is a history of the British Church written in the 8th century. It is the first of the one hundred books I plan to read this year.Bede chronicled the advance of the church from Caesar's first invasion to its state as he was writing. This work does many things such as chronicling the spread of Christianity to one of the world's future powers, and giving insight to the early Britain political structure. But one of his most lasting effects was in our dating system. While he did not invent the term Anno Domini (In the year of our Lord) he did popularize its use. Because of his use of it to this day we refer to dates as A. D. However this is starting to disappear. Today there is a tendency to use C. E. instead of A. D. it can represent many things from Common Era to Christian Era. The reasoning behind it seems to be that even though the birth of Christ is the center of our dating system we don't want to offend people by making that widely known. However it is my opinion that we should continue to use A. D. as it points to the same thing as C. E. If we are going to have a dating system focused on one single event we should not be ashamed of that event. Bede used that method of dating because it focused on the most important date in History. For that reason I believe we should remember and honor Bede by continuing with his choice of words in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven.
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istory of the English People
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