One of the most interesting conspiracy theories of all time got started when Heribert Illig noticed a rather odd discrepancy in the explanation of the Gregorian Calendar. The conspiracy theorists were certain that the Roman Catholic church had faked 300 years of history, and this became known as the Phantom Time Hypothesis. On the surface they had some compelling facts on their side.
In the 1500′s, the Roman Catholic church noticed that Easter was occurring later and later in the spring over the centuries. If something wasn’t done Easter was going to slide right into summer, and eventually the fall. Something had to be done.
The problem as it turned out was the Julian calendar. It didn’t calculate leap years very well and was putting more in than was required. So a new calendar system that did the calculations right was proposed. Instead of leap years occurring every four years, they would occur every four years except for years ending in 00 like 1300, 1400, 1500 and so on. That was actually too large a correction, so every four hundred years the new calendar would skip the skip…. meaning that when the century was divisible by 4, the leap year would not be skipped. So in 1600 it was a leap year after all. This stopped the drift, but by then Easter had slid a number of days. It would have to be put back where it belonged.
So in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII ordered the implementation of the Gregorian Calender. To put Easter back where it belonged he just shortened the year by 10 days. The last day of the Julian calendar was October 4, 1582 and the first day of the Gregorian calendar was October 15, 1582. As a result, Easter happened 10 days earlier the next year when compared to solar events like the spring equinox. This of course created havoc for historians because some countries adopted the Gregorian calendar right away and others waited. To correctly document historical events near the time of transition, the historian must determine which calendar the historical document is referring to.
But what set off the conspiracy theorists was the fact that 10 days wasn’t enough. If you count all the leap years that would have been different between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian, it would take thirteen days to fix the problem, not 10. What could the church have been up to? Why would they go to the trouble of doing all that math, get a new calendar that matches the solar calendar within a few seconds, but then mess up a really easy calculation like that? What were they trying to hide?
The theory went that the Roman Catholic church had just made up 300 years of history. One theory ran that one pope wanted to be the pope of record for 1000 AD, so he got there by advancing the calendar 300 years. Another theory ran that the church had created historical documents predicting future events, and when they didn’t happen they just made up the history to match the documents, stuck it in and claimed that the predictions had come true. Some researchers even went so far as to examine record keeping in certain places to see if there were gaps in building and road construction of 300 years and they found some.
But alas for the conspiracy theorists, Gregory got it right. Since his goal was to put Easter back where it belonged, he had to correct not to when the Julian calendar began, but to when the date of Easter was first adopted. That happened at the council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Since Gregory was certain that Constantine got it right in 325, there was no need to adjust by 13 days, only 10.
The conspiracy theorists were working from correct data. They just weren’t working from ALL the data.
wow
they not only fucked up 300 yrs on the calendar but they set us off 300 yrs meaning we are in the early 1700s
so does the calendar we will have to start wearing powdered wigs and dressing colonial style???
Astronomers use the Julian calendar to calculate time backwards, gee I wonder why? Also, this explains the discrepancy with astrology! No one is born under the sign they think they are. No! the church would never want to hide something like that and keep it for themselves. It is not the biggest conspiracy of all time, it is the greatest loss of knowledge humanity has suffered. Prisca Theologia.
Makes you think huh?
Haha brilliant!
Great information thanks!
Pope Gregory XIII did not invent the Gregorian Calender you bean brains !! It was Luigio Lilio who created it after the Pope sent a decree to have the Julian Calender fixed because Easter was never falling on the right day. Luigi Lilio made the corrections but died before it was presented to the Pope at the reform commission. Instead his brother handed the compendium to the Pope and it was officially accepted several years later. This garbage that Pope Gregory invented the modern calender is just that, garbage !!
When I pay someone to build a house, it is my house, I can call it what I want even if I didn’t pound a single nail. If you want to add to the conversation by pointing out additional detail, by all means. If you’re going to insult me, I’ll ban you. Be as angry as you wish.
It’s all a portion of the full-study. The magic really comes into view when one studies the Jewish/Mesopatamian Calendar before and after Noah’s Flood. Not that there’s any discrepancy in the sequential order that the Bible gives; there isn’t. But according to the Bible account, before the Flood when there was a Water Shield above, the months were exactly 30 days long.
worldslastchance.com
has some very interesting data and historical records about this calendar buisness.
OK here is a list of the leap years that can’t be divided by four hunderd: 100,200,300,500,600,700,900,1000,11000,1300,1400,1500. That is a total number of 12 TWELVE years What year is supposed to be the 13th “leap year”?
0
I originally did consider”0″ but rejected it in that the A.D. years started with “1″. There was never, to the best of my memory, a year that was designated as “0″. But, if there was, then that year could be considered as a leap year. That would then mean when we got to the year 100, it would mark the start of the first century. (the “0″ year would, I guess, be the start of the Zero century). Carrying the concept forward to thge present we would now be living in the Twentieth century and the Twentey First century would not start until the year 2100. It sort of boggles the mind—coesn’t it?
Robert Hayes Halfpenny
The Julian calendar actually “starts” in 45 BC.
It has now taken me 13 day to respond to your comment. I had been down with the flu or the creeping crud, I know not which. Anyhow, irrespective of the Julian calendar starting in 45 BC, the counting of the years remained the same. I.e. 44;43;42…3;2;1 BC; 1 AD or 1 CE. The year “0″ never actually occurred. The fact that it didn’t is the reason why we have always had to refer to our centuries as a number higher than the number we use to innumerate the years. I.e. 19xx years are referred to as the 20th century . Ergo 20xx years are referred to as the 21st century.
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You had stated that the first leap year was “0″ which of course could not have been in that zero had not come into that sort of general usage. I guess it would however be reasonable to state that the year 1 BC could have been designated as the first of the 13 leap years
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While the logic may seem somewhat convoluted, it really is the only thing that seems to make sense. Happy New Year
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Robert Hayes Halfpenny
Robert,
It has been a rather long time since I wrote this and my memory of the details is fuzzy, you may well be correct. I believe however that given that the problem lies in that the year 0 wasn’t the original year 0. It was another number. For sake of argument, let’s call it 45 and the next year 46. It was centuries later that the Christians adopted the calendar system, naming 46 as the “first year of our Lord” and henceforth what was 46 was now 1. But by that time, the calendar was already out by a day.
David,
You called it correctly the first when you said the Julian calendar started in 45 BC.I believe that what was really meant by that is that holidays and feast days were being assigned to specific “days” of the year. At that time the year wasn’t as important as the specific date which, i guess was to coincide with the seasons of the year along with the phases of the moon and the sun etc. Since the BC years counted down to 1 BC, the year following would have to be 1 AD “(remembering that “0″ was still not fully understood as being something more than just a “place holder”)
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It has just occurred to me that there was no such thing as BC years until we started counting AD years, starting with year 1 AD. That means someone had to figure out what to call all those years that came before 1 AD. Naturally, I think, they start with year 1 BC and counted backward to year 2 BC; 3 BC; etc. etc. etc. The Romans certainly didn’t know what the BC years would be until after the birth of Christ. I wonder how they even kept track of their own thousands of years of history?
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Perhaps we should call a curse down upon Pope Gregory XIII for all the confusion he has caused.
Actually I can’t do that in that i am a member of St Gregory’s Episcopal which is named after him. In fact, we supposedly have a fragment of one of his bones in the reliquarium of our alter. Am I becoming even more convoluted in my thinking or am I trying to emulate Diogenes as a “seeker of wisdom and truth”? Or, am I just full of it???
My Philosophy professor is having us answer some questions. “What year is this if we count 0 as the year in which Jesus Christ was reported to have been born?
It is NOT 2013 !!!!!!
What was the mistake? Who made it? When was the mistake made? Are there more or less years than 2013 since that birth? Do not count year zero as 1″
I found this blog while looking for my answers. So would the correct answer be that Pope Gregory XIII caused the mistake in order to keep Easter from moving to late in the year? and the correct year we are in now would be in the 1700s? and the mistake he made was implementing the Gregorian calendar and taking off 10 days to keep Easter where it belongs?
would appreciate any help
Did you read the article?
the problem was, and is, that the number zero (0) gets no respect. Initially it was thought of as a place holder, nothing more and nothing less. This concept I believe goes back to the Chinese, Indians, or Arabs. No one seem to understand that 0 is an actual number and it has a value. That value is in effect “nil”. We use the word “zero’ but we don’t seem to think of it as we do of “one, two, four, or seven”. When we start to count we all start with “one” 1. Properly we should all start with “zero” 0. Thus our real numbering system would reflect all the numbers that there are i.e. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. There are NO OTHER NUMBERS THAN THESE, PERIOD. Counting 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 does nothing more than relegate 0 to nothing more than a place holder.
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The fact of the matter is that the year 0 does in fact exist. In fact all we have to do is say that iit does. The only thing that would happen is that the BC years might get gypped out of one year, but who care? Remember the BC years were calculated AFTER we started the AD years. Carrying this thought to the logical conclusion, we would then refer to the 1st century as Zero century or the ‘ought Century. Sort of like our grandparents might have referred to the year 1908 as nineteen ‘ought eight—OK maybe great grandparents.
Had this been done at the onset of the AD years the year 101 would not be considered the first year of the second century with the last year of the second century being 200. Instead the “ought century would have started in the year 0 and ended in the year 99. Carrying this thought forward to the current day the year 1999 would have been the last year of the 16th century and the year 2000 would be the start of the 20th century and doesn’t this all make so much more sense.
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The funny thing about all this is that computer engineers have used only two numbers 0 and 1, that’s all. As I recall they basically refer to off and on or vice-versa. My personal opinion is that had we recognized 0 in what it truly was and is, a lot more kids might have done a lot better in their math classes—including me. The major problem with Roman Numerals, I V X L C D, is that they never had a O. Can you imagine writing our nation debt in Roman Numerals (assume the debt is stated with only the numbers 1 through 9 with an occasional 0 tossed in for good measure).
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Let me know what you think and also your professor and class.
Bob Halfpenny
Steven,
I guess I should have read David Hofer’s comment below, before I went into a rather long winded response about the year Zero etc. The simple answer to your question is regardless of any thing done in the past to the calendar this year is still 2013—NOTHING ELSE. Gregory should have put the year 0 into the calendar at the outset. This “error” can be corrected today with no effect to our current calendar.
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The BC calendar was started only after the AD calendar was established. If the year “Zero” were now inserted, all it would really mean is that the BC years would have to be re-assigned new numbers. In other words 1BC would become 0 AD. 2 BC would become the new 1 BC. etc. etc. etc. You might want to read all the comments made about this topic, especially those made by David Hoffer and me.
Bob Halfpenny
The shallow insults are boring and illiterate. The bias and mean spirited attitudes are also “BORING”.
Here is a thought about the calendar history.
Why does Daniel 7:25 warn us about a power that would change the law and times? Why would it be changed? Why are the majority of the so-called churches totally unknowing about Leviticus 23?
The creation calendar is and has been a very interesting history lesson etc.
Most of the so-called holi-days on the gregorian calendar cannot be found in the scriptures?
However Leviticus 23 does tell us about the holy convocations and when they are to still be observed?
so the end of the world as predicted by the mayans and nostrodamus is still 300 years away.
or if the Juliun calender started 45BC then the end of the world will be in another 40+ years
You are getting hung up on the wrong thing. The Julian calendar didn’t start in 45 BC What the Pope basically did was to take the religious calendar of events back to the beginning of the cycle in order to establish the corrected order of new dates. Remember that all dates that are BC dates were assigned AFTER the “birth” of Christ. Remember BC years are counted down.to the birth of Christ and of course no one knew when that would actually happen.
In actuality, the year should have been called 44 BC with the years counting down to the year “zero.” which in Roman numerals would look like “IOI” except sideways. Of course no roman number ever looked like that. since they didn’t have the number actually numerated. However, with our ordinal numerals the ZERO “0″ should have been the very first AD number, this making the first ten years numbered as follows, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. The first century would have been the “Nil century” and the 1st century would have started with the year 100. This makes much more sense in that we wouldn’t be referring to this century as the 21st century but rather as the 20th century. Most idiots think the 21century started with the year 2000 but it in fact started with the year2001!!!
This method of counting is more in keeping with the way computers actually work and actually makes much more sense t do it in this fashion. Originally, 0, zero, or nil was not very well understood, with most enlightened minds thinking that the zero was nothing more than a “place” holder. It was thought to have no value, but of course it does have a value which is “nil”. I hope this has made everything as clear as mud.
Robert Hayes Halfpenny