"Israel in 4BC had no mass communication"
WTF???
Wasn't Jesus around 30 years old at the time of this story? Shouldn't the lyric be "Israel 30AD had no mass communication"?
And I checked, AD doesn't mean "After Death", it stands for "Anno Domini", meaning In The Year Of The Lord, starting from the time of his birth.
Wonder how this goof got in?
Well, considering Jesus was born at the tail end of the BCE calendar (around 4BC, coincidentally) Judas was likely referring to Jesus' entire life benefiting from mass communication- not just his ministry years.
Not a goof. Simply an interpretation of the lyrics and determining Jesus' birth year (which, according to most scholars, was not 01AD)
Speak louder, Mr. Hart! Fill the room with your intelligence!
The Lyric is :
If you'd come today, you could have reached a whole nation,
Israel in 4 BC had no mass-communication.
Jesus did not come at the age of 30. he came at 4BC by being Born. It's Not a goof.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Jesus#Year_of_birth_estimat es
It's been widely suggested that, historically, Christ was born a few years before the point of BC-AD transition.
However, BC still officially stands for 'Before Christ', specifying that any date to which it's attributed was prior to Christ's existence. So the lyric claiming Christ came 'in 4 BC' does sound a bit odd if you're unaware of the above.
Thank you for using BCE, before common era (& CE, common era) in your time references. I am teaching my children to do the same but teachers are clueless to it here. We need to stop assuming our calender is proper for every country & religion. I am glad colleges use this reference, now if media would as well.
shareWell, our ancestors derived their "common era" from the birth of Christ for some reason. I see no point in trying to deny it, or to cover it up, because it totally did happen. Other cultures use our calendar simply because they need a common frame of reference in order to make business with us, and I think they don't really mind about the whole Christ thing.
I say this as a non-Christian (and actually, a staunch anti-Abrahamist). I have no more respect for Jesus Christ than I have for Paul Atreides or Frodo Baggins or any other of those fictional self-appointed "I'm saving the world, but not for myself" messiah types. But trying to rewrite history serves no good. And all this respect for other countries, religions and cultures is getting very much out of hand lately, anyway. It smells too much of self-censorship.
If people insist on deriving their calendar from the birth of Christ, let them. For all I care, it is year 55 after Sputnik.