The Fascinating World of Eastern Orthodox Old Calendarists

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

They don't want to! So they won't. End of story I guess.

The real question is WHY...

 

[chevyontheriver]

The real question is WHY...

I can't answer that. I think the date of the Vernal equinox is a matter for direct observation.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

I can't answer that. I think the date of the Vernal equinox is a matter for direct observation.

We know with 100% accuracy when it is now. That was not the case many years ago. One would think that with the main feast of the Church, especially the Orthodox Church, you would want to be as accurate as possible.

 

[PsaltiChrysostom]

The EO Paschal calculations do not follow the actual vernal new moon but the ecclesiastical new moon, which follows a 19 year cycle.

The Paschalion of the Orthodox Church is a set of rules for determining the date of Pascha that traditionally has been implemented by calendrical tables combining Metonic lunar cycles with the Julian solar year. The rules are attributed to the First Ecumenical Council (held at Nicea in 325); the cyclical Paschal tables that emerged in connection with the Council were based on 3rd and 4th century Alexandrian prototypes, and then transposed into Julian dates by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century. - Paschalion - OrthodoxWiki

 

[prodromos]

I do agree that the Orthodox have a bevy of issues they need to resolve. One of them seems to be the issue of how they resolve issues.

We have a very effective manner for solving issues in the Church, it simply requires repentance, humility and obedience, something which is lacking in a number of our bishops at present. Unlike Catholicism we don't have a single person who can make unilateral decisions, which seems to be working out real great for you guys at present.

 

[chevyontheriver]

We have a very effective manner for solving issues in the Church, it simply requires repentance, humility and obedience ....

I guess I will just have to take you at your word for that.

 

[The Liturgist]

That was for a different reason that does not apply today, other than the 14th could be on any day, not always on a Sunday. We actually follow Rome. St John taught Polycarp regarding the 14th. However it was ROME (Anicetus and Victor) that had a problem with it! Polycarp met with Anicetus in 155AD. Most if not ALL the churches in the East (now Orthodox) kept the 14th. Nicea it would seem was a consensus regarding SUNDAY. 1 Corinthians 5:7

Polycrates insisted in his letter to Pope Victor that “we ought to obey God rather than man."
“We observe the exact day (Nisan 14 for Passover), neither adding, nor taking away"
“For in Asia also great lights have fallen asleep, which shall rise again on the day of the Lord’s coming, when he shall come with glory from heaven, and shall seek out all the saints,”
"Among these are Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who fell asleep in Hierapolis; and his two aged virgin daughters, and another daughter, who lived in the Holy Spirit and now rests at Ephesus; and, moreover, John, who was both a witness and a teacher, who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord, and, being a priest, wore the sacerdotal plate. He fell asleep at Ephesus. And Polycarp in Smirna, who was a bishop and martyr; and Thraseas, bishop and martyr from Eumeneia, who fell asleep in Smyrna. Why need I mention the bishop and martyr Sagaris who fell asleep in Laodicea, or the blessed Papirius, or Melito the Eunuch who lived altogether in the Holy Spirit, and who lies in Sardis, awaiting the episcopate from heaven, when he shall rise from the dead?”
"And I also, Polycrates, the least of you all, do according to the tradition of my relatives, some of whom I have closely followed. For seven of my relatives were bishops; and I am the eighth. And my relatives always observed the day when the people put away the leaven. I, therefore, brethren, who have lived sixty-five years in the Lord, and have met with the brethren throughout the world, and have gone through every Holy Scripture, am not affrighted by terrifying words. For those greater than I have said ‘We ought to obey God rather than man’…I could mention the bishops who were present, whom I summoned at your desire; whose names, should I write them, would constitute a great multitude. And they, beholding my littleness, gave their consent to the letter, knowing that I did not bear my gray hairs in vain, but had always governed my life by the Lord Jesus.”

Bishop Victor ex-communicated Polycrates and all the bishops who supported him. However, he reversed his decision later on after several bishops, including Irenaeus, intervened.

At the time of Nicaea, the rationale in support of Quartodecimianism had been compromised by changes to the way the Jewish calendar is calculated. Also it is untrue that the majority of Eastern churches were Quartodecimian, and the attempt to cast this as a Rome vs. Eastern Orthodox is historically anachronisitic.

 

[prodromos]

I guess I will just have to take you at your word for that.

You only have to look at history.

 

[chevyontheriver]

There is nothing to agree on. It is fact, scientific as well as biblical. It depends if people want to or not.

Pope Francis now says he will agree to any date for Easter the Orthodox agree to. Ha! As if that's going to work.

Pope on shared Easter date with Orthodox: Pick a date and we’ll accept

"On this point, I want to say – indeed, to repeat – what Saint Paul VI said ... We are ready to accept any proposal that is made together."

aleteia.org

Sounds like he might accept the Julian calendar. Hmmm.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Pope Francis now says he will agree to any date for Easter the Orthodox agree to. Ha! As if that's going to work.

Pope on shared Easter date with Orthodox: Pick a date and we’ll accept

"On this point, I want to say – indeed, to repeat – what Saint Paul VI said ... We are ready to accept any proposal that is made together."

aleteia.org

Sounds like he might accept the Julian calendar. Hmmm.

Interesting...

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

At the time of Nicaea, the rationale in support of Quartodecimianism had been compromised by changes to the way the Jewish calendar is calculated. Also it is untrue that the majority of Eastern churches were Quartodecimian, and the attempt to cast this as a Rome vs. Eastern Orthodox is historically anachronisitic.

Understand the calendar issues back then. Mainly Rome and Alexandria were keeping it on Sunday while, as posted above, many Eastern churches, mostly in Asia Minor, Syria, Antioch and in Jerusalem, kept the 14th. In many ways it was Rome (the West) vs The East.

 

[Mockingbird0]

Old Calendarists argue that [the Gregorian calendar] got it too close, and the result is that Pascha and Passover could theoretically overlap, which is a violation of ancient canon laws which were implemented when the Rabbis of the Pharisees, who became the sole surviving Jewish denomination in the 2nd century aside from the Beta Israel in Ethiopia, changed the means of calculation from what is thought to have been observations of the Judaean Barley Crop, when this became problematic as the Jews were driven out of their ancestral homeland following the failed Bar Kochba rebellion, to a fixed calendar system.

This is distorted. The Rabbis controlled some towns in Palestine and some towns in Babylonia, but most of the Jewish folk of the Mediterranean world used non-Rabbinic calendars. These non-Rabbinic calendars sometimes placed the Passover festival before the Spring equinox. Christians relying on these calendars to set the date of the Easter festival would therefore celebrate Easter before the equinox. The Council of Nicaea, implicitly though not explicitly, had ruled that the festival should follow the equinox. But the old traditional method of setting Easter to the Sunday in the Jewish week of Unleavened Bread persisted in some places, especially Syria. These schismatics were later called "protopaschites" because they sometimes celebrated Easter a month before the Nicene churches did. Apostolic canon 7 and Antioch canon 1 were leveled against these protopaschites. They have nothing to do with the mid-4th century change of the Rabbinic calendar from an empirical calendar to a partially fixed one.

Much later, in the 12th century, Joannes Zonaras misinterpreted Apostolic canon 7 to mean that the Easter festival should always follow the 15th of Nisan in the modern-day Rabbinic calendar. This "Zonaras proviso" has since hardened into a widespread superstition. But the original intent of Apostolic canon 7 and Antioch canon 1 was against the protopaschites, not against the modern-day Rabbinic calendar, which did not even exist at the time these canons were drawn up.

 

[Mockingbird0]

The thing I find a bit odd about the Gregorian is the claim that it gets it wrong with respect to the Jewish calendar once in a while. As in Easter being too early. Is that a problem only after the Jewish calendar was itself corrected with the solar observance? Is that a problem with the current Jewish calendar or the Gregorian? Is there a fix for it?

The modern-day Rabbinic calendar was designed to place the Feast of Unleavened Bread at the first full moon after the Spring equinox. However, the implied solar year in the modern-day Rabbinic calendar is slightly too long compared to the average tropical year, and over the centuries the error has accumulated so that now, in 3 years out of every 19, Unleavened Bread is at the second full moon after the equinox. These are the years 3, 11, and 14 of the 19-year cycle by the Christian count, respectively 19, 8, and 11 by the Jewish count. (The year 2019 was a special case and does not count as one of these years.) So it is the modern-day Rabbinic calendar that is sometimes having Unleavened Bread too late, rather than the Gregorian lunar calendar that is having Easter too early.

 

[chevyontheriver]

The modern-day Rabbinic calendar was designed to place the Feast of Unleavened Bread at the first full moon after the Spring equinox. However, the implied solar year in the modern-day Rabbinic calendar is slightly too long compared to the average tropical year, and over the centuries the error has accumulated so that now, in 3 years out of every 19, Unleavened Bread is at the second full moon after the equinox. These are the years 3, 11, and 14 of the 19-year cycle by the Christian count, respectively 19, 8, and 11 by the Jewish count. (The year 2019 was a special case and does not count as one of these years.) So it is the modern-day Rabbinic calendar that is sometimes having Unleavened Bread too late, rather than the Gregorian lunar calendar that is having Easter too early.

Would the fix for this be a recalculation of the Jewish calendar? Is that at all likely?

 

[The Liturgist]

Would the fix for this be a recalculation of the Jewish calendar? Is that at all likely?

I doubt it, since there are three Jewish calendars (the Ethiopian, Karaite and Rabinnical), plus the Samaritan, and the canons of the Council of Nicaea preclude using any of them as the basis for the celebration of Pascha. Basically, the three varieties of Judaism and the Samaritan religion, while closely related to Christianity, are different religions, and from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick in his work Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy makes the interesting and unexpected observation that the Eastern Orthodox Church, since it believes the Church has always existed due to its status as the Body of Christ, with Second Temple Judaism being something akin to an earlier stage in its existence according to God’s plan for our salvation, as opposed to the common Western belief,

This is distorted. The Rabbis controlled some towns in Palestine and some towns in Babylonia, but most of the Jewish folk of the Mediterranean world used non-Rabbinic calendars. These non-Rabbinic calendars sometimes placed the Passover festival before the Spring equinox. Christians relying on these calendars to set the date of the Easter festival would therefore celebrate Easter before the equinox. The Council of Nicaea, implicitly though not explicitly, had ruled that the festival should follow the equinox. But the old traditional method of setting Easter to the Sunday in the Jewish week of Unleavened Bread persisted in some places, especially Syria. These schismatics were later called "protopaschites" because they sometimes celebrated Easter a month before the Nicene churches did. Apostolic canon 7 and Antioch canon 1 were leveled against these protopaschites. They have nothing to do with the mid-4th century change of the Rabbinic calendar from an empirical calendar to a partially fixed one.

Much later, in the 12th century, Joannes Zonaras misinterpreted Apostolic canon 7 to mean that the Easter festival should always follow the 15th of Nisan in the modern-day Rabbinic calendar. This "Zonaras proviso" has since hardened into a widespread superstition. But the original intent of Apostolic canon 7 and Antioch canon 1 was against the protopaschites, not against the modern-day Rabbinic calendar, which did not even exist at the time these canons were drawn up.

I did not say anything about Zonaras interpretation, although it is a fact that the actual text of Apostolic Canon 7 is “If any bishop, presbyter, or deacon, shall celebrate the holy day of Easterbefore the vernal equinox, with the Jews, let him be deposed.”

Also, while I take your word that Protopaschites exist, I am baffled that they are not covered in the Panarion of St. Epiphanius or the Fount of Wisdom of St. John of Damascus, which are encyclopedias of all the schismatic and heretical groups as well as a few unrelated religions.

Now, St. Epiphanius and St. John of Damascus do refer to Quartodecimians, who by definition would be both Protopaschites and in violation of Canon 7, which was expressly intended to put an end to quartodecimianism, who persisted in that practice after Nicaea had rejected it as being schismatic, although I seem to recall the Quartodecimians being more in the neighborhood of Asia Minor than Syria.

Lastly, I want to stress that I am not an Old Calendarist, although I personally prefer the Julian and Coptic Calendar and would use them if I could, chiefly because they are decoupled from the civil-commercial-secular observances, however, as I stated at the beginning of this thread, the actual main issue for the Old Calendarists is their belief that “ecumenism” is a “pan-heresy,” which I would agree with if ecumenism were defined as religious syncretism, however, ecumenical reconciliation, such as has been achieved between the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Christians in Syria and Egypt, and to a great extent between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Roman Catholic Church, I regard as extremely important.*



*The only instances where ecumenical reconciliation might seem to some to have gone awry are in some of the Uniting Churches, chiefly the United Church of Canada, with its horrifying actions in terms of liturgizing euthanasia, but I would argue there is a difference between merging several Protestant denominations with historically different doctrines and polities such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists, on the basis of a shared interest in liberal theology, postmodern theology and liberation theology, and genuine ecumenical reconciliation.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I doubt it, since there are three Jewish calendars (the Ethiopian, Karaite and Rabinnical), plus the Samaritan, and the canons of the Council of Nicaea preclude using any of them as the basis for the celebration of Pascha. Basically, the three varieties of Judaism and the Samaritan religion, while closely related to Christianity, are different religions, and from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick in his work Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy makes the interesting and unexpected observation that the Eastern Orthodox Church, since it believes the Church has always existed due to its status as the Body of Christ, with Second Temple Judaism being something akin to an earlier stage in its existence according to God’s plan for our salvation, as opposed to the common Western belief,

So the four more or less branches of Judaism will never agree to fix their calendar or calendars. And the Eastern Orthodox wouldn't even care if they did because of Nicaea. Whose whole point in this was that Christians have a common date for Easter at the right time of the year. The leap second approach will keep the Gregorian calendar in tune with the earth's rotational vagrancy semi-permanently. If the Catholics want to have the same date for Easter with the Orthodox they would have to re-adopt the Julian calendar, flaws and all. And the Protestants would do something or other. Or not. Potato potatoe, tomato, tomatoe! Let's call the whole thing off.

This is all fascinating. But mostly fascinating in how intractable it is when we now have the adequate orbital mechanics science to figure out a system that is both accurate and adaptable to tiny changes in real world orbits and rotations. We know when Spring begins. We know when full moons happen. We know when Easter should be.

https://genius.com/George-gershwin-lets-call-the-whole-thing-off-lyrics

 

[Mockingbird0]

Also, while I take your word that Protopaschites exist, I am baffled that they are not covered in the Panarion of St. Epiphanius or the Fount of Wisdom of St. John of Damascus, which are encyclopedias of all the schismatic and heretical groups as well as a few unrelated religions.

The particular protopaschites that Epiphanius discusses are the Audians (Panarion 6.70). John Chrysostom calls the protopaschites "those who wish to keep the first paschal fast". (Homily 3 Adversus Iudaeos.) The homily of 387 mentions them under the heading of "Novatians":

The Novatians...too are slaves to the date of the Jews following the first month as they imagine it, and the 14th of the moon again; but they do not stop there: having reached this point, they also come to the triduum, although in a way quite invalid...

For a mention of the protopaschites by name, see the following provision from the Theodosian Code (16.6.6.1):

That which was formerly overlooked by the princes, and is done to the injury of sacred law by worthless men -- and by those especially, who [are] deserters and refugees from the congregation of the Novatians, [yet] hold that they are rather to be considered as the authors of the aforementioned sect, [and] who are named after their crime, since they desire to be called protopaschites (cum se protopaschitas appellari desiderent) -- we will not suffer it to be unpunished. If the Novatians order that the famous and ever-memorable Easter Day is to be celebrated on another day than that on which the bishops of the orthodox [order it], let deportation and proscription equally follow the authors of this custom. A sterner penalty was to be promulgated against them [than against other heretics], because they who, observing the festival of Easter at another time than that on which the orthodox [observe it], by this crime even exceed the madness of the heretics, venerating almost another Son of God than him whom we worship. Given at Constantinople on the 12th Kalends of April in the year of Lucius, vir clarissimus, Consul (March 21 413).

The Syrian location of the traditional practice of relying on the Jewish calendar is implied by Constantine's letter (Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 3.19):

And I myself have undertaken that this decision should meet with the approval of your Sagacities, in the hope that your Wisdoms will gladly admit that practice [i.e. the use of independent calculations] which is observed at once in the city of Rome, and in Africa; throughout Italy, and in Egypt, in Spain, the Gauls, Britain, Libya, and the whole of Greece; in the dioceses of Asia and Pontus, and in Cilicia, with entire unity of judgment.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Now, St. Epiphanius and St. John of Damascus do refer to Quartodecimians, who by definition would be both Protopaschites and in violation of Canon 7, which was expressly intended to put an end to quartodecimianism, who persisted in that practice after Nicaea had rejected it as being schismatic, although I seem to recall the Quartodecimians being more in the neighborhood of Asia Minor than Syria.

By definition, Passover was on the 14th of Nisan. That is the date the lambs were killed. You can't really celebrate the resurrection ON the 14th. Pascha would be on the 16th or on that Sunday.

 

[Mockingbird0]

Would the fix for this be a recalculation of the Jewish calendar? Is that at all likely?

A modification of the Rabbinic calendar has been proposed: Rectified Hebrew calendar. But I don't think it will be adopted anytime soon.

 

[The Liturgist]

By definition, Passover was on the 14th of Nisan. That is the date the lambs were killed. You can't really celebrate the resurrection ON the 14th. Pascha would be on the 16th or on that Sunday.

Exactly, this is presumably a major reasin why quartodecimianism was abolished.