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The Resurrection itself would violate this form; see Re: TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA, Unleavens 3 -- a reductio ad absurdum.

Thus the one week difference this year, 2022. An extreme case is 2013 considering "...the earliest Passover currently falls on 26 March (as in AM 5773 / 2013 CE)" Implications for Jewish ritual [en.wikipedia.org]; and from Aleppo:

Your table has Julian Easter on 20 May in 2025. This is wrong. Julian 14 Nisan in year 12 (2025) is on 16 April. Julian Easter that year will be on 20 April.

This is the table from the Aleppo proposal, Towards a Common Date for Easter [oikoumene.org], World Council of Churches / Middle East Council of Churches Consultation, Aleppo, Syria, March 5 - 10, 1997. The irony of the typo is that 2025 is a focus for calendar awareness in relation to the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea: TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA. I did note the incorrect date in that thread, Post #421435, and more recently in The Church Calendar: Theology and Technology [academia.edu].

Looks like I got it wrong. Julian 14 Nisan in year 12 is April 17 Gregorian, not April 16.

Right, for 2025 the Golden Number (Metonic Cycle) is 12 with: Julian Calendar date of the New Moon = March 22; Luna 14 = April 4 (J) = April 17 (G).

Wikipedia has a very unusual section, poorly written and referenced (and polemical), for the Golden number (time) [en.wikipedia.org], section Modern-day use of the golden number ("The prospect of Whitby" - ??????).

Christ is in our midst!!

We only need one thread dealing with this topic. Currently it runs in this section--Town Hall--and in Faith and Theology. Should these two be combined?

Bob
Moderator

See my reply in TOWARDS A COMMON DATE OF EASTER: REMAINING FAITHFUL TO NICAEA.

Got it.

Had it been in use, the modern-day Rabbinic calendar's 15 Nisan (the first day of Unleavened Bread) would have coincided with Julian Easter Sunday in the years

370
496
499
519
523
536
543
563
570
590
594
614
743

This proves that the Julian Paschalion was not designed to make Easter Sunday fall later than the first day of Unleavened Bread in the modern-day Rabbinic calendar.

Now in fact the modern-day Rabbinic calendar was not in use in any of the years listed except perhaps the last one. But in all of the years listed, Easter Sunday remains a plausible date for the first day of Jewish Unleavened Bread. Indeed in the years

370
499
519

any Jewish community that set the first day of its lunar months on the 6PM-to-6PM day of the mean conjunction would have had the first day of Unleavened Bread on Easter Sunday.

These are some relevant scripture and other considerations that pertain to the calendar issue. Both Scripture and usage raise the issue of the relationship between the 14th and the15th “of the moon,” and the Passover and Feast of Unleavens. Conflation and confusion and complexity are coupled with a lack of specificity or agreed upon terminology. What counts as the first day of unleavens? Aviv/Nisan 15 but consider just these scriptures in a standard translation. They become even more intricate – but perhaps in a more literal rendering, sometimes clearer -- in their Hebrew, and NT and LXX Greek nuances.

Using the RSV translation for now.

14th and 15th distinguished.
Leviticus 23:5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, is the LORD's passover.
Leviticus 23:6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread to the LORD; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.

Basically a repeat of Leviticus.

Numbers 28:16 "On the fourteenth day of the first month is the LORD's passover.
Numbers 28:17 And on the fifteenth day of this month is a feast; seven days shall unleavened bread be eaten.

The prototype verses.

Exodus 12:1 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
Exodus 12:2 "This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you.
Exodus 12:3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household
Exodus 12:6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs in the evening.
Exodus 12:7 Then they shall take some of the blood, and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat them.
Exodus 12:8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it.
Exodus 12:11 In this manner you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover
Exodus 12:13 The blood shall be a sign for you, upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
Exodus 12:14 "This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever

Then in the next verse, rather abruptly:

Exodus 12:15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the first day you shall put away leaven out of your houses, for if any one eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

The first/head/chief moon/month is also identified and the evening of the first day.

Deuteronomy 16:1 "Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover to the LORD your God; for in the month of Abib the LORD your God brought you out of Egypt by night
Deuteronomy 16:2 And you shall offer the passover sacrifice to the LORD your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place which the LORD will choose, to make his name dwell there.
Deuteronomy 16:3 You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction -- for you came out of the land of Egypt in hurried flight -- that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.
Deuteronomy 16:4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; nor shall any of the flesh which you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all night until morning.

A (later) example of wording outside the Torah.

Ezekiel 45:21 "In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall celebrate the feast of the passover, and for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten

From the NT

Luke 22:1 Now the feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover.
Luke 22:7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the passover lamb had to be sacrificed.
Luke 22:8 So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and prepare the passover for us, that we may eat it."
Luke 22:15 And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer;

Matthew 26:17 Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the passover?"

Mark 14:12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the passover lamb, his disciples said to him, "Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the passover?"

NAB Note for Mark 14:12: The first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread•••the Passover lamb: a less precise designation of the day for sacrificing the Passover lamb as evidenced by some rabbinical literature. For a more exact designation, see note on Mar 14:1. It was actually Nisan 14.

NAB Note for Mark 14:1 It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread.: The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread: the connection between the two festivals is reflected in Exo 12:3-20; 34:18; Lev 23:4-8; Num 9:2-14; 28:16-17; Deu 16:1-8. The Passover commemorated the redemption from slavery and the departure of the Israelites from Egypt by night. It began at sundown after the Passover lamb was sacrificed in the temple in the afternoon of the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan. With the Passover supper on the same evening was associated the eating of unleavened bread. The latter was continued through Nisan 21, a reminder of the affliction of the Israelites and of the haste surrounding their departure.

A number of issues and questions can be and have been raised:

Is an annual “Christian Passover” (primarily, essentially) a commemoration of the passion, the death and Passover sacrifice vs the resurrection as the culmination and triumph of the sacrifice?

Which verse from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians best represents the dominant or original theology of an annual “Christian Passover” ?
NAB 1 Corinthians 11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.
or
NAB 1 Corinthians 15:14 And if Christ has not been raised, then empty [too] is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.

Quartodeciman theology and liturgy vs a liturgical theology of Sunday as the Lord’s Day
Both synchronic and diachronic comparisons or Pascha and Passover, and relations among Christians and between Christians and Jews
Immenent vs realized or anticipated eschatology
Political/secular involvement/domination (aka Constantine especially) in the Church
Synoptics’ vs John’s chronology

GOARCH has a link [goarch.org] to an essay by Archon John Fotopoulos explaining the difference between Julian and Gregorian Easter.

This essay covers the chief issues quite thoroughly and well. It is worthwhile and informative but it repeats the standard lore that is close enough to fact but needs additional nuance. Some examples:

1. "the rules for calculating the date of Pascha issued by the 1st Ecumenical Council at Nicaea." Nicaea issued no extant "rules." The rules developed over time supported by documents emanating from Nicaea.

2. "vernal full moon." Used 25 times. This is the unfortunate, misleading and INCORRECT "dynamic equivalence" of the proper and actual Patristic and Scriptural "14th day of the moon."

3. "more accurate calendar—although not perfect." The word perfect is not proper for understanding a calendar. A calendar either does the job or does not; it does the job or does it better, or best. It there is a truly perfect calendar then it is nature, the earth-sun-moon dynamic that is not perfect.

4. "new Revised Julian Calendar." An unnecessary improvement that obscures and is enabling (via the "mixed" calendar) rather than eliminating the problem, the Julian Paschalion.

5. "use of a more accurate calendar and more accurate scientific calculations." The Gregorian calendar and its Paschalion already does the job and does it quite well. God in Scripture does not require more from Israel regarding the determination of Passover than what is achieved in the Gregorian Paschalion.

Fotopoulos concludes, pointing in the right direction:
I concur within the context of the 5 caveats above. In particular, the Biblical formula (my synthesis and phrasing based on Scripture) for Passover


developed after Nicaea into

Scholars are building a website called Computus in the Carolingian Age [computus.tchpc.tcd.ie] which will be pretty remarkable when it is all built.

An interesting and ambitious project. From the into on the home page:

Some questions come to mind: As an approach or discipline, was it (computus) completed, or terminated, with the Gregorian reform? Was it a methodology that was considered to have been brought to fruition? Is there any interest or activity, or need or desire, to consider it further? Does it have a role today in the calendar question? Does it fit in with the current emphasis on the detailed scientific approach taken by the EP and Aleppo?

There are many excellent and comprehensive studies, e.g., current studies by Mosshammer and especially Nothaft which, however, stop short of the Gregorian reform in providing details. Is there a standard modern or relatively current commentary on the actual definitive work of the Gregorian reform, the Explicatio of Clavius?

I think that the computations of the Gregorian paschalion can rightly be called "computus".

The history of computus continues to be useful in the present day. I met someone on line who believes that the council of Nicea implemented the Alexandrian computus in all its details. The history of computus refutes that proposition.