Historians accept that the Coptic Orthodox Christian calendar began on 29 August AD284, commemorating the cruel Christian persecution of Emperor Diocletian. AD284 corresponds to the Coptic1 year.
Another name for the Coptic calendar is “The calendar of martyrs”. Years of the Coptic time are designated A.M., the abbreviation for “Anno Martyrum”, Year of the Martyrs. (Coptic1 = A.M.1)
Emperor Diocletian ascended the throne on 20 November 284, the first full year of his reign being AD285.
Because of the difference in the starting dates of the Julian and Coptic years:
“The Coptic year is calculated by subtracting 283 (before Julian New Year) or 284 (after) from the Julian calendar year.” So, during 2017, we can write Coptic 1734 and 1733, depending on which month we consider. (e.g., 2017-283 = 1774)
Historians have entirely ignored the fact that, according to Coptic tradition, the Coptic Church was founded by Saint Mark the Evangelist and martyr.
By the reign of Diocletian, the Coptic Church was already strong, had churches, bishoprics, and at least 20% of Egyptians were Coptic Christians!
Let us assume the legend that Saint Mark founded the Coptic Church may be true.
Why would the Copts start a new time reckoning in AD284? Why was the Coptic time reckoning calculated from Diocletian's first year? How did the year Coptic1 alias A.M.1 come to be more than two centuries away from the time of Jesus?
The foundation of the Coptic Church must have been centuries earlier, much closer to the time of Jesus Christ, because St. Mark lived at the time of Jesus, although he was somewhat younger.
However, as far as I know, there is no historical evidence or legend for the restart of the Coptic calendar in AD284. Therefore, the founding of the Coptic Church and the start of the Coptic calendar may have occurred indeed in AD284.
That is why the opposite assumption might be considered, too. Jesus’ life could have happened much later than accepted today, much closer to the foundation of the Coptic Church, too!
It is known that Emperor Diocletian was a close relative and contemporary of Pope Caius. It is also known that after coming to power, Diocletian explicitly supported Christians and the Christian religion, then (allegedly) turned against them 19 years later. In contrast, years earlier, he had persecuted Christianity’s main rival religion, Manichaeism.
In AD284, Diocletian was not yet persecuting Christians. The Copts could not have founded their church in AD284 to commemorate Diocletian’s martyrs since Diocletian’s persecution of Christians began only 19 years later, in AD303. The foundation of the Coptic Church could hardly have been based on the title of Erich von Däniken’s “Memories of the Future”.
(I guess that the extent of the persecution of Christians towards the end of Diocletian’s reign has been exaggerated by historiography. These persecutions of Christians can be associated mainly with Galerius and not with Diocletian and were primarily confined to specific areas in Nicomedia (Asia Minor), and Antioch (Anatolia). The persecutions did not or only slightly extended to Egypt and did not virtually affect Coptic Christians.)
Therefore, it seems unlikely, unreasonable, and even more incomprehensible that the “martyrs’ era”, i.e., the Coptic time reckoning (calendar year calculation), would have begun from the first year of Diocletian’s reign.
All this is a striking historical contradiction. This is the “Coptic Paradox” mentioned in the “Introduction” as my first historical guess for 220-year insertion. In my opinion, the resolution of this paradox is the following.
According to his own Gospel, St Mark was still a child when Jesus was crucified, and let us assume he must have been 14 years old.
In this case, the year of Mark’s birth, according to our calculations, is 242CE because we calculated the year of Jesus’ crucifixion as 256CE. So, Mark would have been about 42 years old at the foundation of the Coptic Church in AD284, and it is a realistic age for the founder of a Church.
Mark speaks (in his Gospel) in past tense about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (placed now in AD70). So, he was martyred in Alexandria somewhat later, most likely in AD72, at about 50. This year corresponds to AD292, so he survived the church’s foundation by eight years.
(If the year of Mark’s birth or death differed by a few years from the one we have now calculated, this would not affect the rest of our calculations.)
At the heart of our calculation is the observation that the Coptic Church, the Church of the Martyrs, does not commemorate the martyrs of Diocletian. As we know today, St. Peter and probably St. Paul were executed by the mad Emperor Nero in Rome in the summer of AD64. AD64 + 220 = AD284. Consequently, Nero's massacre took place 220 years later, in 284CE. So, the Coptic Church remembers the martyrs of Emperor Nero! And Diocletian became emperor in 504CE, 220 years later than AD284.
By the time of Nero’s massacre, St. Mark, on a personal mission from St. Peter, had already sailed from Rome to Alexandria, where, on news of Nero’s massacres, he had founded the local Coptic church.
Saint Mark dedicated his Coptic Church first of all, to the memory of Saint Peter.
The Coptic Church had wholly separated from the Roman Church as early as AD451, and they did not cooperate for centuries. (In the current hypothesis, this separation occurred 220 years later, 671CE). Egypt had already come under Arab/Islamic rule in the first half of the 7th century. Therefore, if our time reckoning was subsequently messed up, it certainly did not affect the Coptic time reckoning and calendar!
It can be said that the Coptic time reckoning is independent of the AD time reckoning and is not confused. The Coptic Church, founded by St Mark, began in AD 284. The Coptic1 (A.M.1) is a fixed reference year in history.
The RECOUNTING of TIME 