Anno Lucis (“in the Year of Light”) is a dating system used in
Masonic ceremonial or commemorative proceedings, which is equivalent to the
Gregorian year plus 4000. It is similar to ''
Anno Mundi''.
Description
For example, a date
Anno Domini (AD) becomes Anno Lucis (AL) . This
calendar era, which would designate 4001 BC as '
year zero', was adopted in the 18th century as a simplification of the ''Anno Mundi'' era dating system used in the
Hebrew calendar and borrowing from other ideas of that time regarding the
year of creation.
After the
Masoretic text was published, dating creation around 4000 BC became common, and it was received with wide support. Proposed calculations of the date of creation, using the Masoretic from the 10th century to the 18th century, were numerous and fluctuated by many decades.
Notably,
Isaac Newton's calculation pointed at the year 4000 BC.
[
Among the Masoretic creation estimates or calculations for the date of creation, Archbishop Ussher's specific chronology dating the creation to 4004 BC became the most accepted and popular in Protestant Christendom, mainly because this specific date was attached to the ]King James Bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Bible translations into English, English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and publis ...
. The Hebrew Calendar has traditionally, since the 4th century AD by Hillel II, dated the creation to 3761 BC, in accordance with the '' Seder Olam Rabbah'' compiled by Jose ben Halafta in AD 160, and in agreement with '' The Remaining Signs of Past Centuries'', in which the Muslim chronologist al-Biruni identifies ''anno mundi'' as 3448 years before the Seleucid era, but not with '' Seder Olam Zutta'', which dates it to 4339 BC and was compiled in AD 804.[Young's Analytical Concordance of the Holy Bible, 1879, 8th Edition, 1939—entry under 'Creation', quoting Dr. William Hales New Analysis of Chronology and Geography, History and Prophecy, Vol. 1, 1830, p. 210.]
See also
*40th century BC
During the 40th century BC, the Eastern Mediterranean region was in the Chalcolithic period (Copper Age), transitional between the Stone and the Bronze Ages. Northwestern Europe was in the Neolithic. China was dominated by the Neolithic Yangshao ...
* Holocene calendar - system that adds 10,000 years to the common era.
References
Freemasonry
Latin words and phrases
Esotericism
Chronology
de:Anno Lucis