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Out of the question: Easter and Passover

Write, if you have any answers to the questions listed at the end of this section, or would like to add to the answers below.

Your answers

In 2008, Easter and Passover are a month apart. It has happened before. As we both use the Paschal full moon when making our calculations, how can this be?

The date of the Passover is fixed by, for example, Leviticus 23.5 as “in the first month on the 14th day of the month”. Thus the Passover can be any day of the week.

The first month, on this basis at least, is Nisan, determined by the exodus. The months are lunar months of alternating 29 and 30 days, giving a year of 354 days, necessitating an intercalary 13th month to be added seven times in 19 years to catch up with the solar year, and then some further minor adjustments. Hence, in relation to the solar year, the Hebrew calendar seemingly jumps forwards and backwards.

The Council of Nicaea in 325 decided that since Christ rose on a Sunday, Easter Day must always be a Sunday. It was fixed as the first Sunday after the full moon on or after the vernal equinox (Book of Common Prayer: “Tables and Rules”). The vernal equinox is fixed as 21 March; the full moon after this may be as much as 29 days later; and the Sunday after this may be six days later still. The range of possible dates is 22 March to 25 April.

There is a complex system, the “metonic cycle”, of 19 years, each designated by a “golden number” that is supposed to simplify the determination of Easter. In reality, it seems to be just as complex.

There is little residual relationship between Passover and Easter, and an early Easter and late Passover could be significantly apart.
Christopher Haffner (Reader)
East Molesey, Surrey

What is an appropriate response to make when encountering Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons on the doorstep? [Answers, 18 January]

I heard an old priest who was faced with this question suggest that you should just let them begin to quote something from the scriptures, and then interrupt them and ask: “But have you studied those scriptures in the original language?”

On one occasion, I opened the door to a couple of Mormons when I was wearing my cassock. The one nearest the door started backing away, and nearly fell backwards off the step on to a very prickly cactus.
(The Revd) Geoffrey Squire
Goodleigh, Barnstaple
Devon

George Bernard Shaw recommended: “I’m Jehovah. How are we doing?”
Andrew Graystone
Manchester

 

Your questions

An incumbent is preferred to a senior position in the same diocese. On retirement, does canon law allow him an active role in his previous parish? J. B.

If a clergyman is asked to church a woman and refuses, is he subject to ecclesiastical discipline? C. R.

I wish to find the address of a religious order, “The Grey Ladies”, if they still exist. A friend worked for them in a lay capacity in South Africa in the 1950s. M. A. P.

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