alt Hacker NewsProbably they mean to convey significant digits, though I feel it's safe to assume people would read "1300" as an approximation, not pointing to the year 726. I found it odd too.
Edit: "The newly-discovered manuscript in the National Central Library of Rome of Caedmon’s Hymn dates from between the years 800 and 830, making it the third oldest surviving text of the poem." So... 1.2k then?
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dotancohen • today at 8:29 AM
Another commentator mentions that the poem may have been published 1200 years ago, but authored much earlier.
The manuscript is ~1200 years old, but the poem was composed earlier. The Venerable Bede, who died in 735, includes it and the story of its composition in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People: according to that story, it was composed while Saint Hilda was abbess of Whitby, c.660-680.