What's the stupidest thing about the new revisionist Texas state history standards?
Our present calendar is based upon the Gregorian calendar of 1582 CE (named after Pope Gregory XIII), which was a reform of the earlier Julian calendar of 45 BCE (named after Julius Caesar). The labels BC and AD were added in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus, who used them to compute the date of Easter. However, Dionysius miscalculated, and this error has been retained in the BC/AD system. While the Gregorian calendar accurately represents years of 365.25 days, Dionysius’ calculations skipped the year zero, jumping immediately from the year 1 BC to the year 1 AD. The result is a calendar that claims to be based upon the birth of Jesus, but which skips the first year of his life.
But besides the absence of the first year CE from our present calendar, an even greater problem exists with the BC/AD system: Jesus was not born in year zero. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great. According to multiple ancient sources, Herod died in 4 BCE. If the Gospel of Matthew is historically accurate, this would mean that Jesus of Nazareth was born on or before 4 BCE—meaning Jesus was born 4 BC (4 years Before Christ)! If we add to these 4 years the fact that Herod the Great did not die immediately after the birth of Jesus, but, according to Matthew, ordered the death of all children two years of age and younger in an attempt to kill Jesus, we can add an additional two years to the birth of Jesus, making his birth approximately 6 BCE. If we also add the missing year zero, it is most likely that, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was born around 7 BCE!
Thus, the BC/AD system is fundamentally flawed in that it misrepresents the birth of Jesus by approximately 7 years. This means that Jesus’ ministry did not begin around the year 30, but instead around the year 23. Likewise, Pentecost and the origin of the Christian Church should not be dated to “33 AD,” but to about 26 CE.
An even greater problem still exists with the BC/AD system: the year of Jesus’ birth differs depending on which Gospel one reads. While the Gospel of Matthew states in chapter 2:1 that Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, the Gospel of Luke states in chapter 2:1-2 that Jesus was born during the first census of the rule of Quirinius, governor of Syria. According to ancient sources, the date of this census is about 6 CE. Thus, the Bible is internally inconsistent regarding the year of Jesus’ birth. Was Jesus born about around 7 BCE under the reign of Herod the Great as Matthew states, or was Jesus born about 6 CE under the reign of Quirinius, long after Herod the Great had died as Luke contends?
OK, I suppose the stupidest thing is that Texas passed this travesty of a curriculum. After that, it's anybody's guess what the most stupid part of the new standards are. I'm going to focus on the fact that the Texas Board of Education has mandated that students, teachers and textbooks must use the antiquated, insular and inaccurate BC/AD nomenclature versus the more acceptable (and less offensive) BCE/CE system when referring to historical dates.
It's hard to believe these idiotic people on the Texase BOE are so small-minded and insecure in their religious beliefs that they need to remind themselves of those beliefs by appending them to every single date. At something close to 84% of the U.S. population, and probably closer to 95% or more in Texas, these poor Christians feel so threatened in their religious identity that they need to codify by legal decree a dating system based upon the flawed calculations of a sixth century Romanian monk. A monk of the Romanian Orthodox Church, whom many Texas Christians would condemn as not being a true Christian, I might add.
In the article excerpted above, Robert Cargill of UCLA's Center for the Digital Humanities lays out clearly how Dionysius flubbed his calculations and why those calculations were based on an ahistorical reckoning of the birth of Jesus to begin with. That is if one takes the Bible to contain any actual historical facts, which I'm sure the Texas BOE would.
And really, isn't that what this is all about? Facts crushed under the massive weight of ahistorical and confused religious beliefs, all in an attempt to preserve the cultural privilege of white, male Texans with such fragile egos that they insist the world should honor their white, male God at every turn.
