The Third Millennium and the 21st Century both start on January 1, 2001. The only thing that may happen on January 1, 2000 is that a few computer programs may develop problems because of the Y2K bug; but it is beginning to seem like most companies are adequately planning for that event.

I know a lot of hoopla is being raised to try to celebrate the start of both a new century and a new millennium just a few months from now, but that does not mean they are right.

What has everyone confused is that a person celebrates his 1st birthday one year after he is born, i.e. everything is measured from birth as taking place on year 0. So everyone assumes that since the current calendar supposedly is based on Jesus's birth, that it must have taken place in year 0, and when he was supposedly 1 year old it would be 1AD.

But back then the concept of 0 was not really well known (Europeans got the concept of zero from the Arabs around the eighth century), and when a sixth-century monk named Dionysius Exiguss was commissioned by Pope St. John I to create a chronology of time, he estimated Christ's birth at 753 A.U.C. (from the founding of Rome), and then restarted time beginning with the year of Christ's birth as Year 1 A.D. (A.D. stands for "anno domini" or "the year of our lord").

Since there was no year 0, the first century ran from 1 AD to 100 AD, the first millennium ran from 1 AD to 1000 AD, etc. So the year 2000 will be the last year of the 20th Century, and the last year of the second millennium, not the first year of the 21st Century, and the first year of the third millennium.

I said that people celebrating the new century and/or millennium on January 1, 2000 would be a year early, or possibly a few years late. That is because according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born the year that Herod the Great died, which most scholars agree was in 4 B.C., however Luke suggests that Jesus was born while Quirinius was governor of Syria, but scholars place Quirinius's reign commencing in the year A.D. 6 or 7. There was a Roman named Quintillius was in charge of Judea from 6 B.C. to 4 B.C., so maybe Luke confused Quintilluis and Quirinius.

Of course all of this presumes we use the Christian calendar; there are about 40 other calendars in use throughout the world. And none of them are we anywhere close to the year 2000, for example: Byzantine 7508, Chinese 4636, Indian (Saka) 1921, Islamic (Hegira) 1420, Jewish(A.M.) 5760.

Just because it says something on the Internet is certainly no reason that it is true, but you might want to check out this page from the Astronomical Applications Department of the U.S. Naval Observatory, this page, also from the U.S. Naval Observatory, and this page from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, or Ask Jeeves, Atlantic Monthly, US News and World Report, and the Between today and tomorrow part of this article, also http://www.bergen.com:80/region/monk199812203.htm, and http://www.mohawk.net/~barbaria/millennium.html.

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