ABSTRACT
About 1,500 years ago a Christian monk calculated that Jesus Christ was born 753 years after the founding of Rome. In Latin he called that year anno domini – the year of our Lord – and made it year number one. Almost ever since, the birth of Jesus has served as the focal point for most of those who chronicle world history, measuring time in years ad and bc.1 It doesn’t matter that the monk was probably off by a few years on Jesus’s birth. Nor is it very significant that in our present pluralistic day, scholars have begun describing the same numbered years as belonging to the Common Era (ce) and Before the Common Era (bce) in an effort to disassociate dates with a religious figure. The point remains that virtually the whole world reckons its history with reference to the appearance of Jesus Christ. As the calendar testifies, he is surely one of the most influential and important figures in the history of the world. But even though his name will come up regularly, this book is not really about the person known as Jesus of Nazareth.
