What does AD stand for in the Bible?
Those two letters never appear in the text of Scripture itself, yet they are stamped on almost every dated document in the world, and they point straight back to the birth recorded in the Gospels. The question is really two questions: what do the letters mean, and how does the Bible's own way of counting time compare with them?
The Meaning of the Letters
The abbreviation is Latin, not Hebrew or Greek, and one writer spells out both halves of the familiar pairing:
A. J. PollockThe letters B.C. stand for Before Christ; the letters A.D. (Anno Domini, Latin, in the year of our Lord), stand for After Christ. This surely testifies to the very deep and profound impression that our Lord, crucified in shame and disgrace after only a very brief three-and-a-half years of public service, made on mankind.
Where the Reckoning Came From
The system is a human calculation made centuries after the events, and its author can be named:
William KellyDionysius the Little, at the beginning of the sixth century, reckoned the year of the Birth as 753, after the foundation of Rome; but it is certain that Herod died, as stated above, in 750. Hence three or four years have to be deducted from 753.
The Four-Year Gap
Because that sixth-century calculation was slightly out, "A.D. 1" is not actually the year Christ was born. A Bible dictionary applies the correction while dating the start of John the Baptist's ministry under the Roman emperor Tiberius:
Morrish Bible DictionaryHis reign is put down as A.D. 14-37, but there is evidence that he reigned two or three years with Augustus, and the above "fifteenth year" is reckoned from the earlier date. By comparing this with Luke 3:22-23, it will be seen that it could not have been later than A.D. 25 or 26; for Christ was born four years before the Era A.D., and now He "began to be about 30 years old."
How Scripture Fixes Its Own Dates
Instead of a running number, the Bible anchors events to the rulers alive at the time — and that list of rulers is doing more than filling in a calendar:
J. N. DarbyIt is not without purpose that the Spirit mentions the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, and so on. All the earth was seemingly at rest under its heathen lord; the word of God found its suited sphere in the wilderness. The law and the prophets were until John: and where should he be in such a state of things but the wilderness?
The Dates Printed in Your Bible
Many Bibles carry B.C. and A.D. figures at the top of the page or in the margin. Those figures are the work of editors, not of the inspired writers:
A. J. PollockAt the top of some editions of the Bible there is marked the date 4004 B.C., that is nearly 6,000 years ago. But that calculation is put there by the hand of fallible man. It probably is fairly correct in dating the creation of Adam.
Commentators differ on the exact figures. One writer notes that a bishop who added Ussher's dates to English Bibles quietly changed one of them to suit his own theory, while others point out that rival chronologies rarely differ by more than about ten years.
Why Time Divides There at All
The calendar has a hinge because history has a hinge. The split into "before" and "after" matches something the Bible teaches about Christ Himself:
Samuel RidoutIt is Christ who divides all history. Everything before pointed toward Him; and everything since points back to Christ, or, rather, I might say, points up to Him. Christ is the great Centre, the only centre of God's thoughts; the centre of all there is in creation, in the history of man, and in all that the heart can conceive.
Dating a Letter Is Not Knowing the Lord
Writing "the year of our Lord" on a page costs nothing. One writer presses the difference between living inside a Christian calendar and possessing Christian life:
James BoydHow do they know Christ is risen? How do they know they are children of God? How do they know they have passed out of death into life? How do they know what dispensation they are in at the present moment? Is it only by seeing "anno Domini" placed after 1913 that we know we are in the Christian era?
Summary
- Meaning. A.D. is short for Anno Domini, Latin for "in the year of our Lord"; B.C. means "Before Christ."
- Origin. The count was fixed by Dionysius the Little in the sixth century, long after the New Testament was written.
- Correction. His sum was three or four years short, so Christ was born about four years "before Christ."
- Scripture's own clock. The Bible dates by reigns — the fifteenth year of Tiberius — and even that detail carries meaning, since God's word came not to Jerusalem but to the wilderness.
- The centre. Time splits in two because Christ divides all history; everything before pointed toward Him, everything after points up to Him — yet dating a letter "A.D." is not the same as knowing Him.