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Constantine |
In the year 325, Roman Emperor
Constantine convened the Council of Nicea.
This council, attended by 318 bishops from all over the empire, focused
on the subject of the nature of Christ. (The number 318, drawn from Genesis
14:14, was considered to have a special meaning, since in Greek gematria the
letters ΤΙΗ (tau, iota, eta) have a total value of 318, and are also, visually, the shape of a cross
plus the first two letters in Jesus’ name.)
The result of this council was the
Nicene Creed, which declared, among other things, that Jesus was “very God of
very God, begotten, not made.” This
meant that Arius – the Egyptian cleric whose controversial teachings had
elicited the council – was wrong in his insistence that there was a time when
the Logos did not exist.
Something
else was also addressed at the
Council of Nicea. It was not the New Testament canon, contrary
to the fictitious gobbledegook that has been spread by
The Da Vinci Code and similar books. It was the date of Easter.
When the
early church first celebrated the resurrection of Christ, their celebration coincided
with the Jewish Passover. A vestige of
this arrangement can still be found in the King James Version in
Acts12:4: the Passover-festival is referred
to as Easter. In this passage the KJV’s
translators did not intend to convey that the Jewish ruler Herod was
celebrating the Christian holy day of Easter or that he was celebrating some pagan holiday.
They simply retained the rendering that had been made almost 90 years
earlier by William Tyndale, who also coined the term “Passover,” a term which
eventually caught on and facilitated the recognition of the two holidays as
separate events. (Tyndale’s English
version repeatedly refers to the Passover as “Easter,” even in episodes in the Gospels that precede the death and resurrection of Christ.)
Some
Christians had a special annual celebration of the Lord’s resurrection on the
same day as the Jewish Passover. Others,
though, celebrated Holy Week annually with the Lord’s resurrection always
observed on a Sunday. This difference
had persisted for a long time – ever since the days of the students of the
apostles. In Ignatius’ closing comments in his
Letter to the Philippians, he stated that whoever observes the Passover with the Jews or receives the emblems of their feast is a partaker with those who killed the Lord and His apostles - quite a heavy denunciation, though it is unclear if Ignatius was referring to merely celebrating the Lord’s resurrection at the same time the Jews celebrated Passover, or to participating in the Judaic Passover observance itself.
Hippolytus, in Book 8 of his lengthy composition
Refutation of All Heresies, firmly opposed those who celebrated Easter on the 14th of the month; yet even though he called them heretics, he acknowledged that in other regards they kept the apostolic faith and traditions.
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Hippolytus |
Eusebius of Caesarea (a
participant in the Council of Nicea who tended to sympathize with Arius, but
not too vocally) described the controversy that arose in the 100’s, in his
Ecclesiastical History, Book 5, chapters
24-25.
Congregations
in Asia (i.e., western Turkey),
Eusebius reported, customarily observed a tradition that the resurrection of
Christ corresponded annually with the Jewish Passover (the 14th day
of the month Nisan), whether it was a Sunday or not. But in other places, including Jerusalem and Rome, it was
customary to always celebrate the resurrection of Christ on a Sunday – and the
leaders of those places wrote to the churches in Asia,
appealing to them to alter their custom.
Polycrates, a leader in the Asian churches,
responded with a letter – Eusebius cited it specifically and presented its
contents – in which he stated that Philip the evangelist, John the apostle,
Polycarp the martyr, Melito of Sardis, and others (including relatives of
Polycrates) had all observed the resurrection of Christ on the 14th of the month – and he had no intention of deviating from that tradition.
In 193, Victor, bishop of Rome, initially resolved to excommunicate
Polycrates and everyone who agreed with him.
This course of action was averted, though, by advice given by several
other bishops – one of whom was none other than the renowned Irenaeus of
Lyons.
Eusebius
presented a snippet of Irenaeus’ letter, which has a remarkably conciliatory
tone. Irenaeus advised Victor of Rome
that the disagreement involved not only the annual date, but also details about
the length of the fast that preceded it.
To excommunicate people over such details would not look good. In addition, Irenaeus pointed out, earlier
generations of Christians had not condemned one another over this issue; their
inactivity implied that they did not consider it something worth separating
about:
“This
variety in its observance,” Irenaeus wrote, “has not originated in our time,
but long before in that of our ancestors.
It is likely that they did not hold to strict accuracy, and thus formed
a custom for their posterity according to their own simplicity and peculiar
mode. Yet all of these lived nonetheless
in peace, and we also live in peace with one another.”
And there
is more. In the composition by Irenaeus
presented by Eusebius, Irenaeus mentions that
Polycarp, when he was at
Rome, disagreed with
Anicetus (apparently about when to celebrate Easter), and neither could
persuade the other – so they agreed to disagree.
The agreement to disagree effectively ended,
though, at Nicea. The
Quartodecimanians
– those who observed Easter on the 14th of the month – were
summarily denounced. The exact wording
of the decree at Nicea about this is unknown, but in 341 at the the Council of
Antioch, a decree was issued which, in the course of affirming the Council of
Nicea, stated that bishops who observed the Lord’s resurrection at the same
time as the Jews (that is, on the 14th of Nisan) were to be relieved
of duty.
With the
Quartodeciman tradition thus rejected, a consensus emerged that Easter was to
be observed annually on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after
the vernal equinox. The details of this approach were probably based on the
Paschal Canon of Anatolius of Alexandria (from A.D. 270). Alas, even this
objective calculation has not resulted in uniformity among all churches, due to
the effects of the different calendars that have been retained as the basis for
the calculation. This year (2018),
Passover-week is March 31- April 6, and Easter Sunday is April 1 (although for
the Orthodox Churches it is April 8). (
Panos Antsalkis of
the University of Notre Dame explains it all in a detailed essay.)
“Fascinating,”
you may be thinking, “but what does all that have to do with the text of the
New Testament?”
The thing
to see is that an annual cycle of Easter-observance emerged very early, and
became entrenched very quickly, in the first half of the 100s. It seems very likely that other annual
observances spread at the same time and that this elicited the early emergence of lection-cycles. In
the case of the annual feast of Pentecost, Christian observance of Pentecost is
mentioned not only in the New Testament book of Acts, but also in the anonymous
second-century composition Epistula
Apostolorum (which also mentions the Easter celebration).
Tertullian, writing in Latin in North
Africa in the late 100’s or early 200’s, mentioned Christians’ observance of
Pentecost in chapter 23 of his composition
On
Prayer: “We, however – just as
we have received – only on the day of the Lord’s resurrection ought to guard
not only against kneeling, but every posture and office of solicitude;
deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil. Similarly, to, in the period of Pentecost,
which period we distinguish by the same solemnity of exultation.”
Not only was the Day of Pentecost a
special occasion from the sub-apostolic era onward, but the whole fifty-day
period from Eastertime to Pentecost was considered a special period of
celebration. Evidence of this is
provided in Tertullian’s allusion to Pentecost in the third chapter of his
composition
On the Soldier’s Crown,
in the course of referring to activities which in his time were already
regarded as traditional practices: “We
consider fasting or kneeling in worship on the Lord’s Day to be unlawful. We rejoice in the same privilege also from
Easter to Pentecost.”
Slightly later, Origen mentioned
Christians’ annual observance of Pentecost too, in
Against Celsus, Book 8, chapter 22:
“If it be objected to us on this
subject that we ourselves are accustomed to observe certain days, as for
example the Lord’s Day, the Preparation, the Passover, or Pentecost, I have to
answer that to the perfect Christian, who is constantly in his thoughts, words,
and deeds serving his natural Lord, God the Word, all his days are the Lord’s,
and he is always keeping the Lord’s Day.”
He continued in chapter 23: “But the majority of those who are accounted
believers are not of this advanced class; but because they are either unable or
unwilling to keep every day in this manner, they require some sensible
memorials to prevent spiritual things from passing altogether away from their
minds.”
The early establishment of annual
Christian festivals provided a setting in which it was almost inevitable that specific
passages were assigned to be read on specific days. This established the basic building-blocks of
what eventually became annual cycles of lectionary-readings – reading-cycles that were
initially independent and localized (like the manner in which Easter was
observed), but which gradually became more uniform.
John Burgon, in his 1871 book
The Last Twelve Verses of Mark Vindicated,
pointed out some readings in early manuscripts which, he proposed, are early
adaptations of the text made at the beginning or ends of lections to either
introduce, or to round off, the episode.
Not all of his examples seem persuasive, but the following are
interesting and suggestive:
● Matthew 8:13. A small assortment
of manuscripts has an extra sentence attached to this verse: “And the centurion returned to his house, and
in that hour the servant was made whole.”
If these manuscripts were all medieval, this reading would likely be dismissed
as a harmonization to the parallel in Luke 7:10, intended to round off a
lection. And, indeed, this verse
concludes the lection for the fifth Sunday after Pentecost in the Byzantine
lectionary-cycle. But that small
assortment of manuscripts includes Codex Sinaiticus (from the mid-300s) and
several other uncials.
●
Mark 14:3. Codex D (05, Codex Bezae) inserts Jesus’
name.
Codex Bezae’s text includes so
many little expansions that one might argue that it is a mere coincidence that
this one occurs at the beginning of the lection for the seventeenth Friday
after Easter.
● Luke 7:1. Codex D basically rewrites the verse, which happens to begin the lection for the fifth Saturday after Pentecost.
● Luke 4:16. Codex D (and F and G and 579) insert Jesus’ name in the first part the verse; this happens to be the beginning of the lection for first Thursday after Pentecost.
● Luke 5:17. Codex D rewrites the verse, which happens to begin the lection for the second Saturday after Pentecost.
● Luke 16:19. Codex D reads “And He
spoke another parable,” which could be an arbitrarily made harmonization, but
which interlocks snugly with Burgon’s idea that the purpose for the
harmonization at this particular point was to serve as a lection-incipit, that
is, one of the brief phrases with which lectors introduced the daily reading.
● John 14:1. Codex D begins the verse with “And He said to His disciples,” which looks very much like an lection-incipit, that is, one of the brief phrases with which lectors introduced the daily reading. As it turns out, a lection does indeed begin at this exact point; in the Byzantine lectionary John 14:1-10 is the lection for the sixth Friday after Easter.
Burgon also proposed, in the same book, an interesting
theory about Codex Bezae’s unusual reading in Mark 14:41, το τέλος και (between
ἀπέχει and ηωρα): “Nothing else has
happened here,” Burgon proposed, “but that a marginal note, designed originally
to indicate the end (το τέλος) of the lesson for the third day of the second
week of the Carnival, has lost its way from the end of verse 42, and got thrust
into the text of verse 41.” Burgon noted
that this reading is supported by the Peshitta, by the Old Latin, and by the
Philoxenian version – which would mean that this quarter of witnesses echoes a
yet-earlier ancestor; Burgon proposed that such an ancestral text came from the
100s.
Willker’s Textual Commentary on the Greek Gospels confirms that το τέλος Or
its non-Greek counterparts) is in the text of Mark 14:41 not only in Codex D
but also in Codex W (ἀπέχει το τέλος ἰδου ηλθεν) and Codex Θ (ἀπέχητο· το τέλος
ηλθεν), as well as 0233, family 13 (a small cluster of MSS that share an earlier ancestor-copy), 565, 713, 1071, lectionary 844, and the Armenian
version and one Georgian copy, and that it is not only supported by the
Peshitta but also by the Siniatic Syriac and the Harklean Syriac – plus several
Old Latin manuscripts including
Codex Vercellensis (which probably was produced
in the 370s).
Willker also observes that in the margin of Codex
Vaticanus at this point there is a
distigme (that is, a symbo resembling an umlaut which conveys that the person who added it was
aware of a textual variant in the line of text that it accompanies – though
there is some debate about the date at which this person worked) and that not
only Burgon, but also Scrivener advocated the theory that το τέλος had first
entered the margin to signal the end of a lection before being blended into the
text of Mark 14:41, and that later copyists and translators tackled it in their
own ways.
A consultation of a footnote on page 76 of the first volume of the 1894 edition of Scrivener
’s Plain Introduction confirms that Scrivener regarded Codex D’s readings in Luke 16:19 and John 14:1 as lection-incipits, and he also says that the το τέλος in Mark 14:41 “probably has the same origin.” Yet Burgon, in chapter 12 of Causes of Corruption (written some time after his defense of Mark 16:9-20), explained the presence of το τέλος as a slight expansion, rather than as an insertion of stray marginalia, stating in a footnote that he retracted unreservedly what he had proposed in The Last Twelve Verses of Mark regarding this variant.
Hort, in his 1881 Notes on Select Readings, proposed that
το τέλος was added not as a lost lection-ending note, but as an attempted
harmonization drawn from Luke 22:37, where Jesus – still in the upper room –
states that the prophecies about Him are being fulfilled, that is, reaching
their end (καὶ γαρ το περι εμου τελος εχει).
This seems unlikely, inasmuch as a harmonizer would have no motive to be
so frugal.
Metzger resorted to the
guess that a copyist was puzzled by the somewhat rare ἀπέχει (or thought that
the readers of their manuscripts would be puzzled) and added το τέλος to add
clarity – but it seems to me that this would be far down any clarity-prioritizing copyist’s list
of options.
The presence of such phenomena in
Codex Bezae and in the Old Latin copies is especially interesting because these
particular witnesses tend to echo the Western text that circulated widely in
the latter half of the 100s. The case that the variants in the list just given show the influence of early
lection-cycles might not be irresistible, but it is strong, and the inference from
this is that the influence of basic lection-cycles involving the main annual Christian feasts should not be casually dismissed
as a possible cause of textual variants that emerged as early as the 100s, when
the bishop of Rome, until cooler heads prevailed, was willing to excommunicate
fellow Christians because they would not celebrate Easter at the same time he
did.
C. R. Gregory – the scholar whose name is recalled whenever textual critics refer to manuscripts by their Gregory-Aland numbers – theorized that specific passages were assigned for Sundays “at an extremely early date.” Although it was a matter of centuries before lections were collected into separate volumes, nothing precludes the idea that on the major Christian feasts, and particularly for the period from the beginning of Easter-week to Pentecost, specific passages were assigned to specific days. (This may have even been the custom in the time of Justin Martyr, who mentioned in the 67th chapter of his First Apology that Christians gathered on the day called Sunday and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets were read, as long as time permitted, before a sermon and the observance of the Lord’s Supper.)
This factor – the influence of
lection-cycles – should be considered not only when evaluating the variant-units
mentioned earlier, but also some other variant-units, including Luke 22:43-44
and John 7:53-8:11.
[Readers are encouraged to explore the embedded links in this essay which lead to additional resources.]