ABSTRACT
By Theophilus’ time the Paschal Controversies had already had a long history.1 The essential point was whether Easter should be celebrated on the day of the week on which Passover fell in the Jewish liturgical calendar, or whether it should always be kept on a Sunday in deference to the Gospel narratives.2 The Jewish liturgical calendar followed a lunar cycle. Each month, of which the first was Nisan, began with the new moon. The fourteenth Nisan, the prescribed date for Passover (cf. Deut. 16:1), was therefore the first full moon of the liturgical year. But as the solar year is longer than the lunar year, an extra month was intercalated so that Passover would fall on the next full moon after the spring equinox, enabling the first-fruits of the barley harvest to be available as an offering. Some Christians wanted to keep Easter each year on the fourteenth Nisan (hence their name ‘Quartodecimans’); others devised cycles based on the solar Julian calendar to allow Easter to be kept on a Sunday as near as possible to Passover. The Council of Nicaea in 325 fixed the rule, still observed today, that combined the Sunday preference with an acknowledgement of Easter’s relationship to Passover, but without allowing the two to fall on the same day: Easter henceforth was to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.
