Where did all the confusion come from? Simply the dumbing down of the country. It has been going on for some time. Ten years ago newspapers were written on the 6^th grade level. Not a very high standard, but today newspapers are written on the 5^th grade level. All it takes is one wrong advertisement and rather than have corrections and education occur, everyone nods their heads and jumps on the bandwagon.

And all this from a calendar that is not 2000 years old. The Western Calendar was not conceived until Emperor Dionysius' began its development. A task which took many years and which he did not complete until around 550. As to the question, "Was Jesus born in the year 0?" No.

There are two reasons for this: There is no year 0. Jesus was born before 4 B.C.E. (Before Christian Era) The concept of a year "zero" is a modern myth (but a very popular one). Roman numerals do not have a figure designating zero, and treating zero as a number on an equal footing with other numbers was not common in the 6th century when our present year reckoning was established by Dionysius Exiguus.

Dionysius let the year C.E. (Christian Era) 1 start one week after what he believed to be Jesus' birthday. Therefore, C.E. 1 follows immediately after 1 B.C.E. with no intervening year zero. So a person who was born in 10 B.C.E. and died in C.E. 10, would have died at the age of 19, not 20. Furthermore, Dionysius' calculations were wrong. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus was born under the reign of king Herod the Great, and he died in 4 B.C.E. It is likely that Jesus was actually born around 7 B.C.E. The date of his birth is unknown; it may or may not be 25 December.

To further confuse matters the Gregorian Calendar was "adjusted" in the Nineteenth Century when someone discovered that the early calendar calculations did not anticipate leap years. As a result 16 days were added into the calendar, jumping it forward. So with all the adjustments and guesses can you really say this is the second millennium? In the Chinese calendar it is currently the year 4697.

Many different calendars have been developed over the millennia to help people organize their lives. According to a recent estimate, there are about forty calendars used in the world today, particularly for determining religious dates. Most modern countries use the Gregorian calendar for their official activities.

So keep in mind that 2000 maybe the millennium, it should be called the 2^nd millennium, and still the new millennium will not start counting until 2001. Oh, and I purposely did not capitalize millennium anywhere. It is an artificial designation.