oh well, there goes the neighborhood.

Allen

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/reli...aims-Pope.html