On the Computation of Easter

Contents

Reading pages: 1–16 · 17–23

1. 1The author explains that after long study of Scripture he has found the first day of the Passover month, and begins from the command of Exod 12.
2. 2The Passover in Egypt prefigured Christ's passion, so Christians must first establish exactly when the new month begins.
3. 3Genesis shows that on the first day of creation God divided day and night equally, which marks the equinox.
4. 4The author criticizes earlier Christian computists who placed the first month between 15 March and 13 April and failed to find its true first day.
5. 5From the fourth day of creation the sun and moon were appointed to mark days, seasons, and years.
6. 6The author explains how the Hebrews reconciled lunar and solar years by dividing the first month into eleven and nineteen days, and traces the moon's age on 28 March through an eight-year cycle.
7. 7The author works out how the Passover date moved through a sixteen-year cycle with intercalary months and leap years, returning to the same date and weekday after 112 years.
8. 8The author completes the sixteen-year table, which returns to the fourteenth moon on 12 April.
9. 9Using his table, the author dates the Passovers of Joshua, Hezekiah, Josiah, Ezra, and Christ, whose passion he places on Friday 9 April.
10. 10Abraham's story prefigures Christ: Isaac carrying the wood, and Abraham's 318 servants, whose number signifies the cross (T = 300) and the name of Jesus (ιη = 18).
11. 11The author counts the years from the exodus through the judges and the kings of Judah to the exile, 995 years, and recalls the fate of Zedekiah foretold by Ezekiel and Jeremiah.
12. 12The fall of Jerusalem in the 1006th year after the exodus is read as a figure of Adam's fall: 1,006 minus Abraham's 75 years plus one (the lamb) leaves 930, Adam's lifespan.
13. 13The author reckons the seventy years of captivity through the Babylonian kings to Cyrus and quotes Daniel's prophecy of the seventy weeks.
14. 14The last of Daniel's seventy weeks is the seven years at the end of the world, when Enoch and Elijah will preach and the Antichrist will rule for 1,260 days before Christ destroys him.
15. 15The first seven weeks (49 years) cover the rebuilding of Jerusalem and of the temple, which was later destroyed under Vespasian; the shortened war is the reign of the Antichrist.
16. 16The forty-six years of rebuilding equal the numerical value of ΑΔΑΜ in Greek, and the author reckons them through the Persian kings to the sixth year of Darius.
17. 17The forty-nine years signify Christ's thirty-one years and the name of Jesus (18), and also the fire prepared for sinners, figured by the furnace of Babylon; from the exodus to the rebuilding of Jerusalem are 1,114 years.
18. 18The sixty-two weeks (434 years) bring the reckoning to Christ's birth, 1,548 years after the exodus, which the author places on Wednesday 28 March.
19. 19Christ was born on the day the sun was created, as the Sun of righteousness, and the divisions of the solar year figure the three days without sun, the four Gospels, and the twelve apostles.
20. 20The author combines the sixteenth year of Tiberius, Christ's age of thirty-one, and the eighteen of Jesus' name to reach sixty-five, which with tau (300) makes the 365 days of the solar year.
21. 21The moon's phases after its creation foreshow Christ's death on the fifteenth of the moon, his rest in the earth, and his resurrection on the third day, and our own resurrection at the end of the world.
22. 22The author derives Christ's baptism at thirty, in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, from his numbers, and dates his own work to the fifth year of Gordian (AD 243), 215 years after the passion.
23. 23The author shows that his table gives the Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter Sunday for AD 243 and for all future years, and closes with thanksgiving.