The subjoined table (of. Salmon, Introd. to NT. appendix to Lect. XV. ; Mas Lairie, Tr68or de Chronologie, p. 94) gives, flrat, the terminus pofickalit or 14tb of the paschal moon according to the present Christian calendar ; 8etx>ndly, the beginning of the 14tb day, reckoned from the time of the astronomical new moon of Nisan ; and thirdly, the fourteenth day, reckoned from the first appearance of the new moon at sunset (it being remem* bered that the Jewish day began at that hour)—
LD. 28 Sa. 27 M.
29 F. 15 A.
30 Tu. 4 A. SI Sa. 24 M
32 Sa. 12 A.
33 W. 1 A.
28 M., 2 a.m. 16 A., 8 p.m.
4 A., 8 p.m. 26 M., 1 a.m. 11 A., 11 p.m.
1 A., 1p.m.
or ( 3-) 4 A.
The first and third colomni may safely be taken to represent the possible extremes in any j'ear, and it will be seen at once that Friday cannot have fallen on Nisan 14 or 16 in the three years A.D. 28, 31, 32— in each of these the choice lies from Saturday to Monday or Tuesday for the 14th, and from Sunday to Tuesday or Wednesday for the 15th— and must be sought for therefore in one of the remaining years, A.D. 29, 30, 33.
(2) But how is it certain that the full moons just given wer« those of Nisan rather than of some other month?
Nisan was ori^'inally that lunation before the middle of which the first ears of barley har\'est were ripe (pt 16^, Lv 23^0) ; and if, when the previous month Adar ended, Uie earliest barley was not within a fortnicht of being ripe, a 13th month, Veadar, was intercalated. But as ^^ith the month, so also for the com- mencement of each year, a syMtematic calendar must soon have replaced simple observation, for strangers from the Dispersion could not visit Jems, for the passover unless they knew before- hand whether a 13th month were to be intercalated or nut. Such a method as was wanted for correlating the lunar months with the solar year exists in the still familiar rule that the paschal full moon is that immediately following the spring equinox ; and this was certainly in use — nor is there any traoe of any rival system of harmonization — before the Christian era.*
But the equinox itself, though the reckoning of it varied only within narrow limits, was not an absolutely fixed point. Tlie computation ultimately accepted by the whole Christian world, that of the Alexandrians of the 4th cent., fixed it on March 21. But Anatoliua of Laodicea (see the padsaye of his *a.i-ett( reu ta.ffx'^% A-D- 277, preserved in Eus. IIE vii. 32), assigning the first new moon of the first year of his cycle to Phamenoth 26 = a.d. xi kal. Apr. = March 22, says that the sun Is then already in the 4th day of the first ru.^'^^ (or 12th part of his annual course from equinox to equinox), which he therefore placed on March 19. Moreover, according to the same authority, there were those who, disregarding the equinoctial limit, erroneouslv took for the paschal month what was really not the first month of one year but the last of the preceding— and that against the testimony of the old Jewish authorities, Philo, Josephus, MussBus, and the still earlier AgathobuU and Aristobulus. Who these people were whom he is attacking, Anatolius in the extant fragment does not say ; but the evidence of various 4th cent, writers makes it all but certain that they were the Jews of his day. liie Encyclical Letter of Oonstantine at Nicau dissuade* from imitation of the Jewish poscha, celebrated as it is * twice in one year' : the ApoHolic CoiMtitutiont recommend independence of Jewish calculations and careful attention to the equinox, lest the feast should recur 'twice In one year* — i.«. once rightly, Just after the one spring equinox, and once wrongly. Just before the next ; and the Paschal Uomily of pseudo- Chrysostom (a.d. 3h7) appeals from the contemporary Jews and their neglect of the equinox to their wise men of anticui*y, I'hilo, Josephus, and others, in terms which seem to be borrowed direct from Anatolius. (Socrates, UB L 9; Apost. Const. V. 17 ; Chn-'sostom. ed. Bened. viii. Appendix, p. 277 ; cf., too, Epiphanius. Z/"T. 1. 3.)
It is quite likely tliat this supposed error of the Jews simply meant that they reckoned the equinox t-arlier than their Christian contemporaries, better equipped in ostronomicid
• Philo {op. cit. ii. 2U3) connects tlie title of ' first munlh ' given to Nisan in the UT with the concurrence of the soring L-quinox as an annual reminder of the beginning of all things ; and see below for the catena of Jewish authorities appealed to by Anatolius, who quotes the acttuJ lani^uage of ' Ariatobulus one of the Seventy.'
412 CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
knowledge, had learned to do ; with the result that the Jews would be sometimeB keeping the passover when the Christians, holding that the equinox w;is not yet past, waited for Hie next full moon. In any caae the fartheV back the Church's paschal calculations c*n be traced, the earlier does the equinox appear to have been set. Anatoli\i3 himself put it two days before the Alexandrian reckoning, just aa Hippolytus, the first known author of a Christian cycle (a.d. 2'.i2), put it a day before Anatolius. And both Jews and Christians of primitive times may quite possibly have reckoned it a day earlier even than the March 18 of Hippolytus.