Re: BCE/CE

I'm no expert on this, but I don't believe BCE/CE has anything to do with
Russia or the USSR.
Best bet: email Roger Friedland (sociology/religious studies, UCSB). He
uses the terms and I believe he has some knowledge as to their origin.
friedlan@sscf.ucsb.edu
It's safe to assume that he does not subscribe to WSN and has not seen the
query.

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"A man who works with his hands is a laborer;
a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman;
but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart
is an artist" Louis Nizer (1902-1994)

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Judi A. Kessler
Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive, Dept. 0510
La Jolla, CA 92093-0510 USA
(858) 534-4147 or (858) 534-4503
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On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Boris Stremlin wrote:

> On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Luigi Cajani wrote:
> 
> > Dear Colleagues,
> > I'd like to know the origins and diffusion of the years denomination 
>BCE and
> > CE instead of BC and AD, and possibly something about the discussion
> > concerning this choise.
> > Thank you very much
> 
> I'm not sure as to the exact origin and/or spread of the terms, but I do
> know that they were used in the Soviet dating system much earlier and more
> commonly than in the West.  I therefore suspect that their introduction is
> somehow linked to the international socialist movement or to secularism
> generally, so it must have arisen between 1870 and the 1920's, possibly
> after the Bolshevik Revolution.  In any case, that's the first place I'd
> look...
> 
> -- 
> Boris Stremlin
> bc70219@binghamton.edu
>