Anno Lucis (“in the Year of Light”) is a dating system used in

Masonic Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

ceremonial or commemorative proceedings, which is equivalent to the Gregorian year plus 4000. It is similar to ''

Anno Mundi (from Latin 'in the year of the world'; ), abbreviated as AM or A.M., or Year After Creation, is a calendar era based on biblical accounts of the creation of the world and subsequent history. Two such calendar eras of notable use are: * Sin ...

''.

Description

For example, a date

Anno Domini The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used when designating years in the Gregorian calendar, Gregorian and Julian calendar, Julian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means "in the year of the Lord" but is often presented using "o ...

(AD) becomes Anno Lucis (AL) . This

calendar era A calendar era is the period of time elapsed since one '' epoch'' of a calendar and, if it exists, before the next one. For example, the current year is numbered in the Gregorian calendar, which numbers its years in the Western Christian era ...

, which would designate 4001 BC as ' year zero', was adopted in the 18th century as a simplification of the ''Anno Mundi'' era dating system used in the

Hebrew calendar The Hebrew calendar (), also called the Jewish calendar, is a lunisolar calendar used today for Jewish religious observance and as an official calendar of Israel. It determines the dates of Jewish holidays and other rituals, such as '' yahrze ...

and borrowing from other ideas of that time regarding the year of creation. After the Masoretic text was published, dating creation around 4000 BC became common, and it was received with wide support. Proposed calculations of the date of creation, using the Masoretic from the 10th century to the 18th century, were numerous and fluctuated by many decades. Notably,

Isaac Newton Sir Isaac Newton () was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author. Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment that followed ...

's calculation pointed at the year 4000 BC. Among the Masoretic creation estimates or calculations for the date of creation, Archbishop Ussher's specific chronology dating the creation to 4004 BC became the most accepted and popular in Protestant Christendom, mainly because this specific date was attached to the

King James Bible The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by ...

. The Hebrew Calendar has traditionally, since the 4th century AD by

Hillel II Hillel II (Hebrew: הלל נשיאה, Hillel the Nasi), also known simply as Hillel, was an '' amora'' of the fifth generation in the Land of Israel. He held the office of '' Nasi'' of the Sanhedrin between 320 and 365 CE. He was the son and succ ...

, dated the creation to 3761 BC, in accordance with the ''

Seder Olam Rabbah ''Seder Olam Rabbah'' (, "The Great Order of the World") is a 2nd-century CE Hebrew language chronology detailing the dates of biblical events from creation to Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. It adds no stories beyond what is in the bi ...

'' compiled by Jose ben Halafta in AD 160, and in agreement with ''

The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries ''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The ...

'', in which the Muslim chronologist

al-Biruni Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (; ; 973after 1050), known as al-Biruni, was a Khwarazmian Iranian scholar and polymath during the Islamic Golden Age. He has been called variously "Father of Comparative Religion", "Father of modern ...

identifies ''anno mundi'' as 3448 years before the

Seleucid era The Seleucid era ("SE") or (literally "year of the Greeks" or "Greek year"), sometimes denoted "AG," was a Calendar era, system of numbering years in use by the Seleucid Empire and other countries among the ancient Hellenistic period, Hellenistic ...

, but not with '' Seder Olam Zutta'', which dates it to 4339 BC and was compiled in AD 804.Young's Analytical Concordance of the Holy Bible, 1879, 8th Edition, 1939—entry under 'Creation', quoting Dr. William Hales New Analysis of Chronology and Geography, History and Prophecy, Vol. 1, 1830, p. 210.

References

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See also

References