In new book, Gould tackles apocalyptic prophecies

By William J. Cromie

Gazette Staff

According to a longstanding forecast, the world will end at noon on Oct. 23. Archbishop James Ussher made that prediction in 1650, based on his calculation that 2,000 years will pass between the birth of Jesus and the Second Coming. He fixed the former at 4 B.C.

Going strictly by the B.C.-A.D. calendar, that would make the termination day Oct. 23, 1996. That obviously didn't happen. The reason, notes Stephen Jay Gould, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, is that the B.C.-A.D. system we use has no year "0." The calendar jumps from Dec. 31, 1 B.C., to Jan. 1, 1 A.D.

That gives the world an extra year of existence, according to Ussher's calculations.

But Gould expects to be around longer. He has scheduled a reading from his new book Questioning the Millennium (Harmony Books) for Monday, Nov. 3, at the Cambridge, Mass., Public Library.

Lack of a year "0," Gould points out, is the main reason that the coming millennium actually begins on Jan. 1, 2001, not Jan. 1, 2000.

Zeroing In On Millennia

In his delightful new book, Gould points out that the concept of millennium as a time of apocalypse has become confused with the millennium as mere calendrics -- the end of a period of 1,000 years.

The first comes from the Bible, wherein the millennium is defined as a future epoch that will last for 1,000 years and end with a final battle between Christ and Satan. Christ will win, the Devil will go to hell, and all the dead will be resurrected, each soul going one way or the other.

That origin ties the end of every 1,000 years to catastrophe, and the beginning of the next 1,000 years to a new order. And such ties still exist even if no horrendous millennial expectations have occurred.

From the time of Jesus to that of Ussher, Biblical scholars expected the world to last 6,000 years. That raised the question of how many of the six possible millennia had preceded Jesus' birth.

As the year 1000 approached, many people apparently anticipated it with panic and terror, believing that 5,000 years had preceded the birth of Jesus. When that timemark slipped by uneventfully, people drew the obvious conclusion -- only four millennia had elapsed.

This places a special significance on the year 2000. But one small error had to be factored into Ussher's calculations. Blood-thirsty Herod, who ruled Palestine at the time of Jesus' birth, died in 4 B.C. Therefore, Jesus must have been born in 4 B.C. or earlier, or many famous Bible stories are wrong. Ussher solved this problem by setting the beginning of the world at 4004 B.C., and its end in 1996.

When Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Short) divided world time into B.C. and A.D. in the 6th century, the concept of zero had not been developed. Hindu and Arabic mathematicians "invented" the zero in the 8th or 9th century. However, Ussher and many others in Europe still ignored the idea in the mid-17th century. Thus, the millennium nuts must prepare for the end of the world, not in 2000, or 1996, but in 1997.

"If short Dennis had only begun with year zero," Gould comments, "then logic and sensibility would coincide and the wild millennial bells could ring forth . . . resoundingly at the beginning of Jan. 1, 2000. But that didn't happen. Therefore, every year with a '00' must count as the hundredth and final year of its century -- no matter what common sensibility might prefer."

That's what happened in 1900-1901. The presidents of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and the other Ivy League schools all favored Jan. 1, 1901, as the start of the 20th century. Moreover, Gould notes, "every major newspaper and magazine, including The Farmer's Almanack, officially welcomed the new century with their first issue of Jan. 1, 1901."

However, Gould is just as sure that that won't happen this time as he is that the world will not end at noon on Oct. 23. Pop culture, he believes, now rules reason, and "the world will rock and party on Jan. 1, 2000."

Where Did the Days Go?

Symbolism and logic aside, people prefer endings and beginnings with clean, even labels such as 1000 and 2000. Why?

A major reason, Gould thinks, is to impose order on nature's timekeepers. Our year is based on one orbit of Earth around the Sun. That trip takes 5 hours, 28 minutes, and 46 seconds more than our neat 365-day calendars would have you believe.

This situation results in such awkward solutions as leap years, when we add an extra day every four years, except those years that end a century, and except at boundary years divisible by 400. In other words, we remove the extra day at century boundaries, then put it back at century years divisible by 400. The year 2000, therefore, will be a leap year.

Before this rule of time-thumb, Pope Gregory dealt with the accumulating errors by dropping 10 days into oblivion. October 5-14, 1582, never existed, at least on Christian calendars. The Julian calendar ceased to mark the days on Oct. 4, and the new Gregorian calendar took up the count at Oct. 15.

That is, it did in most places. The British didn't drop those days until 1752, by which time they eliminated Sept. 3-12. This calendric sleight-of-hand explains why some sources list, for example, George Washington's birthday on Feb. 11, 1731, and others on Feb. 22, 1732. (The birthday jumps to the next year because, in England, the Julian year began in March.)

The Russians, Gould points out, did not change their calendars until 1919, pushing the October Revolution into November.

Movements of a second natural timekeeper, the Moon, also are inconvenient for marking the beginnings and endings of our months. The Moon rotates around Earth every 29.5, not 30, days.

In the 5th century B.C., calendric order was brought to this motion by the so-called Meton Cycle. This 19-year cycle requires insertion of a leap month in any 7 of the 19 years. The modern Jewish calendar intercalates a 13th month of 30 days into the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth year of the cycle.

Everyday Christian calendars don't use this device. Instead, many of them show diagrams of how the Moon's phases vary from month to month.

The fact that lunar and solar calendars don't match makes finding Easter difficult. "Books, indeed libraries, have been written on the subject," Gould says. "And great scholars have devoted their lives to devising rules and procedures for getting the cardinal day right."

As of now, Easter falls on the Sunday following the first full Moon, (a bow to lunar motion) after the start of spring when the Sun crosses the equator (the solar component).

"If we regard millennial passion and calendrical fascination as driven by the pleasure of ordering and the joy of understanding," Gould concludes, "then this strange little subject . . . becomes a wonderful microcosm for everything that makes human beings so distinctive, so potentially noble, and often so funny."

Just in case the world does end on Oct. 23, Gould will complete a seven-city book signing tour on Oct. 14.