Open Letter to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Vatican City, Vatican

Your Holiness,

Benedict argues Christian calendar based on miscalculation

Pope Benedict XVI, the head of the Catholic Church, reportedly argues in his new book that Jesus was born earlier than previously believed, which means that the Christian calendar based on the year of his birth is off by several years. The Christian calendar was created by an Eastern European monk named Dionysius Exiguus. He invented the now commonly used Anno Domini (A.D.) era, which counts years based on the birth of Jesus. He came up with this concept in the year 525, or, 525 years after the birth of Jesus. “The calculation of the beginning of our calendar – based on the birth of Jesus – was made by Dionysius Exiguus, who made a mistake in his calculations by several years,” Pope Benedict XVI writes. “The actual date of Jesus’ birth was several years before.” The Christian calendar is based on a miscalculation because Jesus was born sometime between 7 B.C. and 2 B.C.

In 1994 Ethiopian Calendar I wrote a paper on the Ethiopic calendar for the first time and this page has since been published in numerous web sites.

Ethiopia has its own ancient calendar. According to the beliefs of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, God created the world 5500 years before the birth of Christ. The current 2005 Ethiopic year is 2012 Gregorian.

“When the Roman papal chancellor, Bonifacius, asked a monk by the name of Dionysius Exiguus (ዲዮናሲዮስ ኤክሲጅዮስ)to implement the rules from the Nicaean Council (የኒቅያ ጉባዔ) for general use and to prepare calculations of the dates of Easter, Dionysius fixed Jesus’ birth in such a manner that it falls on 25 December 753 A.U.C., thus making the current era start with A.D. 1 on 1 January 754 A.U.C. It was about 525 A.D. that Dionysius Exiguus, started his count (instead of the Diocletian/ዲዮቅልጥያኖስ of 284 A.D.) with the year 1 A.D., considered to be the year of the birth of Christ. It is likely that Jesus was actually born around 7 B.C. or before King Herod’s death in 750 A.U.C.”
(http://www.ethiopic.com/calendar/ethiopic.html)

In my work I argued “If Jesus was born in 7 B.C. and nobody made the effort to correct the error, the A.D. years should have remained the same. The Ethiopians imply that Exiguus used 532 in the wrong year without mentioning the A.D. year, though he was working on his Easter calculations in (the proleptic) A.D. 525. The difference of about seven years has moved the date of creation of the Julian calendar by as many years relative to the Ethiopian. (The difference between the Ethiopian and Julian calendars most likely appeared only after Exiguus came up with Anno Domini.)”

“In a new book in Amharic, ብሕረ ሀሳብ(Bahra Hassab), Getatchew Haile (ጌታቸው ኃይሌ) used 365.25 days per year starting with Tuesday, Meskerem 1, 5500 years before the birth of Jesus.”

The Ethiopians stayed younger in spite of hanging onto the calendar for millennia. It is thus possible that the Ethiopian calendar years are probably more accurate when compared to the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

I am writing this letter to thank you for your bold move, courage and conviction by bringing up an issue that has been ignored for thousands of years.

With kind regards,

Dr. Aberra Molla
Ethiopian Computers & Software
Brighton, CO 80602
[email protected]