that could act as dampers upon the univer- 

 sal ballyhoo. First — although I will not 

 make a big deal of this technicality — mil- 

 lenniums are not transitions at the ends of 

 thousand-year periods, but particular peri- 

 ods lasting one thousand years; so I'm not 

 convinced that we even have the name 

 right. Second, if we insist on a celebration 

 (as we should) no matter what name be 

 given, we had better decide when to cele- 

 brate. I devote this essay to explaining 

 why the second issue cannot be re- 

 solved — a situation that should not be 

 viewed as depressing, but enlightening. 

 For just as Tennyson taught us to prefer 

 love lost over love unexperienced, it is bet- 

 ter to not know, and know why one can't 

 know, than to be clueless about why so 

 many people are so agitated about 1999 

 versus 2000 for the great divide. At least 

 when you grasp the conflicting, legitimate, 

 and unresolvable claims of both sides, you 

 can then celebrate both alternatives with 

 equanimity — or neither (with informed 

 self-righteousness) if your persona be 

 sour or smug. 



Rightful names: Millennium does 

 mean, by etymology, a period of one thou- 

 sand years. However, the concept did not 

 arise within the field of practical calen- 

 drics, or the measurement of time, but in 

 the domain of eschatology, or futuristic vi- 

 sions about a blessed end of time. Millen- 

 nial thinking is embedded in the two apoc- 

 alyptic books of the Bible — Daniel in the 

 Old Testament and Revelation in the New. 

 In particular, the traditional Christian mil- 

 lennium is a blessed fuUire epoch that will 

 last for 1,000 years and end with a final 

 battle and Last Judgment of all the dead, 

 as described by Saint John in one of his 

 oracular visions: 



And I saw an angel come down from 

 heaven, having the key of the bottomless 

 pit.... And he laid hold on. ..Satan, and 

 bound him a thousand years. 



And cast him into the bottomless pit, and 

 shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he 

 should deceive the nations no more, till the 

 thousand years should be fulfilled.... and I 

 saw the souls of them that were beheaded 

 for the witness of Jesus. . .and they lived and 

 reigned with Christ a thousand years.. . . 



And when the thousand years are expired, 

 Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. 



And shall go out to deceive the nations 

 which are in the four quarters of the earth, 

 Gog and Magog, to gather them together to 

 battle... and fire came down from God out 

 of heaven, and devoured them. 



And the devil that deceived them was cast 

 into the lake of fire and brimstone, where 

 the beast and the false prophet are, and shall 

 be tormented day and night for ever and 

 ever.... 



And I saw the dead, small and great, 

 stand before God, and the books were 

 opened.... 



And whosoever was not found written in 

 the book of life was cast into the lake of fire 

 [Revelation 20: 1-15]. 



How, then, did this original concept of a 

 forthcoming reign of Christ become trans- 

 mogrified in popular speech into a word 

 for calendric transitions at multiples of 

 one thousand? The main reason must be 

 simple confusion and loss of knowledge 

 about the original meaning, as apocalyptic 

 versions of Christianity, not to mention 

 Bible reading in general, decline in popu- 

 larity (despite, to say the least, vigorous, 

 continuing support in some circles!). But a 

 rationale of sorts for the transfer of mean- 

 ing does exist within the history of escha- 

 tology, particularly in its intersection with 

 my profession of geology in attempts to 

 ascertain the age of the earth. 



Many biblical passages state that God's 

 day may be compared with a thousand 

 human years: "Be not ignorant of this one 

 thing, that one day is with the Lord as a 

 thousand years, and a thousand years as 

 one day" (2 Peter 3:8: see also Psalm 90). 

 This comparison, read literally, led many 

 interpreters to conclude that the seven 

 days of Creation must correspond with a 

 maximal duration of 7,000 years for the 

 earth from Creation to final destruction at 

 the Last Judgment. In this scheme, the 

 seventh or last cosmic epoch, correspond- 

 ing to God's day of rest after six days of 

 furiously creative activity, would be a 

 thousand-year period of bhss, the grand 

 sabbath of the traditional millennium. If 

 either science or hermeneutics could then 

 determine the time of the earth's origin, we 

 might know the moment of inception for 

 this last happy age. 



Most calculations of the earth's age, if 

 done Uterally from bibUcal life spans and 

 other ancient sources, place the Creation 

 somewhere between 3761 B.C. (the Jewish 

 calendar) and more than 5500 B.C. (the 

 Septuagint, or Greek Bible). Therefore, a 

 transition into the millennial age might 

 well be on the horizon — or should have 

 occurred just a while ago, according to 

 your favored calculation. True, none of the 

 suggested times of Creation give any rea- 

 son to redefine a millennium as a transi- 

 tion around a date with three zeros in its 

 written form, but at' least we may under- 

 stand why people might conflate a future 

 period of millennial bhss with some sys- 

 tem for counting historical time in periods 

 of one thousand years. 



Rightful times: As a man of below aver- 

 age stature myself, I am dehghted to report 

 that the source of all our infernal trouble 

 about the ends of centuries may be laid on 

 the doorstep of a sixth-century monk 

 named Dionysius Exiguus, or (literally) 

 Dennis the Short. Instructed to prepare a 

 chronology for Pope Saint John I, Little 

 Dennis decided to begin countable years 

 with the foundation of Rome. But, neatly 

 balancing his secular and sacred alle- 

 giances, Dionysius then divided rime 

 again at Christ's appearance. He reckoned 

 Jesus' birth at December 25, near the end 

 of the year 753 a.u.c. (standing for ab 

 iirbe condita. or "from the foundation of 

 the city," that is, of Rome). Dionysius then 

 restarted time just a few days later on Jan- 

 uary 1, 754 A.u.c. — not Christ's birth, but 

 the feast of the circumcision on his eighth 

 day of life, and also, not coincidentally, 

 New Year's Day in Roman and Latin 

 Christian calendars. 



6 Natural History 4/94 



