title: Alternate history

text: Such "paratime" stories may include speculation that the laws of nature can vary from one universe to the next, providing a science fictional explanation—or veneer—for what is normally fantasy. Aaron Allston's "Doc Sidhe" and "Sidhe Devil" take place between our world, the "grim world" and an alternate "fair world" where the Sidhe retreated to. Although technology is clearly present in both worlds, and the "fair world" parallels our history, about fifty years out of step, there is functional magic in the fair world. Even with such explanation, the more explicitly the alternate world resembles a normal fantasy world, the more likely the story is to be labelled fantasy, as in Poul Anderson's "House Rule" and "Loser's Night". In both science fiction and fantasy, whether a given parallel universe is an alternate history may not be clear. The writer might allude to a POD only to explain the existence and make no use of the concept, or may present the universe without explanation of its existence.


title: Alternate history

text: Isaac Asimov's short story "What If—" (1952) is about a couple who can explore alternate realities by means of a television-like device. This idea can also be found in Asimov's novel "The End of Eternity" (1955), in which the "Eternals" can change the realities of the world, without people being aware of it. Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol" stories feature conflicts between forces intent on changing history and the Patrol who work to preserve it. One story, Delenda Est, describes a world in which Carthage triumphed over the Roman Republic. "The Big Time", by Fritz Leiber, describes a Change War ranging across all of history.


title: Alternate history

text: Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium" is one of the earliest alternate history novels; it was published by "Fantastic Stories of the Imagination" in 1961, in magazine form, and reprinted by Ace Books in 1962 as one half of an Ace Double. Besides our world, Laumer describes a world ruled by an Imperial aristocracy formed by the merger of European empires, in which the American Revolution never happened, and a third world in post-war chaos ruled by the protagonist's doppelganger.


title: Alternate history

text: Philip K. Dick's novel, "The Man in the High Castle" (1962), is an alternate history in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won World War II. This book contains an example of "alternate-alternate" history, in that one of its characters authored a book depicting a reality in which the Allies won the war, itself divergent from real-world history in several aspects. The several characters live within a divided United States, in which the Empire of Japan takes the Pacific states, governing them as a puppet, Nazi Germany takes the East Coast of the United States and parts of the Midwest, with the remnants of the old United States' government as the Neutral Zone, a buffer state between the two superpowers. The book has inspired an Amazon series of the same name.


title: Alternate history

text: Vladimir Nabokov's novel, "" (1969), is a story of incest that takes place within an alternate North America settled in part by Czarist Russia and that borrows from Dick's idea of "alternate-alternate" history (the world of Nabokov's hero is wracked by rumors of a "counter-earth" that apparently is ours). Some critics believe that the references to a counter-earth suggest that the world portrayed in "Ada" is a delusion in the mind of the hero (another favorite theme of Dick's novels). Strikingly, the characters in "Ada" seem to acknowledge their own world as the copy or negative version, calling it "Anti-Terra", while its mythical twin is the real "Terra". Like history, science has followed a divergent path on Anti-Terra: it boasts all the same technology as our world, but all based on water instead of electricity; e.g., when a character in "Ada" makes a long-distance call, all the toilets in the house flush at once to provide hydraulic power.


title: Alternate history

text: Guido Morselli described the defeat of Italy (and subsequently France) in World War I in his novel, "Past Conditional" (1975; ), wherein the static Alpine front line which divided Italy from Austria during that war collapses when the Germans and the Austrians forsake trench warfare and adopt blitzkrieg twenty years in advance.


title: Alternate history

text: Kingsley Amis set his novel, "The Alteration" (1976), in the 20th century, but major events in the Reformation did not take place, and Protestantism is limited to the breakaway Republic of New England. Martin Luther was reconciled to the Roman Catholic Church and later became Pope Germanian I.


title: Alternate history

text: In Nick Hancock and Chris England's 1997 book "What Didn't Happen Next: An Alternative History of Football" it is suggested that, had Gordon Banks been fit to play in the 1970 FIFA World Cup quarter-final, there would have been no Thatcherism and the post-war consensus would have continued indefinitely.


title: Alternate history

text: Kim Stanley Robinson's novel, "The Years of Rice and Salt" (2002), starts at the point of divergence with Timur turning his army away from Europe, and the Black Death has killed 99% of Europe's population, instead of only a third. Robinson explores world history from that point in AD 1405 (807 AH) to about AD 2045 (1467 AH). Rather than following the great man theory of history, focusing on leaders, wars, and major events, Robinson writes more about social history, similar to the Annales School of history theory and Marxist historiography, focusing on the lives of ordinary people living in their time and place.


title: Alternate history

text: Philip Roth's novel, "The Plot Against America" (2004), looks at an America where Franklin D. Roosevelt is defeated in 1940 in his bid for a third term as President of the United States, and Charles Lindbergh is elected, leading to a US that features increasing fascism and anti-Semitism.


title: Alternate history

text: Michael Chabon, occasionally an author of speculative fiction, contributed to the genre with his novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" (2007), which explores a world in which the State of Israel was destroyed in its infancy and many of the world's Jews instead live in a small strip of Alaska set aside by the US government for Jewish settlement. The story follows a Jewish detective solving a murder case in the Yiddish-speaking semi-autonomous city state of Sitka. Stylistically, Chabon borrows heavily from the noir and detective fiction genres, while exploring social issues related to Jewish history and culture. Apart from the alternate history of the Jews and Israel, Chabon also plays with other common tropes of alternate history fiction; in the book, Germany actually loses the war even "harder" than they did in reality, getting hit with a nuclear bomb instead of just simply losing a ground war (subverting the common "what if Germany won WWII?" trope).


title: Alternate history

text: The late 1980s and the 1990s saw a boom in popular-fiction versions of alternate history, fueled by the emergence of the prolific alternate history author Harry Turtledove, as well as the development of the steampunk genre and two series of anthologies—the "What Might Have Been" series edited by Gregory Benford and the "Alternate ..." series edited by Mike Resnick. This period also saw alternate history works by S. M. Stirling, Kim Stanley Robinson, Harry Harrison, Howard Waldrop, Peter Tieryas, and others.


title: Alternate history

text: In 1986, a sixteen-part epic comic book series called "Captain Confederacy" began examining a world where the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War. In the series, the Captain and others heroes are staged government propaganda events featuring the feats of these superheroes.


title: Alternate history

text: Since the late 1990s, Harry Turtledove has been the most prolific practitioner of alternate history and has been given the title "Master of Alternate History" by some. His books include those of Timeline 191 (a.k.a. Southern Victory, also known as TL-191), in which, while the Confederate States of America won the American Civil War, the Union and Imperial Germany defeat the Entente Powers in the two "Great War"s of the 1910s and 1940s (with a Nazi-esque Confederate government attempting to exterminate its Black population), and the Worldwar series, in which aliens invaded Earth during World War II. Other stories by Turtledove include "A Different Flesh", in which America was not colonized from Asia during the last ice age; "In the Presence of Mine Enemies", in which the Nazis won World War II; and "Ruled Britannia", in which the Spanish Armada succeeded in conquering England in the Elizabethan era, with William Shakespeare being given the task of writing the play that will motivate the Britons to rise up against their Spanish conquerors. He also co-authored a book with actor Richard Dreyfuss, "The Two Georges", in which the United Kingdom retained the American colonies, with George Washington and King George III making peace. He did a two-volume series in which the Japanese not only bombed Pearl Harbor but also invaded and occupied the Hawaiian Islands.


title: Alternate history

text: Perhaps the most incessantly explored theme in popular alternate history focuses on worlds in which the Nazis won World War Two. In some versions, the Nazis and/or Axis Powers conquer the entire world; in others, they conquer most of the world but a "Fortress America" exists under siege; while in others, there is a Nazi/Japanese Cold War comparable to the US/Soviet equivalent in 'our' timeline. "Fatherland" (1992), by Robert Harris, is set in Europe following the Nazi victory. The novel "Dominion" by C.J. Sansom (2012) is similar in concept but is set in England, with Churchill the leader of an anti-German Resistance and other historic persons in various fictional roles. In the Mecha Samurai Empire series (2016), Peter Tieryas focuses on the Asian-American side of the alternate history, exploring an America ruled by the Japanese Empire while integrating elements of Asian pop culture like mechas and videogames.


title: Alternate history

text: Several writers have posited points of departure for such a world but then have injected time splitters from the future or paratime travel, for instance James P. Hogan's "The Proteus Operation". Norman Spinrad wrote "The Iron Dream" in 1972, which is intended to be a science fiction novel written by Adolf Hitler after fleeing from Europe to North America in the 1920s.


title: Alternate history

text: In Jo Walton's "Small Change" series, the United Kingdom made peace with Hitler before the involvement of the United States in World War II, and slowly collapses due to severe economic depression. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen have written a novel, "1945", in which the US defeated Japan but not Germany in World War II, resulting in a Cold War with Germany rather than the Soviet Union. Gingrich and Forstchen neglected to write the promised sequel; instead, they wrote a trilogy about the American Civil War, starting with "", in which the Confederates win a victory at the Battle of Gettysburg - however, after Lincoln responds by bringing Grant and his forces to the eastern theater, the Army of Northern Virginia is soon trapped and destroyed in Maryland, and the war ends within weeks.


title: Alternate history

text: While World War II has been a common Point of Divergence in alternate history literature, several works have been based on other points of divergence. For example, Martin Cruz Smith, in his first novel, posited an independent American Indian nation following the defeat of Custer in "The Indians Won" (1970). Beginning with "The Probability Broach" in 1980, L. Neil Smith wrote several novels that postulated the disintegration of the US Federal Government after Albert Gallatin joins the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 and eventually leads to the creation of a libertarian utopia. In the 2022 novel "Poutine and Gin" by Steve Rhinelander, the point of divergence is the Battle of the Plains of Abraham of the French and Indian War. That novel is a mystery set in 1940 of that time line.


title: Alternate history

text: A recent time traveling splitter variant involves entire communities being shifted elsewhere to become the unwitting creators of new time branches. These communities are transported from the present (or the near-future) to the past or to another time-line via a natural disaster, the action of technologically advanced aliens, or a human experiment gone wrong. S. M. Stirling wrote the "Island in the Sea of Time" trilogy, in which Nantucket Island and all its modern inhabitants are transported to Bronze Age times to become the world's first superpower. In Eric Flint's 1632 series, a small town in West Virginia is transported to 17th century central Europe and drastically changes the course of the Thirty Years' War, which was then underway. John Birmingham's "Axis of Time" trilogy deals with the culture shock when a United Nations naval task force from 2021 finds itself back in 1942 helping the Allies against the Empire of Japan and the Germans (and doing almost as much harm as good in spite of its advanced weapons). The series also explores the cultural impacts of people with 2021 ideals interacting with 1940s culture. Similarly, Robert Charles Wilson's "Mysterium" depicts a failed US government experiment which transports a small American town into an alternative version of the US run by believers in a form of Christianity known as Gnosticism, who are engaged in a bitter war with the "Spanish" in Mexico (the chief scientist at the laboratory where the experiment occurred is described as a Gnostic, and references to Christian Gnosticism appear repeatedly in the book). In "Time for Patriots" by retired astronomer Thomas Wm. Hamilton (4897 Tomhamilton) a town and military academy on Long Island are transported back to 1770, where they shorten the American Revolution, rewrite the Constitution, prolong Mozart's life, battle Barbary pirates, and have other adventures.


title: Alternate history

text: Although not dealing in physical time travel, in his alt-history novel "Marx Returns", Jason Barker introduces anachronisms into the life and times of Karl Marx, such as when his wife Jenny sings a verse from the Sex Pistols's song "Anarchy in the U.K.", or in the games of chess she plays with the Marxes' housekeeper Helene Demuth, which on one occasion involves a Caro–Kann Defence. In her review of the novel, Nina Power writes of "Jenny’s 'utopian' desire for an end to time", an attitude which, according to Power, is inspired by her husband's co-authored book "The German Ideology". However, in keeping with the novel's anachronisms, the latter was not published until 1932. By contrast, the novel's timeline ends in 1871.


title: Alternate history

text: In the 2022 novel "Hydrogen Wars: Atomic Sunrise" by R.M. Christianson a small change in post-war Japanese history leads to the election of General Douglas MacArthur as President of the United States. This minor change ultimately leads to all-out atomic war between the major Cold War powers.


title: Alternate history

text: Many works of straight fantasy and science fantasy take place in historical settings, though with the addition of, for example, magic or mythological beasts. Some present a secret history in which the modern day world no longer believes that these elements ever existed. Many ambiguous alternate/secret histories are set in Renaissance or pre-Renaissance times, and may explicitly include a "retreat" from the world, which would explain the current absence of such phenomena. Other stories make plan a divergence of some kind.


title: Alternate history

text: In Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" in which the Matter of France is history and the fairy folk are real and powerful. The same author's "A Midsummer Tempest", occurs in a world in which the plays of William Shakespeare (called here "the Great Historian"), presented the literal truth in every instance. The novel itself takes place in the era of Oliver Cromwell and Charles I. Here, the English Civil War had a different outcome, and the Industrial Revolution has occurred early.


title: Alternate history

text: Randall Garrett's "Lord Darcy" series presents a point of divergence: a monk systemizes magic rather than science, so the use of foxglove to treat heart disease is regarded as superstition. Another point of divergence occurs in 1199, when Richard the Lionheart survives the Siege of Chaluz and returns to England and makes the Angevin Empire so strong that it survives into the 20th century.


title: Alternate history

text: "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke takes place in an England where a separate Kingdom ruled by the Raven King and founded on magic existed in Northumbria for over 300 years. In Patricia Wrede's Regency fantasies, Great Britain has a Royal Society of Wizards.


title: Alternate history

text: "The Tales of Alvin Maker" series by Orson Scott Card (a parallel to the life of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement) takes place in an alternate America, beginning in the early 19th century. Prior to that time, a POD occurred: England, under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, had banished "makers", or anyone else demonstrating "knacks" (an ability to perform seemingly supernatural feats) to the North American continent. Thus the early American colonists embraced as perfectly ordinary these gifts, and counted on them as a part of their daily lives. The political division of the continent is considerably altered, with two large English colonies bookending a smaller "American" nation, one aligned with England, and the other governed by exiled Cavaliers. Actual historical figures are seen in a much different light: Ben Franklin is revered as the continent's finest "maker", George Washington was executed after being captured, and "Tom" Jefferson is the first president of "Appalachia", the result of a compromise between the Continentals and the British Crown.


title: Alternate history

text: On the other hand, when the "Old Ones" (fairies) still manifest themselves in England in Keith Roberts's "Pavane", which takes place in a technologically backward world after a Spanish assassination of Elizabeth I allowed the Spanish Armada to conquer England, the possibility that the fairies were real but retreated from modern advances makes the POD possible: the fairies really were present all along, in a secret history.


title: Alternate history

text: Again, in the English Renaissance fantasy "Armor of Light" by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, the magic used in the book, by Dr. John Dee and others, actually was practiced in the Renaissance; positing a secret history of effective magic makes this an alternate history with a point of departure. Sir Philip Sidney survives the Battle of Zutphen in 1586, and shortly thereafter saving the life of Christopher Marlowe.


title: Alternate history

text: When the magical version of our world's history is set in contemporary times, the distinction becomes clear between alternate history on the one hand and contemporary fantasy, using in effect a form of secret history (as when Josepha Sherman's "Son of Darkness" has an elf living in New York City, in disguise) on the other. In works such as Robert A. Heinlein's "Magic, Incorporated" where a construction company can use magic to rig up stands at a sporting event and Poul Anderson's "Operation Chaos" and its sequel "Operation Luna", where djinns are serious weapons of war—with atomic bombs—the use of magic throughout the United States and other modern countries makes it clear that this is not secret history—although references in "Operation Chaos" to degaussing the effects of cold iron make it possible that it is the result of a POD. The sequel clarifies this as the result of a collaboration of Einstein and Planck in 1901, resulting in the theory of "rhea tics". Henry Moseley applies this theory to "degauss the effects of cold iron and release the goetic forces." This results in the suppression of ferromagnetism and the re-emergence of magic and magical creatures.


title: Alternate history

text: Alternate history shades off into other fantasy subgenres when the use of actual, though altered, history and geography decreases, although a culture may still be clearly the original source; Barry Hughart's "Bridge of Birds" and its sequels take place in a fantasy world, albeit one clearly based on China, and with allusions to actual Chinese history, such as the Empress Wu. Richard Garfinkle's "Celestial Matters" incorporates ancient Chinese physics and Greek Aristotelian physics, using them as if factual.


title: Alternate history

text: Alternate history has long been a staple of Japanese speculative fiction with such authors as Futaro Yamada and Ryō Hanmura writing novels set in recognizable historical settings with added supernatural or science fiction elements. Ryō Hanmura's 1973 "Musubi no Yama Hiroku" which recreated 400 years of Japan's history from the perspective of a secret magical family with psychic abilities. The novel has since come to be recognized as a masterpiece of Japanese speculative fiction. Twelve years later, author Hiroshi Aramata wrote the groundbreaking "Teito Monogatari" which reimagined the history of Tokyo across the 20th century in a world heavily influenced by the supernatural.


title: Alternate history

text: The TV show "Sliders" explores different possible alternate realities by having the protagonist "slide" into different parallel dimensions of the same planet Earth. Another TV show "" explores a female-dominated world in which witchcraft is real. Its world diverged from our timeline when the Salem witch trials are resolved by an agreement between witches and ungifted humans.


title: Alternate history

text: The TV show "The Man in the High Castle" is an adaptation of the novel with the same name that ran for four seasons.


title: Alternate history

text: "For All Mankind" depicts an alternate timeline in which the Soviet crewed lunar program successfully lands on the Moon before the US Apollo program, resulting in a continued and intensified Space Race.


title: Alternate history

text: Fans of alternate history have made use of the internet from a very early point to showcase their own works and provide useful tools for those fans searching for anything alternate history, first in mailing lists and usenet groups, later in web databases and forums. The "Usenet Alternate History List" was first posted on 11 April 1991, to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf-lovers. In May 1995, the dedicated newsgroup "soc.history.what-if" was created for showcasing and discussing alternate histories. Its prominence declined with the general migration from unmoderated usenet to moderated web forums, most prominently AlternateHistory.com, the self-described "largest gathering of alternate history fans on the internet" with over 10,000 active members.


title: Alternate history

text: In addition to these discussion forums, in 1997 was created as an online repository, now containing over 2,900 alternate history novels, stories, essays, and other printed materials in several different languages. Uchronia was selected as the Sci Fi Channel's "Sci Fi Site of the Week" twice.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: A chronology of Jesus aims to establish a timeline for the events of the life of Jesus. Scholars have correlated Jewish and Greco-Roman documents and astronomical calendars with the New Testament accounts to estimate dates for the major events in Jesus's life.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Two main approaches have been used to estimate the year of the birth of Jesus: one based on the accounts in the Gospels of his birth with reference to King Herod's reign, and the other by subtracting his stated age of "about 30 years" when he began preaching. Most scholars, on this basis, assume a date of birth between 6 and 4 BC.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Three details have been used to estimate the year when Jesus began preaching: a mention of his age of "about 30 years" during "the fifteenth year" of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, another relating to the date of the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, and yet another concerning the death of John the Baptist. Hence, scholars estimate that Jesus began preaching and gathering followers around AD 28–29. According to the three synoptic gospels Jesus continued preaching for at least one year, and according to John the Evangelist for three years.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Five methods have been used to estimate the date of the crucifixion of Jesus. One uses non-Christian sources such as Josephus and Tacitus. Another works backwards from the historically well-established trial of the Apostle Paul by the Roman proconsul Gallio in Corinth in AD 51/52 to estimate the date of Paul's conversion. Both methods result in AD 36 as an upper bound to the crucifixion. Thus, scholars generally agree that Jesus was crucified between AD 30 and AD 36. Isaac Newton's astronomical method calculates those ancient Passovers (always defined by a full moon) which are preceded by a Friday, as specified by all four Gospels; this leaves two potential crucifixion dates, 7 April AD 30 and 3 April AD 33. In the lunar eclipse method, the Apostle Peter's statement that the moon turned to blood at the crucifixion () is taken to refer to the lunar eclipse of 3 April AD 33; although astronomers are discussing whether the eclipse was visible as far west as Jerusalem. Recent astronomical research uses the contrast between the synoptic date of Jesus' last Passover on the one hand, with John's date of the subsequent "Jewish Passover" on the other hand, to propose Jesus' Last Supper to have been on Wednesday, 1 April AD 33 and the crucifixion on Friday 3 April AD 33 and the Resurrection on the third day.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The Christian gospels do not claim to provide an exhaustive list of the events in the life of Jesus. They were written as theological documents in the context of early Christianity rather than historical chronicles, and their authors showed little interest in an absolute chronology of Jesus or in synchronizing the episodes of his life with the secular history of the age. One indication that the gospels are theological documents rather than historical chronicles is that they devote about one-third of their text to just seven days, namely the last week of the life of Jesus in Jerusalem, also known as the Passion of Christ.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Nevertheless, the gospels provide some details regarding events which can be clearly dated, so one can establish date ranges regarding major events in Jesus' life by comparison with independent sources. A number of historical non-Christian documents, such as Jewish and Greco-Roman sources, have been used in historical analyses of the chronology of Jesus. Almost all modern historians agree that Jesus existed, and regard his baptism and his crucifixion as historical events, and assume that approximate ranges for these events can be estimated.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Using these methods, most scholars assume a date of birth between 6 and 4 BC, and that Jesus' preaching began around AD 27–29 and lasted one to three years. They calculate the death of Jesus as having taken place between AD 30 and 36.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The date of birth of Jesus of Nazareth is not stated in the gospels or in any secular text, but most scholars assume a date of birth between 6 BC and 4 BC. Two main methods have been used to estimate the year of the birth of Jesus: one based on the accounts of his birth in the gospels with reference to King Herod's reign, and another based on subtracting his stated age of "about 30 years" from the time when he began preaching () in "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" (): the two methods indicate a date of birth before Herod's death in 4 BC, and a date of birth around 2 BC, respectively.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The two nativity accounts of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew and Gospel of Luke differ substantially from each other, and are considered to have been written independently. However, some consistent elements are evidently derived from a common early tradition:


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Thus both Luke and Matthew independently associate Jesus' birth with the reign of Herod the Great. Matthew furthermore implies that Jesus was up to two years old when Herod reportedly ordered the Massacre of the Innocents, that is, the murder of all boys in Bethlehem up to the age of two ().


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Most scholarship concerning the date of Herod's death follows Emil Schürer's calculations published in 1896, which revised a traditional death date of 1 BC to 4 BC. Two of Herod's sons, Archelaus and Philip the Tetrarch, dated their rule from 4 BC, though Archelaus apparently held royal authority during Herod's lifetime. Philip's reign would last for 37 years, until his death in the traditionally accepted 20th year of Tiberius (AD 34), which implies his accession as 4 BC.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In 1998, Beyer published that the oldest manuscripts of Josephus’s "Antiquities" have the death of Philip in the 22nd year not the 20th, of Tiberius. In the British Library, there is not a single manuscript prior to AD 1544 that has the traditionally accepted 20th year of Tiberius for the death of Philip. This evidence removes the main obstacle for a later date of 1 BC for the death of Herod. A list of the oldest manuscripts is found in p. 91 “Josephus Re-examined”, D. Beyer. Some other scholars also support the traditional date of 1 BC for Herod's death. Filmer and Steinmann, for example, propose that Herod died in 1 BC, and that his heirs backdated their reigns to 4 or 3 BC to assert an overlapping with Herod's rule and bolster their own legitimacy.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In Josephus' account, Herod's death was preceded by a lunar eclipse and followed by Passover. An eclipse took place in 4 BC on 13 March, about 29 days before Passover, and this eclipse has been suggested as the one referred to by Josephus. There were, however, other eclipses during this period, and there are proponents of 5 BC and the two eclipses of 1 BC occurring 10 January and 29 December. Nevertheless, most scholars favour a birth year for Jesus between 6 and 4 BC.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Another approach to estimating Jesus' year of birth is based on the statement in that he was "about 30 years of age" when starting his ministry. Jesus began to preach after being baptised by John the Baptist, and based on Luke’s gospel John only began baptising people in "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar" (), which scholars estimate to have been in AD 28–29. Subtracting 30 years, it appears that Jesus was born in 1–2 BC. However, if the phrase "about 30" is interpreted to mean 32 years old, this could fit a date of birth just within the reign of Herod, who died in 4 BC.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The benchmark date of AD 28–29 is independently confirmed by John's statement () that the Temple reportedly was in its 46th year of construction during Passover when Jesus began his ministry, which likewise corresponds to 28–29 AD according to scholarly estimates.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The Gospel of mentions in passing an upper limit of 50 for Jesus' age when preaching: "The Jews therefore said unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" Fifty years is a round number which emphasises the discrepancy to Jesus's claim he had existed before Abraham, that is, for more than a thousand years.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Some commentators have attempted to establish the date of birth by identifying the Star of Bethlehem with some known astronomical or astrological phenomenon. For example, astronomer Michael Molnar proposed 17 April 6 BC as the likely date of the Nativity, since that date corresponded to the heliacal rising and lunar occultation of Jupiter, while it was momentarily stationary in the constellation of Aries. According to Molnar, to knowledgeable astrologers of this time, this highly unusual combination of events would have indicated that a regal personage would be (or had been) born in Judea. Other research points to a 1991 report from the Royal Astronomical Society, which mentions that Chinese astronomers noted a "comet" that lasted 70 days in the Capricorn region of the sky, in March of 5 BC. Authors Dugard and O'Reilly consider this event as the likely Star of Bethlehem. However, there are many possible phenomena and none seems to match the Gospel account exactly.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: One method for the estimation of the date of the beginning of the ministry of Jesus is based on the Gospel of Luke's specific statement in about the ministry of John the Baptist which preceded that of Jesus:


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the highpriesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The reign of Tiberius began on the death of his predecessor Augustus in September AD 14, implying that the ministry of John the Baptist began in late AD 28 or early AD 29. Riesner's alternative suggestion is that John the Baptist began his ministry in AD 26 or 27, because Tiberius ruled together with Augustus for two years before becoming the sole ruler. If so, the fifteenth year of Tiberius' reign would be counted from AD 12. Riesner's suggestion is however considered less likely, as all the major Roman historians who calculate the years of Tiberius' rule – namely Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio – count from AD 14 – the year of Augustus' death. In addition, coin evidence shows that Tiberius started to reign in AD 14.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The New Testament presents John the Baptist as the precursor to Jesus and the Baptism of Jesus as marking the beginning of Jesus' ministry. In his sermon in , delivered in the house of Cornelius the centurion, Apostle Peter refers to what had happened "throughout all Judaea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached" and that Jesus had then gone about "doing good". Jesus' baptism account is followed directly by his 40 day fast and ordeal.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Another method for estimating the start of the ministry of Jesus without reliance on the Synoptic gospels is to relate the account in the Gospel of John about the visit of Jesus to Herod's Temple in Jerusalem with historical data about the construction of the Temple.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Herod's Temple in Jerusalem was an extensive and long term construction on the Temple Mount, which was never fully completed even by the time it was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. Having built entire cities such as Caesarea Maritima, Herod saw the construction of the Temple as a key, colossal monument. The dedication of the initial temple (sometimes called the inner Temple) followed a 17 or 18 month construction period, just after the visit of Augustus to Syria.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Josephus () states that the temple's reconstruction was started by Herod in the 18th year of his reign. But there is some uncertainty about how Josephus referred to and computed dates, which event marked the start of Herod's reign, and whether the initial date should refer to the inner Temple, or the subsequent construction. Hence various scholars arrive at slightly different dates for the exact date of the start of the Temple construction, varying by a few years in their final estimation of the date of the Temple visit. Given that it took 46 years of construction, the best scholarly estimate for when Jesus preached is around the year AD 26–27.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Both the gospels and first-century historian Flavius Josephus, in his work "Antiquities of the Jews", refer to Herod Antipas killing John the Baptist, and to the marriage of Herod and Herodias, establishing two key connections between Josephus and the biblical episodes. Josephus refers to the imprisonment and execution of John the Baptist by Herod Antipas and that Herodias left her husband to marry Herod Antipas, in defiance of Jewish law.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Josephus and the gospels differ, however, on the details and motives, e.g. whether the execution was a consequence of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias (as indicated in , ), or a pre-emptive measure by Herod which possibly took place before the marriage to quell a possible uprising based on the remarks of John, as Josephus suggests in .


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The exact year of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias is subject to debate among scholars. While some scholars place the year of the marriage in the range AD 27–31, others have approximated a date as late as AD 35, although such a late date has much less support. In his analysis of Herod's life, Harold Hoehner estimates that John the Baptist's imprisonment probably occurred around AD 30–31. The "International Standard Bible Encyclopedia" estimates the death of the Baptist to have occurred about AD 31–32.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Josephus stated () that the AD 36 defeat of Herod Antipas in the conflicts with Aretas IV of Nabatea was widely considered by the Jews of the time as misfortune brought about by Herod's unjust execution of John the Baptist. Given that John the Baptist was executed before the defeat of Herod by Aretas, and based on the scholarly estimates for the approximate date of the marriage of Herod Antipas and Herodias, the last part of the ministry of John the Baptist and hence parts of the ministry of Jesus fall within the historical time span of AD 28–35, with the later year 35 having the least support among scholars.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: All four canonical gospels state that Jesus was crucified during the prefecture of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Roman Judaea.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In the "Antiquities of the Jews" (written about AD 93), Josephus states () that Jesus was crucified on the orders of Pilate. Most scholars agree that while this reference includes some later Christian interpolations, it originally included a reference to the execution of Jesus under Pilate.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In the second century the Roman historian Tacitus in "The Annals" ("c." AD 116), described the persecution of Christians by Nero and stated () that Jesus had been executed on the orders of Pilate during the reign of Tiberius (Emperor from 18 September AD 14–16 March AD 37).


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: According to Flavius Josephus, Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea from AD 26 until he was replaced by Marcellus, either in AD 36 or AD 37, establishing the date of the death of Jesus between AD 26 and AD 37.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In the Gospel of Luke, while Jesus is in Pilate's court, Pilate realizes that Jesus is a Galilean and thus is under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas. Given that Herod was in Jerusalem at that time, Pilate decided to send Jesus to Herod to be tried.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: This episode is described only in the Gospel of Luke (). While some scholars have questioned the authenticity of this episode, given that it is unique to the Gospel of Luke, the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia states that it fits well with the theme of the gospel.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, was born before 20 BC and was exiled to Gaul in the summer of AD 39 following a lengthy intrigue involving Caligula and Agrippa I, the grandson of his father. This episode indicates that Jesus' death took place before AD 39.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Another approach to estimating an upper bound for the year of death of Jesus is the estimation of the date of conversion of Paul the Apostle which the New Testament accounts place some time after the death of Jesus. Paul's conversion is discussed in both the Letters of Paul and in the Acts of the Apostles.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (), Paul refers to his conversion. The Acts of the Apostles includes three separate references to his conversion experience, in , and .


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Estimating the year of Paul's conversion relies on working backwards from his trial before Junius Gallio in Achaea, Greece () around AD 51–52, a date derived from the discovery and publication, in 1905, of four stone fragments as part of the Delphi Inscriptions, at Delphi across the Gulf from Corinth. The inscription preserves a letter from Claudius concerning Gallio dated during the 26th acclamation of Claudius, sometime between January 51 and August 52.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: On this basis, most historians estimate that Gallio (brother of Seneca the Younger) became proconsul between the spring of AD 51 and the summer of AD 52, and that his position ended no later than AD 53. The trial of Paul is generally assumed to be in the earlier part of Gallio's tenure, based on the reference () to his meeting in Corinth with Priscilla and Aquila, who had been recently expelled from Rome based on Emperor Claudius' expulsion of Jews from Rome, which is dated to AD 49–50.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: According to the New Testament, Paul spent eighteen months in Corinth, approximately seventeen years after his conversion. states that Paul went back to Jerusalem fourteen years after his conversion, and various missions (at times with Barnabas) such as those in and appear in the Book of Acts. The generally accepted scholarly estimate for the date of conversion of Paul is AD 33–36, placing the death of Jesus before this date range.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: All four Gospels agree to within about a day that the crucifixion was at the time of Passover, and all four Gospels agree that Jesus died a few hours before the commencement of the Jewish Sabbath, i.e. he died before nightfall on a Friday (; ; ; ). In the official festival calendar of Judaea, as used by the priests of the temple, Passover time was specified precisely. The slaughtering of the lambs for Passover occurred between 3pm and 5pm on the 14th day of the Jewish month Nisan (corresponding to March/April). The Passover meal commenced at moonrise (necessarily a full moon) that evening, i.e., at the start of 15 Nisan (the Jewish day running from evening to evening) (; ). There is an apparent discrepancy of one day in the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion which has been the subject of considerable debate. In John's Gospel, it is stated that the day of Jesus' trial and execution was the day before Passover ( and ), Hence John places the crucifixion on 14 Nisan. Likewise the Apostle Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, implies Jesus died on a 14 Nisan ("sacrificed as a Passover lamb", ), and was resurrected on the Jewish festival of the first fruits, i.e. on a 16 Nisan (). The correct interpretation of the Synoptics is less clear. Thus some scholars believe that all 4 Gospels place the crucifixion on Friday, 14 Nisan, others believe that according to the Synoptics it occurred on Friday, 15 Nisan. The problem that then has to be solved is that of determining in which of the years of the reign of Pontius Pilate (AD 26–36) the 14th and 15th Nisan fell on a Friday.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In a paper published posthumously in 1733, Isaac Newton considered only the range AD 31–36 and calculated that the Friday requirement is met only on Friday 3 April AD 33, and 23 April AD 34. The latter date can only have fallen on a Friday if an exceptional leap month had been introduced that year, but this was favoured by Newton. In the twentieth century, the standard view became that of J. K. Fotheringham, who in 1910 suggested 3 April AD 33 on the basis of its coincidence with a lunar eclipse. In 1933, António Cabreira, following a similar method, arrived at the same date, as did, in the 1990s, Bradley E. Schaefer and J. P. Pratt. Also according to Humphreys and Waddington, the lunar Hebrew calendar leaves only two plausible dates within the reign of Pontius Pilate for Jesus' death, and both of these would have been a 14 Nisan as specified in the Gospel of John: Friday 7 April AD 30, and Friday 3 April AD 33.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: A more refined calculation takes into account that the Hebrew calendar was based not on astronomical calculation but on observation of the lunar phases, following criticism that it is possible to establish the phase of the moon on a particular day two thousand years ago but not whether it was obscured by clouds or haze. Including the possibility of a cloudy sky obscuring the moon, and assuming that the Jewish authorities would be aware that lunar months can only be either 29 or 30 days long (the time from one new moon to the next is 29.53 days), then the refined calculation states that the Friday requirement might also have been met, during Pontius Pilate's term of office, on 11 April AD 27. Another potential date arises if the Jewish authorities happened to add an irregular lunar leap month to compensate for a meteorologically delayed harvest season: this would yield one additional possibility during Pilate's time, which is Newton's favoured date of 23 April AD 34. Colin Humphreys calculates but rejects these AD 27 and AD 34 dates on the basis that the former is much too early to be compatible with , and spring AD 34 is probably too late to be compatible with Paul's timeline, confirming Friday 7 April AD 30, and Friday 3 April AD 33 as the two feasible crucifixion dates.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: A lunar eclipse is potentially alluded to in ("The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the day of the Lord come"), as pointed out by physicist Colin Humphreys and astronomer Graeme Waddington. There was in fact a lunar eclipse on 3 April AD 33, a date which coincides with one of Newton's astronomically possible crucifixion dates (see above). Humphreys and Waddington have calculated that in ancient Jerusalem this eclipse would have been visible at moonrise at 6.20 pm as a 20% partial eclipse (a full moon with a potentially red "bite" missing at the top left of the moon's disc). They propose that a large proportion of the Jewish population would have witnessed this eclipse as they would have been waiting for sunset in the west and immediately afterwards the rise of the anticipated full moon in the east as the prescribed signal to start their household Passover meals. Humphreys and Waddington therefore suggest a scenario where Jesus was crucified and died at 3pm on 3 April AD 33, followed by a red partial lunar eclipse at moonrise at 6.20pm observed by the Jewish population, and that Peter recalls this event when preaching the resurrection to the Jews (). Astronomer Bradley Schaefer agrees with the eclipse date but disputes that the eclipsed moon would have been visible by the time the moon had risen in Jerusalem.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: A potentially related issue involves the reference in the Synoptic Gospels to a three-hour period of darkness over the whole land on the day of the crucifixion (according to Luke 23:45 τοῦ ἡλίου ἐκλιπόντος – the sun was darkened). Although some scholars view this as a literary device common among ancient writers rather than a description of an actual event, other writers have attempted to identify a meteorological event or a datable astronomical phenomenon which this could have referred to. It could not have been a solar eclipse, since this could not take place during the full moon at Passover, and in any case solar eclipses take minutes, not hours. In 1983, astronomers Humphreys and Waddington noted that the reference to a solar eclipse is missing in some versions of Luke and argued that the solar eclipse was a later faulty scribal amendment of what was actually the "lunar" eclipse of AD 33. This is a claim which historian David Henige describes as "undefended" and "indefensible". Humphreys and a number of scholars have alternatively argued for the sun's darkening to have been caused by a "khamsin", i.e. a sand storm, which can occur between mid-March and May in the Middle East and which does typically last for several hours.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In a review of Humphreys' book, theologian William R Telford points out that the non-astronomical parts of his lunar eclipse argument are based on the assumption that the chronologies described in the New Testament are historical and based on eyewitness testimony, accepting uncritically statements such as the "three different Passovers in John" and Matthew's statement that Jesus died at the ninth hour. He also alleges that Humphreys uses two very dubious sources, namely Pilate's alleged letter to Tiberius and the writings of the fifth-century Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, which Humphreys however classifies as forgery or contemporary interpretation indicative of a tradition at the time.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In the crucifixion narrative, the synoptic gospels stress that Jesus celebrated a Passover meal (Mark 14:12ff; Luke 22:15) "before" his crucifixion, which contrasts sharply with the independent gospel of John who is explicit that the official "Jewish" Passover (John 11:55) started at nightfall "after" Jesus' death. In his 2011 book, Colin Humphreys proposes a resolution to this apparent discrepancy by positing that Jesus' "synoptic" Passover meal in fact took place two days before John's "Jewish" Passover because the former is calculated by the putative original Jewish lunar calendar (itself based on the Egyptian liturgical lunar calendar putatively introduced to the Israelites by Moses in the 13th century BC, and still used today by the Samaritans). The official "Jewish" Passover in contrast was determined by a Hebrew calendar reckoning which had been modified during the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. This modified Hebrew calendar is in use among most Jews today. One basic difference lies in the determination of the first day of the new month: while the Samaritans use the calculated (because by definition invisible) new moon, mainstream Jews use the first observation of the thin crescent of the waxing moon which is on average 30 hours later. The other basic difference lies in the fact that the Samaritan calendar uses a sunrise-to-sunrise day, while the official Hebrew calendar uses a sunset-to-sunset day. Due to these differences, the Samaritan Passover is normally one day earlier than the Jewish Passover (and in some years two or more days earlier). The crucifixion year of Jesus can then be calculated by asking the question in which of the two astronomically possible years of AD 30 and AD 33 is there a time gap between the last supper and the crucifixion which is compatible with the gospel timeline of Jesus' last 6 days. The astronomical calculations show that a hypothetical AD 30 date would require an incompatible Monday Last Supper, while AD 33 offers a compatible Last Supper on Wednesday, 1 April AD 33, followed by a compatible crucifixion on Friday, 3 April AD 33.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Given these assumptions he argues that the calculated date of Wednesday 1 April AD 33 for the Last Supper allows all four gospel accounts to be astronomically correct, with Jesus celebrating Passover two days before his death according to the original Mosaic calendar, and the Jewish authorities celebrating Passover just after the crucifixion, using the modified Babylonian calendar. In contrast, the Christian church tradition of celebrating the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday would be an anachronism. The calculated chronology incidentally supports John's and Paul's narratives that Jesus died at the same hour (Friday 3pm) on 3 April AD 33 that the Passover lambs were slaughtered.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The estimation of the time of the death of Jesus based on the New Testament accounts has been the subject of debate among scholars for centuries. The debate can be summarised as follows. In the Synoptic account, the Last Supper takes place on the first night of Passover, defined in the Torah as occurring at twilight on 14 of Nisan, and the crucifixion is the following day on 15 Nisan. However, in the Gospel of John the trial of Jesus takes place before the Passover meal and the sentencing takes place on the day of Preparation, before Passover. Some scholars have presented arguments to reconcile the accounts, although Raymond E. Brown, reviewing these, concluded that they can not be easily reconciled. One involves the suggestion that for Jesus and his disciples, the Passover could have begun at dawn Thursday, while for traditional Jews it would not have begun until dusk that same day. Another is that John followed the Roman practice of calculating the new day beginning at midnight, rather than the Jewish reckoning. However, this Roman practice was used only for dating contracts and leases. D. A. Carson argues that 'preparation of the Passover' could mean any day of the Passover week. Some have argued that the modern precision of marking the time of day should not be read back into the gospel accounts, written at a time when no standardization of timepieces, or exact recording of hours and minutes was available. Andreas Köstenberger argues that in the first century time was often estimated to the closest three-hour mark, and that the intention of the author of the Mark Gospel was to provide the setting for the three hours of darkness while the Gospel of John seeks to stress the length of the proceedings, starting in the 'early morning'" Some scholars have argued that it is unlikely that the many events of the Passion could have taken place in the span from midnight to about 9 o'clock in the morning. William Barclay has argued that the portrayal of the death of Jesus in the John Gospel is a literary construct, presenting the crucifixion as taking place at the time on the day of Passover when the sacrificial lamb would be killed, and thus portraying Jesus as the Lamb of God. This understanding fits with Old Testament typology, in which Jesus entered Jerusalem to identify himself as the Paschal lamb on Nisan 10 was crucified and died at 3:00 in the afternoon of Nisan 14, at the same time the High Priest would have sacrificed the Paschal lamb, and rose before dawn the morning of Nisan 16, as a type of offering of the First Fruits.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Colin Humphreys' widely publicised "double passover" astronomical analysis, published in 2011 and outlined above, places the time of death of Jesus at 3pm on 3 April AD 33 and claims to reconcile the Gospel accounts for the "six days" leading up to the crucifixion. His solution is that the synoptic gospels and John's gospel use two distinct calendars (the official Jewish lunar calendar, and what is today the Samaritan lunar calendar, the latter used in Jesus' day also by the Essenes of Qumran and the Zealots). Humphrey's proposal was preceded in 1957 by the work of Annie Jaubert who suggested that Jesus held his Last Supper at Passover time according to the Qumran "solar" calendar. Humphreys rejects Jaubert's conclusion by demonstrating that the Qumran solar reckoning would always place Jesus' Last Supper "after" the Jewish Passover, in contradiction to all four gospels. Instead, Humphreys points out that the Essene community at Qumran additionally used a lunar calendar, itself evidently based on the Egyptian liturgical lunar calendar. Humphreys suggests that the reason why his two-calendar solution had not been discovered earlier is (a) widespread scholarly ignorance of the existence of the Egyptian liturgical lunar calendar (used alongside the well-known Egyptian administrative solar calendar, and presumably the basis for the 13th-century BC Jewish lunar calendar), and (b) the fact that the modern surviving small community of Samaritans did not reveal the calculations underlying their lunar calendar (preserving the Egyptian reckoning) to outsiders until the 1960s.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In a review of Humphreys' book, theologian William R Telford points out that the non-astronomical parts of his argument are based on the assumption that the chronologies described in the New Testament are historical and based on eyewitness testimony. In doing so, Telford says, Humphreys has built an argument upon unsound premises which "does violence to the nature of the biblical texts, whose mixture of fact and fiction, tradition and redaction, history and myth all make the rigid application of the scientific tool of astronomy to their putative data a misconstrued enterprise." As Telford had pointed out in his own book in 1980, "the initial three-day structure found in [Mark 11] is occasioned by the purely redactional linkage of the extraneous fig-tree story with the triumphal entry and cleansing of the temple traditions, and is not a chronology upon which one can base any historical reconstructions."


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The Gospels do not describe the resurrection, but report the discovery of Jesus' empty tomb "very early on the first day of the week" (Mark 16:2), and subsequent appearances of Jesus. A potential chronological contradiction arises in the fact that the resurrection is referred to as happening "on the third day" (e.g. Matt 16:21) whereas elsewhere Matthew (Matt 12:40) states that Jesus would be buried "three days and three nights". The modern concept of zero as a number was introduced by Indian scholars only in the fifth century AD, so that for example the currently used Gregorian calendar does not have a "year 0" and instead begins with the year AD 1 which is immediately preceded by 1 BC. Applied to the reckoning of days, in the absence of a day "zero", that is, using inclusive counting, many modern languages (e.g. Greek, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Welsh) continue referring to two weeks as "fifteen days", whereas in English, which does observe zero and thus uses exclusive counting, this space of time is referred to as a fortnight. Following general practice at the time, the Gospels employ inclusive counting, highlighted in Mt 27.62–64:


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Other estimates of the chronology of Jesus have been proposed over the centuries. Hippolytus, around AD 200, dates his birth as on Wednesday the eighth day to the Kalends of January (25 December) in the 42nd year of Caesar Augustus. This may refer to 2, 3, or 4 BC (it is not certain how much knowledge Hippolytus had of the calendar at that time, which was perturbed). There is some disagreement between manuscripts, but in any case he seems to have believed that the incarnation was on the 25th of March and the birth nine months later. He dates the crucifixion to the 33rd year of the life of Christ, on Friday 25 March of the 18th year of Tiberius. The reign of Tiberius began in AD 14, but 25 March never fell on a Friday between AD 30 and AD 34 inclusively.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Eusebius, in his work "Historia Ecclesiae" first published in AD 313, placed the birth of Jesus in "the forty-second year of Augustus' reign, and the twenty-eighth after the subjugation of Egypt and the deaths of Antony & Cleopatra", i.e. in 3 BC. The 3rd/4th century Roman historian Lactantius states that Jesus was crucified on 23 March AD 29. Maximus the Confessor and Cassiodorus asserted that the death of Jesus occurred in AD 31.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: In AD 525 Dionysius Exiguus devised an Easter table to calculate the dates of Easter at a time when Julian calendar years were still being identified by naming the consuls who held office that year – Dionysius himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior", which was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ". Thus Dionysius implied that Jesus' incarnation occurred 525 years earlier.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: Bonnie J. Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens briefly present arguments for 2 BC, 1 BC, or AD 1 as the year Dionysius intended for the Nativity or incarnation. Among the sources of confusion are:


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: It is not known how Dionysius established the year of Jesus's birth. Two major theories are that Dionysius based his calculation on the Gospel of Luke, which states that Jesus was "about thirty years old" shortly after "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar", and hence subtracted thirty years from that date, or that Dionysius counted back 532 years from the first year of his new table.


title: Chronology of Jesus

text: The Anglo-Saxon historian the Venerable Bede, who was familiar with the work of Dionysius, used "Anno Domini" dating in his "Ecclesiastical History of the English People", completed in AD 731. Both Dionysius and Bede regarded "Anno Domini" as beginning at the incarnation of Jesus, but "the distinction between Incarnation and Nativity was not drawn until the late 9th century, when in some places the Incarnation was identified with Christ's conception, i.e., the Annunciation on March 25". On the continent of Europe, "Anno Domini" was introduced as the calendrical system of choice of the Carolingian Renaissance by the English cleric and scholar Alcuin in the late eighth century. Its endorsement by Emperor Charlemagne and his successors popularizing this calendar throughout the Carolingian Empire ultimately lies at the core of the calendar's global prevalence today.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , and the third most populous, with an estimated 7 million inhabitants in 2020. About two-thirds of these inhabitants live in the metropolitan area of Cape Town, which is also the provincial capital. The Western Cape was created in 1994 from part of the former Cape Province. The two largest cities are Cape Town and George.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape Province is roughly L-shaped, extending north and east from the Cape of Good Hope, in the southwestern corner of South Africa. It stretches about northwards along the Atlantic coast and about eastwards along the South African south coast (Southern Indian Ocean). It is bordered on the north by the Northern Cape and on the east by the Eastern Cape. The total land area of the province is , about 10.6% of the country's total. It is roughly the size of England or the State of Louisiana. Its capital city and largest city is Cape Town, and some other major cities include Stellenbosch, Worcester, Paarl, and George. The Garden Route and the Overberg are popular coastal tourism areas.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape is the southernmost region of the African continent with Cape Agulhas as its southernmost point, only 3800 km from the Antarctic coastline. The coastline varies from sandy between capes, to rocky to steep and mountainous in places. The only natural harbour is Saldanha Bay on the west coast, about 140 km north of Cape Town. However a lack of fresh water in the region meant that it has only recently been used as a harbour. The province's main harbour was built in Table Bay, which in its natural state was fully exposed to the northwesterly storms that bring rain to the province in winter, as well as the almost uninterrupted dry southeasterly winds in summer. But fresh water coming off Table Mountain and Devil's Peak allowed the early European settlers to build Cape Town on the shores of this less than satisfactory anchorage.


title: Western Cape

text: The province is topographically exceptionally diverse. Most of the province falls within the Cape Fold Belt, a set of nearly parallel ranges of sandstone folded mountains of Cambrian-Ordovician age (the age of the rocks is from 510 to about 330 million years ago; their folding into mountains occurred about 350 to about 270 million years ago). The height of the mountain peaks in the different ranges varies from 1000 m to 2300 m. The valleys between ranges are generally very fertile, as they contain the weathered loamy soils of the Bokkeveld mudstones (see the diagrams below).


title: Western Cape

text: The far interior forms part of the Karoo. This region of the province is generally arid and hilly, with a prominent escarpment that runs close to the Province's most inland boundary.


title: Western Cape

text: The escarpment marks the southwestern edge of South Africa's central plateau (see the middle and bottom diagrams on the left). It runs parallel to the entire South African coastline, except in the very far northeast, where it is interrupted by the Limpopo River valley, and in the far northwest, where it is interrupted by the Orange River valley. The 1000 km-long northeastern stretch of the escarpment is called the Drakensberg, which is geographically and geologically quite distinct from the Cape Fold Mountains, which originated much earlier and totally independently of the origin of the escarpment.


title: Western Cape

text: The principal rivers of the province are the Berg and Olifants which drain into the Atlantic Ocean, and the Breede and Gourits which drain into the Indian Ocean.


title: Western Cape

text: The vegetation of the region is also extremely diverse, with one of the world's seven floral kingdoms almost exclusively endemic to the province, namely the Cape Floral Kingdom, most of which is covered by Fynbos (from the Afrikaans meaning "Fine Bush" (Dutch: Fijnbosch), though precisely how it came to be referred to as such, is uncertain.). These evergreen heathlands are extremely rich in species diversity, with at least as many plant species occurring on Table Mountain as in the entire United Kingdom. It is characterised by various types of shrubs, thousands of herbaceous flowering plant species and some grasses. With the exception of the Silver tree, "Leucadendron argenteum", which only grows on the granite and clay soils of the Cape Peninsula, open fynbos is generally treeless except in the wetter mountain ravines where patches of Afromontane forest persist.


title: Western Cape

text: The arid interior is dominated by Karoo drought-resistant shrubbery. The West Coast and Little Karoo are semi-arid regions and are typified by many species of succulents and drought-resistant shrubs and acacia trees. The Garden Route on the south coast (between the Outeniqua Mountains and the Southern Indian Ocean) is extremely lush, with temperate rainforest (or Afromontane Forest) covering many areas adjacent to the coast, in the deep river valleys and along the southern slopes of the Outeniqua mountain range. Typical species are hardwoods of exceptional height, such as Yellowwood, Stinkwood and Ironwood trees.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape is climatologically diverse, with many distinct micro- and macroclimates created by the varied topography and the influence of the surrounding ocean currents. These are the warm Agulhas Current which flows southwards along South Africa's east coast, and the cold Benguela Current which is an upwelling current from the depths of the South Atlantic Ocean along South Africa's west coast. Thus climatic statistics can vary greatly over short distances. Most of the province is considered to have a Mediterranean climate with cool, wet winters and warm, dry summers. Both the Great Karoo and Little Karoo, in the interior, have an arid to semi-arid climate with cold, frosty winters and hot summers with occasional thunderstorms. The Garden Route and the Overberg on the south coast have a maritime climate with cool, moist winters and mild, moist summers. Mossel Bay in the Garden Route is considered to have the second mildest climate worldwide after Hawaii. The La Niña phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation cycle tends to increase rainfall in this region in the dry season (November to April).


title: Western Cape

text: Thunderstorms are generally rare in the province (except in the Karoo) with most precipitation being of a frontal or orographic nature. Extremes of heat and cold are common inland, but rare near the coast. Snow is a common winter occurrence on the Western Cape Mountains occasionally reaching down into the more inland valleys. Otherwise, frost is relatively rare in coastal areas and many of the heavily cultivated valleys.


title: Western Cape

text: The Cape has had a long tradition of holding liberal values. For example, the Cape Qualified Franchise before the Union of South Africa.


title: Western Cape

text: The Cape Qualified Franchise was the system of non-racial franchise that was adhered to in the Cape Colony, and in the Cape Province in the early years of the Union of South Africa. Qualifications for the right to vote at parliamentary elections were applied equally to all men, regardless of race.


title: Western Cape

text: This local system of multi-racial suffrage was later gradually restricted, and eventually abolished, under various National Party and United Party governments. In 1930 white women were enfranchised, and in 1931 property qualifications for white voters were removed. In 1936 black voters were then removed from the common voters' rolls and allowed only to elect separate members in 1936, and subsequently denied all representation in the House of Assembly in 1960. Coloured voters similarly followed in 1958 and 1970, respectively.


title: Western Cape

text: The Black Consciousness Movement (BCM) was a grassroots anti-Apartheid activist movement that emerged in South Africa in the mid-1960s out of the political vacuum created by the jailing and banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress leadership after the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960. The BCM represented a social movement for political consciousness.


title: Western Cape

text: In December 1968, the South African Student Organization (SASO) was formed at a conference held in Marianhill, Natal. The conference was exclusively attended by Black students. After its launch, SASO became the medium through which black consciousness ideology spread to schools and other university campuses across the country.


title: Western Cape

text: In 1974, South African Minister of Bantu Education and Development MC Botha, constituted the imposition of using Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools, effective with students in Grade 7 (Standard 5) upwards. As early as March 1976, students began passive resistance against Afrikaans, fueling the outbreak of the Soweto Uprising on 16 June 1976. Consequently, the student protests spread to other parts of the country, and Cape Town became a pivotal site for Western Cape student revolt.


title: Western Cape

text: Student leaders at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and the University of Cape Town (UCT) organised marches. Poster parades by UWC and Black Power Salute marches by UCT was broken by the police, resulting in 73 students getting arrested and detained at Victor Verster Prison, near Paarl.


title: Western Cape

text: On 1 September 1976, the unrest spread to the city of Cape Town itself. Approximately 2000 black students from Western Cape townships, namely Langa, Nyanga and Gugulethu, matched the Cape Town central business district (CBD). Coloured students also contributed to the protests by peacefully marching to the city, but were blockaded by the police in the CBD. The protests turned violent when coloured students started burning schools, libraries and a magistrate's court in support of the student revolt. Thereafter, 200,000 coloured workers partook in a two-day strike staying away from work in the Cape Town area.


title: Western Cape

text: According to a report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the Western Cape experienced the second highest number of deaths and casualties associated with the 1976 uprising protests.


title: Western Cape

text: In 1994, at the introduction of the Interim Constitution and the first non-racial election, South Africa's original provinces and bantustans were abolished and nine new provinces were established. The former Cape Province was divided into the Western Cape, Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and part of North West.


title: Western Cape

text: In the 1994 election, the Western Cape was one of two provinces that did not elect an African National Congress (ANC) provincial government (the other being KwaZulu-Natal). The National Party (NP) won 53% of the votes and 23 seats in the 42-seat provincial legislature, and Hernus Kriel, a former Minister of Law and Order, was elected Premier. He resigned in 1998 and was replaced by Gerald Morkel.


title: Western Cape

text: The 1999 election marked the beginning of a period of great turbulence in Western Cape politics. No party achieved an absolute majority in the provincial parliament, as the ANC won 18 seats while the New National Party (NNP), successor to the NP, won 17. The NNP went into coalition with the Democratic Party (DP), which won 5 seats, to form a government, and Morkel remained Premier. In 2000 the DP and the NNP formalised their coalition by forming the Democratic Alliance (DA).


title: Western Cape

text: In 2001, however, the NNP broke with the DA over the removal of Peter Marais from office as Mayor of Cape Town by DA leader Tony Leon. The NNP instead went into coalition with the ANC; Gerald Morkel, who was opposed to the split, resigned as Premier and was replaced by Peter Marais. In 2002 Marais resigned as Premier due to a sexual harassment scandal, and was replaced by NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk. During the 2003 floor-crossing period four members of the provincial parliament crossed to the ANC, giving it an absolute majority of 22 seats in the 42-seat house. However, the ANC remained in coalition with the NNP and van Schalkwyk remained as Premier.


title: Western Cape

text: In the 2004 election, there was again no absolute winner in the provincial parliament; this time the ANC won 19 seats, the DA won 12, and the NNP won 5. The ANC-NNP coalition continued in power, but van Schalkwyk took up a ministerial post in the national cabinet and was replaced as Premier by the ANC's Ebrahim Rasool. The NNP was finally dissolved after the 2005 floor-crossing period and its members joined the ANC, again giving that party an absolute majority of 24 seats. In the 2007 floor-crossing period the ANC gained a further three members of the provincial parliament. In 2008 Rasool resigned as Premier due to internal party politics, and was replaced by Lynne Brown.


title: Western Cape

text: The 2009 election marked a significant change in Western Cape politics, as the Democratic Alliance won 51% of the votes and an absolute majority of 22 seats in the provincial parliament, while the ANC won 14 seats with 31% of the vote. The DA leader Helen Zille was elected Premier. In 2010 the Independent Democrats, which had won 3 seats with 5% of the vote, merged with the DA. In the 2014 election the DA won 59% of the votes and an absolute majority of 26 seats in the provincial parliament, while the ANC won 14 seats with 32% of the vote. In 2018 King Khoebaha Cornelius III Declared the independence of the "Sovereign State of Good Hope".


title: Western Cape

text: In the 2019 election, the DA retained their majority in the province, but with a reduction in support. It had won 24 seats with 55%. Helen Zille was term-limited and the DA premier candidate Alan Winde succeeded her. The ANC also lost support. It had received 12 seats with 28% support, its lowest showing since 1994. Veteran politician Peter Marais returned to the provincial parliament as the sole representative of the Freedom Front Plus. Patricia de Lille formed another party, Good, and it achieved a seat.


title: Western Cape

text: Since the late 2000s there has been growing support for Western Cape, or Greater Cape, independence from South Africa. Political parties such as the Cape Independence Party and organisations such as the Cape Independence Advocacy Group and CapeXit, wish to bring forth the constitutional and peaceful secession of the Cape. The Freedom Front Plus and Cape Coloured Congress have also stated that they support Cape independence.


title: Western Cape

text: There is substantial support for the idea with CapeXit garnering over 800,000 signed mandates in May 2021. A poll conducted in 2020 indicated that 36% of the Western Cape's population would support independence, while 47% would support a referendum on the issue. In 2021, a new poll indicated that 58% of the population would now support a referendum on independence, and 46% would support outright independence.


title: Western Cape

text: The provincial government is established under the Constitution of the Western Cape, which was adopted in 1998. The people of the province elect the 42-member Western Cape Provincial Parliament every five years by a system of party-list proportional representation. The fifth provincial parliament was elected in the election of 8 May 2019; 24 seats are held by the Democratic Alliance, 12 by the African National Congress, 2 by the Economic Freedom Fighters, and 1 each by Good, the African Christian Democratic Party, Al Jama-ah, and the Freedom Front Plus. The provincial parliament is responsible for legislating within its responsibilities as set out by the national constitution; these responsibilities include agriculture, education, environment, health services, housing, language policies, tourism, trade, and welfare.


title: Western Cape

text: The provincial parliament also elects the Premier of the Western Cape to lead the provincial executive. Since 2019 the Premiership has been held by Alan Winde, former Provincial Minister of Community Safety. The Premier appoints ten members of the provincial legislature to serve as a cabinet of ministers, overseeing the departments of the provincial government. These departments are Agriculture, Community Safety, Cultural Affairs and Sport, Economic Development and Tourism, Education, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning, Health, Human Settlements, Local Government, Social Development, Transport and Public Works, and the Provincial Treasury.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape Province is divided into one metropolitan municipality and five district municipalities. The district municipalities are in turn divided into 24 local municipalities.


title: Western Cape

text: In the following interactive map, the district and metropolitan municipalities are labelled in capital letters and shaded in various different colours.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape's total GDP for 2008 was R268bn, 14% of the country's total GDP, and R97,664 per capita. Provincially, it is the third highest contributor to the country's GDP behind Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. It also has one of the fastest growing economies in the country, growing at 4% in 2008. At 19.3% the province has a lower unemployment rate than the national average standing at 20% in 2018. The Western Cape's Human Development Index is the highest in South Africa at 0.741 compared to the South African average of 0.705 in 2018.


title: Western Cape

text: The biggest sector in the Western Cape's economy is the financial, business services and real estate sectors contributing approximately R77 billion in 2008. Manufacturing was the second largest contributor valued at R43.7 billion in 2008 with the agricultural sector being the fastest growing at 10.6% in the same year. High-tech industries, international call centres, fashion design, advertising and TV production are niche industries rapidly gaining in importance.


title: Western Cape

text: 95% of wine produced in South Africa is produced in the Western Cape. South Africa is the 7th largest wine producing region in the world.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape has an excellent network of highways comparable with any first-world country. The primary highways are the N1 (from Cape Town to Three Sisters, continuing outside the province towards Bloemfontein and Johannesburg), N2 (from Cape Town to Bloukrans River, towards Port Elizabeth), N7 (from Cape Town to Bitterfontein, continuing towards Springbok and Namibia) and N12 (from George to Three Sisters, continuing towards Kimberley and Johannesburg). Other routes are the "R" roads which connect the smaller towns. All major roads are tarred with major rural gravel roads well maintained. Limited access motorways are limited to the Cape Metropolitan Area, Winelands and Garden Route, however due to the low population density of the remainder of the province, the highways remain efficient and high-speed, except during peak holiday travel seasons, when travel can be slow-going in places due to heavy traffic.


title: Western Cape

text: The 2011 Census recorded the population of the Western Cape as 5,822,734 people living in 1,634,000 households. As the province covers an area of , the population density was and the household density .


title: Western Cape

text: The age distribution of the province was as follows: 25.1% were under the age of 15, 18.3% from 15 to 24, 32.7% from 25 to 44, 18.0% from 45 to 64, and 5.9% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 28 years. For every 100 women there are 96 men.


title: Western Cape

text: 49% of the people of the Western Cape described themselves as "Coloured", while 33% described themselves as "Black African", 17% as "White", and 1% as "Indian or Asian". Afrikaans is the plurality language, spoken as the first language of 50% of the province's population. IsiXhosa is the first language of 25% of the population, while English is the first language of 20%.


title: Western Cape

text: Roughly 16% (894,289 people) of the Western Cape's population in 2011 were born in the Eastern Cape, 3% (167,524) in Gauteng and 1% (61,945) in KwaZulu-Natal. People born outside of South Africa amounted to 4% of the province's population or 260,952 people. Between 2001 and 2007 the Western Cape received 41% of all internal migrants within South Africa with a large majority of these new Western Cape residents coming from the former Transkei region of the Eastern Cape; who were drawn by better economic prospects and higher standards of living.


title: Western Cape

text: 90% of households in the province have a flush toilet and 90% have refuse removed by the local council at least once a week. 75% of households have piped tap water inside the dwelling, while a further 13% have piped water on their property; 11% receive piped water at a community tap, while 1% have no access to piped water. One in seven people live in an informal dwelling. 86.9% of households use electricity for cooking, and 93% use it for lighting. 89% of households have a cellphone and 31% have a landline telephone, while 86% own a television, 81% own a refrigerator, and 34% own a computer. 44% of households have access to the Internet.


title: Western Cape

text: The average annual household income was R143,460, the second-highest in the country after Gauteng. , 69% of the population aged 15–64 are economically active, and of these 25% are unemployed. Overall, 52% of the working-age population are employed. Around 2 million people in the Western Cape labour market (those aged 16 to 64) are employed, 1.3 million are not economically active, 552,733 are unemployed with an additional 122,753 who are discouraged work seekers who want to work but have given up looking for it.


title: Western Cape

text: 2.7% of residents aged 20 and over have received no schooling, 10.7% have had only some primary, 5.6% have completed primary school but gone no further, 38% have had some secondary education without finishing Grade 12, 28% have finished Grade 12 but gone no further, and 14% have higher education beyond the secondary level. Overall, 43% of residents have completed high school.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape province has the most highly educated residents with a very skilled workforce in comparison to any other African region. The high school graduation rate is consistently around 80%, higher than any other province. The proportion of adults with a degree or higher was 4.8% (2005), the highest in the country.


title: Western Cape

text: Types of cuisine originating from the Western Cape include Dutch and Malay cuisines. Other types of South African cuisine are also found and commonly enjoyed in the province. Over 50% of all cheese in South Africa is produced in the Western Cape. Four of the top ten entries in Trip Advisor's Best Fine Dining Restaurants – Africa list for 2021 are in the Western Cape.


title: Western Cape

text: The Western Cape is known for its wine production and vineyards. The winelands are divided into six main regions: Boberg, Breede River Valley, Cape South Coast, Coastal Region, Klein Karoo and Olifants River. Each has unique climate, topography and fertile soil. Distilled wine or brandy is produced in the Cape Winelands, Overberg, and Garden Route districts of the province. Brandy from these regions is regarded as amongst the best in the world due to the high, legally-enforced distilling standards in the region, technically making it equivalent to Cognac.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: Eagles of Death Metal is an American rock band from Palm Desert, California, formed in 1998. Founded by Jesse Hughes (vocals, guitar) and Josh Homme (drums), the band also includes a wide range of other musicians who perform both on the band's studio albums and at live shows. Hughes and Homme are the only permanent members of the band, with Homme rarely performing at live shows due to commitment to his other band, Queens of the Stone Age. The band's current touring line-up includes Hughes alongside Josh Jove (guitar), Eden Galindo (guitar), Jennie Vee (bass) and Jorma Vik (drums).


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: Despite their name, Eagles of Death Metal are not a death metal band, and the name is intended to be humorous. In a 2003 interview, Homme described the sound of the band as a combination of "bluegrass slide guitar mixed with stripper drum beats and Canned Heat vocals." Hughes is known for his enthusiastic interaction with audiences at live performances.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: In a video interview taken at a Converse Music-sponsored event at the Soho Revue Bar in London, Hughes states that he and Homme were in a bar watching a man dance to the song "Wind of Change" by the Scorpions. When asked what he was doing, the man yelled, "This is death metal, dude!", to which Homme replied, "No, it's not. This is like the Eagles of death metal." An alternative story concerning the origin of the band name claims that the name originated during an exchange in which a friend of Homme was attempting to convert Hughes to the death metal genre. When the friend played a song by the Polish band Vader and made a claim that the song was within the death metal genre, Homme then referred to Vader as "the Eagles of death metal". After hearing this phrase, Hughes wondered what a cross between the Eagles and a death metal band would sound like.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: Eagles of Death Metal formed in Palm Desert, California, in 1998 and first appeared on Josh Homme's The Desert Sessions "Volumes 3 & 4", released that year. Over the next few years, Homme became distracted from the band due to the success of Queens of the Stone Age. However, in an October 2008 interview, he reaffirmed his commitment to the band saying, "This isn't a side project for me. I'm in two bands. I have musical schizophrenia, and this is one of those personalities. In brief they are amazing."


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: The band released their debut album, "Peace, Love, Death Metal", in March 2004. Several songs from the album were used in American television commercials including those for Ask.com, Comcast, Payless ShoeSource, Nissan Motors, Budweiser, Pontiac Motors and Wendy's, as well as in the trailer for the film "Thank You for Smoking" and for a promotional disc for the film "Grindhouse," which was available at Hot Topic stores prior to the film's release. The first song on the album, "I Only Want You", was also used on the soundtrack for the PS2 game "Gran Turismo 4", as well as by Microsoft in advertising for the launch of Windows 8. Globe Shoes, a manufacturer of skateboard shoes, has featured the song in the montage section of episode 1 in their new series of skate films entitled, "United By Fate". "Miss Alissa" was featured on Nike's FIFA World Cup 2014 campaign video. The video is entitled "Winner Stays" and featured footballers Cristiano Ronaldo, Andrea Pirlo, Neymar, Tim Howard and many others.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: Eagles of Death Metal returned on April 11, 2006, with their second effort, "Death by Sexy". During the first half of 2006, they toured in support of The Strokes and headlined their own U.S. tour with openers The Giraffes, followed by dates opening for Peaches as well as performing with Joan Jett. In the fall of 2006, the band had an opening support slot with Guns N' Roses, but this lasted for only one show. Axl Rose referred to the band as "Pigeons of Shit Metal" from the stage that night, which resulted in Eagles of Death Metal using the phrase on a T-shirt.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: The track "Chase the Devil" from the album was included in the soundtrack for "Tony Hawk's Project 8". Not only that, the track "Don't Speak (I Came to Make a Bang!)" was part of the soundtrack for Electronic Arts' "". "Cherry Cola" was used in a Microsoft Zune commercial, and "Don't Speak" was featured in "Epic Movie", where the band is seen playing it live; in addition, the song was used in a Guy Ritchie-directed Nike ad ahead of UEFA Euro 2008. The song "I Want You So Hard" was also featured on the HBO series "True Blood" during the credit sequence of episode 8 in season 1. The track "I Got A Feeling (Just Nineteen)" was featured in the TV show "Criminal Minds" in the season 2 episode "Sex, Birth, Death". It plays during the part of the episode when the BAU visit Nathan Harris (played by Anton Yelchin) at his home.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: On October 21, 2008, ahead of their third album release, the Eagles of Death Metal performed a live concert at the Hollywood & Highland Virgin Megastore in Los Angeles for the launch of the video game "". The first single from the third album, "Wannabe in L.A.", is also in the game. The song is also featured in the music rhythm game "Guitar Hero 5" and the racing game DiRT 2. "I'm Your Torpedo" and "High Voltage" were also featured in the 2009 Austin set film, "Whip It". Furthermore, "Now I'm A Fool" was used in the 2012 film "Silver Linings Playbook". The track "High Voltage" from "Heart On" was featured in an online campaign for Head & Shoulders in 2010.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: Their third album, titled "Heart On", was released on October 28, 2008 (November 4, 2008 in Canada), and was accompanied by a North American tour. On February 4, 2009, Eagles of Death Metal performed on a live webcast for Fuel.tv as part of their Heart On tour and performed as a warm up act on tour with Arctic Monkeys.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: In 2010, touring bassist Brian O'Connor was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo chemotherapy. Josh Homme, along with Dave Grohl and John Paul Jones, announced a concert at the Brixton Academy in London to raise money for O'Connor's treatment. Abby Travis filled in on the bass while O'Connor recovered.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: In September 2011, Hughes released his debut solo album, "Honkey Kong", under the sobriquet Boots Electric.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: On October 19, 2013, Hughes posted a video of studio footage on his Instagram account, specifying that a new Eagles of Death Metal album due next year was in the works. Homme announced that the band would play two headliner shows in the UK, one at the KOKO in London and one at the infamous Garage in Glasgow. Homme later confirmed that the band is playing the second stage at Download. In June 2015, the band announced that their next album, "Zipper Down", would be released on October 2. The first single from the album, titled "Complexity", was made available for streaming on Pitchfork Media's website.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: On November 13, 2015, Eagles of Death Metal were playing a sold-out concert to about 1,500 guests at the Bataclan theatre in Paris. The band had started performing the song "Kiss the Devil" when Islamist terrorists killed about 90 fans. According to reports, the terrorists shot indiscriminately into the crowd, including those seeking cover by lying on the floor, and then detonated explosive vests when the theatre was stormed by special police units. Hughes escaped via the backstage, along with guitarist Eden Galindo and drummer Julian Dorio, while bassist Matt McJunkins, who was on the other side of the stage, ran backstage and sought shelter in a dressing room with some fans. Guitarist Dave Catching retreated to a small bathroom and was later evacuated along with McJunkins by French police. Among those killed in the attack was 36 year old Nick Alexander, who worked at the band's merchandise table during the group's European tour.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: Following the attack, a Facebook campaign was created by Jon Morter with the intention of getting the band's cover of the Duran Duran song "Save a Prayer" to number one on the UK Singles Chart. The campaign was promoted by Duran Duran and headed up by Duran Duran frontman Simon Le Bon, who promised to donate their proceeds from the sale to charity. The song ultimately peaked at number 53 for the chart dated the week after the attack.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: Eagles of Death Metal issued a statement about the attacks on November 18, thanking "the French police, the F.B.I., the U.S. and French State Departments, and especially all those at ground zero with us who helped each other as best they could during this unimaginable ordeal, proving once again that love overshadows evil." On November 25, "Vice" posted an interview with the band members, including Homme, about the attacks and their aftermath. During the interview, a shaken Hughes told "Vice" founder Shane Smith that the band plans to finish their European tour in memory of those who died at their concert. Homme encouraged musicians of any genre to cover the band's song "I Love You All the Time", and all of the subsequent proceeds due to the band would be donated to his charity Sweet Stuff Foundation, which would then be donated to the victims of the attack.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: The song was subsequently covered by several artists, including My Morning Jacket, Dean Ween Group, Savages, Matt Cameron, Alain Johannes, Petra Haden, Florence and the Machine, Kings of Leon, Ed Harcourt, Mini Mansions, Jimmy Eat World, and Imagine Dragons. In December 2015, Pearl Jam issued a single featuring Matt Cameron's cover of "I Love You All the Time" and their own live rendition of the EODM song "I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)" that they performed live at their November 22 concert in Rio de Janeiro. As with the covers, the proceeds from the single were donated to the Sweet Stuff Foundation.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: On December 7, the band – without Homme – appeared on stage at a U2 concert at the AccorHotels Arena in Paris in their first concert appearance since the attack. The bands performed a cover of Patti Smith's "People Have the Power" together before Eagles of Death Metal performed "I Love You All the Time". In a statement following the performance, Hughes thanked U2 and said that the band would return to Paris in February 2016. The following day, the band revisited the Bataclan to pay their respects to the victims of the attack.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: In December 2015, the band announced the resumption of their European tour, which they had renamed the "Nos Amis Tour" ("Our Friends Tour"). The tour included a date at the Olympia in Paris on February 16. Ticket holders from the November show at the Bataclan were able to attend the Olympia concert for free.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: In an interview with Fox Business Channel in March 2016, Hughes claimed that some members of the Bataclan security staff were complicit in the attack. Hughes subsequently apologized for his comments following condemnation from French officials and the owners of the Bataclan. The band were dropped from the lineup of the Rock en Seine festival for these and other comments. At the reopening of the Bataclan in November 2016, Hughes and another band member were reportedly denied entry by staff due to Hughes' comments. However, according to the band's manager, Hughes never attempted to enter the club, though he was in Paris at the time of the concert.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: A documentary directed by Colin Hanks, son of Tom Hanks, about the band and the aftermath of the Bataclan attack, entitled "", premiered in February 2017 on HBO. The band was announced as a supporting act alongside Russian Circles on Mastodon's Spring 2017 tour in the United States. During the first show of the tour on April 14 in Missoula, Montana, Hughes introduced Jennie Vee as the new bassist for Eagles of Death Metal. On March 28, 2017 Jay Chandrasekhar announced on Vimeo that Eagles of Death Metal was scoring the movie "Super Troopers 2".


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: On April 26, 2017, the Spanish police announced that one of the nine men arrested the previous day in connection with the March 2016 terrorist attacks in Brussels was spotted and questioned outside the band's concert venue in Barcelona on September 10, 2016. According to the police source, he was subsequently put under surveillance, as were his entourage, which eventually led to the arrest of the nine men on April 25, 2017, in and around Barcelona.


title: Eagles of Death Metal

text: On December 31, 2018, the band played a New Year's Eve Show at The Catalyst, a nightclub in Santa Cruz, California. During the set the band played "Kiss the Devil" for the first time in three years. Singer Jesse Hughes announced to the crowd before playing the song that the band "was taking back a song taken from them", and after singing the song expressed his appreciation to the crowd for being a part of reclaiming his song.