Talk:1st century

Old talk

Jesus was almost certainly born in 1st century BC; moving.Vicki Rosenzweig

foundered v. founded

"foundered by Augustus" should be "founded by Augustus". To found something is to establish it. To founder something is to sink it.--Friendly Person 20:14, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Anyone can edit a Wikipedia article. Although I could easily make the correction myself, why don't you change it yourself for the experience? — Joe Kress 05:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Decimal notation and year 0

A century begins with the 1, and ends in the next 00. So, the 19th was 1801 through 1900. How it looks now, there are only 99 years in a century. --JamesR1701E 20:32, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Following the standard decimal system, shouldn't each century begin with "0" and end with "99"? (e.g., 1st cent. would be 0-99, 2nd cent. would be 100-199, etc.) JeremyMcCracken 17:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Views differ, so I included both in the article. See also Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)#year_zero. DirkvdM 09:00, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

quite frankly, there is no room for differing views. there is no year 0. therefore, centruies begin on the 1 and end on the hundred. so the year 100 is part of the first century. again, no real room for different opinions here.

Year article problem

Someone wrote at Talk:1 that year articles 50 and under should have A.D. in their article title. Has there been enough discussion as of this moment?? 66.245.106.46 22:26, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Lions

Anyone else find it hard to believe that lions became extinct in Western Europe in exactly year 1? The Wikipedia article on lions says only that this extinction happened "around the beginning of the current era". The article should reflect this uncertainty. Ckerr 09:15, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree. I'm not going to make this change myself, being too scared of the traditional Wikipedian's view of unknown editors, but still... Lord Akria 19:35, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed...if at all lions lived in Europe which I doubt.

Vandalism or perhaps just youthful high spirits?

Someone put the following text into the article:

"*Various inventions by Hero of Alexandria, including the steam turbine (aeolipile), vending machine, machine gun, water organ, Nintendo Wii and various other water-powered machines.

• Drew Zimmerman Begins the hobby of ruining wikipedia pages."

The Nintendo Wii and machine gun is the real vandalism, obviously, although I wouldn't be surprised if at least some form of machine gun had been invented by that time although, judging by the machine gun article, there wasn't. The machine gun was placed in an edit earlier to the most recent, and thus may be by a different person from this Drew Zimmerman. What's interesting is the edit date: 7th December. One day before the Wii's launch. XD Perhaps he's a Nintendo fan? If he is then he has good taste. I shall delete it, though I felt it was quite funny. Oh well. I still don't get the water-powered part, I hope...

If it's a joke against Nintendo then I suggest that we tear him limb from limb... Lord Akria 19:35, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I was too late.... Someone else already deleted it... My first chance of protecting against vandalism... Gone... WAAAAAAHHHHHHH! XD Oh well. At least it was done. Lord Akria 19:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is not real, so why is his death listed in the events —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.17.190.86 (talk • contribs) 0:38, June 4, 2007 (UTC)

Interesting point. Perhaps it should be "in fiction"? — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 07:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

He is real to some, and not real to others. P

He actually lived, the debate is whether he was the Son of God or not. 76.77.225.169 (talk) 17:12, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidence? Zwart (talk) 18:04, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Josephus? 75.168.78.126 (talk) 20:42, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Josephus is evidence of Christians, not "Jesus". 192.55.54.36 (talk) 00:22, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

It's generally acknowledged by scholars that somebody called Jesus of Nazareth existed, and that he founded a religious movement in First-Century Palestine. It's nevertheless clear that the "chronology" given in the article for Jesus (and the founding of the Christian Church, and the conversion of the Apostle Paul) is a matter of religious testimony, not of historical evidence (even after somebody quite properly removed the reference to "His Resurrection"). It presumes that Jesus was born in A.D. 1, and takes the biblical estimates as to his age for precise and accurate declarations, none of which is justified by the evidence—or even by the Biblical text. I don't have reliable sources handy or I'd revise the article myself. Would somebody with the requisite time and sources kindly make the chronology fit the historical evidence in this respect? J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 22:15, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm removing the reference to his resurrection as non-historical. It's probably also debatable that the crucifiction happend but at least it's not a supernatural event. There is a lot of Christian bias in this article but I also don't have the reliable sources or knowledge to fix this properly. I imagine that every source will be contested and has been contested for say 2000 years. Opalraava (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:06, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Jesus's crucifixion is actually one of the few events of which historians can be reasonably certain. Crucifixion was a scandalous punishment in the Roman world, and was particularly abhorrent to Jews of the First Century C. E. It is highly unlikely that his followers would have invented such a shameful fate for their teacher/leader/prophet/Messiah/god (depending on which believers you asked, and when). It's far more likely that the fact of Jesus's crucifixion was so well known in Judæa during the early days of the Jesus Community/Church that believers were unable to deny it, and had instead to embrace and apotheosize it. See Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant and The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 00:14, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I improved the crucifixion and start of ministry in the significant events to (traditional date) which is an improvement to the previous (according to christian sources only) so it's in there. I'm pretty happy with what we have now except for the section on Christianity at the bottom of the article. First of all it mentions events in the 4th century, which I'd like to remove. It also cites a lot of New Testament, so I'm not sure if we can see that as a RS. Cutting all that out doesn't leave much. It does, however, contain the very useful and relevant link to a main article about Christianity in the first century. What I'd like to do is to remove that section entirely and move the relevant link to the existing lines on Christianity in the beginning. That way we can move all these tings out of this article and into more relevant articles. Are you OK with that? Opalraava (talk) 11:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Go for it. The Bible is not a Reliable Source. It is a primary source for what its writers wrote, and for what people in their religious, ethnic, or political communities may have believed at some point, as well as for what those who regard it as holy scripture (e.g., Christians and Jews) may have believed at various times. Those things may be clues to, or evidence for historical events, but Wikipedia must be based on secondary works that subject them to critical analysis in conjunction with information from other sources. We can't simply accept them as historical accounts, even with reservations like, "According to the New Testament . . . ." (Opalraava clearly understands this already. I'm just lecturing for the benefit of others who might object to her or his proposed revisions.) J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 14:35, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Ok, it's done. I think we can be very pleased with the result we have so far, the article really has improved a lot. Opalraava (talk) 10:00, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Eastern Hemisphere vs World view

Why is there only a map of the Eastern Hemisphere here? There were people living in the America's as well. It strikes me as a European centered view on the World.

I do not have the means or knowledge to create a better map. But I would want to encourage those who do, to look into this.

(By the way: Me = Born and raised in Europa...) --Looskuh (talk) 19:40, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

There are three reasons why I only made maps of the east hemisphere, and neither of them are Eurocentric. (By the way: Me = Born and raised in Kansas (US = America = West Hemisphere).

First, the maps are already large in file and document sizes - adding the west hemisphere would easily double that size. 2nd, our information on the west hemisphere before 1500 AD is very limited, and in many cases based on pure speculation, so finding accurate sources of info on the early west hem is not easy. And third, it already takes a LOT of time and research to make sure the east-hem maps are as accurate as possible. I simply do not have the time or ability (currently) to add the western hemisphere to the maps. Sincerely, Thomas Lessman (talk) 13:08, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi Steph!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.221.84.226 (talk) 20:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Christian bias

This article lists an inordinate number of Christian events in the timeline. That is unbalanced, and should be repaired. More seriously, the historicity of some of these events is disputed, and I'm pretty sure that the dating of others is in doubt. I think the reliability of the article would benefit if these events were all removed from the timeline. I would remove them, if I didn't think it would set off an edit-war. Therefore, reluctantly, I've introduced the diacritic † for 'historicity disputed' (I didn't check whether there already was a symbol for that, sorry). I've marked the events for which I know the diacritic applies. I invite others to consider whether the symbol needs to be applied elsewhere, too, or whether we need to add a question mark here and there. Zwart (talk) 18:28, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

See my recent remarks on this subject under "Jesus Christ", above. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 19:49, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Orphaned references in First Century

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of First Century's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "ChronosPaul":

• From Anno Domini: Paul L. Maier "The Date of the Nativity and Chronology of Jesus" in Chronos, kairos, Christos: nativity and chronological studies by Jerry Vardaman, Edwin M. Yamauchi, 1989, ISBN 0-931464-50-1, pp. 113–129
• From Jesus in Christianity: Maier, Paul L. "The Date of the Nativity and Chronology of Jesus" in Vardaman, Jerry and Edwin M. Yamauchi.Chronos, kairos, Christos: nativity and chronological studies, 1989. ISBN 0-931464-50-1. pp. 113-129
• From Chronology of Jesus: Paul L. Maier "The Date of the Nativity and Chronology of Jesus" in Chronos, kairos, Christos: nativity and chronological studies by Jerry Vardaman, Edwin M. Yamauchi 1989 ISBN 0-931464-50-1 pages 113-129

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 20:02, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 20:25, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

30 April 2015 Revisions Concerning Jesus and Paul

I have undone an anonymous editor's good-faith attempt to make the dates for Jesus and the Apostle Paul more reflective of the historical evidence, so I felt obliged to make my own effort. Since I don't have better sources at hand, I have used dates and references from the Wikipedia articles Chronology of Jesus and Conversion of Paul the Apostle, which appear reliable to me.

I removed altogether the entry for the beginning of the Christian church, because it's highly debatable what event that even refers to (start of Jesus's ministry? Pentecost? separation of Christian Jews from Jewish synagogues?), and Wikipedia's existing articles don't offer a satisfactory discussion of the issue.

The same IP editor made some other changes, concerning lions in Europe and Caligula's designs on Britain, which were reverted along with the ones concerning Jesus and Paul. I have not restored those, but would not object to their restoration if the sources support it. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 19:47, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

The events concerning Jesus and Paul and their references

The three events from c.29 up to and including c.33-36 (concerning Jesus and Paul) contain *all* the references in the entire article.

I'm pretty sure these three events have been placed there by the same author because they all used 'About' instead of 'c.' (which I fixed several edits ago). Because we know that the first two events on Jesus have no independent reliable sources, yet they have many references, and the conversion of Paul has the same kind of references, judging by their titles, I'm a bit suspicious about it all. I'm suspecting that the author just tried to 'legitimate' these events with an avalanche or references.

Because of this, I removed the conversion of Paul as an historical event. However I was wrong to do so, because there are actually independent sources on the life of Paul and to this event.

Now I'm kinda lost on how to proceed, I still doubt all the given sources in these three lines, but you can't judge a book by it's cover and I don't have access to any of these sources. Perhaps somebody with better information or sources could pick this up? Opalraava (talk) 05:58, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Should the lead say "First Century" or "1st century"?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should the lead say "First Century" or "1st century"? The user Jdcrutch recently reverted my two recent edits, making the edit controversial. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 23:02, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

I reverted the good-faith changes by GeoffreyT2000 because good style requires that all numbers under ten, and (at least optionally) most numbers under 100, be written in words. For example, our own MOS provides,

• Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words
• Integers greater than nine expressible in one or two words may be expressed either in numerals or in words (16 or sixteen, 84 or eighty-four, 200 or two hundred).

J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 23:50, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

The lead should say 1st century as common in English. The MOS is mistaken in this area. Dimadick (talk) 21:55, 5 March 2016 (UTC)

Apparently, the Chicago Manual of Style and Associated Press, the BBC, the AMA, the Library of Congress, the Guardian and Observer, and the APA and MLA, to name but a few, are similarly "mistaken in this area". On what sources does Dimadick rely for her or his claim?J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 17:09, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

These are particularly poor examples as they do not display common use. Try googlebooks where "1st century" gets 329,000 results and "first century" mostly gets results as part of the phrase "Twenty-First Century". Dimadick (talk) 17:22, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@Dimadick: needs to quit edit-warring, and revert her or his changes to the article until consensus is reached. Google Books searches are not a reliable source. Published style manuals are. In any case, Dimadick's Google search confirms the predominance of "Twenty-First Century", which, giving the number in words, flatly contradicts his or her claim. A search of Google Books for "first century" returns over four million hits, as against Dimadick's 329,000 for "1st century". Dimadick is not merely wrong but disastrously wrong. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 17:36, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Really? Most of the results are irrelevant hits about the 21st century, instead of the 1st century. Dimadick (talk) 17:39, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Really! They give the number in words. That's relevant to this discussion. It's the whole point of this discussion. Over four million examples give the number of a century in words, whether "first" or "twenty-first". Less than a tenth that many use "1st". We can even add the number of hits for "21st century", and the total is still only 1.5 million. Clearly, Dimadick's chosen source overwhelmingly favors words over numerals.

More to the point, the leading style manuals for publishing call for the usage I've advocated here, and Wikipedia should follow them.

Dimadick still needs to revert his or her edit-warring revisions. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 17:58, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Comment First or 1st isn't an integer,* which, for linguistic purposes, is the same as a cardinal number. First/1st is an ordinal number. As such, @Jdcrutch:'s argument from WP:MOS (and various other manuals of style) probably shouldn't be given much weight, and @Dimadick:'s edits are entirely within bounds here, as far as I can tell. And yes, you wouldn't write "Barack Obama was the 1st black U.S. president", but century stylings are unique; e.g the film studio is not actually called Twenty-first Century Fox, but rather 21st Century Fox. In point of fact, time representations are generally unique: no one blanches at a newspaper writing "2 AM" rather than "two AM" and I'd bet that if you dug deep enough into our own WP:MOS that this kind of thing would have been accounted for by now.

On a more process related note, you might want to try using the Wikipedia:Third opinion (or even the WP:3rd opinion, if you're so inclined) option before filing an WP:RFC over a two person squabble. -- Kendrick7^talk 06:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC) *You can't for example, add two firsts together and get a second.

Reply @Kendrick7: asserts that the rule doesn't (or shouldn't) apply to ordinal numbers. Most reliable sources appear to disagree. I searched the Web (using Startpage.com) for "ordinal numbers words numerals century". Here are the first ten relevant results (emphasis in all cases is as in the original):

Collapsed when closing the RfC to improve readability - done by TigraanClick here to contact me 15:58, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

1. According to this site, which cites the APA (which isn't itself available on line), Ordinal numbers follow the same rules as other numbers. Spell out ordinals below 10: first, second, . . . ninth. Use numerals for ordinals 10 and above: 10th, 43rd, 99th, and so on. Exception—the twentieth century. 2. According to Gordon College's style guide, Decades and Centuries 1800s, not 1800's Spell out and lowercase the first through ninth century. Use ordinal numbers for all others (including future centuries); superscript the letters. . . . 1990s second century B.C. ninth century 10th century 21st century}} 3. Daily Writing Tips says, Centuries and decades should be spelled out. Use the Eighties or nineteenth century. 4. This site, which compares the AP and Chicago style manuals, says: Ordinals AP (p. 202): Spell out ordinal numbers up to (and including) "ninth" when indicating sequence in time or location (e.g., first kiss, 11th hour) but not when indicating sequence in naming conventions (usually geographic, military, or political, e.g., 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals). Chicago (9.6): Spell out ordinal numbers up to (and including) "hundredth" (e.g., second, sixty-first, 333rd, 1,024th). 5. Dublin City University's Academic Skills Office says, Write in words one or two-word numbers, rounded numbers and ordinal numbers For general academic writing, you need to write these numbers in words: all numbers under one hundred (e.g. ninety-nine) rounded numbers (e.g. four hundred, two thousand, six million) and ordinal numbers (e.g. third, twenty-fifth). 6. The University of Illinois's Department of Physics advises students, Spell out ordinal numbers first to ninth. 7. The University of Rochester says the same: centuries Lowercase; spell out under 10. ninth century 15th century the 1700s 13th-century architecture 8. The Purdue Online Writing Lab is a bit wishy-washy: Although usage varies, most people spell out numbers that can be expressed in one or two words and use figures for other numbers. but the one relevant example it gives is the twentieth century 9. The University of West Florida, in a Powerpoint presentations, says, Spell out centuries in lowercase letters: the twentieth century the mid-nineteenth century Finally, 10. Writing Explained, citing the AP Stylebook, says, Centuries: Use figures for numbers 10 or higher. 21st century Spell out for numbers nine and lower. fifth century Note, “century” is lowercase. For proper names, follow the organization’s usage, 20th Century Fox Twentieth Century Fund

J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 15:36, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

• 1st, consistency.--Zoupan 04:26, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

• First century Summoned by bot. The MOS is actually explicit about this, per WP:CENTURY: "Centuries and millennia are identified using either figures (the 18th century, not XVIII century) or words (the second millennium)." So either would be correct under the MOS. But since multiple reliable sources provided by Jdcrutch say it should be spelled out as first century, I think we should follow that. An internet search also shows that "First century" is far more common than "1st century," (even when hiding results with the word "twenty"). Generally WP follows common usage, so I don't see any reason to disagree with that here. FuriouslySerene (talk) 19:07, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
• First century – I am late to the party here thanks to the RFD bot, but after a combination of reading what has been said here, my interpretation of MOS, and my own thoughts and writing skills, it only makes sense for this to be "first" instead of "1st." If common usage does truly support "first," that just adds weight to this side. United States Man (talk) 14:12, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:1st millennium which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:30, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

1st century

1st century 2603:6080:7D02:2348:E44C:AC34:E4AD:8B44 (talk) 02:04, 21 October 2022 (UTC)