Does the common Jew really give a damn about using BCE/CE instead of using BC/AD?

I have books that belonged to my Grandmother that are a hundred years old that use the term BCE rather than BC.

Your question reads as nothing more than a bully attempt to create a fuss.

Your premise is a false one that is trolling Jews for reaction and is trying to incite hatred between Christians and Jews.

Rather than "exclude" the "nutcase point of view", you appear to be promoting nothing but that all on your own without anyone else's help. However, you're not the first one to try to do this, four years ago I addressed an actual genuine question about this:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200812...

Some Jewish academics were already using the CE and BCE abbreviations by the mid-19th century, such as in 1856, when Rabbi and historian, Morris Jacob Raphall used the abbreviation in his book, Post-Biblical History of The Jews. They didn't try to force Christians to stop using their terms, they simply didn't use a term that is meaningless and antithetical to Jews. The term "politically correct" is one that I'm none too fond of since it's primarily used by bullies trying to make good behavior that respects the rights of others out to be something bad, yet you've done them one further..you're making up things and posting half-truths to mix up unrelated things to create your false premise and then insult them as goodytwo shoes gone nuts. Troll fail.

What is YOUR agenda to put forth the false and insulting premise that BCE and CE are recent developments?

At any rate..most major universities and science centers around the world also use or accept the designation BCE and CE to be more universally acceptable. After all there are 1.5 billion Muslims and a few billion other non-Christians who don't consider Jesus as a "Lord".

It's not simply the 14 million Jews in the world who don't use AD or BC.

That some people appear to be ignorant of the widespread use of BCE and CE by non Christians for hundreds of years and now wish to very strangely claim that it is a *new* development with nefarious purposes is beyond my ability to understand.

From one of my past answers :

"For several HUNDRED years, not just recently, Jews and other non-Christians have used BCE and CE

In addition, they do NOT mean before the Christian era and Christian era, but Before the Common Era and Common Era.I've also got books that belong to my grandmother that are a hundred years old that have the designation B.C.E. and C.E. in them.

I have also known people to harbor a mistaken notion that these designations were recent creations by Jews to "remove" Jesus from "their" calendars. That is another bit of antisemitism. The Hebrew, or Jewish calendar has never had anything to do with Jesus, thus, he's not ever been IN the Jewish calendar to have removed him. Jews in Judea appear to have been ignorant of his existence until the New Testament appeared.

I grew up with many books that had BCE and CE in them and many others with BC and AD in them. For any of the world's non-Christians the MEANINGS of he date designations of BC and AD are utterly insignificant to our lives so it's simply not logical to use them and it violates Jewish law to refer to another entity other than our Creator, as a god.

from 2 years ago, too

http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=201...

Jewish academies started using the terms BCE in the early 1800's and its funny that you've failed to mention that, or that there was no attempt to get Christians to stop using their term when they adopted this practice to ignore the Christian terms in their classes.

that along with this very false claim about Jews is another huge red flag that rather than not wanting any Jew hate, you've done a poor job of cloaking your contempt for Judaism and Jews by lying about us so egregiously " Every religion has those "this is the one true religion and everyone else burns in Hell" type of people. Let's exclude the nutcase point of view?"

Judaism does not say that, the Hebrew Bible teaches that the righteous of all nations merit blessing and that all humans are equal before God. Those are foundational precepts from Torah and begin IN the beginning ( Genesis) In addition, Judaism has no hell for the "unbeliever", what you describe is exclusive to Christian and Muslim doctrine. period.

EDIT: Ever hear of the word "projection" . Re: whining, you've got that in spades. If you're not a Christian you've clearly accepted the Christian concepts of many things since that is the world view and premise you've presented. Denial of that doesn't change what you wrote. If you didn't mean the words you typed, don't whine to us for appropriately calling you out on your bad behavior. Apolgize instead.

When you suppose CE dates are just to dispose of a religious bias you're rather fallacious. BC dates usually are not corrected for the exclusive calendars that were used prior to now, and in some locations are nonetheless used. BC ad does not right between Gregorian, Russian, Georgian or Julian. Without the corrections your dates may also be off by using months. BC advert relationship also lacks a 12 months 0 which makes calculations to BC from ad unnecessarily awkward. CE has a year zero this means that which you can easily calculate dates from the epoch each forwards and backward. By the way, 10,000 BC is not 10,000 BCE. You're one yr off. In case you simply were finding out history you might recognize that, and whether the error is plus or minus.

I'm not at all sure that it was Jewish academies who initiated this - I knew it as a preference by secular institutions wanting to respect their atheist, Hindu and other members. I can't see how this is, in any pejorative sense, 'political correctness'. I truly don't understand why Christians, who get their knickers in such a twist about people 'taking the Lord's name in vain', are happy for non-Christians to mindlessly use terms that are so specifically religious (which BC and AD obviously are) in ways that do no honour to their religion.

Surely, given that this calendar has become a global way for us all to talk about dates, it makes sense to have a way of talking about it that isn't specific to Christianity? When Christians use it to mean something within the Christian calendar, in conversation with other Christians, naturally they will use AD/BC, where I would use the Jewish calendar. But when it's a general, secular, reference to dates, why on earth would one use a specifically Christian way of talking about it.

And yes, as a 'common Jew' I do give a damn, as do my atheist parents. Oh, and no Jew on earth, now or ever, believes "this is the one true religion and everyone else burns in Hell". We don't have a concept of hell and we don't believe we're the only path to the divine. If you remember nothing else from this debate, please, please, remember this.

This Jew objects to "AD/BC" and much prefers CE/BCE.

BTW, it is not a Jewish belief that "this is the one true religion and everyone else burns in Hell" , that's just not how we see the world.We believe that all moral people have an equal place in The World To Come, whatever that turns out to be.

However we do object to being made to pay honor, even indirectly, to someone else's man-god.

And also? There is no such thing as an "average Jew".

But yes, it's a fair question.

Your summary of the history of the usage is incorrect.

Accademics wanted to separate religious implications from non-religious usage.

There is no evidence regarding the percentage of these academics coming from one religion or another.

This has been common usage for at least the past 30 years in normative academia,

raising it as some sort of PC innovation at this point is ludicrous.

To your base question --

even the religious Christians I knew in college and grad school preferred CE/BCE as this removed from the conversation the irrelevant religion component.

-

Jewish answer: every Jew I know uses BCE/CE. It's a step closer to being respectful of all religions, not just Christianity.

And Jews don't believe that everyone must be Jewish to find Gd and there is no hell.

Looks like the one WHINING and acting immaturely is the asker. Grow the hell up

Christ is a meaningless figure in Judaism. Why on earth would we say "Anno Domini" when the secular/Christian year 0 has nothing to do with God? I'd imagine other religionists feel the same way, to speak nothing of atheists/nonreligious people for whom God is meaningless anyway.

Everything changes, and usually for the better. Did "PC nuts" change the law so that women could vote? Or that husbands could no longer beat their wives?

Always it's Jewish fault, right? where did I read that? ah right when the wonderful peaceful church was in control of europe, and the dark ages was the set and ignorance was the norm. then Jews were blamed for every problem from plague, black death to any crime that might or might not happen.

This calendar is used now globally not by just Christians, it makes sense to separate it from religion.

as a pagan, i resent the presumptuousness of ad/bc, and since i don't believe jesus is real, i would be a hypocrite to count the years by him.

this isn't a case of political correctness, it's a case of not kowtowing to an intolerant religious system.

and you're wrong about every religion having people who believe theirs is the only true religion. pagans are shunned for even suggesting such intolerance. it's a belief that only exists in christianity and islam.

As an atheist, pumpkin, I'm much more comfortable knowing that using BCE/CE means that I'll never have to listen to some fundie dimwit insist that I must really deep-down believe in his Jesus because I use AD or BC on dates.

I know it seems petty to you, but you have no idea how offensive that stuff can get, as it piles up.

Atheists,non-Christians and others who do wish to use A.D/B.C use B. C.E and C.E..There are many people including Christians that do not religion in every part of their lives