Erevailed all over the West. They are found in is Commentary on Daniel (iv. 23, p. 244, ed. Bon- wetsch ; aliter iv. 9). They depend on the assump- tion that the earthly life of our Lord, from Ills conception to His death, lasted an exact number
of years. The upholders of symbolical systems of numbers treated all fractions as imperfections. Acting on this idea, Hippolytus fixed on 25th March for the Annunciation, because he had, as he thought, discovered that the Crucifixion took place on that day (see above, § 1 (0 ; he reckoned the Saviour's life as thirty-two years, from B.C. 3 to A.D. 29. Adding nine months, he arrived at 25th December as the day of the Nativity.*
The other date, 6th January, is not so easily ac- counted for. But Duchesne mentions a coincidence which increases the probability of his theory as to 25th December being correct. Sozomen (^HE vii. 18) says tliat 'the Montanists who are called Pepuzites and Phrygians ' celebrated the Passover on 6th April. They reckoned that the world had lieen created on ' the ninth day before the kalends of April,' the vernal equinox, and that the sun was created ' on the fourteenth day of the moon occurring after the ninth day before the kalends of April ' ; and they always celebrated the Passover ' on this day, when it falls on the day of the Re- surrection,' otherwise they celebrated it on the fol- lowing Lord's day. They probably, then, thought that our Lord died on 6th April ; and, as Duchesne remarks, that ' the Passover of Christ, being the true Passover, must fall due at typical maturity reckoned from the origin of all things.' But reckoning nine months from 6th April, on the same reasoning as that of Hippolytus, we arrive at 6th January.
We do not read of either of these days being observed as festivals in the 3rd century. The first mention of such a commemoration on 25th December is in the Philocalian Calendar (see below, § 5), which was copied in 354 A.D., bnt represents the official observances at Rome in A.D. 336. We find the entry: 'viij kal. Jan. Natus Christus in Betlileem Judse.' It is not indeed absolutely certain that 25th December was at that date observed as a feast ; but it is highly probalile that this was so, as the other days, coni- meniorntions nf bishops of Rome and martyrs, seem to lie iiiitcil in oi.lur that they might be observed. Tills \\:is iiioic ilnii a century after Hippolytus.
It «ill Ijr ol)sc Tved that the theory given above of the choice ot 25th December takes no account of the heathen festival of the sun held on the same day. But it is quite possible that when, in the 4th cent., the Christians began to observe tlie Nativity as a festival, they seized on the coincidence between the day as calculated by Hippolytus and the heathen feast-day, and Christianizing the latter as the Birth of the true Sun of Righteousness, showed a good example to the pagan world by making the day a true holy day.
The Eastern festival of 6th January may be traced to about A.D. 300 among the orthodox. Clement of Alexandria, indeed (Strom. I.e.), says that the followers of Basilides celebrated the day of Jesus' baptism, 'spending the whole preced- ing night in lections.' But the earliest orthodox mention of the day is in the Passion of Philip of Heraclea, in the Diocletian persecution, A.D. 304. Philip says : ' Epiphani;i3 dies sauctus incumbit ' (Ruinart, Act. Mart. Sine. p. 410). That it was of recent introduction when the Testament of our Lord was written (c. 350 ?), appears from there being no regulations for it as there are for Pascha and Pentecost. It is only just mentioned in that work
(' Epiphany,' Syr. Vk>J?). And during the greater
* other Patristic assumptions were that the ministry of our Lord lasted one year only, the 'acceptable year of the Lord' (Lk 419; see, e.g., Clem. Alex. 2.C., 'It was rifrht for Him to preach for one year only'), and that Jesus was baptized on His thirtieth birthday (Lk 323 ao-ii i™, t,„»w.t«). This last idea accounts for the baptism of Christ being commemorated on 6tb
262 CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
})art of the 4tli cent., and in some countries even ater, 6th January was the only day observed in the East. The sixth Edessene canon prescribes ' the Epiphany of our Saviour, whicli is tlie chief of the festivals of the Church [this is significant], on the sixth day of the latter Kanun,' i.e. 6th January. Epiphanius knew of no other day. In Hier. li. {'the Alogi,' lib. ii. torn. 1) he speaks of ' A.D. vi Id. Nov.' as being 60 days before the feast 'of the Epiphanies,' when Clirist was born according to the flesh (§ 16), and of ' the day in which He was born, that is, of the Epiphanie.s, which is the sixth of January.' Cassian, at the end of the 4th cent., speaks of 'Epiphany, which the priests of that province [Egypt] regard as the time both of our Lord's baptism and also of his birth in the flesh, and so celebrate the commemo- ration of either mystery not separately as in the Western provinces, but in the single festival of this day' (Conferences, x. 2). Even later, Gen- nadius [de Vir. Illustr. 59) says that ' Timothy the