Calendar Years in the Bible

    When reading the Bible, we regularly come across statements like the one in Nehemiah 2:1: “in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes.” Or like Isaiah 6:1, “In the year that King Uzziah died.” These are significant statements because the numbering of the years was (and still is) tied to the reigning king. The first year of Artaxerxes would have been the first year he was in power. Every time a new king came into power, the numbering of each year would have started over.

    We use the same system today, but we base our calendar on King Jesus, starting in the year most believe was his earthly birth year, rather than arguing when Jesus’ kingly rule began. There is some debate about the starting year, with a range of 3 to 5 years. We still use the same language as the Old Testament: “in the year of our Lord,” but we say AD. AD is short for the Latin statement, Anno Domini, which means, “In the year of our Lord.” At the time of this writing, it’s AD 2025. AD comes first to identify which counting system we’re using. “In the year of our Lord, 2025.” And because Jesus is alive and will never die, our numbering system continues onward centered on Christ.

    But what about when we go back years before Jesus? Obviously, the author of Nehemiah didn’t know he was in 445 B.C. because he wouldn’t have known the starting point of the calendar system we use today. So to clarify, we count away in the negative, starting at the same point—Jesus’ earthly birth. However, rather than using a negative symbol, we use B.C. Because this is English for “Before Christ,” it’s abbreviated with periods.

    Some who want to avoid acknowledging Jesus have tried to change this system to B.C.E., meaning “before the common era,” and C.E., meaning “common era.”  This is humorous because the timeline is still based on Jesus. It’s also a form of chronological snobbery to assume that anything more than 2,225 years ago was uncommon, or that it happened before some magical common time. What defines something as the common era? If we try to remove Jesus from the timeline, what defines someone as in the common or before the common era?  

    The months of the Jewish calendar originally began with Passover and the Exodus. Some of the names changed after the exile into Babylon, but they continued to have twelve months that didn’t start over with each king. They are Abib (Nisan), Ziv (Iyyar), Sivan, Tammuz, Ab, Elul, Ethanim (Tishri), Bul (Marchesvan), Chislev, Tebeth, Shebad, and Adar.