The perpetual calendar

On Mar 17, 2:24*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:





On Mar 17, 1:29*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

On Mar 17, 10:07*am, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:
On Mar 16, 9:32*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

I'm at the American Oriental Society annual meeting in
St. Louis, and I asked Peter Machinist, professor of, among
other things, Jewish History at Harvard, about the
introduction of CE.

He doesn't know who, exactly, was responsible, but
volunteered that it's a post-Holocaust phenomenon.

Did you point out that you had seen evidence that it was in
use in 1856? *If so, what was his reaction?

1856? I thought the single example presented earlier was from
the 1830s?

Surprise.

That was his reaction?

Yes, that was his reaction.

Thanks, the way you phrased it in the simple present tense as
"volunteered that it's a post-Holocaust phenomenon" rather than
something like "volunteered that he thought it was a post-Holocaust
phenomenon" made it sound as though you hadn't disabused him of his
belief.

The phenomenon didn't go out of existence at some point between the
Holocaust and now.

Perhaps you missed my response to Brian about why I said "rabbit-like"
instead of "rabbit."

So his use of "post-Holocaust" could just as easily have been "post-
Woodstock" or "post-9/11" or "post-New Deal"? *It started nearly a
century before the Holocaust and has never "gone out of existence"
since at least the 1880s. *So it's a "post-Holocaust phenomenon" and a
"pre-Holocaust phenomenon" and a "has-nothing-to-do-with-the-Holocaust
phenomenon".

Personally, I'd say that calling something a "post-Holocaust
phenomenon" without meaning to imply that it arose soon after the
Holocaust (let alone that its rise had something to do with the
Holocaust) violates at least one or two Gricean Maxims (quantity
and/or relevance).

That is PRECISELY what he (and I) "meant to imply" (to use another
double-barreled Higher Predicate). By no means did you demonstrate
that "C.E." had anything like the widespread acceptance and usage
before WWII that it has today. It must have been so unusual -- perhaps
confined to a certain stratum of secular Jewish intellectual -- that
atttention needed to be called to it in the new political climate of
the 1950s.

And unless you're an ultra-Generative Semanticist such as never
existed when Generative Semantics analyses were being promulgated,
you should know that people don't generally preface their opinions,
or even reports of opinions, with "I think that" or "I say that X
thinks that."

It's not the lack of indirectness that bothered me. *It was your use
of "it's" rather than "it was" and the fact that it reads as though
you left him to persist in his mistaken belief, even though you knew
it to be false.

It may be "false" in that a certain limited population apparently
found it useful on occasion. It is not false in describing general
usage among practitioners of the historical sciences who are sensitive
to Western chauvinism.

BTW who do you imagine the readership of the Journal of Sacred
Literature to have been, and how widely read it was? There is AFAIK
_one_ run of it in the US, which (fortunately for me) is in Ann Arbor,
where I was able to make copies of Edward Hincks's vitally important
articles on Akkadian grammar -- and it's the copy that now appears in
google books.

Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

I'm at the American Oriental Society annual meeting in St. Louis,
and I asked Peter Machinist, professor of, among other things,
Jewish History at Harvard, about the introduction of CE.

He doesn't know who, exactly, was responsible, but volunteered that
it's a post-Holocaust phenomenon.

Did you point out that you had seen evidence that it was in use in
1856? If so, what was his reaction?

And that wasn't an isolated publication. I see use in the _Journal of
Sacred Literature in 1859. (Interestingly there, I see one article
that constrasts "B.C.E" with "A.C.E" and another that contrasts "B.C."
with "C.E.".) Also in the title of a book listed in a book on the
Talmud that appears to have been printed in 1890. An 1886 _Outlines
of Jewish History_ is subtitled "From B.C. 586 to C.E. 1885" but uses
"B.C.E." in a table of dates. There are a couple of dozen Google
Books hits in the 1880s and about twice that in the 1890s, so I'd
guess that that's where it started to become common.


I wonder how the people who object to A.D. and (I think) A.C.N.* feel
about the German "vor/nach Christi Geburt", which exactly describes what
the calendar is attempting to represent.

* My Latin has gone bad - something like ante Christi natum

--

Rob Bannister

On Mar 17, 6:37*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:
On Mar 17, 2:24*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:
On Mar 17, 1:29*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:

Thanks, the way you phrased it in the simple present tense as
"volunteered that it's a post-Holocaust phenomenon" rather than
something like "volunteered that he thought it was a
post-Holocaust phenomenon" made it sound as though you hadn't
disabused him of his belief.

The phenomenon didn't go out of existence at some point between
the Holocaust and now.

Perhaps you missed my response to Brian about why I said
"rabbit-like" instead of "rabbit."

So his use of "post-Holocaust" could just as easily have been
"post- Woodstock" or "post-9/11" or "post-New Deal"? *It started
nearly a century before the Holocaust and has never "gone out of
existence" since at least the 1880s. *So it's a "post-Holocaust
phenomenon" and a "pre-Holocaust phenomenon" and a
"has-nothing-to-do-with-the-Holocaust phenomenon".

Personally, I'd say that calling something a "post-Holocaust
phenomenon" without meaning to imply that it arose soon after the
Holocaust (let alone that its rise had something to do with the
Holocaust) violates at least one or two Gricean Maxims (quantity
and/or relevance).

That is PRECISELY what he (and I) "meant to imply" (to use another
double-barreled Higher Predicate). By no means did you demonstrate
that "C.E." had anything like the widespread acceptance and usage
before WWII that it has today. It must have been so unusual --
perhaps confined to a certain stratum of secular Jewish intellectual
-- that atttention needed to be called to it in the new political
climate of the 1950s.

I see. *I don't believe that you had previously made clear that the
"phenomenon" was "widespread acceptance and usage" rather than mere
use. *I clearly can't address that until you define what you mean by
"widespread" and establish the level it has today.

(a) I had no reason to suppose the expression existed before the mid
1950s/

(b) Come back when you've learned to comprehend ordinary
conversational English.

I don't think I've found it to be particularly common outside of
Jewish writers (certainly when compared to AD/BC), and it's not clear
to me that among them it was any more or less common before World War
II than after. *(And it's by no means universal among them. *Richard
Elliott Friedman, for example, uses "BC" in _Who Wrote the Bible?_)

(a) Do you read history or archeology?

(b) Richard Eliot Friedman may well have been edited by his
vulgarizing publisher (a division of HarperCollins, not surprisingly).
And people I known in biblical studies don't have a terribly high
opinion of his work.

And unless you're an ultra-Generative Semanticist such as never
existed when Generative Semantics analyses were being promulgated,
you should know that people don't generally preface their opinions,
or even reports of opinions, with "I think that" or "I say that X
thinks that."

It's not the lack of indirectness that bothered me. *It was your use
of "it's" rather than "it was" and the fact that it reads as though
you left him to persist in his mistaken belief, even though you knew
it to be false.

It may be "false" in that a certain limited population apparently
found it useful on occasion. It is not false in describing general
usage among practitioners of the historical sciences who are
sensitive to Western chauvinism.

Since it would otherwise be astonishing from someone who castigated
another for using "everyone" to the exclusion of women, I have to
presume that your "general usage among practitioners of the historical
sciences" includes those who are Jewish and that these Jewish scholars
changed from using "BC" to "BCE" following World War II out of
sensitivity to Western chauvanism.

So that's what you presume, is it.

BTW who do you imagine the readership of the Journal of Sacred
Literature to have been,

No idea. *The editor of the first issue I looked at also edited _The
New Testament from Codex A_, so I'm guessing that it wasn't
exclusively Jewish.

and how widely read it was?

Probably pretty small.

There is AFAIK _one_ run of it in the US, which (fortunately for me)
is in Ann Arbor, where I was able to make copies of Edward Hincks's
vitally important articles on Akkadian grammar -- and it's the copy
that now appears in google books.

On Mar 17, 8:33*pm, Robert Bannister wrote:
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

I'm at the American Oriental Society annual meeting in St. Louis,
and I asked Peter Machinist, professor of, among other things,
Jewish History at Harvard, about the introduction of CE.

He doesn't know who, exactly, was responsible, but volunteered that
it's a post-Holocaust phenomenon.

Did you point out that you had seen evidence that it was in use in
1856? *If so, what was his reaction?

And that wasn't an isolated publication. *I see use in the _Journal of
Sacred Literature in 1859. *(Interestingly there, I see one article
that constrasts "B.C.E" with "A.C.E" and another that contrasts "B.C."
with "C.E.".) *Also in the title of a book listed in a book on the
Talmud that appears to have been printed in 1890. *An 1886 _Outlines
of Jewish History_ is subtitled "From B.C. 586 to C.E. 1885" but uses
"B.C.E." in a table of dates. *There are a couple of dozen Google
Books hits in the 1880s and about twice that in the 1890s, so I'd
guess that that's where it started to become common.

I wonder how the people who object to A.D. and (I think) A.C.N.* feel
about the German "vor/nach Christi Geburt", which exactly describes what
the calendar is attempting to represent.

* My Latin has gone bad - something like ante Christi natum

Have a look at how it's done in French.

Robert Bannister wrote:
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

I'm at the American Oriental Society annual meeting in St. Louis,
and I asked Peter Machinist, professor of, among other things,
Jewish History at Harvard, about the introduction of CE.

He doesn't know who, exactly, was responsible, but volunteered that
it's a post-Holocaust phenomenon.

Did you point out that you had seen evidence that it was in use in
1856? If so, what was his reaction?

And that wasn't an isolated publication. I see use in the _Journal of
Sacred Literature in 1859. (Interestingly there, I see one article
that constrasts "B.C.E" with "A.C.E" and another that contrasts "B.C."
with "C.E.".) Also in the title of a book listed in a book on the
Talmud that appears to have been printed in 1890. An 1886 _Outlines
of Jewish History_ is subtitled "From B.C. 586 to C.E. 1885" but uses
"B.C.E." in a table of dates. There are a couple of dozen Google
Books hits in the 1880s and about twice that in the 1890s, so I'd
guess that that's where it started to become common.


I wonder how the people who object to A.D. and (I think) A.C.N.* feel
about the German "vor/nach Christi Geburt", which exactly describes what
the calendar is attempting to represent.

* My Latin has gone bad - something like ante Christi natum

Ante Christum natum.

Then there are the Irish expressions Be Jaysus and Ah Jaysus.

--
James

"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

On Mar 17, 6:37Â*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
(a) I had no reason to suppose the expression existed before the mid
1950s/

(b) Come back when you've learned to comprehend ordinary
conversational English.

And there we are, the circle has just closed, we are right back at the
start of the discussion again.

And it's /your/ fault that you can't comprehend ordinary conversational
English.

It's really strange. The only person on the whole of Usenet who can
comprehend ordinary conversational English is PTD. The rest of us must
all speak something else (that is mutually comprehensible). I wonder
which of "ordinary", "conversational" or "English"?

Peter - sarcasm aside - if everybody consistently fails to understand
you and be able to hold a sensible conversation with you, do you think
you could you consider entertaining the possibility that just once or
twice a millennium your written words fail to make your intended meaning
absolutely crystal clear?
--
Online waterways route planner | http://canalplan.eu
Plan trips, see photos, check facilities | http://canalplan.org.uk

On Mar 18, 4:01*am, Nick wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

On Mar 17, 6:37*pm, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
(a) I had no reason to suppose the expression existed before the mid
1950s/

(b) Come back when you've learned to comprehend ordinary
conversational English.

And there we are, the circle has just closed, we are right back at the
start of the discussion again.

And it's /your/ fault that you can't comprehend ordinary conversational
English.

It's really strange. *The only person on the whole of Usenet who can
comprehend ordinary conversational English is PTD. *The rest of us must
all speak something else (that is mutually comprehensible). *I wonder
which of "ordinary", "conversational" or "English"?

Peter - sarcasm aside - if everybody consistently fails to understand
you and be able to hold a sensible conversation with you, do you think
you could you consider entertaining the possibility that just once or
twice a millennium your written words fail to make your intended meaning
absolutely crystal clear?

Would you like me to start nitpicking everything Brian or ERK writes,
in the same fashion they do? It would be quite easy to do.

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 04:51:00 -0700 (PDT), "Peter T. Daniels"
wrote:

On Mar 18, 4:01*am, Nick wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" writes:

Peter - sarcasm aside - if everybody consistently fails to understand
you and be able to hold a sensible conversation with you, do you think
you could you consider entertaining the possibility that just once or
twice a millennium your written words fail to make your intended meaning
absolutely crystal clear?

Would you like me to start nitpicking everything Brian or ERK writes,
in the same fashion they do? It would be quite easy to do.

Uh,

How does that answer the question?

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:33:25 +0800, Robert Bannister
wrote in
in
sci.lang,alt.usage.english,sci.astro:

[...]

I wonder how the people who object to A.D. and (I think)
A.C.N.* feel about the German "vor/nach Christi Geburt",
which exactly describes what the calendar is attempting
to represent.

German 'v./n. Chr.' are less objectionable than 'A.D.' for
the same reason that 'A.C.N.' and 'B.C.' are, though '(v.)
u. Z.' are much better than any of these.

Brian

On Mar 18, 2:07*pm, "Brian M. Scott" wrote:
On Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:33:25 +0800, Robert Bannister
wrote in
in
sci.lang,alt.usage.english,sci.astro:

[...]

I wonder how the people who object to A.D. and (I think)
A.C.N.* feel *about the German "vor/nach Christi Geburt",
which exactly describes what *the calendar is attempting
to represent.

German 'v./n. Chr.' are less objectionable than 'A.D.' for
the same reason that 'A.C.N.' and 'B.C.' are, though '(v.)
u. Z.' are much better than any of these.

The French is "av./ap. j.-c." Both these [Ger. & Fr.] formulations are
as inappropriate to non-Christians as B.C. and A.D. because they
ascribe Messiah-hood ("Christ") to Jesus, a doctrine accepted only by
Christians (and possibly Mormons; the dioramas in the Salt Lake City
museum were less than clear about the role of Jesus in their theology).