Dating the birth of Christ – seeing as it’s christmas

It is recognised there is uncertainty on when the modern dating system kicked in and if AD1 has any connection with the Birth of Christ – not least the various talks and articles by Steve Mitchell and Lawrence Dixon on dating systems in the Roman and post-Roman periods, as published in SIS publications and during member meetings (last autumn for example). Now, consensus would have you believe there is nothing amiss but someone else has been doing some digging around – not spending a great deal of time on the subject, however, but enough to put a spanner in the works – so to speak. It seems the Ethiopian and Coptic calendars have our year 2000 in 2008 – see http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/oct-nov-dec-8-9-10-tenth-elevent…