Sir, - I find fault with John O'Halloran's reference (December 8th) to the millennium which he claims to be "of course the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Christ and the moment when God came down into human history".
When Dionysus Exiguus (Dennis the Little) was compiling the history of Christianity, there was no zero in Western mathematics, so he set the birth of Christ at 1AD. This of course puts the 2,000th anniversary a year later, in 2001. However, if Christ's birth was to have been during the reign of Herod, he would have to have been born in 4BC, or earlier still. Seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler claimed that, due to errors made by wee Dionysus, Christ would have been born around 7BC. This date tied in with the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, which St Matthew reckoned was the Star of Bethlehem. Italian astronomer Giovanni Barrata puts the birth of Christ at 12BC, when a great comet was noted by Chinese and European astronomers.
Whichever way you look at it, there are no generally accepted calculations which determine the birth of Christ as having taken place exactly 2000 years before 2000AD. Possible candidates would be 1988, 1993, 1996, or 2001. - Is mise, etc., Dave Walsh,
Arbour Hill, Dublin 7.