The Influence of Past Cultures' Worldviews on the Adjustment of the Anno Domini Count.

New Clues for a Temporal Plot by Dionysius Exiguus Based on the Idea of the Cycle of the Eternal Return and early cults by Using Astronomical Parameters of Planetary Periods and Precession in order to find agreement with bible-prophesy.
 
By Sepp Rothwangl, CALENdeRsign, Austria
calendersign@gmx.at, given at CEP -244701
 
Abstract
The origins and reasons for the invention of the Anno-Domini-years are a mixture of pagan religions, world concepts of antiquity and apocalyptic teleology of medieval. The current cause for the invention of AD was to avoid a calendrical world’s end due to the occurrence of the Anno Mundi 6000. Anno Mundi was biblical seven-day world concept in which after 6000 years the Last (Seventh) Day would come. Anno Domini was invented by Dionysius Exiguus in his “Liber de paschate” and came slowly into use due to promotion by the Venerable Bede and counted the years since the vernal equinox 1 AD. The AD-concept includes the idea of the  “eternal return of everything” and the return of a “Great-Year-Conjunction” of all classical planets. It was assumed to repeat also all terrestrial events in the same way. In the Christian worldview its parallel is the return of the Lord or the resurrection of the dead on the Last Day. The book of Revelation and end time allusions in the Gospels gave Dionysius the motif to calculate this moment in the future, and after having found it, to count backward 2000 years before it, and to fix there the AD-start. By alluding to the Christian vernal equinox symbol, ICHTHYS, Dionysius used for his time bearing the medieval constant of precession, i.e. 666 years / 10° with the effect that in May 2000 of all years a rare alignment of all classical planets occurred.

 
As far as we know, we owe the establishment of the Anno Domini count to the Scythian canonist and scholar Dionysius Exiguus, or Dennis the Little. He lived some 1500 years ago and was author of the Collectio Dionysiana, and of canons of councils and synods of Nicea, Constantinopel Calcedon, Sardica. According to Patrologia Latina he created the AD count by establishing a new Easter calculation, which he published in his “liber de paschate” or book of Easter.
It tells us that the ending of Cyril’s Easter cycle in Diocletian year 147 was the reason to start a new Easter cycle in the following year (532 AD), one that is no longer linked with Diocletian years, but with Christ’s incarnation or conception.
The decisive words of book of Easter reads:
…Because the blessed Cyril began his first cycle in the 153 rd year of Diocletian and ended his last cycle in the 247th year of Diocletian, we have to start in the 248th year of this man who was a tyrant rather than emperor. However, we did not want to preserve the memory of an impious persecutor of Christians in our cycles, but chose rather to mark the times with the years from the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that the commencement of our hope will appear more familiar to us and the origin of the redemption of mankind, that is the Passion of our Redeemer, will shine in a more glorious way. (Translation: DECLERQ, 2000)

Why Dennis the Little introduced this new count and why he evidently chose a different date than previous historians for the fictitious year of Christ’s birth, he gave us no hint.
But if we look closer into the circumstances of his lifetime we will find some significant clues.
Dionysius himself translated several works from Greek into Latin. Thus he surely was scholarly learned upon the ancient cosmological and temporal concepts of his time, which were:

(A) The Great Year basing on an alignment of the classical planets, which was related to the concept of the eternal return of everything or a cataclysmic end of the world.
(B) Precession, which as an independent object found expression in literature and iconography, but was also amalgamated with the Great Year doctrine and lead to terms like Platonic Year.
(C) Ancient pagan religions and cults such as the myth of the Phoenix.
(D) The Interpretation of the Bible, the Apocalypse and the Gospel.
 
(A)
The Great Year doctrine is known by many different names such as Perfect Year, Great Year, Greatest Year, annus vertens, apokatastasis pantoon, cycle of eternal return, Platonic Year, annus mundanus, World Year, etc. The idea behind is, that after a certain period, which is determined by the celestial movements, there would be a complete renewal and everything would repeat in the exactly the same way as before.
In the occident some 25 centuries ago, the main proponent of this idea was Plato:
The famous quote in Plato’s Timaeus tells about the Perfect Year, which is fulfilled when the relative speeds of the eight revolutions, of the seven planets and the sphere of the fixed stars, have finished together and reached their goal.
 
In virtue, then, of this plan and intent of the God for the birth of time, in order that time might be brought into being, Sun and Moon and five other stars - “wanderers”, as they are called - were made to define and preserve the numbers of time. Having made a body of them the God set them in circuits in which the revolution of the Other was moving - in seven circuits seven bodies. (Timaios 38c)
 
They barely know that the wanderings of these others are time at all, bewildering as they are in number and of surprisingly intricate pattern. None the less it is possible to grasp that the perfect number of time fulfils the Perfect Year at the moment when the relative speeds of all the eight revolutions have accomplished their courses together and reached their consummation, as measured by the circle of the Same and uniformly moving. (Timaios 39c-d)
 
The enormous number of authors who wrote about the Great Year doctrine shows that this idea was the most common and powerful for temporal orientation. Some of the authors were responsible for the amalgamation of the conjunctional Great Year with precession and for linking it with mythical theogony and cosmology.
 
List of authors upon Great Year doctrine:

C. ago (Centuries before now, or present)
25        Plato, Pythagoreans, Aristotle
24        Eudemos of Rhodes
23        Aratus, Chysippus, Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes
22        Dercyllides, Diogenes the Stoic
21        Alexander Polyhistor, Lucretius, Posidonios, Cicero (Dream of Scipio), Varro
20        Seneca, Pliny the Elder (Phoenix), Tacitus (on Phoenix), Flavius Josephus, Plutarch, Arius Dydimus,
            Heraclitus Stoicus (on Homer!), Verrius Flaccus, Vitruvius, Q. Fabius Laurentius Victorinus
19        Ptolemy, Aulus Gellius, Sextus Empiricus, Apuleius, Albinus (Alcinoos?),Galen, Abydenus, Adrastus,                         Pseudo-Plutarch, Aetius, Celsus, Sextus Empiricus, Sosigenes
18        Hippolytus of Rome, Clemens Alexandrinus  („the Greek deluge is a copy of Moses“), Minucius Felix,
            Censorinus, Eusebius of Cesarea (Praep.,XV, 19,1) Solinus (Phoenix), Origen, Alexander of Aphrodisias
17        Firmicus Maternus, Arnobius, Porphyry
16        Nemesius, Calcidius, Proclus, Martianus Capella, Augustine, Macrobius (Dream of Scipio), Servius
15        Simplicius, Joannes Philoponus, Aryabhta of Kusumpara, Lydus, Olympiodorus
 
The list of authors could be continued up till now, but we will end it with Francesco Picolomini who first distinguished between Conjunctional Great Year and precession:
 
C. ago
13        Venerable Bede, Masha’ allah
12        Al Sufi (Azolphi), Abu Ma’shar (Albumasar)
11        Al Battani
10        Psellus, Ali ibn Ridwan (Haly Abenrudian), Al Zarqali (Arzarkel)
9          Robert Grosseteste, John of Toledo,  Abraham Ibn Ezra (Avenezra), Alexander Neckham, Gerard of
            Cremona, John of Sevilla, Hermann of Carinthia, Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Peter Lombard
8          Albert the Great, John of Sacrobosco (Holywood), Pietro d‘Abano, William of Auvergne, Johannes Duns
            Scotus, Alfonso X El Sabio of Castillia, Arnold of Villanova, Bartholomew the Englishman, Roger Bacon,
            Robert Grosseteste
7          Nicole Oresme (incommensurabilty), Pierre d’Ailly, Heinrich v. Langenstein Henry of Hesse), Marsilius of
            Inghen
6          Paul of Venice, Pico della Mirandola, Ficino, Jean Gerson
5          Johannes de Fundis, Bartholomaeus Amicus, Jerome Cardano, Francesco Picolomini
 
The GY-doctrine was related also with mythical theogony and cosmology, since the Stoic Heraclitus tells us that the alignment of all planets has a parallel in the classical Greek Olympic symposium, which took place because of the heavenly turmoil due to the creation of man by the Titan Prometheus:
Some people want the conjunction of the seven planets in one zodiacal sign to be referred to by these words of Homer, and also the universal destruction, whenever this should happen. He (Homer) alludes to the confusion of the universe when he brings together Apollo, i.e. the Sun and Artemis, whom we identify with the Moon, as well as the stars of Aphrodite, Ares, Hermes and Zeus. In such a way as not to appear to be ignorant, we have to accept this allegory more for its persuasiveness than for its veracity.
(HERACLITUS STOICUS, Quaestiones homericae, 53)
 
 
Cicero’s Dream of Scipio was widely read. He called this event “annus vertens” and linked it temporally with the death of Romulus together with a solar eclipse and later Macrobius, who calls the great Year annus mundanus or annus verus, world year or true year.
 
Men usually measure one year only by using the return of the sun, thus with  only one star; but if however all stars return to the same point, from which  they started, and repeat in long intervals the same figure of the total sky, then this is called indeed a "turning year";
I almost do not dare to say, how many human ages are contained in it. Because - as once the sun seemed to vanish and expire for humans, when the soul of Romulus penetrated into these temples  here - when at the same place and at the same time the sun again disappears, then, when all signs and stars return to their beginning, see, this is the completion of the turning year. But be sure that a twentieth part of this year has not yet passed.
(Marcus Tullius CICERO, Somnium Scipionis, de Rep. VI,24)
 
The year that is called "mundanus"  [world year, usually called the Greatest Year],  is a true turning-year since it happens by the turning of the entire universe, unfolding over the longest periods of time; ... [it] is therefore the end of the Great Year, when all the  constellations and all the fixed stars so return from a known place to the very  same place, that not a single star is in a place other than the one in which it  was when all the others were set into motion from their places; in returning to it they put an end to their year, so that the lights and the five planets too are in the same places and parts in which they were at the beginning of the Great Year. This, according to the natural scientists, occurs after the passing of fifteen thousand years.
(MACROBIUS, Somnium Scipionis 2,11,8-11)
 
23 century ago, an oriental exponent of a similar idea was Berossos, a Chaldean priest, who founded a school of astrology in Kos and tells that a cataclysm of fire or water would occur alternately, when all planets align in the respective winter or summer signs.
 
Berossos, the interpreter of Belus, states that the courses of the planets determine the time of a fire disaster and a flood. A fire on earth will rage if all planets, which move now in different courses, will gather in Cancer, standing still in the same place (of the sky), such that a straight line can pass through all their positions. A flood, however, will come if the same group of planets comes together in Capricorn.
(SENECA, Questiones naturales III 29,1)
 
The main work of Berossos, the Babyloniaka influenced also a lot of publications in the subsequent centuries until Dennis.
 
Circulation of Babyloniaka Through Time (acc. to P. SCHNABEL)
C. ago
23        Berossos
22        Posidonios, Alexander Polyhistor, Juba,
21        Diodourus Alexandrinus, Ps.Epikurus, Lucretius, Vetusta Placita, Varro, Dydimus, Hyginus, Vitruvius,
            Eudoros Diodorus Siculus,
20        Papirius, Fabianus, Polyhistor interpolatus, Seneca, Plinius, Josephus, Pamphilius
19        Aetios, Ps. Plutarchos, Theophilos Tatianos, Diogenaios, Ailianos
18        Kleomedes, Censorinus, Abydenos, Hippolytos, Africanus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Athenios
17        Anonym. Aratum isagoga, Eusebios, Augustinus, Eusebios, Hesychios
16        Stobaios, Isodoros, Kyrillos, Panodoros, Helladios
15        Palchos, Versio latina barbara, Scholastica Germanici, Verso Armeniaca, Synkellos, Agathias, Photios
 
We find the eternal-return-doctrine also from Christian writers of which Origen, Augustine, and Clement of Alexandria are only few of the many discussing it with much discrepancy.
Both Augustine in the “City of God” and Origen in “Contra Celsum“ compare the repeating eternal cycles with a cite of Ecclesiastes.
Also Clement mentions the Great Year, Plato and the purifying of the Earth by fire and water due to the revolution of the heavenly bodies at large intervals of time. He accuses the Greek philosophers of having stolen the tenet of the flood from Genesis of Moses.
 
It is not the right time to say whether or not there are cycles, and floods or conflagrations in each cycle, and whether this doctrine is mentioned in the Bible, as is this words of Solomon (Ecclesiastes I:9) among many others.
ORIGEN, Contra Celsum, IV,12)
 
“On the periodic succession of ages, which are completed at a definite moment so that the universe, as certain philosophers believed, will always come back to the same pattern and the same appearance”.
… Indeed certain people also alleged, in support of their theory of repeated returns and universal restoration, the passage that occurs in the book of Solomon, called Ecclesiastes (I, 9-10): “… there is nothing new under the sun. If anyone says, “Lo, this is new”, it has already been in the ages that have gone before us.
… of this cyclic theory … the philosopher Plato taught his students in the city of Athens in the school called Academy, so during countless past ages at very prolonged yet definite intervals, the same Plato, the same city and the same school with the same students had existed again and again, and during countless ages to come will exist again and again. Heaven forbid, I repeat, that we should believe that. For Christ died only once for our sin …
(AUGUSTINE, De civitate Dei contra paganos, XII, 14)
 
(The Pythagoreans are) … counting the fixed sphere in addition to the seven wandering spheres, by which the Great Year is produced, as a kind of repayment of what has been promised.
(CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, Stromateis, VI, 16, 140)
 
Plato also states in like manner that the Earth is purified at certain times by fire and water: “There have been many destructions, … the biggest ones by fire and water”.  …Then, (Plato) speaking of the flood: “But when the gods purify the Earth in submerging it, those who are in the mountains, cattlemen and shepherds, are saved, while the inhabitants of our cities are carried away to the sea by the rivers. I have shown in the First Stromateis that the Greek philosophers deserve to be called thieves, for they have taken their main tenets from Moses and their prophets, without any acknowledgement of debt.
(CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, Stromateis, V, 1, 9-10)
 

(B)
The next idea influencing the AD years of Dennis the Little was Precession and its rate.
We have quite early witness of a value of precession. At the beginning its rate seemed to be more less a rounding up or estimation than a true calculation. Ptolemy could have known better, though he handed down the rate of 3000 y each 30° or 100y each 1°. Please notice that from about 1300 years ago we have consitentsafe oriental reports of a rate of precession 66 years each 1°. It equates 2000 years each 30° or 666 years each 10° or decan.
 
Early Rates of Precession
C. ago
24        Kidinnu (Kidenas) c. 50-60y/1° ?
            Aristarchos  100y/1° ?
22        Hipparchos 100y/1°
20        Menelaos 100y/1°
19        Ptolemy 100y/1° (72y/1°?)
17        Theon of Alexandria:Trepidation (oscillatory rate 66y/1°?)
15        Zij-i Shah (66y/1°?)
12        "Tabulae  probatae" or "az-Zig al-mumtan“, 66y/1°; Al-Battani (Albategnius), al-Sufi (Azophi), 66y/1°
11        Al Biruni, al Canon al Masud, 66y/1°, Ibn Yunus, 70y/1°
10        Arabic catalogue  of fixed stars, 66y/1°,
            Zarqali (Arzarkel) and Thabit ibn Qurra (Thebit Chore):Trepidation
8          "Libros del Saber"  of Alfonso of Castile, 66y/1°
            Guo Shoujing (Shou Shi calendar) of Yuan dynasty, 66.66y/1°
 
 
Precession or better the change of the respective equinoctial constellation left its trace also in poesy, for which Vergil’s 4th eclogue is famous.
 
Now there has come the last age of which the Cumaean Sybil sang;
a great orderly line of centuries begins anew;
now too the Virgin returns;
the reign of Saturn returns;
a new human generation descends from the high heavens.
Upon the child now to be born,
under whom the race of iron will cease
and a golden race will spring up over the whole world ...
(PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO, 4th eclogue)
 
The return of Virgo tells of the precessional shift, due to which this constellation moved back into the region South of the celestial equator. In the Virgo-star-myth, Persephone was kidnapped by Hades into the underworld. Due to precession Virgo shifts up into the upper world, thus is leaving again the underworld, to which once Saturn also was condemned.
Remember, Hipparchos and Ptolemy observed and calculated the value of precession using Spica, the main star of Virgo. The Greek name of this star is era, the wheat-ear, which leads to the temporal term “era”.
 
Traces of precession are found in Christian iconography, where ICHTHYS the Latinized Greek word for fish became the first acrostic for Jesus Christ:
It alludes to the current newly risen vernal equinox constellation Pisces and is still found in the petroglyphs of the Roman catacombs of Saint Callisto.
 
 
Believers in this mystic Ichthys were themselves “Pisces-agers” according to a passage of Tertullian
... we, little fishes, after the image of our ICHTHYS, are born in the water.
(TERTULLIAN, De baptismo, c. 1)
 


(D)
Early Christianity incorporated pagan mythology such as the phoenix, from which’ cult many ancient historians report.
The story of this mythic bird briefly goes:
In spring the Phoenix flies from the East to an altar in Heliopolis and sets itself on fire. Next day in the ashes, there is a little worm, the day after it is the size of a little chicken, and on the third day the bird is mature enough to fly back home again. The periods of the return of this spring-bird are reported by many authors, as Herodot, Tacitus, Ovidius, Pomponius Mela, and Physiologus, being 500, 660 and 1461 years. Suspecting behind this period a luni-solar cycle with a seven-day-week and a 4-year-leap-rule, it results in a 532-year period, as used by Dennis.

 
The 10th book of Pliny the Elder’s World History, translated 400 years ago by Philemon Holland, shows a combination of a conjunctional Great Year and the Phoenix period, here being 660 years and attributed to Manilius. The Phoenix-period here agrees with the oriental rate of precession.
 
But the Phœnix of Arabia passes all others. Howbeit, I cannot tell what to make of him: and first of all, whether it be a tale or no, that there is never but one of them in  the whole world, and the same not commonly seen. By report he is as big as an Ægle: for colour, as yellow & bright as gold; (namely, all about the necke;) the rest of the bodie a deep red purple: the taile azure blew, intermingled with feathers among, of rose cornation colour: and the head bravely adorned with a crest and pennache finely wrought; having a tuft and plume thereupon, right faire and goodly to be seene. Manilius, the noble Romane Senatour, right excellently well seene in the best kind of learning and litterature, and yet never taught by any, was the first man of the long Robe, who wrote of this bird at large, & most exquisitely. Hee reporteth, that never man was knowne to see him feeding: that in Arabia hee is held a sacred bird, dedicated unto the Sunne: that hee liveth 660 yeares: and when hee groweth old, and begins to decay, he builds himselfe a nest with the twigs and branches of the Canell or Cinamon, and Frankincense trees: and when he hath filled it with all sort of sweet Aromaticall spices, yeeldeth up his life thereupon. He saith moreover, that of his bones & marrow there breedeth at first as it were a little worme: which afterwards prooveth to bee a pretie bird. And the first thing that this yong new Phœnix doth, is to performe the obsequies of the former Phœnix late deceased: to translate and carie away his whole nest into the citie of the Sunne neere Panchæa, and to bestow it full devoutly there upon the altar. The same Manilius affirmeth, that the revolution of the great yeare so much spoken of, agreeth just with the life of this bird: in which yeare the starres returne againe to their first points, and give signification of times and seasons, as at the beginning: and withall, that this yeare should begin at high noone, that very day when the Sunne entreth the signe Aries.
Philemon Holland, translator (1601): C. PLINIUS SECUNDUS,The Historie of the World. Book X. (Pages 270-309)
 
If we talk about the cycle of rebirth we must remember Pythagoras, who is said to have believed in a still inexplicable 216-year cycle of rebirth.
Pythagoras says... that all things which happened once, will happen again after certain periods and that there is really nothing new.
(PORPHYRIOS, Vita Pyth. 19, Nauck p. 26)
 
The Pythagorean ... having been brought up in the study of mathematics, thought that things are numbers ... and that the whole cosmos is a scale and a number.
(ARISTOTLE, Of the Sky III and Metaphysics XIII)
 
The soul is free from death and when it left its former place It lives on saved in an other house. I am still conscious: At the time of the Trojan war I was the son of Panthous, Euphorbus, on whose breast was Fixed the heavy spear of the second Atride. Recently I have noticed in the temple of Juno at the Abantian Argos the same shield, that I wore on my left. There are only changes, nothing dies.
(PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO: Metamorphôseôn  liber XV, Pythagoras  160)
 
Pythagoras believed in a cycle of rebirth of 216 years.
(NICOMACHOS, Ethics)
 
If we consider the Metonic cycle we may find a clue that could have led Pythagoras to this cryptic number.
 
In the Metonic cycle after every 19 years, there is an average gap of about 2 hours between the respective positions of Sun and Moon, showing how much 19 tropical years are shorter than 235 synodic months.
An easy calculation shows that this gap ends up to one full day after exactly 216 years.
235 * 29,530594 =     6939,68959 days
19 * 365,24219   =     6939,60161 days
Difference:                  0,08798 days (2 h, 6 min, 41 sec)
 
235 ÷ 0,08798  =  2671,06 synodic lunar month
19   ÷  0,08798 =  215,958 ≈ 216 years

In a pictorial way, one could imagine that after this period one new day comes out between sun and moon, thus a new day is born.
This 1-day gap after 216 years also explains why after about 500 or 600 years the Phoenix’ complete rebirth takes until the third day.
Behind the Phoenix myth stands a calendrical cult of priests, who tried to bring order into a luni-solar calendar with their mythology. In the Julian calendar starts after 532 years a new cycle, in which Metonic, leap and weekday cycle are repeating (19*7*4 = 532). The respective lunar and solar positions are diverging meanwhile about two and a half day. Therefore a new calendrical cycle for a respective spring-moon festival has to be created.
 
(E)
Main influence on the AD years of course also had the Bible and its interpretation.
The most about end time we find in the Apocalypse of John of Patmos, revealing its secrets in rather cryptic way.
Franz Boll, who referred to the astronomical content of Revelation, showed that mankind has always used stars to measure time, and that the apocalypse dealt with starlore.
According to many parallels of the apocalyptic ideas of imagination, which were found up until now, nothing else can be expected, than that in Revelation the STARRY SKY and its characters must have a particular significance.
(FRANZ BOLL. Aus der Offenbarung Johannis. Hellenistische Studien zum Weltbild der Apokalypse. Berlin, 1914. S 30.)
 
We find at the very beginning of the Revelation a key to interpret it.
Its introduction presents us an allusion to the seven planets because it equates the seven stars explicitly with the spirits or angels of the addressed seven cities of Minor Asia. They are easy to identify as Artemis of Ephesus, where in antiquity was the major sanctuary of the moon goddess; - or Zeus with its famous altar in Pergamon, thus representing planet Jupiter, and so on.
 
[Rev 1:11] …(the voice) saying, "Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven communities, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea."
 
[Rev 1:20] As for the mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lamp stands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven communities and the seven lamp stands are the seven communities.
 
It is impossible to give you here a detailed version of my astronomical interpretation of Revelation and you may find more on the website: The stars of Revelation

Briefly: At the beginning, the seer’s vision tells of the constellations he could see during his lifetime at the most significant moment of the year:
This is the moment before sunrise at morning of vernal equinox. There he describes Virgo, Lyra, Northern Crown, Pegasus, Milky Way and so on.
 
 
After opening the seventh seal the end-time-seer gives a view of the future sky of the same spring day morning, but 2000 years later. Now there has risen a new constellation upon Western horizon due to precession. In the ancient mythical language, LEO with one foot is stepping out of the Sea. This mythic “Stepping out of the Sea” for “Rising of stars” we can easily grasp also by its opposite, when a star is setting, which was called “taking a bath in the sea”. Thus for example Callisto, the circumpolar Greater Bear, never could take a bath in the Sea after her condemnation into the Polar region.
[Rev 10:1-2] Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face
 was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring; when he called out, the seven thunders sounded.
 
 
The same celestial situation is described by the apocalypse on the Eastern horizon, where after Pisces has set, another constellation is located now due to precession: The angel on the waters is alluding to Aquarius.
[Rev 16:5] And I heard the angel of the waters saying:  "You are righteous, O Lord, the One who is and who was and who is to be, because You have judged these things.
 
 
At the end, the apocalypse reveals the number of the beast. It can easily be interpreted as nothing else than the number of the zo-diacos, word-for word the cycle of the beasts. 666 represents the medieval rate of precession: The rate for each decan or Pliny’s Phoenix period.
 
[Rev 13:18] This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six.
 
666 y/10°(decan) = 2000y/30° (sign), the medieval rate of precession or the period of the Phoenix (Pliny)
 
In a loose page of the 1200-year-old Codex Basiliensis is an illustration of Germanicus on the Phainomena of Aratos where we find the confirmation upon this beast, showing that actually it means a future equinoctial constellation. Opposite Leo, at the position where should be Aquarius there is a beast looking like a panther, but with horns.
 
Between Pisces and Capricorn on the usual position of Aquarius we find this horned animal, matching the apocalyptic beast.
 
Apocalypse describes even a celestial situation that mirrors a conjunction of all planets. During such an event the seeming impression shows that the Sun is the only planet visible above, because its rays hide all other planets. A medieval geocentric model shows such a situation.
[Rev 9:11-12] They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.
 
Also the Gospel describes us in a pictorial way a conjunction of Sun, Moon and the 5 planets. The Gospel of Matthew presents a Christian end time parable ending with: No one knows the hour and the day. It tells of a marriage where the bride’s virgins are waiting for the bridegroom. In the parable the wedding symbolizes the coming together of Sun and Moon. The five Virgins’ lamps similar to the lamps of the apocalypse here again symbolize the five planets, which can be aligned or not, symbolically being awake or asleep.
 
[Matt 25:1-13] Then shall the Kingdom of Heaven be likened unto ten virgins, who took their lamps and went forth to meet the bridegroom.  And five of them were wise, and five were foolish.  They that were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them,  but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.  While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept.  And at midnight there was a cry made: `Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.'  Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps.  And the foolish said unto the wise, `Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out.'  But the wise answered, saying, `Not so, lest there be not enough for us and you; but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves.'   And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage, and the door was shut.   Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, `Lord, lord, open to us!'   But he answered and said, `Verily I say unto you, I know you not.'   Watch therefore, for no one knows neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man cometh.
 
So far the influence of past world views upon Dennis, during his lifetime happened two major events:
Anno Mundi 6000 occurred, a world-year-count established 300 years before Dennis in the first Christian chronicle written by Julius Sextus Africanus.
Anno Mundi’s temporal conception was completely designed after the seven-day creation of Genesis. Within six days of each 1000 years the whole history of mankind should take place, after which the Seventh day is reserved for God.
[Ps. 90:4] For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the  night.
[2 Peter 3:8] one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
 
Influenced by Origen’s commentary on Matthew, who used only one day as the time frame for the whole history of mankind and who dated the arrival of Christ to the 11th of 12 hours, Africanus as a consequence dated therefore Christ’s birth to AM 5500.
 
Writing in the first half of the third century, Origen, in his Commentary on Matthew, employed this analogy of the twelve hours of the day to divide the whole of biblical history into ages. Accordingly, he locates Noah at the third hour, Abraham at the sixth, Moses at the ninth, and, finally, Christ at the eleventh hour.
(DECLERCQ, 2000)
 
A similar passage we find in the first letter of John.
[1 John 2:18] Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour.
 
Birth of Christ calculation in Anno Mundi:
6000: 12 * 11 = 5500.
 
Thus during life time of Dionysius the fatal Anno Mundi 6000 happened to occur, which was announced by Hilarianus and others as Last Day and resurrection of the dead.
At the turn of the fourth to fifth centuries, i.e., precisely the moment when the barbarian invasions may have stirred up apocalyptic anxieties, the North African bishop Julius Hilarianus, for instance, wrote a treatise “On the Duration of the World”, in which he calculates 5530 years from creation to the Passion of Christ, and 369 years from  that event until the consulate of Caesarius and Atticus (AD 397); there remain, so he concludes, 101 years to go before the Resurrection of the dead. (DECLERCQ, 2000)
 
To circumvent this threatening calendrically caused Last Day in order to maintain faith several attempts were made:
 Either shift the date of AM 6000 backwards, as Malalas did in dating it to Passion of Christ with the for the church surely unacceptable consequence that the Seventh Day had already begun, or,
Shift the Last Day into the future, which was done for some 300 years by Eusebius with the consequence that the fatal year 6000 occurred during lifetime of Bede, who shifted it again about 1200 years into the future. Thus Bede’s year AM 6000 threatens in about 38 years with a Last Day.
 
The third solution was Dennis’ version of a new time line called Anno Domini
 
Yet a second event happened during Dennis’ life: Massings of the classical planets.
There is a written report from a contemporary of Dennis, Philoponus, that in the 245th year of Diocletian, all planets were situated within the sign Taurus, which can be verified with modern computer programs and dated into May 529.
An even closer and more impressive planetary massing occurred only 2 years later, in June 531 AD.


 
For the sake of clarity, we have supposed that all (planets) have started this period from the same sign, for it is necessary that this has happened and will happen, even more so for those who assume that the world is eternal. And indeed, as we are now in the 245th year of Diokletian, the seven planets have come to the same sign of Taurus, if not all to the same degree, so that they all are likely to come back to the same sign.
 (PHILOPONUS, De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum XVI,4 )
 
This impressive classical conjunction was the base for a contemporary of Dennis, who would search for a similar alignment in the past.
The Indian, Aryabhata of Kusumpara, also dated the beginning of the recent Indian age, the Kali Yuga to 3102 BCE, when there was a close massing of the naked-eye visible planets.
About 300 years later, the Baghdad scholar, Abu Mashar, determined the Deluge on exactly the same date.
But Dionysius did not look backwards to the beginning as contemporary Aryabhata or the later Abu Mashar, but towards future to the Last Day. He calculated when in the future such a Platonic Great Year Conjunction would occur, in order to find a date for the projected return of Christ.
 
That this was really part of early Christian system of thought is proved a passage of Neoplatonist Nemesius.
It tells us that when the planets come back to the same sign as at the beginning the world would restore anew, and that Christians imagine the resurrection by this way of restoration.
 
… the conflagration and the destruction of all beings is generated, after stated periods of time, by the planets, when they come back, both in longitude and latitude, to the same sign in which each one of them was at the beginning, when the world was first shaped. Then, from the start the world is restored anew. Since the stars are brought back similarly, everything which occurred in the previous period is accomplished, without any change. There will be again Socrates and Plato and every man, with their friend and fellow-citizen.
… everything will be the same without any change, even in the tiniest details.
Some people state that Christians imagine the Resurrection by this way of restoration.
(NEMESIUS, De natura hominis, 38)
 
Dennis’ world’s-end-plot is also in perfect harmony with the end-time-prophesy of the second letter of Peter.
The letter resembles clearly the cataclysmic version of Berossos, which says the end will come either by water or fire.
The only difference between both is, that Peter says, the destruction with water already happened at the Deluge of Noah, thus the coming destruction together with the resurrection of Jesus, will be with fire.
If 1000 years represent one day of the Lord, the end-time-bearing of Dennis would match also with Jesus’ promised resurrection from the dead on the Third Day, thus taking place when two days, i.e. 2000 years, have passed.
 
Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation."  For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water. But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
[2 Peter 3: 3-8 ]
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. [2 Peter 3: 10]
 
In fact, such a rare planetary massing occurred in May six years ago. Dennis used the precessional value 666y/10° to place the date of Christ’s incarnation on the day of vernal equinox 2000 years before this alignment, in order to mark thus the Platonic and precessional age of Pisces.
As having shown, massings of the planets since the beginning of human tradition have been globally quite useful for temporal orientation, though also being abused in superstition, faith and manipulation. The AD-count itself bases upon a clerically ostracized Last Day calculation, which was performed with help of the ecclesiastically condemned astrology.
 
 


Summary and final conclusion
 
The appearance of AD 2000 in the Christian yearly count together with a very rare massing of all classical planets, which in antiquity was esteemed as eternal return of everything, is not of random origin but the result of a temporal plot by Dionysius Exiguus 1500 years ago.
Focusing toward the future border of his worldview horizon and his precessional era, Dennis’ AD-adjustment and end-time speculation resulted that this rare planetary massing happened to take place particularly just in Anno Domini 2000 of all years.

 
 
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Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mrs. Joan Griffith for English corrections