|
0 members (),
722
guests, and
81
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
Forums26
Topics35,506
Posts417,454
Members6,150
| |
Most Online3,380
Dec 29th, 2019
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31 |
I recommend to all a remarkable book: The Ordering of Time : From the Ancient Computus to the Modern Computer [German original: ZEIT UND ZAHL IN DER GESCHICHTE EUROPAS (TIME AND NUMBERS IN EUROPE'S HISTORY) ] by Arno Borst. Internt Archive: The ordering of time [ archive.org]
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65 |
According to this [ orthochristian.com], the Finnish Orthodox Church has reaffirmed its use of the Gregorian Paschalion. But I have never heard of the web site orthochristian.com so I don't know how reliable the report is. It seems plausible though.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31 |
According to this [ orthochristian.com], the Finnish Orthodox Church has reaffirmed its use of the Gregorian Paschalion. But I have never heard of the web site orthochristian.com so I don't know how reliable the report is. It seems plausible though. The statement is a stab at rationality, more of diplomacy, explaining away the litmus test of "true Orthodoxy," adherence to the failed Julian Calendar and its Paschaleon, with muddled facts . The Estonian situation is truly reprehensible in that they rejected their use of the Gregorian Paschaleon, returning to the Julian in what, given just a minimum of God-given discernment, is ignorance bordering on sin, turning away from light to darkness. It seems the inducements of the Finnish government has enable this one Orthodox church (that of Finland) to get this aspect of theology -- and yes, the calendar issue is THEOLOGY! -- right. The Finnish and Estonian Churches were always considered a special case regarding their adoption of the Gregorian Calendar for very sensitive reasons. There was intense pressure by the Finnish government to have the Finnish Orthodox adopt the Gregorian Calendar and distance itself as much as possible from the Russians. At just under 2% of the population, because of their adoption they were able to have equal privileges with the local Lutheran Church in Finland and it allowed for the flourishing of the Church in a time of persecution. It further allows the Church to be supported by the State from tax revenues. [ johnsanidopoulos.com]
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65 |
The Orthodox Wiki's article [ orthodoxwiki.org] on the Sigillon of 1583 calls it a 19th-century forgery, but the link to the supporting authority is dead.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65 |
The First Ecumenical Synod and the Feast of Pascha
Archimandrite Sergius
...In two of his epistles, St. Athanasios touches on the matter of the celebration of Pascha. In a letter to the Bishops of Africa (Chapter 2), he writes:
“The Synod of Nicaea was convened on account of the heresy of Arius and because of the issue of Pascha. Because the Christians in Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia were not in concord, at the same time that the Jews celebrated their Passover, they celebrated...[the Christian Pascha]...,” (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XXVI, col. 1029). In his letter “On the Synods in Ariminum and Seleucia” (Chapter 5), the Saint comments: “The Synod in Nicaea was held not without manifest reason, but out of good reason and urgent need; for the Christians of Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia were erring with regard to the holy days and celebrated the Pascha with the Jews )” (ibid., col. 688).
It is evident from the context, here, that “meta ton ioudaion,” with the Jews, means precisely what the Church has always taught; the expression refers to nothing other than a common celebration with the Jews at one and the same moment in time).
Moreover, it is this very temporal concelebration which invited reproach and which was one of the reasons for the convocation of a synod in Nicaea. ... No it doesn't. We know what the Syrian practice was. It was the practice later called "protopaschite". We know this from a document called the Didascalia Apostolorum, which states Therefore ye, when the people keep the Passover, fast and study to complete your vigil in the midst of their unleavened bread. (Chapter 21) This refers to the practice of setting Easter to the Sunday that fell within the Jewish week of Unleavened Bread. It has nothing to do with whether Easter must alway follow the 15th of Nisan in the modern-day Rabbinic Jewish calendar. St. Ambrose of Milan (circa 339-97), in an epistle written to the Bishops of the district of Emilia in 386, observes, in response to a question from
them regarding the lateness of Pascha in the coming year (387): “The determination of the Feast of Pascha according to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the Holy Tradition of the Fathers who assembled at the Synod in Nicaea requires not a little wisdom. Aside from other marvelous rules of Faith, the Holy Fathers, with the aid of eminently experienced men appointed to determine the aforementioned Feast Day, produced a calculation for its date of nineteen years’ duration and established a cycle of sorts that became a mod-
el for ensuing years. This cycle they called the “nonus decennial,” its goal being...the sacrifice of the Resurrection of Christ at all places on the same
night” (Epistle XXIII, Chap. 1, Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. XVI, col. 1070). The basic rule for the calculation of Pascha is set forth by St. Ambrose in the eleventh chapter of the same epistle: “We must observe a rule, such that the fourteenth moon [i.e., the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan, the Jewish Passover] be not set on the day of the Resurrection, but on the day of
the passion of Christ, or on another preceding day, since the celebration of the Resurrection is celebrated on Sunday.” Further on, he justifies the rule in question by reference to the Feast of Pascha in 373 and 377, which fell on late dates: “Thus, in 373, when the fourteenth moon [that is, the Jewish
Passover—author’s note] fell on March 24, we celebrated Pascha on March 31. Likewise in 377, when the fourteenth moon fell on April 9 (Sunday), the
Pascha of the Lord was celebrated on the following Sunday, April 16.” This is how the Alexandrian computus has always worked. It defines the 14th day of the Spring lunar month and sets Easter to the Sunday after that 14th day. But this refers to the 14th day by the Christian calculation, not to the 14th day by the Jewish calculation. Which day Jewish neighbors set as the 14th of their Nisan is of no consequence to the Alexandrian computus. In essence, St. Ambrose confirms the correctness of the basic condition set by the “Alexandrian Paschalion” and universally accepted by the Synod in Nicaea: that the Pascha of Christ must never coincide with the Jewish Passover and that it must not only follow the Jewish Passover, but be celebrated on Sunday, at that. No. The Alexandrian computus has a rule that Easter must follow the 14th of Nisan by the Christian computation, not by the Jewish computation. The Gregorian computus follows this rule. And St. Ambrose was wrong in thinking that the council of Nicea had established the Alexandrian computus. The only things the council explicitly decided were (1) Christians should celebrate the festival on the same day (2) the date should be calculated independently of the Jewish calendar. Implicitly, they also decided that the festival must follow the Spring equinox, since both the Roman and Alexandrian systems had this feature. Archbishop Peter (OCA) is absolutely unjustified in his claim that in “the fourth century, after Nicaea, the Christian Pascha and the Jewish Passover coincided several times” (ibid., p. 79). In support of this false assertion, he cites the French scientist V. Grumel, who, in his essay “The Problem of the Date of Pascha in the Third and Fourth Centuries” (Journal of Byzantine Research, Vol. VIII, pp. 165-166), uses a table of Paschal and Passover dates, published by Swartz, for the nineteen consecutive years between 328 and 346. Only two of the dates in Swartz’s list are, in fact, Sundays, namely, 329 and 333. With regard to the first of these dates, 329, St. Athanasios designates April 6 as the date of Pascha, not March 30, as does Swartz. With respect to the year 333, St. Athanasios writes that the date of Pascha was moved back, in order to avoid its coinciding with the anniversary celebration of Rome. Again, aside from the two years mentioned, none of the dates in the table used by Archbishop Peter falls on a Sunday. The Sardica Paschal table shows dates of the 14th of Nisan by the Christian and Jewish calculations. That none of the dates is a Sunday is irrelevant, since Easter never falls on the 14th of the moon. But the table shows Christians and Jews calculating the same age of the moon some of the time. This means that, on Sundays when the moon was 15 days old by the Jewish count, it might also have been 15 days old by the Christian count, and Easter might have coincided with the first day of Unleavened Bread by the Jewish calculation. In Chapter 14 of his noteworthy work, A Short Clarification of the Redeeming Pascha of Christ our Lord (Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XIX, col. 1232),1 St. Maximos likewise notes: “We who are, by Grace, vouchsafed to keep the Pascha of Christ, our Lord, with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [I Corinthians 5:8], allow one day to elapse [in order to celebrate Pascha] when March 21 falls on a Saturday and that Saturday is the fourteenth day of the moon. If April 18 happens to fall on a Sunday, and that Sunday is, according to the Jewish calendar, the fourteenth day of the lunar month, then we allow seven days to elapse before celebrating Pascha. This is because, within the thirty-five days between March 22 and April 25, the redeeming day of Pascha is appointed to be celebrated, according to the canons, not before the former date or after the latter, by virtue of Church
rules and the tradition concerning these dates.” This again is a restatement of the rule that Easter must always fall when the moon is 15 to 21 days old inclusive, never on the 14th of the moon. This refers to the 14th of the moon by the Christian calculation. The Jewish calculation is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with a coincidence of the 15th of Nisan in the modern Rabbinic calendar with Easter. The Gregorian computus always places Easter between the 15th and the 21st day of the moon inclusive. Hence if follows the prescription of the Alexandrian computus.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31 |
Since this is something of a catch-all, general purpose calendar thread, I decided to put this here. I have read a lot of popular and even scholarly material about the calendar and Easter on the internet (especially) and it's disconcerting how much of it is wrong. This is one where I can't even make sense of the dates for Easter given with the identified calendars. What's the year of his "this year"? The irony is its title "Years of Confusion: The Origins of The Modern Calendar" on a site called Masterclock. Of course, keeping the calendar in sync with the seasons doesn’t resolve every issue. For example, my calendar shows that Easter fell on March 28 this year. Yet for a few hundred million Orthodox Christians, now loyal followers of the Gregorian calendar, it came on May 2. That’s due to a carefully considered, multi-faceted set of theological decisions made in 1923 at the Pan-Orthodox Conference of Constantinople. And unfortunately, it’s also a very long story—too long even for a footnote. But the good news is that, at least in the USA, that difference is so ingrained that the Orthodox minority has no trouble distinguishing between the “real Easter” and the “American Easter.” [ masterclock.com] Possibly his "this year" is 2021? His "my Easter" is Passover? See the dates in the table Post422315.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2009
Posts: 1,522 Likes: 24
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Apr 2009
Posts: 1,522 Likes: 24 |
According to a table of Western Easter Dates that I saved many years ago:
3/28 1875 1880 1937
Since that date will NOT occur again until 2027 "this year" must refer to 1937 which would be in the second decade following the Pan-Orthodox Conference.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31 |
According to a table of Western Easter Dates that I saved many years ago:
3/28 1875 1880 1937
Since that date will NOT occur again until 2027 "this year" must refer to 1937 which would be in the second decade following the Pan-Orthodox Conference. Yes, thanks for confirming, I saw that too. This is a contemporary article so it being 1937 doesn't fit. The author is fashioned as The “father” of time [ ellines.com]. Here is another blunder or reprehensible typo: ... so Easter would be consistent with the formulas set at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 BC.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: May 2007
Posts: 2,384 Likes: 31 |
To follow up on this, I emailed the author and the points raised are now corrected and clarified in the masterclock.com link.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65 |
Here is a table of full moons, astronomical and ecclesiastical, for 2024.
Astronomical and Ecclesiastical full moons for 2024
Astronomical full moon (UT) / Gregorian EFM / Gregorian date of Julian EFM
Jan 25 / Jan 25 / Jan 29
Feb 24 / Feb 24 / Feb 28
Mar 25 / Mar 25 / Mar 29
Apr 23 / Apr 23 / Apr 28
May 23 / May 23 / May 27
June 22 / June 21 / June 26
July 21 / July 21 / July 25
Aug 19 / Aug 19 / Aug 24
Sep 18 / Sep 18 / Sep 22
Oct 17 / Oct 17 / Oct 23
Nov 15 / Nov 16 / Nov 20
Dec 15 / Dec 15 / Dec 20
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 65 |
Astronomical and Ecclesiastical Full Moons, 2025
Astronomical full moon (UT) / Gregorian EFM / Gregorian date of Julian EFM
Jan 13 / Jan 14 / Jan 18
Feb 12 / Feb 13 / Feb 17
Mar 14 / Mar 14 / Mar 18
Apr 13 / Apr 13 / Apr 17
May 12 / May 12 / May 17
Jun 11 / Jun 11 / Jun 15
Jul 10 / Jul 10 / Jul 14
Aug 9 / Aug 9 / Aug 13
Sep 7 / Sep 7 / Sep 11
Oct 7 / Oct 7 / Oct 11
Nov 5 / Nov 5 / Nov 9
Dec 4 / Dec 5 / Dec 9
|
|
|
|
|
