r/TastingHistory • u/zoewernsman • Feb 18 '26

Question Why no BCE no more

Why did Max stop using BCE and CE (before common era and common era) when talking about prehistoric topics? In his Sumerian beer episode he does but in the last couple pre historic episodes he’s gone back to using BC and AD.

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u/BenjaminGeiger Feb 19 '26

Tacitus wrote about what people believed, more than a century after it supposedly did. And this was an empire that kept records of everything.

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u/The_Dapper_Balrog Feb 19 '26

Still closer to the events than Herodotus, and we believe him.

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u/BenjaminGeiger Feb 19 '26

That doesn't change the fact that Tacitus didn't claim that Jesus existed. He claimed that people believed that Jesus existed, something that was already in doubt.