On the Year and Day of the Lord's Passion

he frequently held a market, narrates that Peregrinus threw himself onto the funeral pyre at about midnight, just as the moon was rising. According to Eusebius, the death of Peregrinus occurred in Olympiad 256, cycle xiv. Therefore, on the 17th of July, the moon was in its 20th or 21st day, and for that reason, it was rising around midnight. But the Olympian games were accustomed to being celebrated on the 15th day of the first month. And so, since in that century Hecatombaeon was the same as July, the games were celebrated on the 15th of July, and on the third day after the games finished, the moon was in its 20th day. Lo, the critical acumen of the man! It had to be demonstrated that the Attic Hecatombaeon was fixed to the Kalends of July. For this, he produces the testimony of Lucian, which is entirely irrelevant to the matter. For if anything is concluded from it regarding the new moon of the month, it refers to the year and month of the Eleans, not the Athenians. For the events described by Lucian took place in Elis, not in Athens. Furthermore, how carelessly he handled that very place in Lucian! For he does not write that the moon rose around midnight, but that that friend of his, to whom he had turned aside, set out for that spectacle around midnight: "Having risen around midnight, he went straight to Arpinis; where the pyre was, a distance of twenty stades from Olympia along the hippodrome." He immediately adds: "And since the moon had risen," etc., he proceeds. Therefore, it could have happened that, with two or three hours having already elapsed since midnight, the moon began to appear. But neither on the third nor on the second day, rather than the 15th or 16th, should that event have occurred. For Lucian writes that when the Olympic games were already finished, Peregrinus, procrastinating day by day, finally decided on a night to demonstrate the burning: "And he, always putting it off, had finally announced the night to show the burning." To these matters, who taught Scaliger that those Olympic games were customarily celebrated on the 15th day of the Julian month, that is, July—and not by the lunar month? Who would not see how vain and ^A incongruous these things are? Certainly, Calvisius believes that that 236th Olympiad took place in August, not July. Yet he himself is quite misled in his book, while writing that Peregrinus became a Christian in the year of Christ 73, Olympiad 213. In which he errs by almost a hundred years: for the death of Peregrinus falls in Olympiad 236, the year of Christ 165; moreover, he lived in the time of Herodes Atticus under M. Aurelius Antoninus, as is gathered from Philostratus, *Life of the Sophists*, book II, in the life of Herodes; and likewise from Lucian in his *Life* of him.

Col. 932 C. *Against the Jews, Maresouan.* Epiphanius assigns the baptism of Christ to that year which had Silvanus and Nerva as consuls, which is Julian year 73, in the month of November, when He had completed 29 years and 10 months. The mean new moon in this year falls on November 6, some hours after the beginning of the night, cycle x. Therefore, if the 6th day of November is the 7th day of the Jewish Marchesvan, the Jewish New Moon began on November 11, and the new moon preceded by five full days. For the Jewish new moon fell on the 7th of November, the first day of the week. But I do not think the lunar ^B *proegesis* was so greatly misrepresented by them. And perhaps the error is such that, instead of 'seventh', we should read 'third' or 'second', or certainly 'fourth', so that the slip of the New Moon might be tolerable. Indeed, there is another error in the naming of the month. For it ought to be not Marchesvan but Chasleu, if indeed that was a lunar month. Which, however, cannot be the case if this passage of Epiphanius is intact and the new moon took place on the sixth of the Jewish month. What if either the Jews at that time, or Epiphanius himself, attributed the names of the Jewish months to the Julian months? And then October was Tisri, and November ^C was Marchesvan. But we have nothing regarding this matter beyond conjecture.

Ibid. D. *For the first year.* That in the prior year of the proclamation no one opposed Christ is neither true, nor can it be defended by the opinion of Epiphanius or of all those who count only three Passovers: as will be demonstrated at no. 28, where the things said here are to be examined more diligently.

CONCERNING THE YEAR AND DAY OF THE LORD’S PASSION. SECOND DISSERTATION.

Various opinions of the ancients concerning the year of the Passion. Any discussion undertaken about a given subject ought to start from things that are certain and not at all in doubt; which either are true in themselves, or are held to be true and acknowledged among those who are disputing. For this reason, those who strive to find out the true year of the Passion must, first of all, choose those matters of which there is certain faith, and set them in the place of principles or axioms. And there are some things about which it would seem ^D duty-bound for a Christian not to doubt at all: such as these are: that He suffered under Tiberius Caesar and the procurator Pontius Pilate; then indeed on the Preparation of the Sabbath, or the sixth day; or if there is anything else which the authority of the sacred books confirms. If learned men had been content with these, and had not bound us to their own opinions and conjectures, as if to decrees of Scripture or the Church, they would have provided much better for the truth and for posterity. But there is a race of men who too timidly and almost servilely cherish those things which, having been received by the consensus of the mob and having obtained authority some centuries ago, are not too ancient and have not been diligently examined; and they try to wring belief and assent to them from the unwilling, and to foist them upon others as dogmas of the Church. Of which sort is this indeed.

^A Well, but at the very place where we have fallen into times that are contradictory and in conflict with themselves—when a great lust for novelty has been injected into men, so that this disease of public madness might not erupt to the detriment of religion and faith—they have preferred to err on the side of caution. But truly, just as great regard must be had for antiquity by a pious and Catholic man—yet in those things which have been established by the Church, one must not hesitate even in the slightest—so also must one take great care that those things which have emerged only a few centuries ago are not considered ancient and sacrosanct; and that that beautiful name of the consensus of the Church and the public is not transferred to the support of falsehood. We observe that this license of ascribing ecclesiastical authority has been rife both in other matters, where it is practiced with impunity, and in this question which we are treating, that of our Lord’s Nativity and Passion. In this, many things are accustomed to be bandied about as if drawn from the common faith of the Church which are either false, or very similar to falsehoods.

Let us not seek examples from afar; that decree of the most holy and learned man, Bede, will occur to us, which we deferred to this place. Therefore, in chapter 40 of his book *De temporum ratione*, concerning the age and Passion of the Lord, he declares in these words: “For the faith of the Church holds, if I am not mistaken, that the Lord lived in the flesh for a little more or less than thirty-three years until the time of His Passion: because, clearly, He was baptized at thirty years of age, just as the evangelist Luke testifies, and He preached for three and a half years after His baptism.” He then adds: “For the holy and apostolic Roman Church testifies that it holds this faith, and also by the very tablets which it is accustomed to inscribe annually upon its candles, where, recalling the time of the Lord’s Passion to the memory of the people, it notes a number always thirty-three years less than what Dionysius places from His Incarnation. Finally, in the year 701 from His Incarnation according to Dionysius, in the fourteenth indiction, our brothers who were then at Rome reported that they had seen it written on the candles of St. Mary in this way at the Nativity of the Lord, and had transcribed it thence: ‘From the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, there are 568 years,’ etc.” He adds afterwards: “For that the Lord ascended the cross on the fifteenth day of the moon, which was a Friday, and rose from the dead on the first day of the week, that is, on the Lord’s Day, no Catholic is permitted to doubt.” So he says. Two things are here proposed as decrees of faith and of the Church: the first, that Christ the Lord suffered when He had already completed His thirty-third year and was beginning His thirty-fourth: namely, in the thirty-first year of the Dionysian era, because since He was baptized in His thirtieth year, He lived for three and a half years thereafter; whence it must be that He died in the thirty-fourth year. Wherefore from this also another dogma of the Church is born: that Christ celebrated four Passovers, at the last of which He died. The second decree of the Church, about which it is not permitted for any Catholic to doubt, is put thus: that Christ suffered on the fifteenth day of the moon. Best and most learned men are wont to usurp this passage of Bede as a certain most firm bulwark of chronology, and with this weapon especially that former opinion of our Dekerius in his *Annals* is attacked.

^B But he involves himself more clearly when he concludes thus: “Since the Paschal cycle is completed in 532 years, add to these thirty-three, or rather thirty-four, so that you may reach that very year in which the Lord suffered, and they become 566. This, therefore, is the year of the Lord’s Passion and resurrection from the dead: because just as in the first year [according to the cycle], so it accords in the 566th year—the thirty-fourth—throughout the entire course of the sun and moon.” He determines completely that in the year 566 of the Dionysian era, which is the 567th of the cycle, the same new moons and feast days recurred as were in the 35th year of the cycle, in the 34th year of the era. From which he concludes thus: “And therefore, with the cycles of the blessed Dionysius opened, if you find in the year 566 falling from the Incarnation of the Lord, the fourteenth moon on the ninth day before the Kalends of April, a Friday, and the day of the Lord’s Passover on the sixth day before the Kalends of April, the seventeenth moon, give thanks to God, because what you were seeking, just as He himself promised, He has taught you to find.” Who would suspect that these things were said by Bede through irony? Which Bridefertus of Ramsey noted in his scholia. “He says this ironically,” he says, “since it is found in no way.” But the scholiast himself is ridiculous here. For Bede had no reason for laughing when he wrote those things; rather, as is plain from that whole entire chapter, he signified what he himself felt quite openly and clearly. Yet those things are such that it would have been very much to Bede’s own interest for them to have been spoken ironically. For they are most absurd. For in the 34th year of Christ, with the cycle of the sun 15, of the moon 16, the Dominical letter C, the Nicene new moon (which, as I have often warned, they once even accommodated to the time of Christ) happened on March 8th; the fourteenth moon, on the 12th day before the Kalends of April, or March 21st; the Passover on the fifth day before the Kalends of April, or March 28th, as appears from the cycles of Dionysius and Bede. The same characters correspond to the year 566. Therefore, in those years, the fourteenth moon does not fall on the 13th day before the Kalends of April, a Friday, ^C nor the Passover on the sixth day before the Kalends—which, for it to happen, the cycle must be the 13th of the moon, 21st of the sun, that is, the 12th of the Christian era. Wherefore, in order for the things that are handed down by Bede to be true, it must be that Christ died not in the 34th year of His age, but in the 12th. But however the days of March ascribed by Bede may stand, if Christ suffered in that year, the 34th, it cannot have happened on the fifteenth day of the moon. For the Nicene fourteenth moon, which was the twelfth in the time of Christ, corresponds to March 21st, a Tuesday. Whence the Lord must have suffered on March 21st, a Tuesday. ^D I have discovered no less disruption of cycles and years in Victorius of Aquitaine. His *Fasti* are in the possession of the Reverend Father Sirmond, with the *Preface*, from which Bede cites some things and refutes them in his book *De temporum ratione*, ch. 49. In that *Preface*, therefore, Victorius

(for so he is named in that most ancient codex, and also Victor, not Victorinus) ^A acting concerning the year of the Lord’s Passion, says: "Our Lord Jesus Christ is shown to have suffered when 5228 years had passed from the creation of the world, by the same account of the Chronicles" (he is speaking of the Chronicles of Eusebius, Jerome, and Prosper). That this occurred at the beginning of the 28th year cannot be doubted. Since it is taught that on the 8th of the Kalends of April, in the first month, on the 14th day of the moon on the preceding evening, just as it was made on the fourth day from the beginning of creation, it began; and with leap years added to the sum of 5228 years, in the following 8th year, the 20th year, it teaches that it was anticipated by tradition on the 5th feria. But on the first day of Unleavened Bread, our Lord Jesus Christ, dining with his disciples after he had revealed the sacraments of his body and blood, proceeded to the Mount of Olives, just as the holy Gospels testify, ^B and there was detained by the Jews, being betrayed by a disciple. Next, on the following 6th feria, that is, on the 6th of the Kalends of April, he was crucified and buried. On the third day, that is, the 5th of the Kalends of April, he rose from the dead on the Lord’s day. Thus far Victorinus. He asserts that Christ suffered on March 26, on the 6th feria, and rose again on March 28. Thus the Sunday letter was C, which character corresponds to the 34th year of the Dionysian era, with a solar cycle of 15. But since he says the moon of March 25, on which day he celebrated the Paschal feast, was the 14th day of the moon; this corresponds only to the Nicene cycle, or the 13th, if he called the 14th day the 15th. The 12th cycle corresponds to the Dionysian year 31. Wherefore it agrees in the year of the lunar cycle with Epiphanius and the ancients; in the solar cycle with Bede and the rest. In the expanded Fasti, everything is more perturbed. There he says the Lord was crucified under the two Gemini as consuls; who were succeeded by Rufus and Rubellius, in the year 32 after the Birth, in which year the Passover fell on the 3rd of the Ides of April, moon 20. For which reason the cycle will be lunar 1, Sunday letter C, which also corresponds to the 34th Dionysian year. But the depravation of the nineteen-year cycle is most foul.

Now, as it pertains to the passage of Bede, in which he writes that the 668th year from the Passion of the Lord was noted in the Dionysian year 701, in the 14th indiction; it is believed that in the *Annales*, through the fault of the scribes, 701 crept in for 702; which I marvel at greatly. For the year 702 corresponds not to the 14th indiction, but to the 15th, which began from the preceding September. Whence it is much more probable that the Nativity, which the monks read of in the candles, was December 25 of the Dionysian year 700, from which day the years of Christ were once wont to be numbered. But in this way the years of the Passion are to be begun from the preceding Nativity, that is, almost three months before the actual day of the Passion; for if you subtract thirty-three total years from 700, there will remain 667 complete. Therefore the year 701 beginning is likewise 668 beginning, which starts from the seven-hundredth Dionysian Nativity in the 14th indiction. But if it were to begin from the Nativity of the very year 701, there would not be the 14th indiction, but the 15th. And indeed it may be that the Roman Church in those times judged that Christ suffered in the 33rd year of his age. For thus the seven-hundredth year closing will fall into the year of the Passion 668; if, indeed, 33, being the first ^D of the Passion, might be held—which is perhaps truer. But there is more to be thought about concerning that passage of Bede. For if we wish to start the year from the Nativity, that which, unless the words be corrupt, seems necessary, since the Dionysian epoch does not fit very well, which was accustomed to begin from the month of March. Yet the year 701 has indiction 15 at the Nativity. Therefore, either the Roman indictions already then began from January and ended on the last day of December; or for 701 under Bede 700 is to be read, as the scholiast seems to have read; or finally, indiction 15 is to be substituted for 14. But if Bede wrote the year 700, then indeed the Lord suffered in the 33rd year from the Incarnation, entering his 33rd year. Paulus Forosempron. in book 4 of *Paulina* put the year 701 in this place of Bede; but he does not conclude from 669 of the Passion that Christ, according to their opinion, suffered in the 31st year of his age, with three months. For, he says, the years from the Passion and the Incarnation begin on the same day; that is, from the 8th of the Kalends of April. Therefore it is necessary according to Bede that that whole year, which was 701 from the Incarnation, be 669 from the Passion. Now subtract 669 years from 701, there will remain 32 years from the Incarnation to the Passion, with nine months deducted; Christ suffered in his 31st year with three months. Thus he. But the indiction opposes this, unless the passage is otherwise amended. From all of these, that pronouncement of Bede is most strongly refuted, by which he thinks, following the faith of the Church, that Christ died in the year 54, and had lived 33 years and 3 months. Paulus Middelburg asserts that no one has, as he says, found this opinion to fit; and that Bede even disagrees with himself, who in the *Chronicon*, or the book *De sex ætatibus*, assigns to Augustus 56 years and 6 months, and then writes that Christ came into this world in his 40th year, in the year of the city 752, in the third year of the 194th Olympiad, but suffered in the 18th year of Tiberius. From which it follows that he lived under Augustus 14 years and 9 months; under Tiberius 17 years and 6 months. In total, 32 years and 3 months are gathered from the Incarnation; 31 years and 3 months from the Nativity. Wherefore the elder Middelburgensis thinks that 33 years—not yet completed—were attributed to Christ in the flesh; but not in the sense of Bede, who calculates these years after the womb from the Nativity, but so that they are numbered from the Incarnation itself. For concerning the fact that those who support that opinion with Bede claim it rests upon the authority of the Church: I would wish them to produce a decree of some council, that is, the common voice of the Church, or at least the constant consensus of the ancient Fathers in maintaining it, which they will never achieve at all. For we cannot be ignorant how greatly the Fathers themselves differ, both on the year of the Passion and on the very day. Irenaeus, almost contemporary with the apostles, asserts that the Savior suffered between his fortieth and fiftieth year of age; and he confirms that he learned this both from the Gospel and from the disciples of John, which they had received from the Master. Which passage of Irenaeus is not correctly [treated in the Annalibus]

understood, as I see. For they deny completely that this was written by Irenaeus, surely that it was inserted by another hand, and they bring as the cause of this conjecture that in the same chapter he professes the contrary a little before: that Christ was baptized when he was nearly 30 years old, and subsequently passed through three Passovers, in the third of which he suffered. Therefore, he thinks that what is subjoined is a mere imposture.

But this conjecture can be nothing more alien to the mind and opinion of Irenaeus. For it is so far from the case that these things are not Irenaeus's own, that his argument could in no way have proceeded otherwise than if he thought and wrote in that way. He argues in that place against the Gnostics, those patrons of the number thirty and of the Pleroma, who used to say that Christ was baptized at the beginning of his 30th year, and suffered in the same year, in the twelfth month. He refutes these from the Gospel of John, in which three Passovers are distinctly numbered. He did not, therefore, fulfill his preaching in one year. Nor did Irenaeus bring forward those three Passovers in such a way that he did not believe Christ to have lived through more; but because those things which are read in John are clear and express, he demonstrates most powerfully from them that he preached at least up to the third year, and not a single year only: although he himself wishes to imply that far more passed by after the baptism. Which those arguments that he uses against the Gnostics clearly prove. For he maintains that Christ taught at that age at which he could deservedly be called a Master, that is, one perfect and manly; which he extends from the age of 40 to 50 years: in which interval he thinks the Lord preached, and finally suffered; and in the following chapter he shows this from those words of the Jews: *Thou art not yet fifty years old*. Wherefore, although he gathers from Luke that Christ was baptized by John at the beginning of his 30th year, yet Irenaeus does not feel that he immediately proceeded to teaching. Otherwise, he cannot be consistent with himself. Tertullian, *Against the Jews*, ch. 8, thinks Christ suffered in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, although Jerome on chapter 9 of Daniel assigns 33 years, not 30, to Christ according to Tertullian's opinion. Eusebius in his *Chronicle*, when he rejects Christ's birthday to the 42nd year of Augustus, 2015 from Abraham, but his Passion to the 20th of Tiberius, 2047 from Abraham, settles that he lived 31 years and several months after his birth; provided that he places the birth itself in December; but if, by the decree of the Egyptians, whom Epiphanius follows, he predefines the 6th of January for Christ's Nativity, he will impute one more, that is, 32 years with three months, to him after he was born. It would be long to enumerate the others who claim 31, or 32, or at most 33. But I think there was no one before Bede who assigned 34. Even he does not conclude that he lived 34 years, but at most 30 years with three months; for from that number, the first of his life and age must be subtracted, which he spent in the Virgin's womb, as we have often admonished. For which reason I am the more accustomed to wonder that some have persuaded themselves—and indeed the faith of the whole Church—that Christ had reached the 34th year of his age. I grant not even one from the entire memory of antiquity who either thought so, or, if he seemed to have cast it out in word only, as not to have counted that year in which he was gestated in his mother's womb among those years. So far, therefore, is this opinion of the 34th year of age from being common, that it was utterly unheard of to all antiquity, and only a few centuries ago it began to obtain, in the very sense and interpretation in which it is commonly handed down.

The opinion of certain chronologers is weighed, who suspected that 22 years were missing from the Dionysian era.

Just as regarding the year of the Passion, so also for the day and month, certain things were established as it were by common belief, but this in particular: that Christ suffered on the 15th of the moon during the Passover itself, or the first day of Unleavened Bread; and indeed in the month of March. Since these two things had settled into the minds of many, it happened, as was natural, that infinite dissensions of opinion were born concerning the time of the Passion. Among which, to be wondered at, is that ridiculous one which we previously reported from Sigebert, Marianus, and others. Since they were most firmly persuaded that Christ suffered on the 25th of March on a Friday, that is, the 7th day before the Calends of April, and rose again on the 6th day before the Calends of April, the 26th of March, when they could extract no certain method in the Dionysian cycle and the common era, they were eventually reduced by the very difficulty of the question to asserting that the Lord suffered in the 12th year of the Christian era, believing that Dionysius had erred by 34—or rather 22—years, as he had established as the 12th year that which he ought to have counted as the 34th. For those things which we said match the 12th year; so that Friday falls on the 25th of March, by the 21st solar cycle, letter CB, 13th of the moon. See what we produced from Marianus and Sigebert in the previous Dissertation. Paulus Forosemproniensis narrates in the 10th book of the 2nd part of his *Paulina* that that same conjecture and opinion about a 22-year error was divinely revealed to him. For since he did not doubt in the least that Christ had carried the cross on the 25th of March, a Friday, and did not sufficiently explain the certain year, he narrates that after a long vigil, the Apostle Paul appeared to him and pointed out the error of all chronologers, who had passed over 22 years: so much so that he who is reckoned as 12 in the common era ought to have been held as 34. The same man, however, thinks that Christ suffered not on the 15th of the moon, but on the 14th; because the full moon happened on the 26th of March, Friday, on which day the Jews celebrated the Passover. From which you may gather that it follows from the opinion of Bede, Sigebert, Marianus, and others, that Christ was put on the cross not on the 15th of the moon, but the 14th. Although they thought it was the 15th of the moon, because they transferred the Nicene cycle to the times of Christ and the Passion without any suspicion of the *proegesis* (which they were ignorant of). Paulus, however, as he was skilled in astronomy, used mean motions of the moon and tables for consultation. Furthermore, that two-year and...

^A two-year span, which we have above most strongly refuted, he reverts to it; and he defines that the true Nativity of Christ preceded Dionysius by two years. Wherefore Casaubon, quite imprudently in *Exercit.* 16, ad A. 34, no. 34, defends this Paulinian fiction against Baronius’s oblique castigation; since, apart from the dream of an idle man and a sick old person, and an absurd fantasy, it contains nothing. For, to pass over him who had said that it had been revealed to him—and who had tacitly damned and rejected it—how absurd that fable is can be demonstrated in this way: if a mistake of 22 years has crept into the era, such that he who is called 12 would have to be numbered as 34, it cannot have happened otherwise than that some years were subtracted from the number and the series itself; or certainly that Dionysius moved Christ's Nativity 22 years below the legitimate time: as, for instance, when the year of the Incarnation and Nativity according to the use of Dionysius is 46, it ought to have been 24: to which if you add 34, it will be 57, which is 12 of the Dionysian era, when all those supposed that Christ had suffered.

But in truth both of these are most absurd and far from the truth. For there are very certain markers of time; there are the Fasti books, in which each consulship is diligently noted; there are the years of the Roman emperors, and histories written with the highest degree of faithfulness, in which the trace of such a gap does not even appear in the slightest. It is established that Augustus died in the 14th year of the Christian era, which that memorable lunar eclipse shows. There follow others, two of which, one occurred in the year of Christ 45, under the consuls M. Vinicius and Statilius Corvinus, on the Kalends of August; which Claudius Caesar had also announced by edict, in the fifth year of his reign, as Dio is the author; the other happened under the consuls Vipsanius and Fonteius on the Kalends of May, as Plinius testifies, lib. II, c. 72. That fits the vulgar year 59, April 30, while the fifth year of Nero was passing. If you were to add thereto other eclipses, which occurred partly before and partly after Christ's Nativity, and compare them with the series of Roman consuls, you would understand that not even one year is missing, let alone that 22 solid years could have been ^B omitted. And I cannot grasp the mind and purpose of Sigebert, Marianus, and other chronologers of that sort: who, although they everywhere declaim that the Dionysian era is stained with such a great fault, nevertheless do not depart from it. Thus, Marianus writes that the Savior was born in the year of the City 752, the 41st of Augustus, in the third year of the 194th Olympiad, indiction 4. Where, although the indiction is wrongly written, which ought to have been the third in the 194th Olympiad and 752nd of the City; yet it is connected with the vulgar era by the very institution of Marianus.

It is false, therefore, that 22 years are missing in the Dionysian cycle, since, apart from these things which we have said, there are many others which are established as being implicated and joined with the Lord's birth in evangelical history: such as the times of Augustus, Herod, Pilate, and Tiberius; all of which cannot cohere if such a huge gap had been admitted, and the Nativity of Christ seemed to be moved forward by 21 years; for as for there being nothing to change in the Christian era, but something to be changed in the arrangement of the cycles is what those men judge, it pertains to nothing: for the ratio of the new moons and the established days remain nevertheless, to whichever cycles you accommodate them. So that, for example, in the 12th year of Christ, whether you apply the lunar cycle 13, solar 21, or any other, the new moon falls on March 12, the full moon on the 26th. But in year 33, the new moon is March 19 or 20; the full moon April 11 or 12. Whence, however much they commute the order of the cycles, they will never, however, succeed that, in that year which they prefix to the Lord's Passion, the 15th moon fall on March 25, on a Friday. It is added that even if we concede everything to them, they will nonetheless, which is what they most desire, be no more successful in showing that Christ suffered on the 15th moon. For in the 12th year of the Christian era, the new moon among the Jews, and in the Jerusalem meridian, falls on March 12, on a Saturday. But Christ suffered on a Friday. Therefore, it was the 14th moon, and March 25, not the 15th moon nor the full moon. In which matter Bede is to be rebuked, as I have said ^C several times, who in *De rat. temp.* chap. 45 reports that Christ suffered on the 7th Kalends of April, on the 15th moon, in the 34th year of the Dionysian era. Nor less hallucinated are those who affirm that He suffered in the same year, on the 15th moon, on the 9th Kalends of April, by the faith of the Council of Caesarea; of which it will be treated a little later: for the full moon in the year of Christ 34 entirely occurred on the 10th Kalends.

Wherefore there are two things which fixed a cross for the chronologers of the Middle Ages in that question: first, that they did not doubt that the Jews celebrated the Passover on the 15th moon, and had observed the lunar motions, and indeed the most accurate ones; the second, because they wanted it to have happened in the month of March and on its 25th day, on a Friday. But later chronologers, the same ones who are better prepared by all the aids of the liberal arts, especially the mathematical, when they saw that these things were little consistent, they indeed abandoned that first point concerning the lunar motion; the latter, however, concerning the month and day, they did not follow at all. From which it has come about that in investigating the year of the Passion, they judged that the ratio of the full moon coinciding with a Friday must be taken into account. Paulus Forosemproniensis, in lib. VII, part II, of the 12 years, that is, from 50 to 40 of Christ, set forth the new moons and full moons, as much mean as true. Out of which we shall here transcribe only six, so that the question and the state of the controversy may be submitted to the eyes of the readers; from the 31st year of the era to the 36th; because Christ's passion must be located in one of these years.

^A This is an opinion which we will examine later.

For we must first see what the reckoning of the year was among the Jews in those times. This is something which they did not even think needed inquiring into, for it was most certain to them that the Jews used the mean motions of the moon for the custom of feasts and solemnities, so that the Passover was celebrated on the 14th day of the moon towards evening, nor was it lawful to celebrate it at any other time, as we read in the *Ecclesiastical Annals*, year 34, number 34. However, since from this one source those countless and inextricable controversies and opinions have propagated, we must penetrate to the very stronghold of the question, and that very thing—which with some holds the place ^B of an axiom—must be called into question.

Of the form of the Jewish year which they held in the times of Christ.

A double reckoning of the civil year is recorded in the Hebrew commentaries, both of them lunar, about which Moses Maimonides discourses accurately in the first part of his *Yad*, Treatise on the Sanctification of the Moon, and the Gloss to the same Treatise. The first was in use while the Temple still stood, by which they announced the new moons "from the appearance" (ἀπὸ τῆς φάσεως). This was done in this manner: there was among the Jews a ^C *Beth Din* (בית דין) or Sanhedrin, in whose power it resided to determine the new moons, which they call the *Qebi'ah* (קביעה). Since there were many such *synedria* (συνέδρια) in Palestine, the one at Jerusalem was the principal one, upon which the others depended. Therefore the Gloss on the Treatise *Kiddush*, chapter 1, § 8, *[Hebrew text omitted]* (for they are the pillar of instruction, and the *Qebi'ah* is in their hand, which is not according to this or that, because all *Beth Din* in Jerusalem are... etc.). Nor indeed do we rely on any other than the decision of the sacred council: for this is the pillar of the decision. Yet it is this very Jerusalemite council. Since all the consistories which are in the land of Israel are, so to speak, certain accessories. The Jerusalemite one is the foundation. Wherefore responses were sought primarily at Jerusalem. ^D But when the city was overthrown, as long as the Jews remained in Palestine and maintained a *synedrion* there, all the right resided in it, as long as the wise men of the Gemara existed, as Moses writes in chapter 5, § 3: *[Hebrew text omitted]* (in the days of the wise men of the Mishna, and likewise in the days of the wise men of the Gemara, until the days of Abaye and Rabba, they relied upon the determination of the land of Israel regarding the *Qebi'ah*). The last of the wise men of the Mishna lived around the times of Antoninus, 150 years after Christ; and those of the Gemara until year 500, as the scion of David makes known. Therefore, in all that time, they ordained the new moons "from the appearance" (*ἀπὸ τῆς φάσεως*), and according to the prescription of the Israelite council. For the order of establishing them was as follows: that council would most diligently examine the true and accurate motions of the moon—and, as they say, *diqduq* (דקדוק) from astronomical tables—and would explore whether the moon might show itself to be seen in its own time; namely, on the thirtieth night, so that it might fall into that *phasis* (φάσις), or first illumination...

which they call *qabbi'ah* (קביעה). ^A And if they knew that there was a capacity for observing it, they would post observers who, as soon as they had caught sight of the newborn moon, would report it to the council. But in the selection of witnesses, a painstaking and superstitious diligence was required, which the authors of the Talmud explain in a few chapters. When it had been agreed upon by sight, then messengers were sent out in all directions, who would give notice of the coming new moon. And if, on the thirtieth day, no witness or observer had appeared, they would define the new moon as the thirty-first day. It happened thus that for the succession of full and hollow months there was no certainty; but rather that civil months were directed according to the aspect of the star; as chapter 8 of the Gloss teaches. Furthermore, those who lived far from the place where the council (or *Beth Din* [בית דין]) was, so that the messengers (whom they call *seluhim* [שלוחין]) could not arrive there quickly, used to celebrate the festal new moons for two days, because they were uncertain which day had been defined by the council. And the Jews who live outside the borders of Judea in the *diaspora* (ἐν διασπορᾷ) do this even today. Concerning which, see chapter 4 of the Tract *Kiddushin*.

The intercalation of months did not consist of a fixed system. For although every third or sometimes second year they would insert a month as far as was permitted, nevertheless it very often happened otherwise, and sometimes two intercalary years were consecutive. And Maimonides in chapter 4 explains the threefold cause for intercalating. The first is the *Tekupha* (תקופה), or the hinge of the vernal equinox: when this fell on or after the 16th of Nisan, then Adar was intercalated; the second cause is if the *Abib* (אביב) did not yet approach, that is, if the new crops were not yet ripe; namely, the barley (*se'orin* [שעורין]) from which the *Omer* (עומר)—or the sheaf, which was offered on the second day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread—was to be offered; the third cause is when the fruit of the trees had not yet ripened. Other lighter causes were added besides, which are delivered in chapter 4: as if the approach to the city was obstructed by broken roads and bridges; if the ovens were not yet repaired; if the people had been deported far away, and other things of that kind. But the primary cause for intercalating was the *Tekupha*, in order that the moon should be constrained within certain limits of the solar year, lest it wander too much and transfer the celebration of the feasts into varied seasons, which happens in the Arabic year, in the simple lunar year, and in the *solutum*. But concerning what description of the solar year was observed by the Jews at that time, we will discuss later. Furthermore, it is agreed among the Talmudists that this very form of the year was used while the Temple still stood, and before the Jews were completely dispersed. After the destruction of the Temple and the scattering of the Jews from Palestine, when no *synedria* (συνέδρια) remained, another method of ordering times was kept, so that fixed new moons might be proposed according to the written records and the Tables of mean motions, according to the method of the nineteen-year cycle, which they call *maḥazor* (מחזור) and *'ibbur* (עבור). This is the very last year of the Jews, accommodated to the mean motions of the moon, concerning which Moses in chapter 6 and the following ones—and then Paul Forosempronius, Munster, Scaliger, and others—have argued.

^A With this Jewish year, the translations of new moons and six hundred other trifles are linked, bothersome indeed and perplexed: but things which pertain to nothing of our task, unless something regarding translations will be dealt with later.

These are the forms and descriptions of years among the Talmudic writers: the former of which, in their opinion, coincides with the times of Christ; the latter was received long afterward. Wherefore they err not inconsiderably who study to investigate old Jewish feasts, especially at Passover, from this more recent method and the mean motions of the moon; which Paul Forosempronius does with excessive anxiety and over-scrupulously, in Book VIII, Part II. Nor do they err less who bind the Jewish Passover to the fourteenth moon from the accurate calculations of mean motions; since it can sometimes happen in a political year that the *phasis* (φάσις) occurs two days after the mean conjunction: concerning which later.

Now, therefore, the opinion of others after the Hebrew masters must be weighed; Scaliger above all, who, in his book *De emendatione temporum* II and in the *Isagoge Canonica*, has argued copiously about the Jewish year, both old and new, from the Hebrew Commentaries. But, as is his habit, he mixes in very many things fashioned from his own ingenuity, and false things: which elsewhere, if the Lord grants, will be refuted by design. In this place, however, in regard to the question undertaken concerning the year of the Lord’s Passion, we will taste a few things from the many.

Concerning the opinion of Scaliger on the old Jewish year

I shall say nothing here about the year of the most ancient Hebrews and patriarchs; because it does not pertain to the present subject; but only of the more recent age, which preceded the birth of Christ by some centuries. At which time Scaliger judged that the Alexandrian or Greek form of the year was admitted by the Jews and received into civil use, and he persuaded all his admirers among the chronographers of this. In the first place, indeed, he writes in Book *De emendatione temporum* II (p. 99, 1st edit.) that the Jews, when they derived the new moons *from the phasis* (ἀπὸ τῆς φάσεως), having accepted the yoke of the Seleucids, transferred their year and epoch to political uses, and usurped the Syro-Macedonian period. This was purely Callippic, consisting of IV Metonic cycles, 76 years, as Censorinus is the authority (p. 39), and 27,759 days. Furthermore, the nineteen-year Callippic cycle was exactly the same as the Julian, 6,939 days, 18 hours. But since Callippus had begun his period in the year in which Alexander defeated Darius at Arbela, in the 112th Olympiad, the second year, or 446 of the era of Iphitus, 4383 of the Julian period, with the moon in the 13th cycle and the sun in the 15th; from the autumn; both the Greeks in Macedonia and the Syro-Macedonians in Asia restored that same one, which had been devised by Callippus as the nineteenth, twelve years after the death of Alexander, in the 4402nd year of the Julian period, with the moon in the 12th cycle [error in source: 11th], and the sun in the 6th: and the Chaldeans, Jews, Hagarenes, and Arabs received it, having been passed down from the Syro-Macedonians. The Jews, however, commonly call the era of contracts *minyan-shatarot* (מנין שטרות). In the books of the Maccabees, the years of the Greeks...

are called by the same name, and they are also called Seleucidae, because in the same year in which that period began, Seleucus recovered Babylon, emerged, and began to establish his empire.

The mode of the lunar year is 354 days, 8 hours, 53 minutes, 6 seconds, and a fraction; the month is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 25 seconds; the beginning of the year is from the autumn, specifically October 6th; for the Tekupha of Tishri falls on October 6th, which was the first day of the solar year. For they also observed the solar year, as he writes in Book IV of *De emendatione*, of which the leap day was inserted before the first of Tishri, October 6th. But later, when the beginning was moved to the spring, it was inserted between the first and the second of April. Afterwards, the Julian form of the year was accepted, and a day was intercalated between the 25th and 26th of March. Therefore, the arrangement of the lunar year among the Jews was Syro-Macedonian or Calippic, the beginning of which was from October 7th.

^B But since the lunar Calippic cycle is the same as the Julian, it exceeds the Jewish lunar cycle—which Scaliger considers most true—by 5 hours and 760 Jewish scruples; for the excess of the nineteen-year cycle is 1 hour, 485 scruples; but after four Calippic cycles, which make one Hipparchian cycle, it amounts to 22 hours, 880 scruples; that is, the excess reaches almost a full day; the Jews gradually became aware of the slip in their year. For they had retained that Calippic form until the year of Christ 344, as is written in Book II of *De emendatione*. Around this year, however, they noticed an error of two days; since the year 656 from the beginning of the Seleucids was already passing, which is 48 years after the two Hipparchian periods. And so, while the Alexandrian year of the Jews was on September 26th, a Wednesday, by current epilogism, or lunar *akribeia*, the character was 2, 4, 240, September 24th: behold, a slip of two days. For the Jews had not yet disturbed the Calippic system from its seat, but had kept it as yet intact. Late, then, at last, the error having been recognized and astrology having been invoked for aid, they established the year which they use today. For which reason, according to Scaliger's opinion, that Syro-Macedonian and Alexandrian Calippic year prevailed not only around the very time of the Passion, but also long afterwards among the Jews. But in the same work, *De emendatione*, he changes his opinion and teaches the contrary, Book V (p. 359). For he asserts that the Jews used the Calippic period more or less up to the times of Diocletian. But since the Calippic new moons delayed the true new moons by two days, the Tiberian Sanhedrin, having convened the requested masters of astronomy, among whom, as I suppose, was Rabbi Adda, abrogated the use of the Calippic period along with the computation of the years of Alexander and established a new method of the year, so that the new moons were accounted for not by periods, but by the mean lunar motion itself. Therefore, where the place of the intercalated day was, that is, October 7th, they judged this to have been the first day on which the world was created, and from this they decided to begin their computation. And because the day of the equinox, and therefore of the autumnal Tekupha, was on September 24th, they considered in how many years Tishri would move backwards from the Macedonian center, that is, from October 7th to September 24th. ^C Progress was made: which they could not detect without the teaching of R. Adda. Therefore, from October 7th to September 24th, there are 13 days precisely: to which correspond 1,104 years according to the doctrine of R. Adda. Likewise, the years give a *proēgēsis* of the moon of 13 days, 1 hour. This is also repeated in Book IV. But nothing is more vain and inconsistent than this doctrine of Scaliger. For first, he retracts what he had said: that the Calippic form had not yet been repudiated after the times of Constantine; and that in the year 344 it was first substituted in its place. Then he thinks that R. Adda was present at that council; and that he was the author of the repudiation of the Calippic period and the institution of a newer one. To these, he adds that by the decree of that same Tiberian synod and of R. Adda, the epoch of the year was transferred from October 7th to September 24th, when as many years had been established as were required for the 13 days of *proēgēsis*, namely 4,104. All of which it is clear are empty and fictitious, nor are they supported by the authority of any writer, or by any testimony of antiquity, unless they are said to be contrary even to themselves and in no way consistent. For nothing in Scaliger, both in his book *De emendatione* and in his *Isagogic Canons*, is so frequently chanted as that the "novitiate" one, as he calls it, of the Jewish year, which they are accustomed to use to this day, was devised by R. Hillel long after the times of R. Samuel and Adda. And I might seem to be slandering him, as long as I compare the writings in that work *De emendatione* with what is read in the last book he published on the subject, which is completely different and contradictory. For in *Isagog. Can.* Book III, p. 215, he says, "While the Temple was still standing, the mean lunar month of Hipparchus was in use by the Jews." After the destruction of the Temple, so that there might be a certain perpetual formula of the civil year which the whole *diaspora* of the Jews would use, Samuel, nicknamed Jarchinai, first published a standard, around the year of Christ 213, more or less: when he commanded the Jews that, having abandoned the old Tekupha on October 6th, they should embrace the Julian Tekupha of Sosigenes on September 24th. He himself was also the first of the Jews, from the definition of the Hipparchian lunar month, to discover that the difference between the Julian and the lunar enneadecaeteris was 1 hour, 485 scruples. Afterwards (Book III, c. 5, p. 210), R. Adda Bar Ahaba, a man most learned among the Jews of his century, having weighed the ratios of Hipparchus, from which the lunar enneadecaeteris is less than one Calippic enneadecaeteris by 1 hour, 485 scruples, and having distributed this excess into 19, he collected that 0 hours, 827 scruples of the Julian or Calippic quadrant were to be deducted; so that the mode of the year is 365 days, 5 hours, 997 scruples. Wherefore R. Adda rejected the Julian year and the Tekuphas of Samuel; because they adhered permanently to that same Julian day: but he himself, having intruded the Hipparchian tropical year into his own, in which after 304 years the ratios of the sun and moon agree to a nicety, nor is there that *proemptōsis* or *metemptōsis*, he instituted other Tekuphas, which with the new moons retreated in the same ratio from the epoch of the Julian year. He began, however, from the Tekupha of Nisan, not as Samuel, from the Tekupha of Tishri: and the first Nisan in...

resulted at the same time in the same ratio. He placed it in the night which followed the Kalends of April, feria v: whose character ^A is 5, 4, 770, in the year of the present computation 4017 (p. 216), and by deducting from it the character of seven years, namely 5, 45, 158, he discovers Nisan of the year of the present computation 4010, namely 6, 10, 620: from which, if one deducts the character of seven months, there shall remain Tishri of the same year, 2, 17, 469. Two hundred and eleven cycles had already elapsed, whose character 7, 12, 265, deducted from 2, 17, 469, leaves the first of Tishri as 2, 5, 204.

Lastly (p. 215), Rabbi Hillel the prince, in the year of Christ 344, 92 years after the death of Samuel, wishing to reconcile both factions so that he might embrace the old epoch of Moses, which is October 7, and the new one of Sosigenes, which is September 24, because the years correspond by the 13 days of the *proegesis* of the moon which are interposed between September 24 and October 7, counted as many years from the beginning of his computation to that time, namely 4104, as is set forth more fully in book II *De emendatione*, where it is thus declared: A period of 6916 years was established around the year 344, having multiplied 12 into the cycles of the sun and moon. The year 4105 of which period begins in the year of Christ 344, with the Jewish moon cycle 1, the Roman cycle 111, and the solar 17: in which space of years, indeed, the lunar *proegesis* amounted to 13 days, 1 hour: which, being subtracted from the 36 days that had flowed from the Kalends of September, leaves 24 days. In the same year, the character of Tishri happened at midday, September 23, hour 10, 204, or ceremonially, from the beginning of the night, hour 4, 204, feria 11. But the first year of the cycle had the new moon of Tishri from midday, October 7, hour 11, 204, or ceremonially 5, 204, feria 11, in the 953rd year of the Julian period; ^B so that the character of Tishri is 2, 5, 204: which is the root of all Jewish new moons, but the Tekupha was at the 9th hour of the night, that is 7, 9, 0.

*The Scaligerian doctrine concerning the Jewish year is refuted.*

This is the sum of the Scaligerian doctrine, which, stuffed with mere conjectures and dreams, cannot reconcile itself with itself. And let us examine in the first place that which was brought forward from the *Isagoge canonum*: if, while the Temple was still standing, the Hipparchean form of the year was admitted by the Jews, upon which the Callippic period accumulates an excess of 5 hours, 760 parts in 76 years, that is, 1 hour, 485 parts in each enneadecaeteris, and after 304 years almost one whole day, certainly neither the Callippic nor the Alexandrian period has been retained until the year of Christ 344, more or less, nor does that two-day *proegesis* intervene, and all these things, which are inculcated everywhere in the books *De emendatione*, must be introduced; and especially that scrupulous and anxious investigation of the 5 Passovers, and of the final crucifixion, which is proposed in the sixth book, is rendered ^C idle and useless.

Now, concerning that period invented by Rabbi Hillel, and the two reconciled factions, by whose authority is it finally defended? The Hebrews believe there are almost 3761 years from the creation of the world to the Dionysian Nativity of Christ. Therefore, in the year of Christ 344, began the Jewish 4105. Furthermore, the intervals of time are described accurately according to their understanding in the book *Seder Olam*. Regarding the fictitious ^D period for obtaining the lunar *proegesis*, not even one word exists. Let Scaliger therefore see from where he brought it forth; for he produces no foundation or author for it; as if to divine and to invent were finally to amend and to arrange the times. And yet, what after all is this reconciliation? The autumnal Tekupha of Samuel in the year of Christ 344 fell on September 24, hour 15, from midday, or 9 at night; but politically, September 24, 216 decennovenal cycles having passed: by which a *proegesis* was made of 13 days, 4 hours. Therefore, the Tekupha in the first year of the computation falls on October 7, hour 10, from the beginning of the night. But let one hour be neglected. What is this to the Tekupha of Samuel? For indeed, as regards investigating the new moons, since the present Jewish one... [remainder of text follows]

^A is attached like an appendage: whence it consisted of 562 days; the other is the lunar, from which, as a warp from a woof, the popular year is woven and runs. It includes both in certain circles and periods, first tetraeterides and octaeterides; then larger ones, such as 19 and 76 years; but the last of these was the most common in the popular year. While the most ancient of the Greeks observed this tacitly through their tetraeterides, Calippus defined it with certain limits and a cycle of years, and established that period of 76 years, in which there are 30 tetraeterides, each of 1447 days; of which 1440 are ordinary, and 7 are intercalary. In these, only the first month is lunar, while the rest, since they are all 30 days long, gradually depart from the lunar. Among the tetraeterides and periods, he makes the Olympic one the most ancient; according to whose example he believes the others were propagated. He defines the beginning of the same as July 9, because the Olympic games were celebrated after the summer solstice at the full moon; but he understands the solstice not as the exact or tropical one, but as the eighth part of the signs. Therefore, when in that year in which the first games were established by Iphitus, that is, in the Julian period 3938, the Tekupha, or the end of the second quadrant, and the eighth part of Cancer ^B falls *platykōs* (broadly) on the eighth day of July, therefore the ninth of July was, and henceforth continued to be, the first day of the solar year, and the beginning of the quadrant, into which the new moon also conveniently fell. Thus, the first lunar month of the tetraeteris existed, which was perpetually observed. Whence also the fourth month, which he believes among the Athenians was Pyanepsion, began on October 7, after the new moon. And in this manner, the remaining months and years necessarily follow in a context like a certain chain of Chrysippus, as he explains more fully in the first book *De emendatione*. The Attic and Macedonian period consisted of the same series. For the *Hyperberetaios* of the latter, and the *Hekatombaion* of the former, began from the solstice. But in the year of Iphitus 465, of the Julian period 4402, and the ninth of the Olympic and Macedonian period, the new moon of the first month occurred on July 10. Therefore, the fourth month began on October 8. But since the lunar new moons had fallen on July 9 and October 7, which is the old epoch of the Olympic period, they unraveled the period according to the prescription of Calippus, and founded a new one from that year of the Julian period 4402, whose epoch they fixed on October 5. Wherefore the Macedonians began the new moon of the *Hyperberetaios*, both popular and lunar, on October 7. Therefore, the end of the solar Syro-Macedonian year falls on October 6; and their popular year never forestalled these limits. This is Scaliger (lib. II *De emend.*, p. 91): who, holding his former opinion in book V, overturns this very thing (p. 339). For he writes that the last day of the solar Syro-Macedonian year was October 7, because the Macedonian *Hyperberetaios* had fallen on July 10. And so the first new moon corresponds to October 8. But that the Jews act ignorantly, who in that year, having accepted from the Macedonians the first new moon, and the beginning of their own equable year, on the very day of October 8 ^D constitute it. You see how perplexedly Scaliger involves himself in this doctrine; and how, in the same work, he refutes what he had defined but a little before with contrary decrees; for at one time he asserts that the new moons of the equable and popular year are reconciled into their old position, that is, transferred from July 10 to 9, and from October 8 to 7; at another time he retains them on the same days, and disagrees with himself throughout the whole order. Which, indeed, in this entire work, and in the *Isagoge canonica*, is solemn and perpetual for the man: and this, if the Lord grants, we shall demonstrate in our own proper book, which we have long had in our hands. And here, as I hope, it will give the reader faith that those things which were devised by Scaliger concerning the doctrine of times, and commended by him with such display and pomp, and received with the applause of his supporters and admirers, are false, inept, [Greek: alogistos kai anapodeiktos] (irrational and undemonstrated) and poured forth, and have nothing but outward appearance and ostentation. Let that Attic period, which he sells so gloriously and insolently, be the proof: the ineptitude and [Greek: paraploysmos] (misinterpretation/error) of which we have exposed in our *Notes to Themistius*. The rest we reserve for that work, in which the Jewish year will also be discussed at more length, and that form of the Greek year and the description of the Olympic period will be refuted. Yet on that feigned context of both, as on a foundation, the entire doctrine regarding the ancient Jewish year is established. It is not evident, I say, to Scaliger from elsewhere that the Jews, some centuries before Christ, had fixed the epoch of their year, or their Tekupha, on October 7, than because from the calculation of the Greek popular and Macedonian period the fourth popular month fell on that day in the year in which the Syro-Macedonian period was instituted. But since there are many things to be refuted in this entire opinion of Scaliger, and that matter requires a longer and more important discussion, and, as I have said, will soon follow; we, as will be demonstrated in that book, maintain that the structure of that Greek and Macedonian year is false. We deny it is certain whether, in that year of the Julian period 4402, the popular and equable Syro-Macedonian month fell in October on the 7th or 8th. We deny, furthermore, that the Jews recognized that hinge of the solar year, or placed the Tekupha in it. We deny that the popular year among the Greeks or Syro-Macedonians was of such a kind as Scaliger produces from his workshop. I go deeper, and involve myself in the very citadel of the question. I deny that it is certain whether the Jews ever used that Calippic lunar form, or the Syro-Macedonian one. Once that is shaken and collapsed, the rest, which depend on this, must of necessity fall. For whence is it known to Scaliger that the Jews adopted the Calippic lunar period for civil use? I think that there is only that one argument, that both the books of the Maccabees and Josephus and the other writers of Jewish affairs used the years of the Greeks. But who necessarily gathers from that that the Jews used the very disposition of the year? For it is permitted that the Jews may have used the era, or the epoch itself, and the title, from which the Greeks repeated the beginnings of their years, when they recorded the exploits of the Greeks, or

rather, that the Jews themselves, by some period of fourteen years, or LXXXIV, received their own year. ^A

This passage of Epiphanius owes much to the most learned Kepler, who, in his *Eclogae Chronologicae*, achieved in a most brilliant disputation that we might emerge from these difficulties, and behold some light in these obscurities. For there is no passage in Epiphanius more obscure and difficult. And as for me, before I had obtained Kepler’s Commentaries, it had vexed me mightily; and yet I had attained something, which, I confess, I subsequently improved with his aid, and explained some things a little differently than he did. Although not even Kepler himself is satisfied with his own work, nor do I lay claim to the ability to unravel everything; since no one besides Epiphanius remembers this cycle, and the very words are corrupt, I shall nevertheless set forth, as briefly and clearly as I can, what I judge to be either true, or at least closer to the truth. ^B

And first, that most obscure cycle of the Jews must be expounded, so that, once it is known, we might more easily grasp what the opinion of Epiphanius regarding the Passion of Christ is. The end and scope of explaining the Jewish cycle, which Epiphanius thinks was in use at the time of Christ the Lord, is to show that the Jews in the very year of the Passion wandered by two, or even three days, from the calculations of the moon. He describes the cycle roughly as follows: he asserts that the Jews determined a lunar year to consist of 354 days and 8 hours; these hours constitute one day in three years. Moreover, that in fourteen years they intercalate five months, because from the course of the sun—which is 365 days and 6 hours—they strike out one hour. For if you add the hours, 365 days will remain, *παρὰ μίαν μίαν*. Hence, when they have multiplied fourteen years six times, they intercalate one month in the eighty-fourth year; so that in total XXXI months are imputed to LXXXV years, whereas the correct ratio requires XXXI months and XXIV days, with 3 hours. Such is Epiphanius; from these, with certain corrections which are examined point by point, Kepler unearthed this form of the cycle. ^C

Yet that the Jews used a lunar year is something almost all mortals suppose. Which form, therefore, did they embrace, rather than the Calippic? If I should say the Hipparchean, and the more recent Jewish one, which Scaliger thinks is most accurate, I would be saying what that same man asserts in express words (*lib. I, Isag. can., p. 215*). In which he brings himself into great mockery, while he overturns all his own decrees and oracles, and overturns with that new opinion those things he had frequently and with such effort maintained regarding the Passion of Christ; but I would easily say that neither period was received among the Jews by use and custom: I suspect, however, that they wished to attain the lunar motion somehow. For Josephus persuades us of this, who, *lib. III Orig., cap. 10*, speaking of the Passover, says: "In the month of Xanthicus, which is called Nisan among us, and is the beginning of the year, the fourteenth day according to the moon, when the sun is in Aries." Likewise Philo, who writes in his *De vita Mosis*: "In this very month, around the fourteenth day, when the lunar cycle is about to become full, the Passover, a public festival, is celebrated." Doubtless, it was their intention to approach the motions of the moon more closely; even if, because of the flaw and defect of the cycle, they sometimes wandered. Which can also be clarified by the example of Christians. ^D For just as they—inasmuch as civil use permits—strove to adjust the celebration of Easter to the lunar calculations, and this had been decreed at the Council of Nicaea, in such great light and skill of astronomical matters, they could not, however, escape the propagation of the accumulation of the flaw of the years over several centuries to our own times; so that they wandered by ten whole days from the motion of the sun, and by four from the lunar. Wherefore I have no doubt that it happened to the Jews that their new moons sometimes strayed by two or even three days from the mean and even the true motions of the moon. Concerning the cycle and the orb of years, into which they included their new moons, although I define nothing at all, I think it nevertheless probable that, in this heresy which Epiphanius sets forth, they were used in the time of Christ.

A double lunar cycle once existed among the Jews: one of fourteen years, the minor; the other of LXXXIV: each septenary; the reason for which number they seem to have had because of the Sabbatical years. The decade-four, according to their institution, has complete syzygies, but both decade-fours reunite into a harmony of the year somehow. I said the lunar year is defined by 354 days and 8 hours. If these are multiplied fourteen times, they make 4956 days and 112 hours, or 4 days and 16 hours—that is, almost 5 days. There are added five intercalary months, each of 29 days and 12 hours. Those make 147 days and 12 hours. From which a total is conflated of 5103 days and 12 hours. Finally, if you add those 112 hours, or 4 days and 16 hours, there are gathered 5108 days and 4 hours. If 15 Julian years are deducted from these, which are 4748 days and 6 hours, there will remain 359 days and 22 hours, or 360 days, less one hour. And if days are precisely intercalated in the fourteen years, first, what Epiphanius says, that every third year

a day is added, it is to be understood of the first ^A years: but in the thirteenth and fourteenth years one day will be computed; so that the fourteen years take away 5108 days, 18 hours, from which, if the 14 years are subtracted, 360 days, 4 hours will remain. But now 14 Julian years possess 5113 days, 12 hours. From which 5108, 10, being subtracted, there remain 5 days, 2 hours. But with those two hours taken away, the difference between the lunar and solar tessaradecaeteris is five days, which collected from six cycles after 84 years leave 30 days, which are intercalated at the beginning of the 85th year. Wherefore the Julian tessaradecaeteris consists of 5113 days, 10 hours, but the lunar of 5108, 10. Which things in civil usage are disposed thus: the first tessaradecaeteris has 5109 days, and takes 14 hours from the subsequent one; the second obtains 5108, and distributes the remaining 10 hours to compensate for the previous 14; 4 hours remain; which, returned into the cycle later, make the remaining hours; the fourth cycle has 10 remaining hours; the fifth cycle adds one. For it is 5109 days, and leaves two hours. Finally, the sixth cycle leaves 2 hours. There are collected in the 6 cycles 30650 days, 12 hours. To which if you add the 30 which arise from the six solar tessaradecaeterides that surpass the lunar ones, they make 50680 days, 12 hours. But 84 Julian years demand 30681 days. The difference is 12 hours; which are consumed in the 6 cycles, that is, 2 in each tessaradecaeteris. Wherefore the final first syzygy of the ogdoecontatessaradecaeteris requires only 29 days, 12 hours. But in civil use it ^B takes away 30, and borrows 13 hours from the following; of which 10 having been restored in the first cycle, two must be compensated. These having been likewise returned in the second tessaradecaeteris, 8 are superfluous. In the third tessaradecaeteris 18 hours remain. In the fourth, with a whole day added, 4 hours remain. After the fifth tessaradecaeteris 14 hours overplus. In the sixth, one day is taken away. 30650 days are collected. With the 30 days added, they become 30680. Wherefore in 168 years one day is taken away. Kepler thinks that the Jews had regard to this, that because they knew the Julian year to be greater than the tropical, and since the amount of the tropical year was not certain, in 168 years they would take away one day; which are the smaller cycle 14 and the larger 11. For 168 Julian years demand 61362 days. But two larger cycles and 168 tropical years, 61361 days. Thus indeed the Jews after 84 years had persuaded themselves they had made the moon equal with the sun. But it is not so. For 84 lunar years, that is, 4 decemnovennial cycles with the octaeteris, demand 30682 days, 6 hours, 51 minutes nearly. The difference from Julian 84 years is 1 day, 6 hours, 51 minutes. Wherefore by almost two days the political new moons are anticipated in the Jewish cycle.

These things in summary by Kepler; who changes some things in the Greek context, which we shall note a little later. Yet there are two things in his reasoning which do not enough ^C please me. First indeed, when Epiphanius says that the Jews from the course of the sun—that is, 365 days and a quarter—take away the twelfth part of the *nychthemeron*, or one hour, which Kepler thus accepts, that in every fourteenth year those two hours are subtracted, he does the same in the lunar year imprudently: which is neither true, nor does Epiphanius signify it. For when 14 lunar years collect 12 hours over 5108 days, Kepler attributes to them only 10 hours, because, 13 Julian years having been subtracted from 5108 days, 12 hours, when 5 days, 2 hours remain, he takes away these very two hours. Wherefore there, in the lunar tessaradecaeteris as in the Julian, he takes away two hours, and thus after 168 years in both cases one day is lost; which in the lunar year is utterly unheard of.

The second, that he thinks Epiphanius to have written, *hémera para horas duo*, for *txe' hémerai para horan mian*, which is that 4 hours over 360 days remain. For in the number of days he judged that the fivefold note should be introduced: but that *para* is the same as "besides," I cannot agree, because it signifies rather a defect in a construction of this kind: and *para horan mian* is one hour less. Which also Kepler presently acknowledges; and he confesses that that former reasoning does not please him enough. Therefore, all things having been diligently calculated and weighed, by which we could treat and illustrate this most difficult cycle, we have performed it by a double method; both of which, if we are not mistaken, we shall prove to the ^D learned and equal reader.

The first, however, is of this kind: the Jews used a double cycle, the larger and the smaller: the latter of 14, the former of 84 years. They constituted the lunar year at exactly 354 days, 8 hours. Thus in the tessaradecaeteris there were 5108 days, 4 hours. The 19 simple lunar years collect 4956 days, 168 syzygies, alternately full and hollow, that is, 84 full and as many hollow. There are added 5 full embolismic syzygies, or 150 days. There result in the tessaradecaeteris 5106 days, 89 full syzygies, 84 hollow; there remain 2 days, 4 hours. The hours having been reserved for the end of the larger cycle, the remaining two days added to two hollow syzygies take as many from the number of the hollow ones. Thus there result 91 full, 82 hollow in the whole tessaradecaeteris, 5108 days. But if anyone should prefer the 5 embolismic months to be of only 29 days, 12 hours each, let him add to 4956, 147 days, 12 hours. There are collected 5103 days, 12 hours; which, subtracted from 5108 days, 4 hours, leave 4 days, 16 hours. From which 12 hours having been deducted, and those coming to the last intercalary syzygy, which we determine to be of 29 days, 12 hours, complete that full one. Then indeed those four days from the hollow syzygies constitute as many full ones. Whence 91 full syzygies are conflated, 82 hollow, as before. There remain 4 hours. Moreover, 14 Julian years demand 5113 days, 12 hours. Therefore the solar surpasses the lunar tessaradecaeteris by 5 days, 8 hours. But 6 lunar tessaradecaeterides, or 84 years, collect 30679 days, but the solar as many, 40681 days.

^A Therefore, the lunar ogdoecontatessaraeteris lacks something for the solar to attain its reasons.

But it is one thing to describe a cycle

technically

technically

political

apokatastasis

apokatastasis

apokatastasis

This is the prior description of this Jewish cycle, which leans on the words of Epiphanius, while he says that the quantity of the Jewish year is 354 days, 8 hours precisely. For thus in 14 years, 112 hours are formed, or 4 days, 16 hours. From which the sum of days for the whole cycle arises to 5108, 4 hours. He adds then that there are 5 embolismic months. Then 2 hours are subtracted from the sun's course. These things are obscure; but they can be explained in some way. He brings the cause why they fashioned a cycle of 14 years: because, in truth, they did not wish to reconcile the moon with the sun in this smaller cycle, but reserved the five superfluous days with 8 hours. For thus it happens that if from the fourteenth Julian year you take away 5 days, 8 hours, there remain 360, minus two hours. For if you remove the Julian 14 from 5108 days, 4 hours, or 4748 days, 6 hours, 559 days and 22 hours will remain. Hence the words of Epiphanius are to be corrected and directed thus: [Greek text omitted]. But at the end of the number read thus: [Greek text omitted]. For he wishes to have intercalated 31 months in 84 years, whereas they ought to be computed as only 50 with 28 days; that is 1039 syzygies, and 28 days. Thus the Jewish cycle is missing by two days from 84 solar years; which cycle Epiphanius also deems to be the

akribes

Follows the other method of interpreting the cycle, so that both the tessaradecaeteris has 5108 days, 12 hours, and the ogdoecontatessaraeteris 40681 days precisely; by which revolutions the Jewish moon returns into concord with the sun, but civilly wanders by two days from the mean motions of the moon. This, both in the smaller as well as the larger cycle, can be done

technically

tessaradecaeteris the syzygies are the same number as in the previous method, unless perhaps one ought to increase the full ones, by anticipating 12 hours from the following cycle, which when added to the 11 superfluous hours of the previous one make a day; so that the prior cycle is 5109 days. For then 92 full syzygies and 81 hollow ones are to be counted. The second cycle will have 5108 days; the third, 12 hours anticipated from the fourth cycle, 5109; the fourth 5108; the fifth 5109; the sixth 5108, and with the thirtieth month added from the solar epacts of the individual tessaradecaeterides, there are collected 40681 days, 550 full months, 489 hollow ones, and in total 1039. Furthermore, technically, 5108 days, 12 hours out of 5113 days, 12 hours, which is the Julian fourteen-year standard, being subtracted, leave as epacts precisely 5 days, which are carried over to the last cycle.

Besides this civil arrangement of the individual tessaradecaeterides, in which the full months exceed the hollow ones by 61, another method, as in the previous one, could have been administered, with an elegant and uniform succession of hollow and full months. For 30681 days complete full and hollow syzygies alternately, 1040, and one day besides. Thus there are 521 full, 519 hollow. In the whole period there are 31 full embolismic months; but since 1040 lunar syzygies require 30682 days, 6 hours, 51 minutes, there will be lacking for the final completion 4 days, 7 hours. Therefore, they were wrongly constructing a fair syzygy, when no more than 28 days, 6 hours remained. For if from 29, 52, 44', which is the mean syzygy, you subtract 4, 6, 54', there will remain 28, 5, 53': that is, twenty-eight days and three hours, as it must be amended in Epiphanius. Thus, civil new moons will anticipate the true ones by almost two days. And since Kepler conjectures that the Jews, in order to reconcile the tropical year with the Julian, removed one day after two major cycles (or 168 years), and two hours in each tessaradecaeteris; if this is true, the Julian tessaradecaeteris will have 5113 days, 10 hours. From which five days being taken away, which are reserved for the last cycle, there remain 5108, 10. From which the quantity of thirteen Julian years being subtracted, the fourteenth day takes away 560, so that it ought to be read in Epiphanius: “There remain 66 days and three hours less one hour.” But the days in the major cycle will amount to 30680, 12, which are absent from the lunar motion by almost two days, that is, 1 day, 18 hours. Wherefore Epiphanius writes that the Jews, anticipating the mean new moons by two days, imputed a final thirtieth day when there were only 28 days, 6 hours. And this later arrangement of the cycle seems to be approved by a different understanding of the words of Epiphanius; namely, when he writes that every third year a day increases from the 8 hours that accrue to each year. For these can be taken in such a way that in the thirteenth year, 12 hours, and as many added in the fourteenth year, they collect a day in the biennium; because the lunar new moons are forced into this circle of years. Thus the entire cycle claims for itself exactly five superfluous days: not as in the prior method 4, hours 16. The rest are very easy from the above.

No one can truly deny that either interpretation accords with the words of Epiphanius. However, there are many things that persuade us that the Jews in the time of Christ, and indeed at the time of the Nicene Council, used this or a similar arrangement of years which strayed from the motions of the sun. But this above all, which we shall demonstrate later: that Passover was frequently celebrated by the Jews in the last month, that is, before the equinox. It is therefore necessary that some error had lapsed into their solar year, on account of which, having shifted from the prior epoch, it retreated into earlier times: which kind of error existed sometimes as a three-day, sometimes as a two-day displacement, in the nineteen Golden Numbers and the eight Alexandrian ones; which the Jews had as simple numbers. ^B For in these the fourteenth day of the moon, and indeed the Jewish Paschal one, falls on the 18th and 19th of March, two, as I said, or three days before the vernal equinox. Which error certainly emerges gradually in this cycle of Epiphanius. For in the previous method, if the new moon of the first month of the ogdoecontatessaraeteris falls on the equinox, for example March 22, after 84 years it will reach the 20th, and so on thereafter by a transition to earlier times; unless it is checked by correction and the addition of days: which it is likely the moderators of times among the Jews did repeatedly, and sometimes announced the new moons later. But in the later method, after 84 years, the Jewish new moons return to the same Julian days; but the celestial new moons anticipate by one day, 7 hours. Wherefore that first interpretation seems to approach the mind of Epiphanius a little more, since he wishes it to be thought that the Jewish new moons had receded, especially from the equinox. But so that the whole matter may be subjected almost to the senses themselves, I will here append a model of the greater Jewish cycle, or the tessaradecaeterides in terms of that civil form and arrangement which can probably be established from the discussion of Epiphanius, from which it will be manifest how the new moons gradually depart from the solar epoch into earlier times by two days. Let there be taken, therefore, as was said in the first method, the quantity of the greater cycle of 30679 days. The beginning of which is drawn from the year of the Julian period 4663, moon cycle 8, sun 15, letter C, the 51st year before the birth of Christ. Thus, since the Passion of Christ according to the opinion of Epiphanius falls in the Julian year 76, the 31st of the common Christian era, that year will be the 82nd of the greater cycle, but the 13th year of the sixth tessaradecaeteris, in the Nicene cycle 13, sun 12, letter G. ^D These things having been noted, let the new moon of Nisan in the Nicene cycle 8, in the first year of the first tessaradecaeteris, be established on April 6. For indeed in the year of the Julian period 4663, cycle 8, the mean new moon according to Muller’s Tables happens on April 6, around the middle of the night, that is, April 6, 0, 58. The remaining new moons will necessarily follow one another in the whole cycle in the context, as is evident from this diagram. In which there are 8 orders: the first contains the number of years; the second, the cycle of the sun; the third, the cycle of the moon, both Nicene; the fourth, the number of days which correspond to individual years,

the fifth, the new moon of Nisan in the Julian month; the sixth, the leap-month and the quality of the year; that is, we have noted the intercalary years and the Dominican letter; the seventh, the character of the new moon; the eighth, the days collected for the four-year cycle.^A

TABLE OF THE NEW MOONS OF NISAN IN THE YEARS OF THE FOUR-YEAR AND EIGHTY-FOUR-YEAR CYCLES OF THE JEWS, BEGINNING FROM THE 4663D YEAR OF THE JULIAN PERIOD.

FOUR-YEAR CYCLE I

Anni Periodi | Cycli solis | Nicæni lunæ | Dies annorum | Neomenia Nisan | Neom. feria | Qualitas anni | Dies collecti --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- 1 | XV | VIII | 354 | VI Ap. | C | 5 | | 354 2 | XVI | IX | 354 | XXVI Mar. | B | 7 | | 708 B 3 | XVII | X | 385 | XIV M. | A G | 4 | Emb. plenus. | 1093 4 | XVIII | XI | 354 | III Ap. | F | 1 | | 1447 5 | XIX | XII | 354 | XXII M. | E | 6 | | 1801 6 | XX | XIII | 384 | XII M. | D | 4 | Emb. cavus | 2185 B 7 | XXI | XIV | 354 | XXX M. | C B | 4 | | 2539 8 | XXII | XV | 384 | XIX M. | A | 1 | Emb. P. | 2923 9 | XXIII | XVI | 355 | VII Ap. | G | 7 | | 3278 10 | XXIV | XVII | 354 | XXVIII M. | F | 5 | | 3632 B 11 | XXV | XXVIII | 383 | XVI M. | E D | 2 | Emb. C. | 4015 12 | XXVI | XIX | 355 | III Ap. | C | 7 | | 4370 13 | XXVII | I | 354 | XXIV M. | B | 5 | | 4724 14 | XXVIII | II | 384 | XIII M. | A | 2 | Emb. P. | 5103

FOUR-YEAR CYCLE II

B 15 | I | III | 355 | XXXI Mar. | G F | 4 | | 555 16 | II | IV | 354 | XXI M. | E | 6 | | 709 17 | III | V | 383 | X M. | D | 3 | Emb. P. | 1092 18 | IV | VI | 355 | XXXIII M. | C | 1 | cavus | 1447 B 19 | V | VII | 354 | V Ap. | B A | 6 | Emb. P. | 1831 20 | VI | VIII | 355 | XXV M. | G | 5 | | 2185 21 | VII | IX | 354 | XIV M. | F | 2 | | 2540 22 | VIII | X | 383 | XV M. | E | 7 | Emb. C. | 2923 B 23 | IX | XI | 354 | I Ap. | D C | 5 | | 3277 24 | X | XII | 355 | XXI M. | B | 2 | | 3632 25 | XI | XIII | 384 | XI M. | A | 7 | Emb. P. | 4016 26 | XII | XIV | 354 | XXX M. | G | 6 | | 4370 B 27 | XIII | XV | 355 | XVIII M. | F E | 3 | | 4725 28 | XIV | XVI | 383 | VIII M. | D | 1 | Emb. C. | 5108

Colliguntur dies in II cyclis 10216.

FOUR-YEAR CYCLE III

29 | XV | XVII | 354 | XXVI M. | C | 6 | | 354 30 | XVI | XVIII | 385 | XV M. | B | 6 | Emb. P. | 739 B 31 | XVII | XIX | 354 | III Ap. | A G | 3 | | 1093 32 | XVIII | I | 354 | XXII M. | F | 7 | | 1447 33 | XIX | II | 384 | XII M. | E | 4 | Emb. C. | 1831 34 | XX | III | 354 | XXXI M. | D | 3 | | 2185 B 35 | XXI | IV | 354 | XIX M. | C B | 4 | | 2539 36 | XXII | V | 385 | VIII M. | A | 4 | Emb. P. | 2924 37 | XXIII | VI | 354 | XXVIII M. | G | 4 | | 3278 38 | XXIV | VII | 383 | XVII M. | F | 1 | Emb. C. | 3661 B 39 | XXV | VIII | 355 | III Ap. | E D | 6 | | 4016 40 | XXVI | IX | 354 | XXIV M. | C | 4 | | 4370 41 | XXVII | X | 384 | XII M. | B | 1 | Emb. P. | 4754 42 | XXVIII | XI | 355 | I Ap. | A | 7 | | 5109

Colliguntur dies in III cyclis 15525.

FOUR-YEAR CYCLE IV

B 43 | I | XII | 354 | XXI M. | G F | 5 | | 354 44 | II | XIII | 383 | X M. | E | 2 | Emb. C. | 737 45 | III | XIV | 354 | XXVIII M. | D | 7 | | 1092 B 46 | IV | XV | 384 | XVII M. | C B | 5 | Emb. P. | 1476 47 | V | XVI | 354 | V Ap. | B A | 4 | | 1850 48 | VI | XVII | 355 | XXV M. | G | 1 | Emb. C. | 2185 49 | VII | XVIII | 383 | XV M. | F | 6 | | 2568 B 50 | VIII | XIX | 354 | II Ap. | E | 4 | | 2922 51 | IX | I | 355 | XXI M. | D C | 1 | | 3277 52 | X | II | 384 | XI M. | B | 6 | Emb. P. | 3661 53 | XI | III | 354 | XXX M. | A | 5 | | 4015 B 54 | XII | IV | 355 | XIX M. | G | 2 | | 4370 55 | XIII | V | 383 | VIII M. | F E | 7 | Emb. C. | 4755 56 | XIV | VI | 354 | XXVII M. | D | 5 | | 5107

* Hic est annus primus Iulianus. ** A. 1 Æræ Dionysii.

OF THE YEAR AND DAY OF THE LORD’S PASSION. TESSARADECAET. V.

[Table data appearing in columns for Anni Periodi, Cycli Nicæni, Solis, Lunæ, Dies annorum, Neomenia Nisan, Neom. feria, Qualitas anni, Dies collecti:]

57 | X-V | VII | 385 | XV M. | C | 2 | | 385 58 | XVI | VIII | 354 | IV Ap. | B | 2 | | 759 59 | XVII | IX | 354 | XXIII M. | A G | 6 | | 1093 60 | XVIII | X | 384 | XII M. | F | 3 | Emb. C. | 1477 61 | XIX | XI | 354 | XXXI Mar. | E | 2 | | 1831 62 | XX | XII | 354 | XX M. | D | 6 | | 2185 63 | XXI | XIII | 385 | VIII M. | C B | 3 | Emb. P. | 2570 64 | XXII | XIV | 354 | XXVIII M. | A | 3 | | 2924 65 | XXIII | XV | 385 | XVII M. | G | 7 | Emb. C. | 3307 66 | XXIV | XVI | 355 | IV Ap. | F | 5 | | 3062 67 | XXV | XVII | 354 | XXIV M. | E D | 3 | | 4016 68 | XXVI | XVIII | 384 | XIII M. | C | 7 | Emb. P. | 4400 69 | XXVII | XIX | 355 | 1 Ap. | B | 6 | | 4755 70 | XXVIII | I | 354 | XXII Mar. | A | 4 | | 5109 *Colliguntur dies in V Cyclis 25541.*

TESSARADECAET. VI.

71 | I | II | 383 | X M. | G F | 4 | Emb. C. | 385 72 | II | III | 355 | XXVIII M. | E | 6 | | 738 73 | III | IV | 384 | XVIII M. | D | 4 | Emb. P. | 1122 74 | IV | V | 354 | VI Ap. | C | 3 | | 1476 75 | V | VI | 355 | XXV M. | B A | 7 | | 1851 76 | VI | VII | 383 | XV M. | G | 5 | Emb. C. | 2214 77 | VII | VIII | 354 | II Ap. | F | 3 | | 2568 78 | VIII | IX | 355 | XXII M. | E | 7 | | 2925 79 | IX | X | 384 | XI M. | D C | 5 | Emb. P. | 3307 80 | X | XI | 354 | XXX M. | B | 4 | | 3661 81 | XI | XII | 355 | XIX M. | A | 1 | | 4016 82 | XII | XIII | 383 | IX M. | G | 6 | Emb. C. | 4399 83 | XIII | XIV | 354 | XXVI M. | F E | 4 | | 4755 84 | XIV | XV | 355 | XV M. | D | 1 | | 5108 *Colliguntur dies in VI Cyclis 30649.*

In this cycle there are xxx embolisms. But the cycle ends on the iv of March; so that the eighty-fourth year begins from the iv of March. The neomenia therefore ascends by 32 days from the Julian epoch of the first cycle, which is the vi of April. Wherefore a month of thirty days must be intercalated, by which the neomenia will be moved forward to the iv of April and will recede by two days from the former epoch. Which was to be demonstrated. But Epiphanius says that this thirty-first embolismic month is cast into the 85th year. Therefore the first year of the second cycle will start on the x of March. Where the Jews also fixed the cycle, because the limit nearest to them precedes the Nicene [limit] by three days.

Moreover, Victorius of Aquitaine in that same Preface makes mention of a cycle of lxxxiv years, as having been adapted by some to the Paschal business. So that it may appear that not only the Jews, but also the Christians at one time used a cycle of years of this sort. And before Victorius, Cyril in the Preface which he published for his own cycle, which was present in the same codex, censured those who instituted the paschal cycle of lxxxiv years, or seven fourteen-year periods. For thus the Latin interpreter translates it.

That Jewish cycle is explained, and its convenience is laid open.

This was, or could have been, the civil arrangement of each cycle, in which you see observed with precision everything that was argued a little before. For the number of days in each tessaradecaeteris is that which we established, 5108, or 5109, but once 5107; the matter of the civil [year] requiring this. Then the days intercalated every third year; but the embolismic months—full, or hollow, and in individual cycles five; in the tessaradecaeterides, thirty embolisms. Or rather thirty-one. For as many ought to be imputed; so that there are 30679 days in the eighty-four year period. But Epiphanius rejects the last of the embolisms to the beginning of the following cycle, or the 85th year. Whence the previous cycle consists of 30649 days; the second 30709, and will have 32 embolisms; otherwise they would recede too far from the neomenia epoch. The forward movement and transition to the preceding days of such neomenias you can look at in the same Diagram. For after any tessaradecaeteris, the neomenia of Nisan precedes the first epoch by 5 days and 8 hours. So that if in the first year of the cycle the neomenia of Nisan falls on the vi of April at midday, after xiv years have passed, it will return to the Kalends of April; and at the iv hour after midnight it will fall on the A. D. Kalends of April; and so then the Jewish neomenia will proceed further and further from the epoch of the first month and from the solar one, until as the longer cycle revolves, when it has already been shifted back by xxxii days, by the intercalation of a full month it is recalled to its original epoch, anticipating by only two days.

Epoch of the neomenia of Nisan in the Nicene cycle viii. (a) Year of the Baptism according to Epiphanius on the viii of November. (b) This is the year of the Baptism according to the Latins on the vi of January. (c) This is the year of the Passion according to Epiphanius.

is April 6; but in the 13th cycle it is March 12, because in the Christian century, in the 13th cycle the new moon fell on that day; from which, by the time of the Nicene Council, it moved to the 11th. But in the Jewish cycle, the first ^A tessaradicaeteris shows the new moon on the 12th, the second on the 11th, and so on up to the 9th; and on account of the intercalary day that occurs, it recurs even on the 8th. In the 76th Julian year, Nisan fell on March 9, a Friday, which for Epiphanius's opinion, and for explaining that whole question regarding the year and day of the Passion, fell most opportunely.

Indeed, I shall also briefly disclose another fruit and use of this table and that Jewish cycle. Know, therefore, that a probable reason is elicited from it why the Jewish Nisan, and likewise the first month of the Latins, deviated from the ancient epoch, that is, the equinox. For that the 14th of Nisan once fell on the very day of the equinox is taught by the most ancient Jewish masters: primarily the two Agathobuli. And Aristobulus, their disciple, who was one of the LXX Elders, in a fragment which Eusebius cites (Hist. VII, c. 27), asserts: ^D "It is necessary to sacrifice the Passover after the vernal equinox, in the middle of the first month." Musaeus, an ancient Jewish writer, taught the same. Philo also, in his book *De Vita Mosis*: "Moses designates the first month as the beginning of the vernal equinox." Josephus also agrees: "...is called by us, and is the beginning of the year, the fourteenth according to the moon, [the sun] being in Aries." ^C Therefore, the Jewish 14th of Nisan fell on the equinox in those ancient times, and according to the institution of Moses. But afterwards, overstepping the prescribed limits, it preceded the equinox by several days. The most ancient Christian monuments bear witness to this, which warn that the Jewish Passover sometimes precedes the equinox and is celebrated in the 12th month. Canon 6 of the Apostles, book 1: "If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon shall celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox with the Jews, let him be deposed." Regarding which passage Balsamon trifles when he denies that the vernal equinox occurs on a fixed day, but rather "whenever it falls by the revolutions of the sun and moon," which is childish. Furthermore, Constantine, in the letter which he wrote to the Churches after the Nicene Council, in Eusebius, *De Vita Constantini*, book III, says that the Jews celebrate a double Passover in the same year. That is to say, because in the 19th and 7th cycles, their Passover fell before the equinox. Which also many others, both Westerners and Easterners, copied, fixing the final new moon of March on the 5th, and the 14th of March on the 18th, as will be said later. Truly, I do not think the Jews did this with a set purpose of anticipating the day of the equinox—which they could have investigated from astronomical tables—but rather, through the method of some corrupt cycle, this flaw crept in little by little. What kind of method this is appears sufficiently in the table above; for after 84 years have passed, the new moon of Nisan, which had begun from April 6, is found on March 5. Wherefore it could happen that when, after some years, a new moon of Nisan had been reduced to March 5, finding the cycle flawed, they applied their mind to the correction, and having established another type of cycle, fixed its beginning in that same year, which, since it was the first of the following ogdoekontatessaraeteris, and hence ought to have been intercalary, they made this same one, as the beginning of a recent cycle, a common year. Thus it happened that from then on the final new moon consisted on March 5, and the 14th moon on March 18.

Epiphanius is vindicated from Scaliger's absurd reprimand.

Finally, disputing about this Jewish cycle, Scaliger, lib. II *De Emend.*, p. 146, says: "I cannot," these are his words, "acquit our Epiphanius, as well as all the ancient writers, of the charge of negligence in this part." But, he says, "he is no better than the tessaradecaeteris, which the same Epiphanius not only puts forward as sound and legitimate, but wishes the Jews to follow no other reason in the lunar year than his method." Then, having cited the words of Epiphanius, he first finds fault with that which he had said: that one day is imputed to the three years from the 8 remaining hours. "But," he says, "it will be false that only one day increases after three years, when there remain after three years two days and 18 hours, which is 24, or 9, which is 12." Then, because he had defined the cycle of 14 years, he refutes it in this way. For he denies that any precise reason can be made. "For the days of the Julian years total 5,113, 12 hours; the simple lunar years total 4,956: the difference is 157 days, 12 hours. From which five full months are intercalated, and there remain 7 days, 12 hours. Now, 14 times 8 hours constitute 4 days, 16 hours. Which sum, subtracted from 7 days, 12 hours, leaves the difference of the true and false tessaradecaet. as 2 days, 12 hours." Scaliger prefers the lust for disparaging to the truth, conjoined with equal ignorance or *aproséxia*: for he unjustly accuses Epiphanius; who expounded in his commentaries the system of the times as he knew it was observed by the Jews. In which he himself does not sin at all. Nor did he thrust this cycle forward as sound and legitimate, which Scaliger calumniates. Indeed, on the contrary, he signifies not obscurely that it was faulty, when he teaches that it deviated by two days from the celestial new moons, as has been amply declared.

Now for that point of ignorance, and indeed one not at all common, that he did not even understand Epiphanius. For what is this reprimand: that it is impossible for a day to be completed in three years from the 8 hours which are added over 354 days each year, when there remain after three years 2 days and 18 hours? Or does eight multiplied by three not make 24? But Epiphanius intended only this: that a day corresponds to three lunar years. But this is a wondrous hallucination of Scaliger; that he believed the lunar triennium should be compared with the Julian. For the Julian trieteris has 1,095 days, 18 hours; three simple lunar years have 1,062, and with three times eight hours added, and an intercalary full month, they become 1,093, which, being subtracted from the Julian triennium, leave 2 days, 18 hours. But this to Epi—

Epiphanius’s intent and plan pertains nothing; for he is not comparing two triennia with one another, but is speaking only of the lunar three-year period. The other matters which he puts forward concerning the solar ^A five-day discrepancy, which prevent a precise reckoning and the restoration of new moons, can easily be refuted from those things which we have previously discussed. For Epiphanius does not think that the Jews used only a cycle of 14 years, or that in it a precise reconciliation of both heavenly bodies is effected; rather, he taught that this is obtained only after 84 years have elapsed, according to the opinion of the Jews. But in the tessaradecaeteris, he shows that only the lunar syzygies’ restoration is represented, with five days reserved which are the lunar epacts, for the year 84 coming to an end, or the 85th beginning. It was of interest to him to weigh all these matters, who wished either to refute the error of another or to consult his own reputation.

The doctrine of Epiphanius explained from what precedes.

Thus far that recondite cycle of the Jews has been declared according to the opinion of Epiphanius, but we have not yet finished all our work. For there remains in those words which precede the explanation of the cycle a great deal of obscurity and difficulty, which deserve diligence from us and patience from the reader. But these things have also been illustrated and explained by the benefit of the same learned mathematician, whose conjecture on this passage, enriched by some of our own additions, I shall disclose in a few words.

The mean vernal equinox in the age of Julius Caesar coincided with March 25: the day on which the Council of Caesarea, held under Pope Victor in the year of Christ 198, decreed that Christ had risen; a fragment of which is found in Bede, lib. *De æquin. verno*, which reads thus: "For the Lord suffered on the 11th before the Kalends of April, on the night on which He was delivered up by the Jews, and on the 6th (but 8th must be read, just as we find in the most ancient codex of P. Sirmond. In which, moreover, we observed this: that the fragment which is being attached to Bede’s booklet on the equinox, with this inscription: 'On the ordering of the Paschal feasts by Theophilus'; is noted with the title of another author; namely this: 'Begins the epistle of Philip on the Pasch') before the Kalends he rose." How then are three days excluded? Therefore, according to the opinion of the council, Christ suffered on March 23, and rose on the 25th. Since these days were the seat of the mean and civil equinox in Caesar’s time, it was commonly believed that Christ had risen on the equinox. This year must necessarily be Julian 76, Dionysian era 31, lunar cycle 12, solar 10, Dominical letter G. For it is certain that Christ was arrested on the fifth day of the week toward evening, suffered on the 6th, and rose on Sunday. But that year, which I have mentioned, presents those days of the week on the dates predetermined by the council. It is therefore Julian 76, in the consulship of Tiberius and Sejanus, lunar cycle 13. Furthermore, since the Nicene cycle 13 established the Paschal new moon on March 11 and the full moon on the 25th, it was persuaded among many by the authority of the council that Christ rose on the very full moon.

^A Now the new moons in Christ's time occurred later: for instance, the new moon in cycle 13 happened on March 12, the full moon on the 25th. For in the Julian year 76 itself, as Paulus Forosemproniensis observes, it occurred on the Jerusalem meridian on March 11, 19 hours 51 minutes 12 seconds, that is, March 12; the full moon on March 26, 14 hours 13 minutes 14 seconds, that is, March 27. But civilly on March 26, because of the new moon of March 12. But there was no mention then of the lunar anticipation (*proêgêsis*); wherefore they did not doubt but that in Christ’s time, they had possessed the same position which had been established by the Nicene council. This therefore deceived Epiphanius; because he believed that Christ’s resurrection had occurred on the day of the full moon and the equinox. Already saturated with this *proêgêsis*, he directed his mind to the day of the equinox: because, although all the ancients who had preceded the era of Diocletian by a little, and Anatolius in particular, had found it on March 22, even though the Nicene council later fixed it on the 21st, he nonetheless believed that Christ rose on March 22; and indeed on the full moon, which he himself signifies clearly when he compares the full moon with the equinox on the 11th before the Kalends of April. Nor is it a wonder that nothing regarding the anticipation of the equinox occurred to Epiphanius at that time; since not even for several centuries afterward could the not undistinguished writers of ecclesiastical computations suspect anything of the sort. As, in particular, Bede: whose zeal and anxiety we understand in other places, as well as in chapter 43 of his book *De natura rerum*. Nay, even in our own age, certain chronologists, having not noticed the *proêgêsis* of the equinoxes, when they judge the universe to have been created on the day of the vernal equinox, define it as March 21. Similar, therefore, seems to have been the error of Epiphanius, that, believing that the Lord rose on the very equinox and full moon, he wrote that it happened on the 22nd of March. And because he saw that the Jewish cycle sometimes anticipated the celestial new moons by two days, and that this had happened in the very year of the Passion, he attributed that defect, and the retrocession of the popular New Moon, to that very day of March 22. When therefore the 15th moon had fallen on the equinox—that is, as he falsely believed, March 22—and Christ had risen on that day, it follows that He must have suffered on March 20, the 10th moon by the Nicene rule; but having completed the legal supper, and having been arrested on March 19 toward evening, at the departing of the Nicene 12th moon, and the beginning of the 11th. Yet the Paschal supper is legally held on the 14th moon toward evening: Christ however, surely, celebrated it at the legitimate time. Therefore the 12th Nicene moon must have been the 14th for the Jews in that faulty cycle, and the following, that is, March 20, the 15th moon: and thus the Jewish new moon falls on March 6, the Nicene indeed on the 8th. Whence it follows that the Jewish new moons differed by two days from the celestial and Nicene ones. During the same period the Jews, for a certain reason, concerning which we shall treat shortly, transferred the Pasch to the day following the legitimate one, that is, to the Sabbath, or March 21, and did not celebrate it on the same day as Christ. For He celebrated it on the day in which it was necessary to sacrifice, that is, on the 14th moon, civilian and political, not of course celestial, and derived from the middle and astronomical reckoning of the stars, concerning which nothing had been prescribed by the lawgiver.

But the Jews celebrated the Passover on the fifteenth lunar day, following the sixteenth. Nor indeed does Christ seem to have done this—setting the legitimate time, constituted by God, before the inventions of men—but rather [He followed] the rites and those for the most part more tenacious of ancestral custom; hence a ^A *thorybos*, or disturbance, arose during the very celebration of the Passover. That Epiphanius, when he wrote this, had no other intention, his own words easily demonstrate. Yet Epiphanius errs in many ways. For first, he believes the Nicene new moons to be fixed and perpetual. Then, the equinox, which he placed on March 22nd following Anatolius and the more ancient Egyptians, he assumes was also committed on that same day in the time of Christ. From which error it happened that he transferred to March 20th [those events] which would have fallen on March 23rd, that is, the third day before the equinox. Hence he calls that moon the fifteenth in the Nicene cycle ^B of March 22nd; and he confuses the characters of the days, or the feriae: for indeed on March 20th, on which day he asserts the Savior suffered, the day was then a Tuesday; but indeed on the 22nd, it was a Friday. But Epiphanius did not perceive these things then, thinking only of how he might explain away that two-day discrepancy. Certainly, those Nicene moons, which Epiphanius accommodates to the year of the Passion, agree with the sixteenth cycle, not the thirteenth, that is, in the thirty-fourth year of Christ. Also in the solar Nicene cycle of the fifteenth year, that is, in the thirty-third year of Christ, he intruded a foreign day into the year. For the reason why he dedicated the thirty-first year of the Dionysian era to the Passion, was declared a little above in the series of consuls. And so that the mind of Epiphanius, and this our own disputation, may be more clear, I shall set forth the perturbation of the cycles and feriae in this diagram.

TABLE OF LUNAR DAYS AND FERIAE, AS MUCH TRUE AS VICIOUS OR FALSE, IN THE YEAR OF THE LORD'S PASSION.

[Table data skipped — see facsimile]

You have in this table the arrangement of the lunar days and feriae; of a sort that in that Julian year 76 could have been as true as it could have been [based] on the institution of the Nicene Council and on the vicious cycle of the Jews, and finally on the sense of Epiphanius.

From the above is gathered the opinion of Epiphanius concerning the true year and day of the Passion.

It remains that all the above be recalled to that purpose and end, for the sake of which these things were argued. This is, most importantly, so that the true time of the Passion might at last be established on the authority of Epiphanius. If, therefore, anyone wishes to lead back the erring opinion of the most holy Father into the right path, and to bring into the light the truth buried in these shadows, he will achieve this from our previous dissertation concerning the Jewish cycle as follows. ^C Since among the ancient Jews the 14th of Nisan fell on the equinox, which in the century of Christ fell according to the *politikos* [civil calendar] on March 25th, the nearest new moon of Nisan corresponds to March 11th; which falls at the beginning of the *ogdoecontatessarakteridos*. But because of the depravity of the cycle, the new moon gradually arrived at March 9th; but the fourteenth moon [arrived] at March 22nd: which our Table shows to have happened in the year of the 82nd cycle. That year was, by the Julian hypothesis, 76; and it is the same as the year of the Passion. Wherefore Christ will have suffered on March 20th, a Friday, the Jewish moon being the 15th, and the Nicene the 13th, which was the same as the middle, or celestial, [moon] of March 20th toward evening, the Jewish 14th ending, and the 15th beginning, ^D *en ho edei thyein*. The Pharisees and their followers celebrated the Passover on March 20th, the 15th moon ending, the 16th beginning. Epiphanius would not have written otherwise, if he had either acknowledged the *prognosis* [anticipation] of the equinox, or had thought even a little about the solar cycle and the feriae. But that error, of whatever kind it is, is compensated by the remarkable and singular fruit of his doctrine, by which he alone taught us of the perturbation of the Jewish year. Which matter, having been noted after a long interval, we have been freed from the highest annoyances and the inextricable snares of difficulties, and we have learned finally this: that the true year of the Lord's Passion had hitherto been sought in vain through astronomical abaci and the motions of the celestial stars: which would then finally be true, if the Jews had held to a sure and constant ratio of the lunar and solar year. But since they deviated from it in a major way, as will be declared copiously a little later, there is another way, if we are wise, which we must insist upon, that we rely more on the authority of ancient writers and on consensus than on an accurate description of celestial motions.

But indeed that was the most common opinion among the ancients: that Christ suffered in the 18th year of Tiberius, in the Julian year 76; which Epiphanius embraced when he designated that year, in which Tiberius [was in his] 6th [year], and S...

^A they were consuls, with the lunar cycle 13, and solar 11: even though he wrongly ascribes it to Vinicius and Longinus, because he split into two what belongs to one consulship. This year is indeed the 202nd Olympiad, the second year ending, in the Julian period 4744. The force of all calculations persuades us that the nexus of these years is most certain. That he suffered, however, at the end of the 17th year of Tiberius, in the Julian year 76—that is, in the solar cycle 11—has been demonstrated by many. We, since it is necessary, will skim the summits of the proofs.

First of all, there is that ancient tradition, which the fragment described by Bede indicates the Fathers followed in the Council of Caesarea: where Christ is said to have been betrayed on the night which follows the 11th Kalends of April; having suffered, however, on the 10th Kalends of April, and to have risen on the 8th Kalends. Therefore, it is necessary that the Dominical letter was G, with the solar cycle 11, which the Julian year 76 exhibits. But because our Dekerius calls this opinion of the Fathers a declaration of the Apostolic See, and as it were a definition of the Church, it is no more true for that than the statement in that same synod, that the equinox falls on the 25th of March, in the year of Christ 198; and, what is far more absurd, that on that very day the beginning of the created world happened. For it is known that the reasons themselves which are brought forward in councils are neither always true, nor are they considered among the decrees of faith. That authority ^B nonetheless holds the common faith of the most ancient times regarding the day of the Passion and the Resurrection: to which are also to be added those testimonies by which the Passion of the Lord is conjectured to be on the 10th Kalends of April, that is, the 23rd of March; while the Resurrection is on the 8th Kalends; which Paulus Forosemproniensis attributes to the Greeks, and Lactantius followed it in book IV, chapter 10, where he asserts that in the 15th year of Tiberius, with the two Gemini as consuls, Christ was affixed to the cross before the 10th Kalends of April. But some codices have the 7th instead of the 10th Kalends.

Paulus Forosempron. thinks that "before the tenth day of the Kalends" is the same thing as the 11th Kalends, and he uses the words of Paulus the jurisconsult, who says: "Before the 10th Kalends, and after the 10th Kalends," in both usages the 11th day is signified. But a faulty reading led Paulus Forosemproniensis into error. For he reports: "A. D. 10th Kalends, after the 10th Kalends," in neither usage are 11 days signified. Certainly, A. D. 10th Kalends is the same as the 10th Kalends, just as "before the nearest Kalends" is the same as "at the nearest Kalends," Law 56, § 'Qui ita stipulatur,' Digest, de Verb. Obl. For something is understood; so that the full expression may be "before the finished day." Hence it is that the Gallican Church fixed the festival of the Resurrection on the 25th of March, as Bede testifies: who himself also in his book *De temp. rat.*, chapter 67, thinks Christ suffered on the 10th Kalends, though in chapter 47 he asserts it happened on the 8th Kalends. More can be seen in Dekerius. By these testimonies it is established that the Lord suffered in the Julian year 76, on March 23rd. And this was, moreover, the opinion of the most ancient theologian Africanus; who held that Christ suffered in the 1st year of the 202nd Olympiad, as Eusebius reports (in his *Greek Chronicle*, p. 65). And the Fathers ^C agree with that. For they count the years of Tiberius in the Jewish, or ecclesiastical, custom from the preceding Nisan. And yet in the Julian year 76, at the end of the 17th year of Tiberius, the 18th began. Indeed, Apollinaris of Laodicea also, in his *Commentary on chapter 9 of Daniel* according to Jerome, when he enumerates six years of Tiberius after the year of the Lord's Passion, judges that he suffered entirely at the end of the 17th. There are added also the intervals of certain times which are computed from the Passion. As when James the Less is said by Jerome in his book *De script. eccles.* to have presided at Jerusalem for 30 years, and to have been killed under the Paschal celebration in the 7th year of Nero, which corresponds to the Julian year 106. Therefore, he began to preside in the Julian year 76. Likewise, the apostle Paul, according to the same Jerome, is sent bound to Rome in the 25th year after the Lord's Passion, in the 1st year of Nero: where also in the 14th year of Nero, 36 years after the Passion, having Capitones and Rufus as consuls, in the Julian year 112, he was beheaded. The beginning of Nero happened after the death of Claudius, in the Julian year 99, after the 2nd Ides of October. Therefore, the 14th year began from October of the Julian year 112. But Jerome clearly starts the years from the preceding Passover. And so from his reasoning the 76th year is built up for the Lord's Passion. Thus Peter, by the testimony of the same Jerome, arrived in Rome in the 1st year of Claudius, where he presided over the Church for 25 years, and in the 37th year after the Passion, in Nero's 14th, he was killed with Paul. Finally, the destruction of Jerusalem happened in the 40th year after the Passion, as most of the ancients testify, Jerome, Eusebius in book III of *History*, c. 8, and in book VI of *Demonstrations*, c. 16, Chrysostom, and others. Jerusalem was overturned in the second year of Vespasian, in the Julian year 115; consequently, the Passion of Christ in the year 76 fits. The rest must be sought from the commentaries of Dekerius and Kepler.

But we are urged especially by the testimony of Phlegon and Thallus, who record that in the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad a horrible eclipse of the sun occurred, that is, in the Julian year 78: which the ancient Fathers—Africanus, Jerome, Eusebius, and others—interpret as being that very one which happened under the death of the Lord. They who contend that the Lord spent more than three Passovers rely mainly on this argument, and do not think it is the mark of a sufficiently modest man to resist the prejudice of so great an authority and the agreement of so many ^D writers. But I chiefly wish that they answer me this: do they think that those from whom they learned the testimony of Phlegon have themselves read Phlegon? When they have confessed this, let them then explain what reason there is why the same people who establish the solar eclipse, which is recorded by Phlegon, to be that which happened under Christ's Passion, nonetheless assign to the Passion itself not the fourth year of the Olympiad, but the second or the third. For Africanus, in his *Commentary on Daniel* chapter 9 and in the fragments of Eusebius, p. 63, asserted that Christ suffered in the second year of the 202nd Olympiad, and Eusebius and Jerome in the third. But what is more absurd than, while using the authority of Phlegon against the heathens and that eclipse which he [sets] in the fourth year…

of the Olympiad ^A, to attribute the Passion not to the same year? Wherefore, lest those most serious Fathers be convicted of such great stupidity and ignorance, indeed of prevarication, we are finally necessarily reduced to saying that that testimony of Phlegon was corrupted by the scribes, or by Jerome himself as expressed in the Chronicles. Certainly, in the Greek Chronicle of Eusebius, page 118, it is written thus: *in the year of the 202nd Olympiad*; so that it appears that the numeral mark had been obliterated, for which the reader of Jerome read a delta, that is, the fourth year, when the conjunction was *delta* [four]. But Kepler, in his *Eclogae*, suspects that Phlegon spoke of another solar eclipse which happened in the first year of the 202nd Olympiad, November 24th, year 74 of the Julian era, which was total in Asia or Syria, one or two hours before noon. Since Africanus and others saw that this converged with that Olympiad in which the Lord suffered, they persuaded themselves that it was the same solar eclipse which, as Christ suffered, had occurred against nature. Finally, since that obscuration of natural light was not such, nor could it be investigated from mathematical tables, Phlegon could not have found it from elsewhere, if he mentioned it, than from the testimony of others: in which there was easily room for error, so that one year was substituted by him for another. Another argument is wont to be brought forward from the history of Dionysius the Areopagite. For he, in Epistle VII to Polycarp, explaining what he had seen at Heliopolis with Apollophanes at the very time of the Passion, signifies that it was a full moon then. For after the eclipse, *kai ten epiprosthesin, eis to tou heliou diametron antikatastenai*, he asserts that the moon [had done so], that is, that it had arrived in that place of the heaven which faced the sun ^B diametrically. But from those words of Dionysius, nothing is gathered regarding a full moon; for even if we grant that the moon was then *amphikyrtos* [gibbous], when it returned after the *epiprosthesis* [occultation] to its former place, it is said only to have passed through that region of the sky which was diametrically opposed to the sun, not to have rested in it. For it traverses more than a half-circle. Wherefore there is nothing that disturbs the business of the opinion of Epiphanius, and thus of the common opinion of the ancient Fathers, concerning the true year of the Passion. Now we shall weigh the author's words one by one; if first we refute Onuphrius, his opinion drawn from Gauricus concerning the Passion of Christ, which had almost escaped [our notice]. For when he confirms that it happened in the 34th year of the Dionysian era, March 26, the 19th moon, which had already begun the preceding evening, he asserts that the Jews did not begin the new moon from the conjunction of the luminaries, but from the horned appearance, that is, on the third day after the new moon, which occurred on the 9th day of March around sunset. Whence their civil new moon *apo tes phaseos* began on March 12. Therefore the fifteenth day falls on March 26. These are the words of Onuphrius. And although he professes to have drawn these from Jewish doctrine, they nevertheless differ much from it. For the new moon, when it was established *apo tes phaseos*, was never more than three days away from the true conjunction, but the civil new moon was usually announced one day at most after it, as is clear from R. Moses. Concerning which, see the Gloss on chapter 1 of *Kiddusch*. But ^C indeed [the truth] falls on March 9, at the fifth hour with a third, almost from midnight, about eight hours after the central conjunction, which preceded the true one, in the meridian of Jerusalem. Wherefore it is false that the new moon was fixed only on the third day, that is, March 12.

Col. 933 C. *Paschei de en te pro dekatrion.* Neither the leaves of the Sibyl, nor the riddles of the Sphinx can be compared with the obscurity of those things which follow: which not even that most learned mathematician, who declared this cycle most skillfully, has grasped. For firstly, he says that the Jews *hyperbasei*, that is, by a translation, postponed the Passover; but that Christ suffered on the 14th moon *nykterine*. Kepler very well understands the Nicene moon here. But He suffered, as Epiphanius believes, on the 10th day before the Kalends of April, that is, March 20. But the Nicene moon then, by the authority of the same Epiphanius, was the 11th, but it began the 14th towards evening, when in the faulty Jewish cycle it was the 15th, and following that the 16th. But *kath' hyperbasin* the 14th was made by them, when they had transferred the Passover to it. But it cannot be accepted regarding this later one, because he calls it *nykterine*. But to the Jews after the *metabasin* it ceased at the 15th: and therefore it was *hemerine* 15th. It is possible that this place requires an emendation rather than an interpretation: and it should be read: *triskaidekate hemerine mese*, that is, the 13th moon, which begins from the rising of the sun, and during the decline, or rather *mesazouse* towards noon, namely of the day on which the 11th moon is civilly enumerated. Unless it is thus, nothing occurs more apt than what pleased Kepler, that the 14th Nicene is called the 13th; because it ends in that night from which the 14th took its beginning: just as the day of Unleavened Bread is called by the evangelists the Preparation ^D of the Passover itself, or the fourteenth day of the month *kata prolepsin* [by anticipation]. But then, if *mese* signifies noon, it will hardly cohere. For it is not *nykterine mese*, which began only after evening. But neither in my opinion did Epiphanius look to the mean astronomical motions. Wherefore *to mese* can be absent as far as I am concerned.

Ibid. *Proelabon gar, kai ephagon.* This is that almost inextricable knot, which that most sharp mathematician does not untie. For he interprets it thus: Christ, with certain Jews, celebrated the Passover on the faulty Jewish 14th moon, as it was ending—the Nicene being the 13th, that is, 14 days before the Kalends of April—the day before the one in which He suffered. Therefore He anticipated the Nicene moon by two days. Therefore, says Epiphanius, *proelabon, kai ephagon to Pascha* [they anticipated, and ate the Passover] two days before the legitimate time, which was the 14th Nicene falling on the 10th day before the Kalends. As if these words, *proelabon*, etc., were not to be understood of all the Jews, but of Christ and the apostles, and if there are any others who observed the rites of the elders. For as far as the rest of the Jews are concerned, they transferred their Passover to the following day, that is, the 13th day before the Kalends, on which Christ suffered, *kath' hyperbasin*. Whence they did not anticipate the Nicene 14th by two days, as others believe, but by one day only, because they celebrated the faulty Jewish 15th, and the Nicene 14th. Wherefore Epiphanius wrote: *hyperbebekoton auton mian hemeran* [they having passed over one day], which is also found in no. 27. But what follow...

follows seems to signify this, namely, that some of the Jews, the Pharisees and Scribes, desiring to amend this common error, had postponed their Pascha to the 20th day of March, on which day Christ suffered, so that they might get closer to the equinox or even to the celestial full moon. For the very words silently demonstrate this: "And the equinox [was] before the eleventh day of the Kalends of April, on account of which, having erred, they made an exception of one day." Therefore, on account of the equinox, and perhaps also on account of the moon, so that they might not depart so far from either, they had spread out the day. For even the very appearance of the star could have warned them of the defect, which they at least decided should be diminished.

While I am investigating these matters more attentively, I have discovered that the opinion of the most holy Father was different—false indeed, but one which he nonetheless inculcated several times: namely, that most of the Jews observed their Pascha with Christ not on the fifth feria, or the day before that on which he suffered, but on the third feria. He teaches this same thing in most explicit words at the end of this *Panarion*, in the *Exposition of the Faith*, no. 22, where, while dealing with the rites of the Church, he mentions among other things the fast of the fourth and sixth feria, the reason for the institution of which he reveals: *Epeideper epiphoskouse tetradi syneluphthe o Kyrios, kai to prosabbato estaurothe.* "Because the Lord was apprehended at the dawning of the fourth feria, and was crucified on the day before the Sabbath." Since it is established that the Lord was apprehended on the beginning of the fourth feria, and crucified on the fifth feria, it follows that, on the night which follows the third feria, and which is attributed in the Jewish [reckoning] to the fourth feria, he was apprehended, having celebrated the Pascha a little earlier. ^D Epiphanius, therefore, had heard and received from his elders that those two feriae had been appointed for the commemoration of the Lord's Passion and were consecrated by fasting. But when it was certain that he was fixed to the cross on the sixth feria, no other part of his Passion seemed to remain but his apprehension and binding. Therefore he believed that the Lord was apprehended and bound as the fourth feria was approaching. Nor did he wish [him] to celebrate at any other time than that at which the majority of the Jews celebrated. Therefore, the Jews also performed it on the third feria. Vitiated, who denies it? But because the largest part was eating the Pascha on that day, he anticipated along with them by two days. For it was to be celebrated on the fifth feria, March 19, when the vitiated Jewish 14th [moon] coincided with this day. But for what reason those Jews were eating the Pascha so precipitately, he offered no reason. But this, however, seems to signify that some of the Jews, namely the Pharisees and Scribes, desiring to amend this common error, had postponed their Pascha to the 20th day of March, the day on which Christ suffered, so that they might get closer to the equinox, or even to the celestial full moon. For the very words tacitly demonstrate this: "And the equinox [was] before the eleventh of the Kalends of April, on account of which, having erred, they made an exception of one day." Therefore, on account of the equinox, and perhaps also on account of the moon, so that they might not depart so far from either, they had spread out the day. For even the very appearance of the star could have warned them of the defect, which they at least decided should be diminished.

When Epiphanius clearly feels these things, the other things said by him must be directed in the same way, and thus be constituted: Christ celebrated the legal Pascha with most of the Jews on the 16th of the Kalends of April, the third feria, with the vitiated Jewish moon at 12, when with the fifth feria the vitiated moon 14 ought to have been completed. Therefore, he anticipated by two days. But the Pharisees and other Jews [celebrated] on the Jewish moon 15, March 20, the day on which Christ suffered, *kath' hyperbasin* [by a passing over] of one day from the 14th lunar day to the 15th. From these [facts] it is evident that those are false who attribute to Epiphanius the opinion of the Greeks, that Christ celebrated the Pascha on the 13th moon, before the Jews, who finished it the day after. For he thinks that Christ did not do this on the 13th moon, but on the 12th, insofar as he thinks it happened on the third feria. But if he had thought that Christ celebrated on the fifth feria according to the common and most certain opinion, he would have asserted that it was done on no other moon than that which was 14 from the vitiated cycle. Hence, from the more critical judgment ^C of Epiphanius, it must be defined that Christ celebrated the Pascha on the fifth feria, 14th moon, with some of the Jews, but the others with the Pharisees on the sixth feria. From which opinion of Epiphanius two things are gathered, which are usually most keenly disputed concerning the year of the Passion: the first, that the princes of the Jews did not perform the legitimate feast of the lamb on the same day as Christ; the second, that since this could not have happened without some change of times and feasts, a certain translation existed in those times. Wherefore, in order to illustrate this discussion of Epiphanius, so many questions must be argued in a few words in this place.

Whether the Jews formerly used a translation of the feasts.

In the more recent computation of the Jews, the choice of days for fixing the new moons is somewhat scrupulous and anxious. Concerning which there is much in the Talmudic commentaries, in the Treatise on the beginning of the year, and in the first volume of *Jad* of R. Moses, in the Tract *Kiddusch hakhodesch*: and also in the book *Sefer Ha-Itim* of R. Isachar, son of Mordecai, and in other books in which infinite rules and cautions are prescribed. However, the new moons of two months, Tishrei and Nisan, are especially observed by them, for the sake of the translation of which ^D a double [cause] is there brought forward: natural, or civil. For when the minutes exceeding the feriae reach 18 hours, and the lunar *psephismos* [calculation] reaches the noon of the following day (for the Jews begin the day from the beginning of the night, from which 18 hours calculated reach the noon of the following civil day); then for the other natural feria...

^A a translation of the neomenia is said to occur. But as the day is spread out for the sake of some convenience, this is entirely a civil matter, and depends on the will and institution of men. From this source have arisen the schisms concerning the feriae among the Jews; for some are "rejectable" (rejiculæ), others "proper" and "legitimate." The rejectable, which is called *Lo* by them, is triple, which in Tisri is contained in this technical word *Adu* [T'IN]. Thus, the Tisri neomenia never begins on feria 1, 4, or 6. In Nisan, however, it is *Badu* [T" Badu]: and it signifies that the Nisan neomenia never falls on feria 2, 5, or 6. The remaining four feriae are called *Kebihhoth*; because in them the neomeniae are fixed and retained. Furthermore, it is thought that the caution regarding the feriae flowed from the fact that they did not want two Sabbaths, or feasts, to be consecutive in Tisri, because that month is occupied almost entirely with solemnities: for if Tisri should fall on feria 1, the fifteenth day would be the Scenopegia, immediately after the Sabbath; if on the 4th, the tenth day, which is the feast of Kippurim, would fall on the 6th feria; if finally it should fall on the 6th, the Scenopegia would occur on the 6th feria, immediately before the Sabbath. In Nisan, there is another cause than the continuation of two Sabbaths; for even that can be avoided no more, as when the Nisan neomenia begins on feria 1, which is legitimate; the fourteenth day is the Sabbath, and the following is the solemnity of the Azymes. The rest can be read both among the Hebrews, and from the Latins in Paulus Forosemproniensis, lib. VIII, part II, in Münster in his *Calendarium*, and also in Scaliger, books II and VII of *De emendatione temporum*, which we deservedly pass over.

Nunc, the question is now called into consideration whether that distinction of days and feriae was used in ancient times: so that in the year in which Christ suffered, the Jews transferred the Pasch according to a prescribed formula. Scaliger defends the view that this custom was most ancient and received even before the times of the Seleucids, and he thinks the reason why it was observed especially in Tisri is that they could with difficulty preserve cooked foods for two days in those regions, which are accustomed to be very hot in the autumn. This reasoning tacitly assumes that which has been refuted in another place; that it was permitted for the Jews to cook victuals on no feast days at all. But we have demonstrated, in the old Law, that this was commanded only regarding the Sabbaths alone or, if perhaps, the day of Kippurim also: in the other solemnities, only servile work was forbidden; but things pertaining to food could be prepared lawfully. But nevertheless, he proves ^B the translation of the Tisri characterism under the Seleucids in book II, where he discusses the period of the Alexandrian Jews, and confirms it by some examples. Just as, in the year of the Lord’s Passion, when Tisri had fallen on September 24, feria 4, it was transferred to the fifth; because Nisan had passed from the Sabbath, that is, from the 6th feria, into the 7th. For it was the Alexandrian year 344, and therefore the 11th of the 5th period. Thus, in the year of Christ 70, when the Nisan neomenia, according to the Alexandrian cycle, fell on the 7th feria, it was transferred to the 1st. Therefore, also Tisri was moved from feria 4 to 5, in an embolismic defective year. But that Nisan began on the first feria, he concludes from the fact that Josephus says the fourteenth of Nisan fell on the 14th day of the Julian month. It was the first year of the 6th period of the contract: Tisri 6th September, feria 4, solar cycle 22. Thus, the neomenia was transferred to the 5th feria: and for that reason Nisan, which coincides with the Kalends of April, having been transferred from the 7th to the 1st, was in the solar cycle 21.

But in both demonstrations, Scaliger is consistent with himself, and to prove that which is doubtful, he brings forward things that are more doubtful and uncertain. For who would concede to him this first point, that it is the year of the Passion which he himself established, the Julian 78, the Dionysian 53? What if, moreover, the Jews never even adopted that Alexandrian period? A fact we discussed earlier. Wherefore, by even the slightest denial, the Scaligerian demonstration is torn down, and profits nothing. Nor is the other one any more solid or firm, nor does it rest on less false and obscure postulates. For as to his claim that Josephus joins the 14th of Nisan with the 14th of April in the year of the Jewish destruction, Josephus never said that: but he teaches in book V of *The Jewish War*, c. 11, that the 19th day of the month Xanthicus was the day of the Azymes: ^C "And on the day of the Azymes, on the fourteenth of the month Xanthicus, on which the Jews are thought to have been liberated for the first time from the Egyptians." Scaliger divines that Xanthicus in this place is the Julian April, as if he had permanently assigned those Macedonian appellations of the months to the Julian months: which is most false. For Xanthicus is often the same as Nisan, as in book III of *Origenes*, c. 10: "And in the month Xanthicus, which is called Nisan among us, and is the beginning of the year, on the fourteenth according to the moon, when the sun is in Aries," etc., he writes that the Pasch is celebrated: which he had also stated in c. 9, concerning the month.

Paulus Middelburgensis also asserts the antiquity of these translations in book VIII of part II, and from that explores the time of the Lord’s Passion. But in his *Annales* for the year 34, n. 54, he harshly expostulates with those who have brought a new opinion into the Church of God concerning the transferred Pasch, since God most gravely commanded that the sacred Pasch be celebrated on no other day than the 14th moon at evening. Whence those who, because they were unclean, could not perform it on the 14th day of the first month, were not deferred to the following, or the third, or ^D fourth day, but to the 14th moon of the second month, which he also demonstrates by the example of King Hezekiah in II Paralipomenon, chapter xxx. And yet this argument against the translation of feasts seems very light. First, because nowhere in the Sacred Scriptures is it commanded that the Pasch be celebrated on the 14th moon, nor is there any mention of a moon, but of the fourteenth day of the first month. But will anyone think that the 14th moon was so observed, that the true, or at least the motion of the mean, star of this had to be explored? For this could not be performed in civil and equable usage. But with this removed, the aforementioned reasoning concludes nothing: for those who defend that the feriae were translated do not assert that the Pasch was celebrated on a day other than the 14th at evening; but that the neomenia itself, from which the 14th day is counted,

^A should be shifted to another day is what they think. But they deny this, since it must be that the feast began at the very instant of the celestial full moon, whereas either from the error of the lunar cycle, or from the observation of the 24th, it could have been the 15th day of the month, the 15th or 16th moon. I say these things not to define at once that this political shifting of the later computation was among the ancient Jews, and thus used in the time of Christ. For the Jews themselves even deny this. Since R. Moses ben Maimon in chapter 7 of *Kiddusch Hakhodesch*, § 7 and 8, thinks that the rejection of the feriae arose from the time when they began to direct their computation toward mean motions, having passed over the true ones; for which reason they do not fix the computation in the days of Adar, because this license is for the conjunction of the moon and sun in their mean motion, not in the true place as we have indicated; therefore they made a day of fixing and a day of delay so as to hit the day of the true conjunction. ^B *For what reason in this computation do they not place the neomenia on the 1st, 4th, or 6th feria (namely in Tisri)?* Because, obviously, this computation is adapted to the conjunctions of the sun and moon according to the mean motion of those stars, without regard for their true place, as we have already shown. For that reason they have pre-determined certain days on which they might fix the neomeniae, and other rejections, so that in that way they might be able to attain the true conjunction. Wherefore, since they have announced neomeniae for several years before and after the passion of Christ based on the observation of the 24th and the calculations of true motion, as the same author Moses says, it follows that this superstition was introduced long after.

Verum, because in the opinion of Epiphanius and other most serious theologians, Christ performed the last Pasch and the solemn ceremonies on the day before that on which the Scribes and Pharisees celebrated the Pasch, there is some probable reasoning to be entered into, because the Jews might have transferred their Pasch from the legitimate day to the following one. And that is, if I am not mistaken, not at all absurd, from whose commentaries (those of the rabbis) we have taken this conjecture. They write—and among others R. Moses in that treatise which I have often mentioned—that there were formerly many causes for deferring the first month and the Pasch, which we have touched upon before: as when the crops or the fruits of the trees did not yet appear ripe; if bridges were broken, or furnaces destroyed, and other things of that kind which might hinder the solemnity. ^C About which the assembly of that body, which they call the Beth Din, had to wait for a decree. It happened thus, that the matter of the first month and the time of the Pasch was very uncertain, and placed in their discretion: just as among the Romans it was the custom for the duration of the years to be contracted or deferred by the whim of the pontiffs through intercalation. Wherefore, just as those same pontiffs were accustomed to announce the Kalends—that is, the Kalends of the months—every month, so among the Jews the Synedrium, which presided over the ordering of the times, was accustomed to announce the neomeniae of certain months by messengers, whom they called *shelihim*, namely of those months in which certain solemn feasts were performed, whose times were difficult to conjecture. These were Nisan, Ab, Elul, Tisri, Casseu, Adar, about which Moses discourses in chapter 3. When the temple was standing, for the lesser Pasch, Ijar was added. Therefore, after the witnesses had been heard and approved, who confirmed that they had seen the new moon, and the neomenia had been sanctified, in Tisri and Nisan, on the very first day after sunrise, messengers went out, and traveling through Palestine, they went quite far, and announced the neomenia. In nearer towns, to which the messengers could arrive more quickly, they held the neomeniae for only one day; in more remote ones, they held them for two days, because they were uncertain which day the Synedrium had pre-fixed. Concerning which, see chapter 5 of the treatise of R. Maimonides. And this the Jews even today retain in the diaspora, and they celebrate the iéromenias for two days—that is to say, the thirtieth, or the 31st and the new moon. Whence the Horatian saying is derived: *Today is the thirtieth Sabbath.*

But so that it may be more evidently clear how inconstant and mutable the definition of the neomeniae was, there is a certain lucid passage in chapter 1 of the same treatise, § 15 and 16, which I shall transcribe here in the same words. For nothing can be said more aptly to our conjecture: "The Beth Din sat all the thirtieth day, and the witnesses did not come; and they rose at dusk and passed over the month, as we have explained in this chapter. And after four or six days, remote witnesses came and testified that they had seen the moon in its time, which was the night of the thirtieth. And even if they came at the end of the month, they threaten them with a great threat, and confuse them with questions, and weary them with cross-examinations, and scrutinize them regarding it; and they labor so that they may not sanctify this month, since it has turned out [to be] intercalated. But if the witnesses stand by their testimony and it is found to be consistent, and the witnesses are men who are known and wise, and the testimony has been examined as it ought, they sanctify it, and they return and reckon for that month from the thirtieth day, since the moon appeared in its night." [Postquam] The Synedrium sat for the whole of the thirtieth day; and if no witness arrived, they rise at early dawn and intercalate the month; just as we have explained in this chapter. But if after the fourth or fifth day remote witnesses arrive, and confirm that they have observed the moon in its time—that is, on the thirtieth night—nay, even if they arrive at the end of the month, first they indeed present to them a great terror, and lash them with interrogations, and wear them out with more tedious questioning; and they examine their testimony ^D more scrupulously; and they turn themselves in all directions, so that they may decline that new sanctification, after it has once been intercalated. But if those witnesses are constant in their testimony, and it has been found to be entirely true; but also the witnesses themselves are known and prudent; and finally, their testimony has been rightly and properly explored, they define the neomenia anew, and re-weaving that month, they begin to calculate its days from the thirtieth day of the previous one: since the moon was indeed seen in its night. It is manifest from the passage that in the time of Christ the Lord the neomeniae were not so firmly established that it was not permitted to re-weave and retract even when the month had already been affected, and thus the solemnities themselves, which depended on the beginning of the month.

^A fell upon different days. Wherefore, since this whole business was being administered incorrectly by very foolish magistrates, and contrary to the rites of the ancestors, while superstition was rampant and in most corrupt times, it is likely that some were found who strove to amend this disturbance of ceremonies and rites, as far as was in them, and to perform the sacred rites which they could personally attend to at the lawful times. Of this kind was the supper of the Paschal lamb: which Christ chose to partake of with the apostles, and perhaps even with other Jews, on the day before the others did so perversely. Nor should this difference of one or another day be more worthy of wonder than the fact that for the Christians themselves, not only before the decree of Pope Victor or the Council of Nicaea, but even for some centuries afterward, it happened that they differed from one another in the most religious celebration of Pascha, usually by one month, sometimes by seven days. Concerning which we have noted some things in our ^B *Protheoria* regarding the Breviary of Nicephorus. There we made it plain that such dissensions raged not only between heretics, or Quartodecimans, and Catholics, but even among the orthodox themselves.

Whether Christ celebrated Pascha on the same day as the other Jews.

The controversy between the Greeks and the Latins has rendered the question celebrated in itself: for the former, in order to patronize their own opinion concerning leavened bread, most stubbornly defend that Christ the Lord celebrated Pascha not on the 14th day of the moon, but on the 13th, when the Jews were not yet using unleavened bread. On the other hand, the Latins, lest they allow this aid/presidium to be extorted from them regarding the Lord’s example, have denied that He ate the legitimate lamb on any other day than that on which the other Jews did, that is, on the 14th day of the moon toward evening. But this opinion of the Greek dregs, insofar as it teaches that Christ celebrated Pascha without unleavened bread, contains a great deal of ignorance and absurdity. For whatever day Christ might have died, since once the solemnity of the Unleavened Bread was to be observed, He could not have satisfied this solemn religion without unleavened bread any more than without the lamb. Therefore, He did not use leaven, lest He infringe the law of which He was the author. But neither is it true, as the Greeks, and among others Cedrenus and Nicephorus affirm, that Christ ate the Paschal supper on the 13th day of the month, not the 14th: nor does Epiphanius think this, as some great men have believed. Indeed, ^D he asserts that He celebrated Pascha even before the 13th day of the moon, that is, at the end of the Jewish 11th day of the moon, but the Nicene on the 11th, as has been declared in its proper place. But the obscurity of the passage makes it necessary to grant pardon to those who have falsely interpreted the opinion of Epiphanius. But omitting the controversy of the Greeks, which contains nothing of difficulty, we shall be the briefer in treating the whole remaining question, because most have diligently explained it in their own writings. Wherefore the arguments of either side must be estimated in a few words.

Those who wish that Christ celebrated Pascha on the same day as the other Jews, rely on the authority of the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The former of whom, chap. xxvi, 5: *On the first day*, he says, *of the Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus*, etc. And Mark, chap. xiv, 12: *And on the first day of the Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Pascha*, etc. Finally Luke, chap. xxii, 7: *The day of the Unleavened Bread arrived, in which it was necessary to sacrifice the Pascha*. They manifestly call it the first of the Unleavened Bread, which began from the evening of the 5th day of the week, on which day the Pascha appears to have been prepared by the apostles according to custom and announced to the father of the family.

But others, who with Epiphanius and other very grave writers deny that Pascha was celebrated on the same day, bring forward the testimony of John; who signifies this openly and without ambiguity: first, chap. xiii, 1: *Before the feast of the Pascha*, he writes that Christ was at the end of His Pascha, that is, *Before the feast of the Pascha*. Also chap. xviii, 28, he says that the Jews did not wish to enter the praetorium on the day of the Preparation, so that they might not be defiled, but that they might eat the Pascha. To these, chap. xix, 14: *And it was the preparation of the Pascha, about the sixth hour*. I pass over the other testimonies or arguments. For these are the most important.

Now, in such a conflict of opinions and authorities, I judge that one should rest most upon that which is approved by those testimonies which cannot be drawn into the opposite opinion, whereas the others, which seem contrary, can be reconciled and explained. And of such a kind is the latter opinion, which Epiphanius has followed: to which not a few, and those foremost in authority and erudition, have given their suffrage: especially Paulus Burgensis, Paulus Forosemproniensis the bishop, Joannes Lucidus, Onufrius, Jansenius, our own Maldonatus, and others. Although these, and almost everyone who has thus far embraced this opinion, are accustomed to take refuge in that common translation of the feasts and the selection of the days of the week, and think that the first day of the Unleavened Bread was never celebrated by the Jews on the 6th day of the week. But that this was not yet established in the time of Christ, the Hebrews themselves teach. And indeed, if that had been the ordinary method of rejecting and adopting the days of the week, and it had been accepted by all, neither Christ the Lord, nor any Jews at all, would have celebrated new moons or feast days otherwise than according to the prescription of that law. For that change of the days of the week was not headlong or abrupt, but was already accustomed to be provided for and designated at the very beginning of the year. As we said above was the case in the year of the Passion according to the opinion of Scaliger; in which, when Tisri had passed from the 4th day of the week to the 5th, it was a consequence that Nisan should also be moved from the 6th to the 7th. If, therefore, this were common and perpetual, no one would depart from the common custom. Wherefore it is likely that a certain extraordinary and singular disturbance existed, which happened precisely in that month in which Christ suffered: so much so that not only He alone with the apostles, but also others celebrated on a day different from the rest. For even

^A those things which are brought forward by the evangelists against this opinion are reconciled without any difficulty. For the first day of the Unleavened Bread, they call that day, of course, upon whose evening the celebration of the Pasch and the beginning of the Unleavened Bread would fall, according to the Law and the prescription of the elders: which Luke, noticing, prudently added, "where it behooved [them] to sacrifice," as if he were obliquely noting the Scribes and Pharisees, who had sacrificed ^B where it was not fitting. This common interpretation is assisted by that conjecture of ours which we proposed earlier: that the celebration of the Pasch was of such a kind at that time, that when it had been proclaimed in a preposterous and confused manner by the council, and perhaps they had also changed the pre-established new moon and the day of the Pasch, the majority thought that day should be observed with Christ and the apostles, on which it had been proclaimed before, and indeed at the rightful time, and they did not care for that vain retraction of the teachers. From which it came to pass that the apostles found everything prepared at that guest-chamber.

Col. 933 D.

Συλλαμβάνεται δὲ τῇ τρίτῃ.

Ibid.

Ἐπιφώσκουσα Κυριακή.

ἐπιφώσκουσα Κυριακή

ἐπιφώσκουσα

ἐπιφώσκουσα

^A Or, it is used even if the light of the moon or the stars is rising, in whatever way it may initiate the day, which Casaubon in *Exercit.* 16, no. 15, truly considers, so that it should be understood as if [the text] said, as Luke says in chapter xxiii, 54: *And the Sabbath was dawning.* For this reasoning seems absurd and superfluous. But simply, and with no other [meaning] to be sought, *ἐπιφώσκειν* is to appear or to arrive. I believe, however, that this arose from the fact that, since the primary and most natural designation of *day* signifies light, and the time from the rising of the sun to the setting; and yet most nations, having established various beginnings of time, have nevertheless called *day* that space of time which revolves from the point they have established for themselves back to the same point. Wherefore, just as in that primary and natural notion of a day it is properly called a day because at its beginning the sun rises, so too, when the appellations of a day are transferred to remaining forms, this same word for a beginning is used, even if less properly than in that [first] case. Therefore, whether the starting point is reckoned from midnight, or from midday, or from the beginning of the night, everywhere *day*, that is, *to begin* and *to enter*, will simply be said. Just as the word *neomenia* (new moon), although it properly signifies the nascent moon, is transferred to all beginnings of months, even those not at all lunar, such as the thirty-day months and the Egyptian months. Hence, there is one *new moon* according to the moon, another not according to the moon. In this sense I think the evangelists used *ἐπιφώσκειν* simply, as when in Matt. ch. xxviii, 1, he speaks thus: *And late on the Sabbath, as it was dawning toward the first of the Sabbaths.* Where there is no need for any argumentation so that either the day itself is said to begin from the night, when finally the sun rises, or that the moon or stars are implicitly understood. For in my judgment the sense here is: the Sabbaths having been completed, or the week having been finished, on the following day, which was entering with the first day of the week; which is declared more clearly in Luke, ch. xxiii, 54: *And the Sabbath was dawning.* Where the word *ἐπέφωσκε* signifies no light, but a beginning. And in Epiphanius in the *Exposition of the faith*, no. 22, the paschal fast is said to be broken around cockcrow, that is, after midnight, from which Christians begin the day. Item, a little later he writes that some keep vigil through the holy week. Where he seems to have taken it properly, as if the night brightens on the day following, that is, ends in the light. For he understands the night which precedes the Preparation (Παρασκευή). ^B

*Col. 934 D. And that there is a resurrection and equinox.* Here is the argument for the error. For he believed that Christ, whom he had learned had risen on the very equinox, that is, March 25, rose on the day on which the equinox fell in Diocletian's time; for from Anatolius, as I think, and the ancient Alexandrians, he established the equinox of March 22, whereas the Nicene [Council] transferred it some years later to the twentieth. Hence those who succeeded ^C Alexandrian writers to the 11th of the Kalends, that is, March 21, fixed the equinox, as among others, Proterius the Alexandrian in Bede, *Book on the Vernal Equinox*, which is in volume III. He, I say, fixed the equinox on the 25th of Phamenoth, which is the 8th of the Kalends of April, in the time of Pope Leo. Therefore, it is a mnemonic error of the most learned Kepler, while in his *Eclogae*, page 193, he says that Proterius fixed the equinox around the beginning of the reign of Diocletian on the 11th of the Kalends; but this property belongs to Anatolius, whose illustrious fragment Eusebius describes in *Book* vii, *chapter* 26, from the same Paschal canons, which also Bede mentions in his *Book on the Equinox*: where he also distorts Anatolius's words, taken wrongly from the most depraved interpretation of Rufinus, into a foreign meaning. Wherefore, since the doctrine of Epiphanius has flowed from that decree of Anatolius as from a source, it is not open for us to pass over so illustrious a discussion in silence.

An Anatolian passage of distinction is weighed

Anatolius lived nearly in the time of Diocletian, by race an Alexandrian, who, while he was making a journey to Laodicea for the synod held at Antioch against Paul of Samosata, was elected bishop by the Laodiceans. He flourished, therefore, under the times of Aurelian and Diocletian, a man most learned and cultivated in mathematical arts. ^D Who among other things composed Paschal canons; from which Eusebius transcribed these: We have rendered these into Latin thus: *Furthermore, he possesses in the first year of the enneadecaeteris (19-year cycle) the new moon of the first month; which is the beginning of the entire enneadecaeteris, on the 26th of the Egyptian month Phamenoth, according to the Macedonian months the 22nd of Dystrus, or as the Romans would say, the 11th of the Kalends of April. And the sun is found on the aforementioned 26th of Phamenoth, not only having entered the first segment, but also having already traveled the fourth day in it. And this first segment they are accustomed to call the dodecatemorion (twelfth part), and the equinoctial, and the beginning of the months, and the head of the cycle, and the release of the course of the planets; but that before this, [is called] the last of the months, and the twelfth segment, and the final dodecatemorion, and the end of the path of the planets. Wherefore we say it is no small error, nor one that occurred by chance, for those who place the first month in it, and take the fourteenth [day] of the Passover according to it.*

^A Since therefore he had fixed the equinox on the twenty-second of March, this seemed wonderful to many, who remembered that both the recent Alexandrian writers and, what is the chief thing, the Nicene Synod had established it on the twenty-first of March. Concerning this matter, Bede, being consulted, is greatly agitated; and bringing forward the words of Anatolius—corrupted, as I have said, by Rufinus—he accommodates to them a meaning that is foreign. For Rufinus rendered the earlier parts in this way: "There is, therefore, in the first year the beginning of the first month, when there is the beginning of the nineteen years, according to the Egyptians indeed Phamenoth 26; but according to the Romans the 11th of the Kalends of April. On which day the sun is found not only to have ascended the first part, but also already to have a fourth [part] on the same day, that is, in the first of the twelve parts, etc." Which Bede accepts thus: The equinox, on account of the bissextile [leap year], sometimes falls on the 12th of the Kalends, sometimes on the 11th. For since the Julian year exceeds the Egyptian and simple year by six hours, a shift of the equinox occurs in a common year. Wherefore if the equinox is on the twenty-first of March in the bissextile year itself, in the first year after the bissextile it will fall at the midday of the twenty-first; in the second year after the bissextile ^B at the decline of the day on the twenty-first; in the third year into the middle of the night; in the fourth year, through intercalation, it will recede from the twenty-second again into the twenty-first and the morning time. Therefore, when it falls in the evening or middle of the night, it pertains to the 11th of the Kalends; for the reason that the night itself is attributed by Christian rite to the following day. But when it arrives at midday or the morning time, it is attributed to the twenty-first of March, or the 12th of the Kalends of April. Whence, he says, Anatolius advisedly does not forbid the Passover from being celebrated on the 11th, but [rather] before the 11th of the Kalends of April. For he did not signify the times of the first equinoctial throne, but the last: that is, those from which he knew the celebration of the Passover could begin. For when in the second or third year after the bissextile the Lord's Day of the Passover occurs on the 11th of the Kalends of April, it is certain indeed that the Passover day begins with the equinox; the parts of whose ceremonies are celebrated in the first night; [and] when the same is half-spent, or at its beginning, the equinox is completed. Then, truly, the Passover is rightly performed; because the principal part of the resurrection, which took place at dawn, is celebrated after the equinox. This is approximately Bede’s [judgment] in his book *On the Equinox*. Who thus explains the words of Anatolius: Since there are two days attributed to the equinox, Anatolius speaks of the latter; in which, specifically, on that night which follows the twenty-first day of March, the equinox occurs. ^D Moreover, he indeed understands it concerning the evening equinox above all; because Anatolius says that one ought to celebrate the Passover when the moon is found to be positioned opposite the sun, such that the sun holds a part of the vernal equinox, but the moon [a part] of the autumnal. "What then," he says, "is to be wondered at, if he says the equinox happened on the 11th of the Kalends, since he declares he is speaking of that hour when, as the sun sets in the evening, the moon raises its rising from the opposite direction?" Then he proceeds, and regarding what Anatolius had written—that on the 11th of the Kalends of April, the sun had not only ascended the first part of the twelfth-part, but also already had a fourth [part] in that same day—he explains it thus: Because as often as the equinoctial time, according to the aforesaid theory, falls on the 11th of the Kalends, so often in that same moment that fourth part of the day, which annually is wont to increase, is esteemed to be perfect according to nature. ^C Wherefore, when the sun has reached the equinox, it has already completed the quadrant of the day. As if to say: From one vernal equinox to the other, there intervene solid 365 days, and six hours. But so that you may understand how much it has deviated from the sense of Anatolius, that remarkable passage must be explained by us. Anatolius therefore believes the first month of the first year of the whole decemnovennial cycle to have its new moon on the 26th of Phamenoth, or March 22nd, or the 11th of the Kalends of April, on which day the sun traverses the first segment of the zodiac. Which segment he calls the first twelfth-part, and equinoctial, and the beginning of the months, and therefore of the whole cycle, and the "release" of the course of the planets, that is, as it were the starting-gates from which they originate. For Rufinus has not interpreted the "release" correctly, unless being released is the same as being originated. Although that epoch, or equinoctial point, is the same as the beginning of the following course, and the end of the preceding: whence he teaches that they are strongly hallucinating, who constitute the first month and the paschal fourteenth [day] in the previous and final segment. For the series of the discourse itself indicates that the Greek must be accommodated to this sense: *And [we say it is no small error] for those who place the first month in it.* The pronoun "in it" pertains to the "final twelfth-part," and the "end of the course of the planets." Nor do some correctly emend [the text] to "before it." For he is speaking about the final segment. He proceeds then: *And we say that those who take the fourteenth of the Passover according to it [commit an error so great, or by chance.*] For *κατ' αὐτήν* [according to it, fem.] I affirm that *κατ' αὐτό* [according to it, neut.] should be read. For there is nothing to which that pronoun can conveniently refer. He had just mentioned "those who place [the month] in it," that is, in the final segment. But if someone contends that it pertains to those things which are further away, for example the "beginning of the months," or the "head," or the "release": the opposite of that which we argue, and which we wish Anatolius to have thought, will follow from that discourse. Surely, it is not permitted to fix the paschal fourteenth on that first day on which the equinox is completed, but in the upper segment; and therefore the Passover can be celebrated on the twenty-second day. For if it is forbidden to place the paschal fourteenth *on the day of the equinox* itself, then it is permitted to place the Passover on the day immediately preceding it, so that the latest Passover is established on March 22nd, which is also the truth that it is allowed after the times of the Nicene Council. But that Anatolius had thought this, or that his words can be referred to that intention, that I steadfastly deny. For primarily it is absurd to join the pronoun "it" with those things that are placed at such a long interval back in the discourse. Then Anatolius refutes those who were celebrating the first month before the first segment and the day of the equinox; which they would not do if they placed the paschal fourteenth on the equinoctial day itself: for this is the beginning of the first month. In addition to these things, what he brings forward from the doctrines of the Jews to prove that opinion of his, leaves no room for doubt. For they used to maintain...

after the equinox had occurred, toward evening—at which time the moon, in the other equinox, looks from the region toward the sun—that the passover rites, that is, the Jewish Pascha, ought to be celebrated. But this xiv moon was celebrated at evening. Therefore, the xiv must fall on the equinox itself, not precede it, because the Pascha must be performed Judaically "after the equinox," as he repeats quite often. Since, therefore, he asserts that what he had said proceeded from the opinion of the Jewish doctors; and furthermore, that the Jews could not indicate a xiv before the equinox: it is manifest that Anatolius did not wish to appoint the xiv before the day of the equinox itself. Especially since the Christian xiv, by most ancient tradition, ought to fall on the equinox itself, not before this day. Consequently, that common reading "according to it" is faulty; it should be written "according to the same." The most recent interpreter (for we shall speak of Rufinus later) has greatly depraved this passage of Anatolius. For he translates thus: "Wherefore we say that those who think the beginning of the first month is on the xxvi day of Phamenoth, and appoint the feast of the Passover to be celebrated on the xiv day next according to it, err greatly." He thought that "according to it" pertained to the xxvi day, whereas it should be understood as referring to the final segment of the zodiac. Wherefore, from what has been discussed so far, it appears that the first Tropic month, or of Aries, is here understood by Anatolius. For it cannot be the lunar month, since in the Alexandrian cycle the new moon of the first month in the first cycle is March xxi ^A: for the first year of the Alexandrian cycle begins its paschal new moon ^B from this day, whereas the first cycle of the Latins, received after the Alexandrian, began on Apr. iv, which is the last Alexandrian cycle, as we shall explain more fully elsewhere, God willing. Since, therefore, that is the new moon of the first lunar month which follows next after the equinox, it is apparent why the Alexandrians, and the Nicene Fathers who followed them, should have appointed March xxiii as the i cycle: because the seat of the equinox for Anatolius and the other founders of the paschal cycle—whether by time or by decree—was March xxii. Whence, although the equinox later passed into the xxi, and the first new moon did not happen on March xxiii, nevertheless they did not move the first cycle from the old station. Wherefore the new moon of Aries, or the first solar month, is the final paschal limit, or the xiv, which by the rule of Anatolius corresponds to the v cycle: for the nineteen-year cycle, or paschal cycle, as Beda says, is accommodated to finding the limits, or the lunar fourteenths, just as the lunar cycle is to the new moons. And therefore, the first paschal month deservedly began from the first xiv, that is, from the day of the equinox; which Anatolius had established on March xxii. And thence it is clear that the Pascha cannot be celebrated on all days of the paschal month; but that its new moon is accepted, which is, as I have said, the xiv of the v cycle. This is also indicated by Anatolius himself, when he reproves those who, in the superior segment—which is the last—place the first month and the lunar xiv. For it is a consequence that all lunar fourteenths are confined within the epoch of the first month.

When, therefore, Beda had not sufficiently observed this, he falsely believed that Anatolius had established as a new moon of the first month that into which the Pascha might fall most early. For he who denies that the paschal xiv falls before the beginning of the first month, and fixes that very beginning of the month on the xi Kalends, manifestly prohibits the Pascha from being celebrated at the very beginning of the month; for if that were done, it would immediately exceed the xiv outside the limits of the prior month and be forced to be put back to the last.

For as to the fact that he narrates that two days should be attributed to the equinox, ^C and that the Pascha is celebrated on the day that follows, of which he thinks Anatolius also speaks, that indeed is true, that the equinox *metemptosis* runs over into the following day: but between the two, that is chosen politically as the seat of the equinox and the hinge of the year, in which it is believed to be retained chiefly and for the greatest part of the time: it is not that into which the liberty of wandering is gradually poured; nor does it remain therein for very long, but is recalled from time to time by an intercalation as if by a rein: of which kind Beda relates that March xxii existed according to the opinion of Anatolius. Which is otherwise. Otherwise, if the equinox were generally contained in March xxi, and did not approach the xxii except in the second or third year after the leap year: nay, indeed, did not reach the limits of the civil day in either of those years: that is, [did] not [go] beyond midnight of the xi Kalends of Apr., Anatolius would never have assigned xxii rather than xxi as the hinge of the year and the paschal limit. Just as at this time after the Gregorian revision, although the equinox according to *metemptosis* in the equable year arrives at almost midnight, which precedes the xiii, nevertheless it is fixed on the xxi; which runs across the day through almost the entire Julian quadrennium. There is no doubt, therefore, that Anatolius established the civil equinox on the xi Kalends of April, in the manner in which it was translated after the Nicene Council to the xii Kalends: so that no xiv moon, which occurred before the xi Kalends, was considered paschal. For the words of Anatolius most clearly testify to this.

Indeed, if we follow the mean form of the tropical year, such as the Alphonsine, which is preferred to the others, in the time of Anatolius the equinox claimed for itself an equal part of both days. For he lived in the middle of about the third century after the birth of Christ. And since in the year of Christ 200 the vernal equinox happened on March xxi, at 7 hours, 16 minutes, 15 seconds past noon, but in the year 300 on March xx, at 13 hours, 22 minutes, 53 seconds; if you divide the Alphonsine excess equally, you will find that the equinox had migrated back and forth from almost noon of March xxi to noon of March xxii. But Anatolius retained that equinox, which he had received from his predecessors, on the xxi, when Ptolemy had observed the vernal equinox in the whole century before on March xx at noon, in the year of Christ 140, a leap year, so that by this reasoning it progressed between noon of the xx and the xxiii. But if Anatolius embraced the form of the Ptolemaic and Hipparchian year, which loses one day in 300 years; since the *proegesis* requires more or less a hundred years of hours, you will find that in the age of Anatolius the equinox in a leap year occurred about eight hours before ^D

^A midday of the twenty-second day, and consequently this civil day was very beautifully fixed for the equinox. Although it is possible that he completely ignored that tropical *proegesis*, as it is certain that it was unknown for some centuries after the Council of Nicaea; and especially by Bede himself, who for this reason was deceived in many ways; for according to that same hypothesis, in Bede's century the equinox had receded further from the twenty-second and had arrived at the eighteenth. And yet he appeals to the trustworthiness of clocks and gnomons, so that he might ascribe the equinox to the very cardinal points Nicæan.

A remarkable error, or rather a heresy of the Scots, is most clearly declared to have arisen from the false interpretation of Rufinus, and Anatolius is freed from calumny. For it is truly a great error, that those who celebrate Pascha before this beginning of the first month err vehemently. Therefore, even at the very beginning of the month—but this is the fourteenth moon according to the prior definition, which the Council of Nicaea and the whole Catholic Church knew—it is of such importance, as with other matters and duties, to provide truth in interpreting writers; which this interpreter oft neglected. Hence, even on this account, he deserved very poorly of Anatolius, and of Catholic dogma, and of all posterity, while he made the most holy and learned Father the author of an absurd dogma and a heretic. So that no one may think this is asserted by me more heatedly than truly, let him consult what is narrated by Bede in his *Ecclesiastical History* concerning the altercations of the Scots and the *tessareskaidekatitai*. From which he will understand who supported this error, and upon whose authority they relied, trusting to have withstood the Christian dogma. Which authority, indeed, they had drawn not from the sources of Anatolius himself, but from the gaps of the Rufinian interpretation.

But in order that we may open the source of so absurd an interpretation and error, know that this is not so much the fault of Bede, a most learned man and very experienced in that genre, who had not seen the Greek of Anatolius, as it is of Rufinus, a writer, as all know, most inept, who exercised his style in mutilating and depraving the writings of the ancients rather than in interpreting them. For he removed some things from the words of Anatolius, which gave occasion for the most shameful error for Bede as well as for certain others. For when Anatolius wrote: *“Hence also those who place the first month in it [the equinox], and who take the fourteenth day of Pascha according to it, we say do not err slightly, nor by chance.”* This is: *“When the last month, and the final segment of the zodiac, [that] segment closest to the equinox moves before it, they must necessarily hallucinate vehemently who place the first month and the fourteenth of the Paschal [moon] in that very last segment.”* For that *kať autēn* should be read *kať auto*, no one, I think, would deny: since these, I say, are the meaning of this passage, Rufinus translates it thus: *“And therefore we say that they do not err a little who think that the Pascha is to be celebrated before the beginning of this new year.”* Where he most shamefully removed these words *“and the fourteenth of Pascha,”* and the entire mention of the Paschal fourteenth. Yet with those few little words expunged, a false and absurd meaning follows, and one contrary not only to the decree of Anatolius, but also to Catholic dogma: namely, that Pascha can be celebrated on the civil day of the equinox, and on the very limit itself. What is the Paschal fourteenth moon? It is surely that which either falls on the day of the equinox itself, or immediately after it. For that Anatolius thinks that Pascha is not to be performed after the equinox, nor on the equinox itself, he openly professes in the same place, when he says that the Jews pronounced what he had written concerning the observation of Pascha so far in advance, namely: *“to sacrifice the Passover, all alike after the vernal equinox, in the middle of the first month.”* Therefore, after the equinox, not on the equinox, does Pascha fall for both Jews and Christians; which he also immediately inculcates again: *“that the Pascha and the Unleavened Breads must by all means be kept after the equinox.”* Anatolius set the equinox on Phamenoth XXVI, or the XI Kalends of April, and the beginning of the first month [there]. He denies, therefore, that Pascha is duly celebrated on that very day. But in truth, from the ^B clearly famous controversy concerning Pascha, which Bede is the author was agitated with great contention of spirit among the English and Scots. But in the first book, chapter twenty-five, the most noble conference held before King Oswiu of Wilfrid, a Catholic priest, and Colman, a Scot bishop, is described. In which, when Wilfrid objected to these Scots that they celebrated Pascha from the fourteenth to the twentieth moon against the Nicene canon and the decree of the Roman Church, Colman thus finally responds: *“Was Anatolius, a holy man and much praised in the aforementioned ecclesiastical history, wise in things contrary to the Law or the Gospel, who wrote that Pascha is to be celebrated from the fourteenth to the twentieth [moon]?”* But also, earlier, in chapter three of the same book, writing concerning Bishop Aidan, who was summoned to England from Scotland by King Oswald, he says that he celebrated Pascha according to the custom of his nation from the fourteenth to the twentieth moon, which the nation of the Scots and the Picts likewise did, thinking that they followed in this observance the writings of the holy and praiseworthy Father Anatolius. You see, I think, that all those schismatics placed the chief shield of their obstinacy and their opinion in the authority of Anatolius, not indeed, as I have said, drawn from his writings, which they had never seen, but from the faith and testimony of the Ecclesiastical History, that is, interpolated by Rufinus. I return to Wilfrid, who so clears Anatolius that he seems to prevaricate in the cause. Certainly he attributes to him that opinion which he never even dreamed of; nay, indeed, that which Wilfrid himself, from what the Scots were contending, was opposing, he effects, which is truly ridiculous. *“It is certain,”* he says, *“that Anatolius was a most holy man, most learned, and most worthy of praise,”* etc. Soon after: *“He so computed the fourteenth moon for the Dominical Pascha, that he confessed this same day, according to the custom of the Egyptians, to be the fifteenth moon at evening. So the same man annotated the twentieth day for the Dominical Pascha, that he believed this, when that same day had declined, to be the twenty-first. Whose rule of distinction you prove to have been ignorant of, because sometimes the Pascha manifests…*

most festively before the full moon, that is, on the thirteenth moon. Therefore, Anatolius decreed this, that the ^A fourteenth moon *hmerini*, as Epiphanius says, or *nykterini*, be the fifteenth, so that the Pascha might be rightly performed—which is a doctrine purely of the Scots and the Quartodecimans; I mean, of those who, even if they set the Lord’s day for the celebration, did not hesitate, whenever the Sunday fell on the fourteenth, for the festival to fall on that day. That neither the Scots nor the other men of that same heresy and faction thought otherwise is more well-known than to involve proof. Certainly, Bede wrote that the Scots themselves celebrated the Pascha from the fourteenth moon to the twentieth, when the Catholics did it from the fifteenth to the twenty-first, so that there was a difference of one day. Therefore, as for the Catholics, the fifteenth is the paschal one, which ends on the sixteenth, and is the *pentekaidekate hmerini*, so, for the ^B *tessaresdekatitai*, it is likewise *hmerini*, but the fifteenth should fittingly have been *nykterini*.

For if they were to bring the Pascha forward on the thirteenth *hmerini*, they would differ from the Catholics not by one day, but by two. But from those things which the same Wilfrid immediately objects, it can be guessed what he himself thought, or what he judges Anatolius to have thought, when he says that the Scots generally celebrated the Pascha on the thirteenth moon before the full moon. For this was the opinion of Theophilus, Cyril, and Bede himself, to such an extent that no new moon is considered to be one that does not kindle before the setting of the sun: so that if it is kindled only after the setting of the sun—that is, when it is conjoined with the sun—even if it has shone 23 hours later, it retains that appellation which it had while the sun was setting. So that if the conjunction occurs on Saturday after sunset, the new moon is to be fixed not on the following Sunday, ^C but on the second day of the week: which is handed down in the book *De temporum ratione*, ch. 41, by Bede from the notions of the more recent Alexandrians. Furthermore, from the fact that the new moon is occasionally put off by an entire day, it is necessary that the subsequent days of the moon follow more slowly; and thus, if for example the full moon should have occurred immediately after sunset on Saturday, all that whole day will nevertheless be called the fourteenth moon, not the full moon: whence also the preceding thirteenth day will not be computed as the fourteenth. This, as it has been said, was the opinion of the Alexandrians, which certain Hebrews also embraced. For in the Gloss on ch. 7 of the Tractate *Kiddush ha-Hodesh*, in Volume I of the *Yad*, the various opinions of the doctors concerning that matter are commemorated by Maimonides. The same opinion is argued by Bede and refuted by Foresempr. in book II, part II, and Peter Pitatus of Verona explains it, in chapters 4 and 15 of his *Canones Paschales*; but the Catholic Church by no means follows it, for it binds the calculations of the paschal festival to civil use and an equable cycle, not to the observations of mean motions. Moreover, from this very opinion, it follows that the fourteenth moon sometimes falls on the full moon; and because of this, the full moon is called the fourteenth by some writers. This also happened because of the lunar *proēgēsis* after the Nicene Council, about three centuries later. For then, with the golden numbers sticking to the same days, the Nicene fourteenth moon was made the full moon, and that *kata symbebēkos* ^D or by anomaly of the heavenly body, when otherwise it was not the full moon by institution in the twenty-first lunar day, so that the Pascha was extended: which is a hallucination of Scaliger, most validly refuted by our Clavius and, most recently, by Guldin of the same society. But that discussion of Wilfrid pertains to the former sense. For he reproaches the Scots because, while they were celebrating the Pascha on the fourteenth, they nevertheless did not follow that method of the paschal fourteenth which Anatolius had prescribed. For he had intended that fourteenth to be only the paschal one which the full moon caught at evening—that is, before the setting of the sun; otherwise it would be called the thirteenth, not the fourteenth. But the Scots, without any such discrimination, were consecrating to the paschal celebration that one which fell on the day after whose rising the full moon would occur only in the following night; and because of this it was not called the fifteenth moon, but the fourteenth, whereas the one on which the Pascha had been performed was the thirteenth. This is the entire meaning of that very difficult passage; according to which Anatolius patronizes the error of the *tessaresdekatitai*, while it is established that: by his institution, the paschal fourteenth is that one which ends in the full moon. Such is the new hallucination of those men, and the calumny cast upon Anatolius. I suspect that the occasion for this was offered by the fact that, when he had brought forward from the teachers of the Jews the canon of the *diabatērion*—that is, of the typical Pascha—to illustrate the Christian doctrine of the Pascha, by which it is enjoined that the Pascha be celebrated on the fourteenth moon at evening, at the very time of the opposition and the full moon, they transferred this to the Christian Pascha, thinking it could be celebrated on the fourteenth day according to the decree of Anatolius: and indeed earlier than the Jews are allowed, which is unheard of and totally unworthy of Anatolius.

The explanation of the words of Anatolius continues.

≫ of March. From which we can suspect that the equinoctial hinge is not at the first point of Aries, but set at the fourth from it. Just as the ancients formerly thought that solstices and equinoxes occurred in the fourth part of the signs, as Pliny testifies in Book XVIII, chap. 25, and Columella in Book IX, chap. 13, from the fasti of Eudoxus and Meton; which Sosigenes also seems to have persuaded Caesar of; for the beginnings of the four months that are closest to the cardinal points began from almost the eighth part of the signs in the age of Caesar. According to Geminus, the ^A *tropai cheimerinai* (winter solstices) occur on the fourth day from Eudoxus, from which the sun has entered Capricorn. But according to Euctemon, it is on the first day itself. Moreover, the vernal equinox is on the sixth day from the entry into Aries according to Eudoxus, since it occurs on the first day itself according to Calippus’ Parapegma. But whether Anatolius persuaded himself of the same regarding the fourth part of the signs, must be further pondered: for that reasoning of Bede is in no way probable; when he fixes the equinox on the XI Kalends of April, he is speaking only of the evening [equinox], that is, of that which happens when the moon is opposite to the sun at sunset; for this reason, from the opinion of the ancient Fathers, he decreed that for the Easter celebration, not only must the sun be at the vernal equinox, but also the moon must be situated at the autumnal [equinox]: which happens when the equinoctial point falls at sunset. For ^B first, he brought forward this not from the writings of the ancient Fathers concerning the Christian Easter, but from the authority of Aristobulus concerning the Jewish one: *as it is necessary that at the feast of the Passover not only should the sun pass through the equinoctial [point].* Next, he did not even wish for this, that those stars must be opposite to each other at the equinoctial points; but in segments, which have latitude: namely, that the sun, for example, is in the first segment of the zodiac, and in some part of it, while the moon is in the seventh. Finally, as often as the equinox falls on the 22nd day, it is not necessary for the XIV moon, or the XV, to coincide with it. For that can happen only once in the entire cycle. But what is more absurd than to suppose that Anatolius is speaking only of that equinoctial day which can occur no more than once in the entire nineteen-year cycle? In vain, therefore, is another meaning of that place sought by him, if it is not in the least corrupt, other than that which the words themselves present, such that Anatolius ^C assigned the entry into Aries to the 19th of March.

From this opinion another certain *porisma* seems to follow, which I think it worthwhile to explain here briefly. For because it is brought about from the words of Anatolius that the point itself of the *parodos* (transition) arrives at the Aries segment on the 19th of March, it is allowable to suspect that most Westerners and Latins assigned the epoch of the year, or the new moon of the first month, to the 19th of March; and thus they fixed the latest limit on that day, just as Anatolius did on the 22nd. For the Latins, having long rejected the Alexandrian cycle, retained the Jewish: which is called the lunar [cycle] by Bede and others, and differs by three years from the Alexandrian. For the first of the Alexandrians is the 17th of the Latins; but the 19th of the Alexandrians is the 16th of the Latins; and the 8th of those same Alexandrians is the 5th of the Latins. Who when they had intercalary months, the Latins, as also the Jews, had simple ones; for they were the 16th and the 5th. Thus the Latins celebrated Easter in the Jewish Nisan, the Alexandrians in Iyar. Therefore ^D the paschal new moon of the Latins was from the 2nd Nones of March, or the 5th of March, to the 2nd of April, whereas the Nicene extends only from the 7th of March to the Nones of April. Whence also the latest paschal XIV of the Latins was the 18th of March, the furthest the 16th of April, while the Alexandrian and Nicene fourteenths extend from the 21st of March to the XIV Kalends of May, or the 18th of April. This we learn from Bede, who in chapter XLIX *De temp. rat.* refutes the error of the Latins and of their standard-bearer Victorinus, whom he calls Victorius; a fragment of whom also exists in that same chapter of Bede. Whence therefore are we to think it has come that the Latins placed the new moon of the first month on the 19th of March, if not from the decree of Anatolius, as indeed it is commonly conceived: by which he seemed to conceive the first entry into Aries on the 19th of March? Hence, therefore, they shifted the paschal limit, which was the 15th among the Latins, not the 16th, to the 19th of March. For, as we confessed at the beginning, the passage of Anatolius is very obscure and involved: for on that very day on which he establishes the equinox, namely the 22nd of March, he indicates that the sun has already reached the fourth degree of the first segment. This first segment he calls *dōdekatēmórion* (twelfth-part) *kai mēnōn archēn* (and beginning of the months): *to de pro toutou, mēnōn eschaton, kai tmēma dōdekaton* (that before this, the end of the months, and the twelfth segment). Therefore, those three degrees which the sun traverses, the 19th, 20th, and 21st of March, since they are in the first segment and outside the last, belong to the first month. Wherefore the spaces of the first month must be extended so that they also embrace the 19th day. And when he adds: that all those who place the first month, and the paschal XIV, in that last segment are not a little hallucinatory, he signifies that the XIV can be duly begun within the first *dōdekatēmórion*, that is, from the 19th of March.

Thus these things seem to hang together little. But although that appendix is rather obscure, the head of the opinion itself is almost certain: namely that the hinge and epoch of the year is the 12th of March, which he also calls the *kephalēn enneadekaetēridos* (head of the nineteen-year cycle). Therefore the *enneakaidekaetēris* (nineteen-year cycle) was neither discovered by Eusebius, as Bede states in Book *De temp. rat.* cap. 42, nor by the Nicene council, as some assert, since Anatolius mentions it, and it was thought out long before by Meton and Euctemon, as Diodorus Siculus, Geminus, and Censorinus affirm. Although there was a different arrangement of the lunar year and months then. Wherefore it is probable that this passage of Anatolius was a cause of fraud for the Latins: yet Victorinus constructed that paschal canon of his quite ridiculously, not only because he commands Easter to be celebrated only on the 16th moon, which is repugnant to the canon, but also because he had some useless and idle limits. The first of their XIV was, as has been said, the 15th of March, but the fifteenth was the first of all, the 19th of March, which they also fixed as the limit. And yet

never celebrated the Passover before the twentieth of March; since the Passover ought to have been on the twentieth of March. Wherefore they either postponed the moon to the twenty-second, or to the second month. The Venerable Bede thinks the cause of this most foolish reasoning was that they considered it a matter of religious duty to celebrate it before the equinox. But I, for my part, believe that they obeyed the decree of Anatolius, as well as those of the Cæsarean and Nicene councils, and that they did not presume to transgress the limits of the Pasch prescribed by them and accepted by common consent: and so [did] Paul of Fossombrone, whom you may consult in Book V, where he proposes several examples of Paschal discrepancies ^A and dissensions.

Finally, it must be considered again and again whether the Jews who lived in Epiphanius’ time fixed the epoch of the year or the equinox on the nineteenth or twentieth of March; for Epiphanius, transferring this to the time of Christ, believed that in that year in which He suffered, the equinox remained on the same day on which he saw it set by them in his own day. For since it is established from Josephus, Philo, and those more ancient [authors] Aristobulus and Agathobulus, that the Jews did not wish to celebrate their Passover before the equinox, yet it is certain that the nineteenth year of the cycle of nineteen, which was embolismic for the Alexandrians, was common to the Jews, there is room for the conjecture that in the time shortly before the Nicene Council, the day of the equinox was assigned by the Jews, and in accordance with them, to the nineteenth of March. This opinion of theirs the Latins may have received along with the lunar cycle, relying especially on the authority of Anatolius, who seemed to locate the first ingress of Aries on that very day. Indeed, no other more probable reason can be investigated why both Jews and Latins so obstinately retained their fourteenth [days] on the eighteenth of March, except that they had falsely persuaded themselves that the equinox occurred sooner than had pleased the Alexandrians. For the Jews’ Passover ought ^B by the decree of the elders to fall on the very point of the equinox, or at least very near it; but the Latins, after the sanction of the Nicene Council, had learned that it was a sacrilege to define the Paschal limit so long before the equinox. A second and more probable conjecture concerning the passage of Anatolius is proposed.

But if this conjecture of ours has not obtained the assent of learned men, it certainly does not deserve ill will and reproach. Relying on the reader’s candor and humanity, I will offer another suspicion concerning this passage of Anatolius, which came to my mind while I was writing these things. I would indeed have believed that in the things preceding that passage, Anatolius had argued against those who retained the old equinox, that is the Julian, on the twenty-fifth day of March, and did not allow the feast to be celebrated before the sixth of the Kalends, which is the twenty-ninth of Phamenoth; especially because they were persuaded that Christ had risen on that same day, according to the faith of the Cæsarean council, of which I shall speak later. In order to correct their error, Anatolius, who was well versed in mathematical and astronomical doctrines, taught that the equinox falls on the twenty-second of March. With this posited, the twenty-fifth of March, or the twenty-ninth of Phamenoth, is already the fourth day in the segment of Aries. Wherefore if for *sixth and twentieth, ninth and twentieth* you read, you will have most beautifully restored the place. We find, he says, *in the aforementioned Phamenoth ninth and twentieth* (in the aforementioned, which he had proposed to himself for refutation, and of which he had made mention in the preceding [part]) that the sun had already progressed into the segment of Aries for four days. This confirms our conjecture, because it is certain that Anatolius instituted those canons regarding the equinoctial time. Hence Nicephorus, Book VI, ch. 36: *And he pointed out the most accurate limits concerning the Passover.* He established the most accurate canons concerning the Paschal equinox. Evidently, since everyone generally supposed, from what had been proposed at the Cæsarean synod held by Theophilus, that the equinox occurred on the twenty-fifth of March, Anatolius, correcting this very thing, transferred the equinox to the twenty-second of March from Ptolemaic and astronomical sources. You see by the change of one small word how much light has arisen for this very difficult passage, so that I may justly judge this latter [view] to be the most true and most apt to the mind of Anatolius: there had, indeed, crept into ecclesiastical use as many Paschal discrepancies ^C as there were equinoctial limits; for some, since they were ignorant of the *tropical precession*, held the vernal hinge where it had once been placed by Sosigenes, and thought that the Passover should by no means be celebrated before the twenty-fifth of March: against these, the decree of the Cæsarean council was opposed. Others, like the later Jews, and those who followed the Jews, since they undoubtedly thought that the equinox, or the ingress of the sun into Aries, happened several days earlier, anticipated their Passover. Anatolius refutes both in these canons: the former, indeed, by the equinoctial epoch we have mentioned; the latter, however, when he argues that the first month is defined by the first twelfth part of the zodiac; above which is the last segment, and the last month: in which the canonical sanction forbids taking the fourteenth [day] of the Passover; because, as has been proven thus far, the closest limit falls upon the equinox. And just as the latter caution pertains properly to the Jews and to the Christians who ^D follow Jewish customs, such as the Westerners and the Latins were: so the former fights against those things which are read in the Acts of the Cæsarean synod: a fragment of which is found in Bede after his little book *On the Equinox*. In these, first the equinox is established on the twenty-fifth of March; then, indeed, because Christ was believed to have risen on that same day, and to have suffered from the eleventh of the Kalends, therefore a period of three days is arrogated to the Paschal limits, prescribed under that law, so that the Paschal celebration can be performed from the eleventh of the Kalends of April to the eleventh of the Kalends of May, lest so great a sacrament of the passion be excluded outside the limit.

But to say what I think about those synodal Acts: that was indeed a provincial council, assembled by Theophilus of Cæsarea by the order of Pope Victor, at which time that controversy about the Passover was vehemently agitating the Christian world. But not all things that are included in those Acts are to be held as decrees of faith; rather, they are for the most part reasons brought forward privately by the Fathers, by which they [sought to support] their opinion.

Furthermore, what Eusebius narrates (Book V, ch. 22), that at the same time, as elsewhere generally, so also at Rome by Victor on the same question, synodical decrees were issued which conspired toward the same judgment regarding the celebration of Easter, is not to be understood as if all things which were alleged in those Acts were approved by the Roman pontiff and received as catholic dogmas; but only those things which, having been deduced somehow from those false principles, were found to be true and solid. Of which sort were those sanctions: that the Passover should not occur on the fourteenth moon, nor on any other day than the Lord’s day: which was the proposition. The rest, which can be called incidental, since they are partly clearly false, partly doubtful, and contrary to ecclesiastical canons, not even the Cæsarean Fathers themselves wished to be of any authority; nor did Victor ever approve them. Concerning which matter we have discoursed earlier, when we treated the time of the Lord’s Passion, against the excessively superstitious credulity of some. Now, we shall note another thing in those same Acts, which is more proper to our set disputation. For they believe the equinox occurs on March 25, at which time these things were pronounced, that is, in the year of Christ 298. How falsely this was believed, even the observations of Ptolemy themselves and the mathematical tables demonstrate, from which it is known that the equinox then fell on the 22nd, or indeed even the 21st. But I do not urge this point. Let it be the 25th of March as the day of the equinox. Now, who does not see that it is most absurd, and repugnant to ecclesiastical discipline, that they decree the Passover to be announced three days before the equinox? There is an ancient canon, which is listed among the apostolic ones: *If any presbyter, or deacon, shall celebrate the holy day of Easter before the vernal equinox along with the Jews, let him be deposed.* Wherefore, all those Fathers ought to have been deposed if they truly pronounced that the equinox occurred on March 25.

And not even to me does the paschal term seem to be placed with sufficient accuracy for that time on March 21. For in the year of Christ 300, according to the Alphonsine method, the equinox falls at the beginning of the night, that is, at the 6th hour from noon on the 21st, so that the space through which it would run was the 22nd day of March. More rightly, therefore, could the closest Passover have adhered to March 23, where Anatolius and others also constituted it: whom the Nicene council later followed, for the sake of utilizing antiquity, leaving not indeed the closest Passover, but the beginning of the first year of the [i]ennea-kaidecaeteris[/i] on that same 23rd day. Not ill, therefore, have we labored thus far, having both diligently explained the most noble and likewise very obscure fragment of Anatolius, and having warded off such a signal calumny and injury from that excellent and most holy Father. That we have been longer in discussing this question and controversy, it is not fitting that either we ourselves, who did it out of necessity, should repent, nor that it should displease the reader, for whose benefit we intended it.

Col. 934 D. “Which falls every three years.” Kepler read this in a certain manner. Col. 935 A. “And other four hours every year.” Such is what [i]nychthemeron[/i] consists of. For at Epiphanius’s, there are two equinoctial hours in an hour. Ibid. “So as to be in three years.” See what we noted above. Ibid. “Wherefore there are five months among them.” This causal particle coheres with difficulty with the above. Perhaps it is the same as [i]dioti[/i] or [i]hoti[/i], and it does not have the force of an inference, but initiates a new sentiment, by which the 14-year cycle is explained. But if you prefer it to be illative, it will pertain to what precedes; for because the lunar year has 354 days, it happens that in the third and sixth year, single months, and in total in 14 years, five months are intercalated, by which the solar year exceeds the lunar year in 11 days. Be that as it may, he seems to judge the 14-year cycle, in which five months are inserted. But whether that cycle was observed in political use, or kept by the Sanhedrin and conformed to a method, as a common year was unfolded by a perpetual succession of full and hollow months, we have previously doubted. Ibid. “Because of being taken away from the solar.” They give this reason why the new moons were concluded in a 14-year orbit; but because of the varying disposition of the cycle, others can be invented. We have said the cycle can be explained in two ways: the first is that 354 days and 8 hours are attributed precisely to the lunar years; but for 14 years, 5108 days and 4 hours. By this span of time they constituted the cycle, in which they had regard for the ratio of the lunar [i]apokatastasis[/i] alone, nor did they compare its calculations with the sun. Wherefore from the last, that is, the 14th solar year, and indeed the political, which is of 365 days, they subtracted five days and one hour: for this reason, that if from 5104 you take away 4 Julian [years]—[that is] 13 [days]—the fourteenth day will have 360, one hour less; by which interval they believed the lunar new moons were restored: but this technically only, not in political use; according to which, if this smaller cycle was used, those 5 appendix hours were rejected to the end of the cycle. Therefore, when after the lunar cycle of 14 years, five days and 8 hours remained from solar calculations, they persuaded themselves that only five days remained over, which being reserved, they intercalated a sixth entire month after the smaller cycles. Thus the days became 50679; the type of which [i]oikonomia[/i] proposed earlier shows. The other ratio: if five full days fashioned from eight hours are added to 14 years. All of which you have explained diligently above, where we also corrected the words of Epiphanius from either method. Ibid. “Of the eighty-fourth year.” Epiphanius teaches that that embolismic month of 31 days, when it ought to have been intercalated at the end of the 84th year, is cast into the first year of the following cycle. And yet the last year of the 14-year [cycle] is already endowed with its own embolismic [month]. Therefore, two embolismic [months] are next to each other.

^A Indeed, those very embolismic months will be jammed together, and there will be three months of Adar. But the third one will be the beginning of the 85th year; lest, if Nisan be substituted for Adar, the epoch being left behind, the new moon might wander too loosely into earlier times. Kepler admits the two embolismic months immediately following one another; the later one, regarding the three months of Adar, can be objected to. But each is resolved most conveniently from the Table and the previous discussion; for it is one thing to view the tessaradakaeterides apart and separately, and another to view them as fit into and connected within a larger cycle. The lesser cycles individually by themselves require 7 embolismic months in years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14; but in a continuous series and in a larger cycle, the 14th year is not always embolismic: whence it does not demand two months of Adar; but the last year of the final cycle, which is the 84th, claims for itself another Adar; because the 31st month accrues to it from the epacts of the cycles; and therefore it ought to have 7 embolismic months, so that the lunar [year] may be in some way equalized with the solar year. But Epiphanius is the authority that in the 85th year that month was delayed; which, when it is in truth Adar, has been made Nisan by the Jews, as I think. Thence it happens that they anticipated the epoch of their year, and in the same year celebrated the Passover twice. Which was most abundantly explained before.

Col. 936 A. *Olitres ōpheilon einai*. That there is a mistake here, and indeed a twofold one, the preceding things show sufficiently: first, it should be read "thirty months," not "thirty-year months"; then it is false that the remaining 30 months are above 24 days and 6 hours: otherwise from the Julian 5,113 days and 12 hours of the fourteen-year [cycle], only four days and one hour would remain to be subtracted, and the lunar tessaradakaeteris would be 5,109 days and 11 hours. Individual conjunctions [would be] 29 days, 12 hours, 49 minutes, 35 seconds. Or if two hours are taken away from 14 Julian years, so that there are 5,113 days and 10 hours, the lunar tessaradakaeteris will have 5,109 days, 9 hours, and the conjunctions 29 days, 12 hours, 48 minutes, 54 seconds. Which I do not consider to be true. Therefore, the error of Epiphanius himself, or of the copyist, must be corrected, and either "twenty-eight days" or "twenty-eight days and three hours" should be written in this place. See what we have said before.

Ibid. B. *Eveken toutou*. This does not mean what Kepler thinks, and what it seems to wish at first sight to mean, that by the fault of this cycle the Passover of the Jews anticipated the legitimate time by two days: as if the *proēgēsis* [anticipation] of two days only had been made from the true 14th; but that the Pharisees, by the *hyperbasis* [transgression] of one day established, had anticipated by only one day; whereas Christ had anticipated the Nicene 14th by two full days; for in the same sense he said in this place that the Jews "anticipated by two days," in which he said in the previous number: "They ate the Passover two days before the [proper] time of eating." But there the anticipation of two days is not at all compared to the Nicene 14th, but to the Jewish and faulty one, which, when it fell on the fifth day of the week, March 19th, Christ with the common people of the Jews celebrated the Passover on the third day of the week, March 17th. Wherefore, not even in this place does *dyo hemeras prolabein* [anticipate by two days] refer to the Nicene 14th, but to the Jewish [Passover] from the common cycle. Therefore, the meaning of Epiphanius is interpreted in this way: *eveken toutou*, that is, because ^B they were using that corrupted method and disposition of the cycle, according to which the 14th moon anticipated the celestial—that is, the Nicene—by two days, having observed the flaw, they postponed the Passover to the 15th moon so that they might approach closer to the full moon. Therefore, the celebration of the Passover was doubly faulty: first among those who ate the Jewish Passover on the third day of the week on the 12th moon, because it ought to have been done on the fifth day of the week on the 14th moon; then among the Pharisees, who by the *hyperbasis* [transgression] of their own cycle had passed over the 14th. Moreover, Christ celebrated with the greater part of the people on the third day of the week. Thus indeed Epiphanius, nor is it permitted to interpret otherwise, or to vindicate him from error. For neither on the third day of the week, that is, on the fourth day before the Passion, did Christ complete the Passover, ^C nor was He held in bonds for two days, which Epiphanius believed in vain: for concerning the time of the *stauroseos* [crucifixion] he is of the same opinion as we are. Therefore, it must be amended in the manner which we demonstrated above on page 172.

Ibid. *Kai ekei to Pascha*. What do I hear here? *Ekei*, that is, did he eat the Passover in the garden? Not at all; but either *ekei* pertains to what precedes, or this place is faulty by transposition. What he adds: *ouk allōs poiēsas*, excuses Christ why He did not perform the Passover at the legitimate time; because He preferred to accommodate Himself to public and common use.

Ibid. D. *Euthys prōtos Oualentinos*. These things are expressed from Irenaeus, who in book II, chapter 38, refutes the Valentinians, who supported their collection of 30 Aeons with this number of the years of Christ: since they asserted that Christ suffered in the 30th year of His age, in the 12th month. Against whom in chapter 39 he demonstrates that He preached for two years and some months. Since, therefore, we have most accurately discussed both the year in which the Lord was born and the year in which He suffered, it is fitting that we explain the most difficult question concerning the number of Passovers which Christ underwent after His baptism. Which we have deservedly postponed to this very place, because it seemed connected and implicated with the previous discussion concerning the Passion of Christ.

How many Passovers Christ underwent after His baptism.

I pass over those ancient ones, not only the heretics, like the Valentinians, but also the Fathers, who handed down to memory that the Lord suffered in the 30th year of His age: and who assigned to Him only one year of preaching, as among others Tertullian, book *against the Jews*, chapter 8. Likewise Lactantius, book IV, chapter 10; Clement of Alexandria, books I and VI of the *Stromata*; Africanus in his *Commentary on Daniel*, chapter 9. ^D These, I say, having been passed over, whose opinion manifestly fights against the Gospel of John and the others, there are three principal opinions regarding the number of Passovers: for either three, or four, or five are posited; the last of which is that in which, or under which, Christ was fixed to the cross; which is therefore called the *staurosimon*. Of these, the second is of middle antiquity, the third of the lowest age: the first is that of almost all the ancients. Therefore, as more than three

Paschas are believed to have elapsed after the baptism; this seems to be confirmed by the testimony of the Gospels, and especially of John, who described these events more distinctly and by name than the other three. In him, the first Pascha is recounted shortly after the baptism and the miracle performed at Cana (ch. ii, v. 13); the second in ch. v, v. 1, where he mentions a feast day celebrated by the Jews, which Irenæus takes as the Pascha (bk. ii, ch. 39); the third is in ch. vi, v. 4, after the five thousand had been satisfied with five loaves and two fish; the fourth is that in which he suffered. To this history of John, those who narrate the other events, which have a less distinct description of times, attempt to accommodate their accounts as if to a rule: for they think that John alone commemorated the first Pascha; the second is that in which John is read as still baptizing (John iii, 23). After he was cast into chains, Christ began to preach (Matt. iv, 2; Mark i, 14), from which time the other three trace the events performed by Christ as if from the beginning. There follows, therefore, the second Pascha, which is tacitly signified both in John v and in Matt. xii, Mark ii, and Luke vi, in that the apostles are said to have passed through the cornfields on the second-first Sabbath and plucked the ears of grain, a time which falls within the feast of Unleavened Bread itself. Now the third, in addition to John ch. vi, has been reported also by Matthew ch. xiv, Mark vi, and Luke ix, provided they interpret that miracle of the multiplied loaves, which John writes happened near the Pascha itself. In this manner, those who weave together the evangelical harmonies commonly arrange the Paschas, unless something is explained a little differently by others, which I judge idle to scrutinize too scrupulously.

But Scaliger, in book vi of his *De Emendatione*, fights more vehemently that five Paschas are to be found: for besides the first of John ii, he establishes that second one of which John v speaks. To this he joins as a third that one from which the apostles are said to have had their journey through the cornfields; the fourth is from John vi; the fifth is the *staurosimon*. He adds the characteristics and delineations of each, the vanity of whose *akribologias* (precision) we have abundantly refuted before.

Moreover, the ancients, as has been said, all to one, except those who think the Lord suffered in the thirtieth year of his age, count only three Paschas: first Irenæus in the cited place; then Apollinaris of Laodicea, according to Jerome in ch. ix of Daniel; Origen, bk. ii *Contra Celsum*, where he writes that Judas did not spend a full three years with Christ; ^D Eusebius in his *Chronicle*, where he confirms from the Gospel of John that after the fifteenth year of Tiberius and the Lord's baptism, a three-year period (*triete chronon*) of teaching had elapsed. To these is added Epiphanius.

But some of them seem to have been led by an insufficiently firm reason to assert that Christ preached for two years: namely, that which is read in Isaiah ch. lxi, v. 2, where Christ professes that he was sent by the Father "to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution," they suspected that that *eniautos dektos* (acceptable year) was the former of the two; in which, with no one contradicting, the Gospel preached. From which they reasoned that ^A another had been provided for him. For so Epiphanius reasons, especially in n. 25. But, in my judgment at least, Clement of Alexandria and others who defined Christ's preaching by a one-year span from the words of Isaiah and the mention of a single year are far more tolerable. For in this way *eniautos dektos* will be called not by comparison with the Jews, but of God himself; in which sense Isaiah said: *sheth ratson l'Adonai*. Which St. Jerome rightly translates, "the year of the Lord’s favor." And he taught in his Commentary that the "acceptable year and the day of retribution" signifies the entire time of his preaching in which he dwelt in the flesh. To which the apostle Paul also looked when he said in II Cor. vi: "Behold, now is the acceptable time." These things Jerome said. Which Irenæus also had taught before him, bk. ii, ch. 38: namely, the year which the prophet calls acceptable signifies all the time from the advent of Christ until the consummation. Nor did Isaiah intend otherwise. Wherefore, that which certain Fathers argue from it concerning one or the other year of preaching, which may it be said without the preface of an excuse, seems entirely alien to the mind of Isaiah. And truly, if Christ spent only two Paschas before that final one, the *staurosimon*, it cannot be that he completed the former year without any offense or contradiction; for it is necessary that many and hostile vexations, snares, and insults be cast into that year, as will be declared later, although the distribution of the Paschas and times from them is not even convenient. Irenæus establishes the first Pascha as that which John mentions (ch. ii, v. 13); but he deduces the second from John v, v. 4, where he names a feast day of the Jews: with which he confuses the other of ch. vi, v. 4; before which the prodigy of the multiplied loaves happens: to these two he subjects the *staurosimon*. I wonder that those who, from Irenæus's authority, constitute that same one of which John v speaks as the second Pascha—so that the third is that of which John vi makes mention—have not weighed this place of Irenæus sufficiently. For if Irenæus believed these two feasts to be distinct, since he attributed only a triple Pascha ^B to the preaching, he would never have said that the former feast of John v was the Pascha. ^C But Epiphanius sins more broadly, who in number 25 makes the first Pascha that feast in which Christ cried out: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (John vii, 37); indeed, the other, about which in the same chapter he said: "I do not go up to this feast day," in which also the Pharisees were repressed by fear when they wanted to seize him (v. 44). There are many things written by the most holy Fathers that are sometimes not very truly or attentively written: which to wish to justify, I judge to be perhaps the mark of a religious, but not a very prudent man; but to accuse them vehemently is the mark of neither a religious nor a prudent one. We do not so much inquire into the errors and lapses of these divine men—yet they were men—with the moderation that is due, as we lay them open, once they have appeared of their own accord and occur even unwillingly, lest they be a stumbling block to anyone; but neither to defend nor to maintain them is any more my aim than to imitate their vices, if there be any.

^A Such things in this writer of ours are perhaps too numerous. But among them, nothing is less to be overlooked than that distinction between the Passovers. For in the first place, those two things which in chapter 5 are said to have been spoken by Christ pertain to the same feast; secondly, that was not the Passover, but the feast of Scenopegia, chapter 2; thirdly, Epiphanius has accepted these in reverse order: for what he mentions in the first place are read to have been used at the end of the feast, and what he places later, before the feast. I omit the rest; for I have no desire to pursue that falsity more accurately.

Furthermore, we must enter upon another method of ordering the two Passovers. But first, the head of the question itself must be considered, from whence the confirmation of a fourth Passover is sought. Since, as we have said before, John distinguished the Passovers more exactly than the other three, the times must be arranged primarily according to his authority. Wherefore, if in chapter 5 he signified the Passover by the name of a feast, the matter will be settled, at the very least, by four Passovers: provided it is not in the least confused with the Passover in chapter 6, verse 3. Moreover, since that miracle, by which He satisfied five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes, is entirely the same as that which is described in Matthew chapter 14, Mark 6, and Luke 9; it is necessary that that Passover, before which the miracle happened, according to John’s testimony, is different from that which is tacitly expressed by those three evangelists, when Christ walked with His disciples through the cornfields: which undoubtedly happened after the Passover, that is, on the second-first Sabbath. ^B If, therefore, that journey through the cornfields happened after a different Passover than the one next to His baptism, undoubtedly more than three Passovers must be established. But if these can be reconciled, so that neither that feast day in John 5 is the Passover, nor the second-first Sabbath, of which Luke speaks in chapter 6, occurred immediately after the first Passover, then nothing at all can be concluded about the interval of four Passovers; for as far as the feast day in John 5 is concerned, many and very serious Fathers deny that John spoke of the Passover, but some understand it to be Pentecost, others another feast. Furthermore, as to the testimony of Irenaeus which is brought forward, it has already been provided against his authority by us, because he acknowledged no other Passover than the one commemorated in chapter 6; with which feast he confused that day in John 5. Wherefore I would easily have forgiven this very Passover, which is read in John 5, as long as it is not distinguished from the later one by Irenaeus's opinion, nor does it attribute more Passovers to Christ than he does. But there were only three feasts at which it was necessary to present oneself at Jerusalem: the Passover, Pentecost, and Scenopegia. Since, therefore, that one of those three feasts was the one for which Christ went up; and the latter two have no place, it is necessary that John spoke of the first, that is, the Passover. For the fact that it was neither Pentecost nor Scenopegia is shown by the argument that, in the chapter above, verse 35, Christ had said that four months were remaining until the harvest. But these, in my judgment, ^A are very slight; for to omit that which Maldonatus thinks—that a certain proverb was in circulation among the Jews of this kind, "four months still remain unto the harvest," when they wished to signify nothing that needed to be pressed—why are we forced to admit that it was one of the three major feasts? Do not the Gospels testify that Christ also came for the Feast of Dedication, and is it not likely that the remaining days were celebrated by Him? Wherefore, unless we wish it to pertain to Pentecost with Chrysostom, Cyril, and among the more recent, Maldonatus, and others; nothing prevents it from being understood as Purim, or the feast of Lots, which was celebrated on the 15th of Adar. Regarding which, Kepler wrote learnedly in his *Eclogues*. Now that second-first Sabbath can be placed after the first Passover from His baptism, as Kepler also does in that same place, and as we ourselves will shortly show. One thing remains, which Kepler proposes and refutes from Chemnitz: for indeed, Christ began His preaching after John had been cast into prison, Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:14. But John was cast into chains after the first Passover: for after it was celebrated, John continued to baptize, John 3:23. Therefore, Luke’s second-first Sabbath, and his walking through the cornfields, cannot be subjected to the first Passover, because already, when these things were happening, Christ had begun to preach. From which it follows that at least four Passovers are elicited, as we argued a little before.

But it seems quite absurd that Christ did not touch the office of preaching before the imprisonment of John, and for such a long time remained idle and slothful. And if we wish to confess the truth, that meeting of Nicodemus with Christ, and those words of his: "Rabbi, we know that Thou art come from God: for no man can do these signs that Thou doest, except God be with him" (John 3:2); then what is narrated in the chapter above, regarding many believing in Him; demonstrate that Christ had already preached and had spoken to the people. Add to these all the things that were said and done by Christ before John was bound, which the other three have covered in several chapters. Furthermore, Peter also in Acts 1 testifies that Christ began from His baptism. Eusebius in book 1, chapter 10, teaches the same, and Epiphanius in this place. For Irenaeus thinks He was baptized in His thirtieth year, and after a few years, when He had already attained the proper age for teaching, he says that that preaching began, which refers to the "acceptable year." ^D As far as Epiphanius is concerned, above at number 24, he says that on the day after He was baptized, that preaching began. What then shall we do with those evangelists who narrate that Christ began to preach only when John was cast into prison? It seemed to Kepler that the matter could be accomplished by the transposition of one verse. For if in Matt. 4, verse 12: "Now when Jesus had heard that John was delivered up, He withdrew into Galilee": likewise in Mark 1, if you transpose verse 14 elsewhere, you will weave the order of the narration very aptly. But to me, this transposition of a single verse seems truly violent: for nothing is clearer than that the things which are set underneath are connected with those very verses. It is better, therefore,

^A to accommodate the difficulty of that place with some convenient interpretation. And this is very easy. For Matthew and Mark do not by any means teach that Christ then only, when John was sent into chains, began to preach to the people—that is, to speak words publicly—which is shown to be false from those very evangelists themselves. But the sense is this: after John was captured, He made a kind of new beginning of preaching and, when He had applied Himself more accurately to that task, He then particularly impressed this: "Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Such an exhortation He had either not used before, or had used less frequently and vehemently, because John had taken up for himself that province of preaching repentance as his own peculiar work. Nothing, I think, could be imagined more probable than this conjecture of ours. ^B Now, so that the opinion of Epiphanius and the ancients regarding the three Passovers may be more illustrated, I will direct a brief series of the evangelic narrative according to their intervals.

The narrative of the Evangelists accommodated to the opinion of Epiphanius concerning the three Passovers

After the baptism and the forty days' fast, those things occurred which are narrated in the first chapter of John concerning the calling of the apostles. Then, the marriage in Cana of Galilee, John II up to verse 13, when He set out with His own for Capharnaum. Where, when He had stayed for a few days, He traversed Galilee and there preached the Gospel, Luke IV, v. 14. He went to Nazareth, where He was almost killed by the townsfolk. After these things, He called the apostles again, Mark I, 16. And again, having boarded a boat, He drew Peter and the others to Himself. Then He came to Capharnaum, Mark I, 21, Luke IV, 31. Where He healed a demoniac in the synagogue: thence, Peter's mother-in-law and the leper. There follows the calling of Matthew, Matthew IX, Mark II, Luke V. After this, the disciples of John coming with the Pharisees expostulate with Him, because His own disciples did not fast at all. Thence, the first Passover after the baptism, John II. For it is necessary that, after many miracles had been performed and the preaching begun, the Lord should have become famous, as is gathered from the speech of Nicodemus. During those same days of the Passover, Christ removed the merchants from the temple. Afterwards, He passed through the cornfields, Matthew XII, 1, Mark II, 23, Luke VI, 1. There follow the deeds in Matthew X up to verse 21, and Mark III up to verse 13, Luke VI up to verse 12. ^D The apostles are then chosen, Mark III from verse 13 to 19, Luke VI from 12 to 16, Matthew X in the whole chapter. Afterwards, partly on a mountain, partly on level ground, He instituted various sermons; which Matthew anticipated for the most part in chapter VI, and Luke in chapter VI. Then He delivers the centurion's servant from disease, Luke VII from verse 1 to 10, Matthew VIII from 5 to 10. Then the widow’s son at the town of Naim, Luke VII from verse 12; He sends the disciples to Christ, Luke VII from verses 19 to 35, Matthew XI. There follows the office performed for Christ by the sinful woman, Luke VII, verse 37. Thence He came home, Mark III, 20. He casts out a mute demon, Luke XI, 14, Matthew XII, 22. Therefore the Pharisees ^C accuse Him of doing these things in Beelzebub.

The mother comes with the brothers, Mark III, 31; Matthew XII, 46. Then, going out from the house, He arrives at the sea. Where He explains the parable of the sower and certain other things, Mark IV, Matthew XIII: and perchance also those things which are read in Luke VIII, 33. Meanwhile, some approach Christ and declare that they wish to follow Him, Matthew VIII, 18. Afterwards, having been carried into the deep, He calms the storm, Mark IV. Having crossed the strait, He frees a demoniac in the country of the Gerasenes, Matthew VIII, Mark V. Returning, He heals the daughter of the archisynagogue, then the woman suffering from the flow of blood, Matthew IX, Mark V, Luke VIII. Departing from there, He went into His own country, Mark VI, Matthew XIII. He sends the apostles by twos with most ample power, Mark VI, Luke IX. Meanwhile, Herod, when he had heard much concerning the wonders of Christ, thinks John has been raised from the dead and desires to see him: but he withdraws himself. Wherefore it is credible that John was killed around these times. I refer the fourth chapter of John to this same flight of Christ, when, having left Judea, He withdrew into Galilee; on which journey He spoke with the Samaritan woman. Wherefore there is a huge gap in the history between chapters I and V of John, because the other evangelists had written the deeds of the previous year most accurately. Chapter VI, however, is connected with chapter IV: for after all those things, Christ approached a certain feast which was not far from the Passover: namely, Purim, or some other. There follows a huge miracle, when He satisfied five thousand men with five loaves and two fish, John VI, Matthew XIV, Mark VI, Luke IX: when, fearing that they might make Him king, He withdrew into the mountain and from there crossed over to Capharnaum, at which time He also walked upon the waters. Around the same time, that disputation was held with the people which is described in John VI. Thence He set out into the land of Gennesaret.

There follows the second Passover, John VI, 4. Hence ensued that altercation with the Pharisees, Matthew XV, Mark VII. Afterwards, having set out into the borders of the Tyrians and Sidonians, He heals the daughter of the Canaanite woman, and also a mute and deaf demoniac at the sea of Galilee, when the Pharisees, slandering Him, said these things were done in Beelzebub. Which indeed happened twice in total: first Matthew IX, Mark III, then Matthew XII and Mark VII, Luke XI. To be added to all these is another prodigy, when He satisfied four thousand men with seven loaves, Matthew XV, Mark VIII. Thence He sets out into the parts of Dalmanutha, Mark VIII, where the Pharisees ask for a sign, Matthew XVI, Luke XI: which they had asked for even before, Matthew XII. He is invited by a Pharisee and discourses on many things, Luke XI, Matthew XXIII. He goes across the sea, Mark VIII, 13, Luke IX, Matthew XVI. He warns against the leaven of the Pharisees, heals the blind man of Bethsaida, Mark VIII, 22. Peter makes a confession, Mark VIII, 27, Matthew XVI, Luke IX, 18. After five or six days, He is transfigured, Matthew XVII, Mark IX, Luke IX. The next day He heals a lunatic. A contention arose among the apostles concerning pre-eminence, Mark IX, 32, Luke IX. He set out from Galilee for the feast of Scenopegia