In my current readings I am beginning the process of working through the Rt. Rev. N.T. Wright’s series called “Christian Origins and the Question of God.” Last night I began the first of a projected six voume series (three of the six volumes being already published) and came across a most interesting thought in the preface. The following comes from the book titled “The New Testament and the People of God”, p. xv. Please excuse me for posting nearly the entire paragrapah but to omit anything contained therein would detract from Wright’s main point. He says,
[...] some people get cross if they see the usage BC and AD in reference to dates before and after the birth of Jesus, since they take it as a sign of Christian imperialism. Others are irritated if they see Christians using the increasingly popular ‘neutral’ alternatives BCE (‘Before the Common Era’) and CE (‘Common Era’), because it seems either patronizing or spineless. Similar debates rage as to whether the Hebrew Bible should be called ‘Tanach’ or ‘Old Testament’, or perhaps even ‘The Older Testament’ (in my view, this last is the most patronizing of all); or whether ‘First Testament’ and ‘Second Testament’ are more appropriate. It is strange that it seems to be scholars within the broad Christian tradition who are afflicted with these problems. Jewish writers do not affect ‘Christian’ ways of referring to dates and books, nor would I wish them to. In all these cases there is, I fear, a malaise among us, which consitsts of the desire to present a ‘neutral’ of ‘objective’ view as though we were all merely disinterested historians looking down from an uninvolved Olympian height. As I shall be arguing in Part II of the present volume, such an epistemology is inappropriate and indeed impossible.
