Who could have had a motive to manipulate the year's count?
Nobody! In fact, there was a chain of errors over several centuries:
- Hipparchos had calculated the years from the solstice of Kallippos in the summer after Alexander's victory over Darius III.
Since he assumed an immutable date of solstice and equinox, the course of the moon deviated within the 1½ centuries by one day.
This meant for him that the epoch must have begun around one Oktaetris (8 years) earlier.
- Claudius Ptolemy had calculated the day of the battle at Gaugamela on the basis of the lunar eclipses handed down by Hipparchos.
Also he presumed fixed corner points of the year. His calculation thus deviated over now 4 Kallippos centuries by some 3 days.
Agreement with the course of the moon he found therefore 54j earlier, the span of the already known Exeligmos.
- Hieronymus (the 'Church Father', †420 ad) had fixed the World's year AM 5200 as the year of Christ's birth.
- Panodorus had reported (at about the same time) the World's year AM 5492 to be the epoch year of the Alexandrians.
For the later chroniclers, this could only refer to the birth of Christ in the Christian city of Alexandria,
since, due to Ptolemy's accurately dated astronomical epoch of Alexander, it did not make sense for Alexandria.
- Dionys Exiguus had created an Easter table up to the year 247 after Diocletian (532 AD).
- Beda Venerabilis combined Panodorus's Alexandrian Epoch, that had become the reference at Rome, with the AD chronology of Dionys.
He observed eclipses and the reports from Rome, where the 664th year of
the passion of Christ had been commemorated a few years ago.
According to Bede, Emperor Herakleios had ruled in Eastern Rome from
the year 610 (CE), Emperor Constantine in the West from 306 (AD).
- Pope Silvester II. eventually declared the year 1000 CE as the Millennium of Christendom.
The 'Millennium' became sacrosanct, although it comprised doubled 304
years and just 7 real centuries were counted since Christ's birth.
Its begin was now too early by 3 centuries! This could be ignored
easily, as long as no objective measuring methods were available.
...and Today?
- As we know Christ's birth happened some two millennia ago: Thus, matching eclipses can be determined without problems.
- Also the secular acceleration of the moon has to be calculated from these.
- 14C - dating before the Middle Ages apparently now requires a
'calibration', which must also be respected for ancient tree rings.
however:
- Ice cores that can be counted by the year, unfortunately do not
provide a definite dating for volcanic eruptions known from history.
- Likewise, the large number of historical events, which seemingly repeated themselves three centuries later, remains puzzling...
HEK 08/2023