AD, BC & CE Full Form
What is the full form of AD, BC & CE?
AD, BC, and CE refer to the period concerning the birth of Jesus Christ. AD is Anno Domini, BC is Before Christ, and CE is a common era.
This helps us to identify the date and time of the particular event. This calendar is also known as the Gregorian calendar.
Anno domini
Anno domini means "the year of the lord." According to Christians, this is the year when Jesus Christ was born.
The term " Anno domini" is derived from the medieval Latin word, and that's why it means "the year of the lord"; usually, people shorten it and call it " Our lord." So, the time period after this year is referred to as AD. For ex. 1200 AD represents 1200 years since the birth of the Jesus Christ.
Before Christ
Before Christ is the term that means before the birth of Christ, this includes the era before the birth of Jesus Christ. The time is taken from the Jullian and Gregorian calendars. This is the calendar where we count the year backwards, making this era unique.
There are a few examples to clarify: 1200 BC represents the year 1200 years ago before the birth of Jesus Christ.
Common Era
The common era (CE) is the same as AD, Anno Domini, and it might confuse you, so in brief, Christians follow the AD dating year, but people belonging to different faiths found it difficult to understand, so as per their convenience they started using CE dating year. Examples are 2022 CE, 2020 CE, etc.
Birth Date Of Jesus
The birth date of Jesus of Nazareth has not been specified in any secular texts but scholars assume it to be between 6 BC to 4 BC. Absolute date is not mentioned in any historical evidence. But the date is estimated through two methods which are either working backwards from the estimation of the start of the ministry of Jesus or analyzing references to known historical events mentioned in the Nativity accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew.
No Year Zero
According to the AD year numbering system, AD 1 comes immediately after 1 BC , with nothing in between i.e. there was no zero year. There had been several debates about whether to include year zero or not. For calculation reasons, astronomical year numbering and the ISO 8601 standard designate years so that AD 1 = year 1, 1 BC = year 0, 2 BC = year −1, 3 BC = year -2 etc. In common usage, ancient dates are expressed in the Julian calendar, but ISO 8601 uses the Gregorian calendar while astronomers may use a variety of time scales depending on the application. Thus dates using the year zero or negative years may require further investigation before being converted to BC or AD.