Q: "A.D. stands for Anno Domini which means "In the year of Our Lord," but by starting at 1, the calendar is incorrectly celebrating the first birthday of Christ on the day he was born. On 2 A.D., Christ was 1 year old. On 3 A.D. he was two. (In fact the calendar is probably much more inaccurate than this, for according to Matthew 2, King Herod was alive when Jesus was born, and historical records show that Herod died in 4 B.B. according to our calendar.) So our calendar is in a bit of a mess. Because we had no zero, the beginning of the second century was actually 101 A.D. The recent millennium celebrations were all a year out - the year 2001 A.D. was really 2,000 years since Christ's (perceived) birth."
Q: When was this realized, and who first discovered it? Is it possible that the calendar truly is accurate as it is currently? How can we really know whether or not our calendar is correct? It the calendar is off by a year, or whatever, should the calendar be altered? Does it really matter if the calendar is inaccurate?
C: I thought that this was an interesting section of the text, because you don't really even ever consider that our method of time keeping could be flawed. Or even that zero, in itself, has had such an impact. You don't think, initially, that numbers or mathematics would even matter that much in relation to the calendar, but, apparently, it does.
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