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Dear so called "materialist" "historians" (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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You want me to use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD because its too 'religious'

But what event triggers this "common era"?

:lea-smug: :very-smart:

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Hey, I'm a BCE/CE Enjoyer, so I'll defend it.

You need some point in history to be year "0". There is no way you will get the whole world agreeing to one point of reference, not to mention how difficult it would be get everyone to start using that new point anyway. So we have to go with the birth of Jesus (or what people thought it was, we don't actually know when Jesus was born).

But the BC/AD terms just reinforce Christian social domination. We can't do anything about the actual year 0, but we can at least try and make the terminology neutral. And it makes evangelicals pissy, which is always fun.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

At the very least Jews and Muslims have their own calendars. I think there's an Orthodox calendar. And I'm sure there are dozens of others.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Sure would be great if we actually had a year zero then. Going from 1BCE to 1CE annoys me more that whether it's CE or AD.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Also iirc Christian scholars are still debating Jesus' birth and whatnot, meaning BC/AD are in possible flux, while B/CE standardizes the calendar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yes, because the gospels fundamentally contradict. One gospel mentions King Herod killing babies but he died in 4 BCE. Another gospel talks about a census as the reason Mary & Joseph were in Bethlehem, but the first Roman census in that region was in 6 CE (and it was for Judah, not Galilee where Bethlehem was but the author just likely screwed that up).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

i've seen people use BP (before present) where "present" is 1 jan 1950 (caused by radiocarbon dating shenanigans), if you're historian-adjacent, you might have not heard of this, but it's common in geology; at least that's what i thought until i came upon a paper (about pastoralism in neolithic northern africa) that was just using BP time like it was nothing, including dates like 1200 BP which i just cannot grasp and have to do mental math (so 0 BP is 1950 CE by definition, and seeing that BP is just distance from 1950 CE, then 1950 BP is 0 CE so 1200 BP is 1950 - 1200 = 750 CE)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

The common era started 7 years ago. There was a significant event that happened that marked a turning point in history. A steady and consistent collapse of conditions has followed since. Everything has mostly taken a turn for the worse and it was forever marked with a tragedy.

The era we live in today is "PH".

Post-Harambe :the-gunman: :le-monke:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Imagine people living through the depression being like "Edison electrocuting that elephant started all this"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I think if they had internet back they would have definitely memed about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

:harambe-salute:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

He now teaches African American Studies at the University of Maryland

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Make it start at 9/11 but somehow also rejigger the calendar so 1/1 is on the spring Equinoxx

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

But what event triggers this “common era”?

Pontius Pilate dunking on some rabble rouser

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Blue haired SJW Pontius Pilate

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Blue haired SJW gets owned (stabbed in the HEART) by chad sigma male Pontiac Pilates

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

what event will cause the next "year zero"?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

:posadas: :posad: :posadist-nuke:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Communism and the end of class resulting in true outreach to the stars that forces us to consider a new calendar for the new space age.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Stardate time :curry-space:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I agree, we should add 10,000 to the CE in order to make the cutoff point the invention of agriculture.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

How about we split the difference and make it about the discovery of bronze? There's a "B" in it. I'd suggest iron but the meteoric wootz thing would really mess with what year to establish it on. :edgeworth-shrug:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

If it's 10,000 it's likely about the time we started smelting copper. Copper Era.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Common era is kinda dumb terminology because it is meant to contrast with the regnal era (year used by commoners vs year of monarchs reign).

Jewish people in Europe used common era as well as current era which I feel makes more sense.

Altogether better is the Czech terminology which uses “of our years” and “before our years”.

I’ve also heard of retconning bc/ad to be “backwards count” and “ascending dates”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

"Before Christ" and "In the Year of the Lord" are just factually wrong though — Jesus of Nazareth was born no later than 4 BCE, the year of Herod's death.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I thought it was supposed to be from his crucifixion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

That’s around 33 CE.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

I know you're joking, but that's a great question that I wonder if Marxist historians have tackled. What were the material conditions for the rise of Christianity? The fall of Rome? Disruption of the slave economy? The plague and famines of the 3rd century?

Christianity didn't come from nowhere, it became popular in an era where many "mystery cults" plagued the Roman empire. The Cult of Isis was the other major popular one, but there were dozens. Clearly the mystery cult era was a response to material conditions, and Christianity happened to be the one that took off. It became the social component of the superstructure.

Definitely worth looking into.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The present time period is full of modern mystery cults, and a lot of them claim to be secular too. Just about every "lifestyle coach" crank and self described "guru" is roughly that, and some take it even further into culty grounds, such as "NXIVM" and "LessWrong."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Basically, imagine if Andrew Tate was crucified but the then some tax accountant on his way to, idk, Rotterdam, had a vision and started preaching his word, setting up Tatist communities across Europe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

except Tate is much more comparable to Jupiter or Mars in his messaging

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Honestly, Tates messaging isn't even as comprehensible as that. At least Mars and Jupiter had the whole empire building thing going. His was literally just toxic masc libertarian nonsense without even the fetterings of intellectualism that most libertarian nonsense has. Basically a non-ethos.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I actually don't know what he says beyond the fact he seems to be a violent pimp

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Oh materialy speaking, that's what he does, but what he says and streams are just incoherent nonsense.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

imagine if Andrew Tate was crucified

:wholesome:

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

a lot of the old pagan system didn't work for a lot of people. The Roman gods were gods of hierarchy and the spiritual justification for the empire. the new religion was the religion of slaves

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

marxist analysis of historical periods is a bit of niche topic (sure marx wrote about that but who reads marx anyway amirite), the most i can recall is G.E.M. de Ste. Croix's titanic work "Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World" which despite being marxist analysis, it's so good "non-partisan" historians will cite it (with the pre-requisite disclaimer of "this is a marxist book, i am not a marxist")

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Also perry anderson transition to feudalism and some links therein

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

I have Ellen Meiksins Wood's "The Origins of Capital" open on my browser. https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/ellen-meiksins-wood-the-origin-of-capital-a-longer-view.pdf

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Bureaucracy spread?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Well, it comes from a political divide within the elites, with Christians being blamed and killed for the material degradation of the empire, which was caused by material and bureaucratic failures of the 3rd century (classic othering) and then that cult was subsequently uplifted by other elites in opposition because it had become a populist response to the bungling elite class, thus taking the religion of widows, slaves, and freedmen and making it the religion of kings. It is likely a part of a Striestand effect, if another cult had been as persecuted, they might have been the saviors of the empire. Hell, if Judaism hadn't been so well incorporated into the empire at that point, it could have been Judaism.

Mind the biggest problem that Constantine had with the Christians is that they still hadn't stopped having their own bloody internecine conflicts, hence the need to create the Nician Creed.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

thus taking the religion of widows, slaves, and freedmen and making it the religion of kings.

Perhaps that's part of the materialist answer right there. It was the religion of the poor and destitute and slaves, so the some elites coopeted it to maintain/increase their political hegemony. If Christianity was a social movement, then the Roman elites taking over and neutering it's revolutionary character makes a lot of sense.

I'm thinking back to a great book I read, not Marxist as far I know, called "The Germanization of Christianity." The first third of the book is about the Romanization of Christianity, turning a religion of desert monks and beggars into a bureaucracy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

To be sure, it became more of a political movement after it was targeted by Emperors such as Domitian. Not immediately afterwards, but it became a place where, if you were on the outs with the Emperor, you could still seek some level of political power. By the time it was coopted by Constantine, it's social revolutionary characteristics were already well and gone, and it was suffering its own political schisms. Still an incredibly potent political force within the empire, but not one of social revolution, imo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A professor at Uni once said that in the first century of Christianity, deathbed conversions were very popular among the wealthy elite because a conversion cleansed you of past sins. I thought it was a fun fact at the time, but it's such an elitist mindset to think you can cheat your taxes to get into heaven.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I also had a professor mention that, but he couched it as, it was very popular among early Christians to claim that 'so-and-so' converted on their death bed, but we don't find evidence of conversion (i.e. christian ornaments in graves) among the elites until much later.

It's very much a history as opposed to archaeology matter.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Luckily archaeology is becoming more and more necessary for modern historians to acknowledge.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

They try their hardest not to. That being said, it is likely that Constantine was baptized on his deathbed, but we also don't know for sure, but it is clear from what writings we have that he had that elite understanding of sin that you were talking about, so it could have been popularized by that point.

Hard to say.