What This Year’s Early Easter Date Tell Us about Early Christianity

The bright moon this morning provoked a conversation in which my daughter asked a telling question that reveals a lot about early Christianity.

The date of Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. This year, the Vernal Equinox was March 20 (it is often on March 21). The full moon was March 23. The Sunday following is March 27. So we have an early Easter this year.

There is a logic to the date of Easter. Jesus was crucified on Passover, which is the fourteenth of Nissan, which is the month of spring (hence the Vernal Equinox). Nissan, like other months of the Jewish calendar, is a lunar month starting on the new moon. The fourteenth is thus the date of the full moon. The Resurrection was the Sunday following the crucifixion. 

On the calendar that we use, the Roman calendar, the date of Eastern changes from year to year. My daughters question was: “Didn’t they record the date of the Resurrection?”

The answer is that that they did, but they recorded it in the Jewish calendar, not the Roman calendar. The earliest Christians were all Jews or converts from Judaism. It was only later that the Christians started accepting converts from Gentiles, such as Greeks and Romans. So the early Christians recorded the date of the Resurrection according to the date on the Jewish lunar calendar, not the Roman solar calendar.

Starting in the second century, there was a controversy in Christianity between those that wanted to celebrate Easter on the 14th of Nissan (following the gospel of John) and those who wanted to celebrate it on Sunday and so the Sunday following (following the gospel of Matthew). The Easter controversy was not ostensibly settled until the fourth century.

There are only two Christian Holy Days that follow a Jewish calendar, that thus go back to the earliest period of Christian history. Both commemorate the Resurrection. Those Holy Days are Easter, and the Lord’s Day (Sunday). All the other Christian Holy Days follow the Roman calendar (including Christmas) and are thus later.

So, what we learn about early Christianity is that the Resurrection was the only event commemorated; it was memorialized in two Holy Days, Easter and the Lord’s Day. The dates of these events were recorded in the Jewish calendar, which was the one that the earliest Christians used.

The Archaeology of the Council of Nicaea

Recent, under-informed assertions about the Book of Mormon and archaeology prompt this discussion.

Let's ask a simple question:

What archaeological evidence do we have that the Council of Nicaea ever took place?

Unlike Zarahemla, or the Mitanni capital of Washshukanni, Nicaea is a site whose location is known. It has been excavated. We know what is there.

Archaeologically, Nicaea (modern Iznik) is most famous for its ceramic tiles, but they date from the Ottoman period. On the other end of the time spectrum, some neolithic pottery has been found at Iznik (Machteld J. Mellink, "Archaeology in Anatolia," American Journal of Archaeology 89/4 (1985): 549).

The theater is 1st century, a typical Hadrianic style building that would have seated about 15,000 people. (Marie-Henriette Gates, "Archaeology in Turkey," American Journal of Archaeology 98/2 (1994): 276.)

The city wall is also first century with numerous renovations in later times.

The church at Nicaea is 6th century (William Tabbernee, "Asia Minor and Cyprus," in Early Christianity in Contexts, ed. William Tabbernee [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2014], 307.) The Koimeisis Church dates to the early eighth century (SEG XLI 1099) or late seventh century (SEG XLIV 1007).

So all of the Christian structures date at least two centuries after the Council of Nicaea. This is problematic.

The epigraphic corpus for Nicaea is extensive: Sencer Sahin, Katalog der antiken Inschriften des Museums von Iznik (Nikaia), 4 vols. (Bonn: Rudolf Habelt Verlag, 1979-87). With four volumes of inscriptions plus numerous additions in the SEG (Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum), it is clear that Nicaea has more inscriptions than most Mesoamerican sites.

As far as epigraphic evidence we have:

1st century BC

• a first century BC epitaph (SEG XXIX 1289).

1st century AD

• an inscription of Nero (AD 54-68) regarding street repair (I Iznik I 13 = CIG 3743)
• two first century AD dedications on the city gate to the Flavians (AD 70-79)  (SEG XXVIII 1028-29).
• a building dedication to the Flavians (AD 78) (SEG LI 1709)
• a statue of Domitian (AD 81-96) (SEG LVII 1275)
• three first century inscriptions for Roman officals (SEG XXVIII 1025-27).
• four first century epitaphs (SEG XXVIII 1032-33; XXX 1429; XLVII 1679) 

2nd century AD

• an aquaduct inscription of Hadrian (AD 117-138) (I Iznik I 1)
• an architrave inscription of Hadrian (AD 117-138) (I. Iznik. I 30a = SEG XXIX 1282).
• an altar dedicated to Hadrian (AD 117-138) (I Iznik I 32 = SEG XXIX 1283). 
• a dedicatory inscription from the reign of Hadrian (I Iznik I 56 = SEG XXXVII 1071 = SEG XLVI 1604)
• three second century altars (SEG XXXIV 1263; SEG XLIII 897)
• thirty-one second century epitaphs (SEG XXIX 1290-91; SEG XXX 1430; SEG XXXIV 1264-65; SEG XLIX 1789; SEG LI 1710-11; SEG LV 1346, 1348-56, 1358; SEG LVI 1392-93; SEG LVII 1278, 1281-88; SEG LVIII 1447).

3rd century AD

• an honorary inscription from the reign of Elagabalus (AD 218-222) (I Iznik I 60 = SEG XXIX 1281).
• a milestone of Julius Verus Maximinus (AD 235-38) (I Iznik 21 = CIL III 12226 = 13650)
• two inscriptions of Claudius Gothicus (AD 268-70) regarding the rebuilding of the city wall (I Iznik I 11-12 = CIG 3747-48)
• four third century dedications to Zeus (SEG LV 1337-39; SEG LVII 1276)
• twelve third century epitaphs (SEG XXIX 1293; XXXIII 1080; SEG LI 1712-13; SEG LV 1344, 1357, 1359-63; SEG LVI 1394-95).
• a fragmentary third century epitaph (SEG XXIX 1292). 
• a milestone of Diocletian and Maximian (AD 286-293) (I Iznik I 22) 

4th century AD

• a fourth century epitaph (SEG XXIX 1294).
• a fourth century Jewish inscription quoting Psalm 135:25 (I Iznik II 615 = SEG XLVIII 1499) 

Undated

• an undated dedication to Ti. Claudius Aelianos Sabinos (I Iznik I 35 = SEG XXIX 1284).
• six undated dedications to Zeus (SEG XXX 1428; SEG XL 1144-46; SEG XLVII 1678; SEG LX 1338)
• an undated dedication to Zeus, Hera, and Athena (SEG XXVIII 1030)
• an undated altar dedicated to Apollo (SEG LV 1340)
• an undated altar dedicated to Hermes and Apollo (SEG LV 1341)
• an undated honorary inscription (SEG XLVII 1677)
• an undated altar dedicated to Tadenos and Okkonenos (SEG LX 1339)
• three undated altar inscriptions (I Iznik I 43 = SEG XXIX 1288; SEG LI 1709 bis; SEG LX 1340).
• three undated fragmentary dedications (I Iznik I 36, 42, 66 = SEG XXIX 1285-87; SEG XXXVI 1153).
• two undated fragmentary inscriptions (SEG XXIX 1343-44).
• fifty-nine undated epitaphs (SEG XXVIII 1034; SEG XXIX 1295-1318, 1320-24, 1326-31, 1333-38; XXX 1431-34; XXXIII 1081-82; SEG XLVII 1680-81; SEG LX 1341-49) 
• four undated Christian inscriptions (SEG XXIX 1339-42)
• four undated Christian epitaphs (SEG XXIX 1319, 1325, 1331-32)
• an undated testamentary regulation (SEG XLIX 1790)

There is no epigraphic evidence that Constantine paid the least attention to Nicaea. Furthermore, looking at the epigraphic evidence, we would conclude that fourth century inhabitants of Nicaea had converted from the worship of Zeus to Judaism, not Christianity. There is not a single inscription of Constantine's from the site.

There appears to be no archaeological evidence that Constantine was ever in Nicaea, nor that there was a Christian council held there in the fourth century, and, of course, no archaeological evidence for the content of the Nicaean Creed. Should millions of creedal Christians therefore abandon their faith? They cannot point to a single piece of archaeological or epigraphic evidence that the Council of Nicaea ever took place. No reputable archaeologist has ever produced any. I can find no record of any reputable archaeological journals that have published any archaeological evidence that the Council ever took place or that support the creed that it supposedly produced.


Anyone who has actually worked trying to integrate archaeological with historical data can spot the problems with this sort of analysis easily. Some people, however, want to apply a double standard applying different standards to the Book of Mormon than they do to other historical events.

Early Christian New Testament Reading

What sort of New Testament books were the most popular in Early Christianity. I will look at two time periods using two different methods of analysis. For the early second century, we have quotations in Church Fathers. For the third and fourth centuries, we can look at attestations of various books when they circulated as separate books and not as complete New Testament codices.

For the second century we have, in order of popularity:

• Matthew (32)
• 1 Corinthians (16)
• 1 Peter (13)
• Romans (8)
• Luke (6)
• Acts (4) 
• Galatians (4)
• 1 Timothy (4)
• Hebrews (4)
• John (3) 
• Ephesians (3)
• Philippians (3)
• Titus (3)
• Mark (1)
• 2 Corinthians (1)
• 1 Thessalonians (1)
• 2 Thessalonians (1)
• 2 Timothy (1)
• 1 John (1)
• 2 John (1)
• Revelation (1)

For the third and fourth century we have, again in order of popularity:

• Matthew (17)
• John (16)
• Acts (7)
• Luke (6)
• Hebrews (6)
• Romans (5)
• Revelation (5)
• Ephesians (3)
• 1 Thessalonians (3)
• James (3)
• Mark (2)
• 1 Corinthians (2)
• 2 Corinthians (2)
• Philippians (2)
• 2 Thessalonians (2)
• 1 Peter (2)
• Jude (2)
• Galatians (1)
• Colossians (1)
• Titus (1) 
• Philemon (1)
• 2 Peter (1)
• 1 John (1)

Granted, two different measures are being used, but the results are interesting. In the early second century 1 Peter and 1 Corinthians were much more popular than they were in the third and fourth centuries. The gospel of John and the Revelation, on the other hand, were more popular in the third and fourth centuries than they were in the second. Matthew was, for all this time, the most popular of New Testament writings.

Early Christian Scripture Reading

Judging by what they quote, the earliest writers of the Christian church after the New Testament really liked the following books of scripture:

• Genesis
• Exodus
• Psalms
• Isaiah
• Matthew
• 1 Corinthians

As I look at reconstructions of early Christianity, they tend to reflect the modern scholars' preferences rather than the ancient Christians.

A.D. 356

A.D. 356 is one of the traditional dates for the death of Saint Anthony. Anthony, you may recall, is considered the father of monasticism. He was celebrated as such by Anthanasius, who wrote his hagiography.

Athanasius's hagiography divides the live of Anthony into various parts. Anthony was born an Egyptian Christian. Athanasius claims that he was uneducated and unsociable. After his parents died, about the time that he was nineteen, he heard Matthew 19:21, about selling everything and giving to the poor, read in Church and decided to do just that. He did so and fled into the desert. This was a typical anachoresis practice. Roman tax burdens being what they were, many people found that they could not really make ends meet after taxes and so fled the country (the Greek verb for that was anachoreo).

Anthony spent years in the desert fighting demons, but also growing his own garden, free from the encumbrances of the state and its taxes. It would not be the last time that someone was lionized for going Galt.

Athanasius takes pains to present Anthony as someone respected by the emperors, and rejecting those Athanasius despised: the Manichaeans, the Miletians, the Arians, the pagans. Athanasius spends no time describing Anthony's rebuffing of the Manichaeans or the Miletians, but quite a few on Anthony's apologetics against the Arians and the pagans.

By the time that Anthony died, a whole generation had grown up, raised children and were seeing grand children since Constantine had made Christianity legal. Even though Christianity had supposedly triumphed, there was still a need to defend the faith.

A.D. 328

A.D. 328 was the official consecratio of the new capital of Constantinople, the symbol of the new direction in which Constantine was taking the Roman empire. Constantine had planned it for some time, and construction had actually been proceeding for a couple of years. Now, it was official. Constantine rejected the old capital of Rome, and indeed, had always neglected it. Four years later, the bread distributions that had been a staple of Rome were transferred to Constantinople; the grain revenues that had supported Rome for so long now flowed in a different direction, just as the sources for that revenue began to dry up (quite literally, the canal system in the Fayyum was clogging up from neglect).

Indications of Constantine's new direction could be seen from a number of items.

In A.D. 311 Galerius issued an edict of toleration in the Eastern Roman Empire which stopped the active persecution of Christians. In A.D. 313 Constantine made Christianity legal. This is sometimes known as Constantine's edict of tolerance, but it turns out not to have been so tolerant. In 324, in the Egyptian city of Panopolis, Horion, son of Horion, applied for the familial post of prophet of the temple of Min. Constantine's government, however, rejected the application, and forced the whole family to relinquish their ancestral occupation (and the revenues) and find employment elsewhere. (The story is told in this book.) Christianity might be tolerated but the priesthood of Min would not be.

Actually, even Christianity would not be tolerated. Philosophical differences in the church of Alexandria caused a division in the Church. Constantine decided to settle the dispute, even though he was neither a philosopher nor a Christian, and did not really know anything about the subject. As a result of Constantine's meeting in A.D. 325, half of the Christians were condemned to persecution by their fellow Christians. The Christian world was also burdened with having to figure out and explain a poorly-thought-out and incoherent philosophical term.

Eusebius, a partisan of Constantine and his beneficiary, writes of Constantine in glowing terms, as though Constantine were the greatest thing to ever happen to Christianity, and had single-handedly ushered in the millennium. Alas, it did not prove to be such.

Three on the Fourth Century

I recently finished three books that happened to deal with Christianity in the Fourth Century.

Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), is one of those books that completely changes the way you think about a subject. He examines the archaeological and architectural evidence for Christianity in the third and fourth centuries. This leads him to a number of worthwhile observations, some of which bear on the issue of the growth of Christianity. His arguments seem to show that Rodney Stark has grossly overestimated the number of Christians at the end of the fourth century.

Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2010), is an examination of how the Council of Chalcedon came about. Jenkins accepts Chalcedon and views the situation of how the council arrived at the conclusions it did and how they stuck as providential. But all the palace intrigues and dirty dealing that he recounts about how things arrived where they did, make it hard to see how most of it was related in any way to the workings of the Holy Spirit. In Jenkins' telling, most of those involved in deciding the creeds were more corrupt than Christian.

Adam C. English, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012) is a hagiography of Nicolas of Myra from an evangelical perspective. Drawing on late Catholic and Orthodox hagiographies, English wants to make Nicolas into a good modern evangelical saint. He recounts most of the legends, accepting those that make Nicolas look like a good evangelical and rejecting those that do not. He also tries to situate them into a fourth century context (though some of what he says is contradicted in MacMullen). Along the line, English drops occasional tidbits of information that show that even the earliest of the legends about Nicolas are late and probably invented, and that Nicolas was probably never at the Council of Nicea (he is not on any list of participants), so alas, he probably did not punch anyone in the face at the council.

Costly Apparel

The insightful Ramsay MacMullen in his book, The Second Church (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 107-108 talks about the struggle between the clergy and the laity in the early Christian Church:

Individual bishops forbade the adoption or advertising of martyrs unlicensed; new ones went on appearing. The authorities also showed their hostility to traditional forms of worship: you shouldn't dance, as only the heathen did; or you should do so, but only shuffling your feet a little; you shouldn't make it a party, or sing too loud, or throw happy glances about, and you certainly shouldn't have enough wine to affect your behavior. . . . If it was a dinner put on for religion, then--no interrupting, nor arguing or rude words, no reaching around the table, and always, modest portions. Leave a bit on the plate. A Christian also would be well advised to avoid memorial picnics for the dead--this, a real problem, given the universal importance of the rites and their deep roots in people's feelings and traditions. The proper manners were thus taught to you by your betters, whose manners at their own dinners were so different and whose clothes made you ashamed of your own.

Shades of 1 Nephi 13:8-9:

8 And the angel spake unto me, saying: Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks, and the scarlets, and the fine-twined linen, and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church.

9 And also for the praise of the world do they destroy the saints of God, and bring them down into captivity.

Reading the Gospel of Judas VIII: Judas's Legacy

It is clear from the gospels that during Jesus’s life, many groups persecuted Jesus and his followers and they wanted to kill Jesus and end his Church. The outside persecution could be endured, what made a difference was the treachery inside and its conspiracy with the persecutors. As I have noted before:

The most deadly combination for the Church in its first century was apostates within colluding with persecutors without. Judas Iscariot had used that combination to kill Jesus, and others found it equally effective in killing his Church.[1] 

This was Judas’s legacy to the first century Church.

Whenever 3 John was written, probably in the last half of the first century, John notes Diotrephes would not permit him to come to the Church because Diotrephes wanted to be in charge (3 John 1:9).

In the seventies and eighties, a number of Christians left their faith, although the man who recorded this did not care why they did so only that they did so.[2]

Jude’s grandsons were denounced as politically dangerous in the late eighties or early nineties, but they were released even though they were Christians.[3] This means that someone had to make accusations to Roman authorities about them, accusations so serious that they carried the death penalty.

At the end of the beginning of the Second Century, Pliny writes to his friend, the emperor Trajan, and notes that he is receiving anonymous accusations against individuals accusing them of being Christians.[4] Pliny wants to know whether simply being a Christian is automatically sufficient cause for execution, and it seems that whoever wrote the accusation must have thought so.

Hegesippus records that also about this time a certain faction of Christians at Jerusalem accused Symeon, bishop of Jerusalem, to the authorities and had him put to death.[5] Hegesippus also says: “until that time, the Church had remained a pure and uncorrupted virgin since until that time those who corrupted it lay undeclared in darkness.”[6]

Clement of Rome says that in Trajan’s day the Church was filled with “unholy sedition,”[7] as proof of that he pointed to “everyone abandoning the fear of God, and becoming blind to his faith, neither walking in the ordinances of his appointment, nor comporting according to the Christian duty, but walking according to wicked lusts of his own heart.”[8]

This tale of Christianity to the beginning of the second century shows that various individuals tried to sabotage the Christian faith, often by betraying the leaders to get gain or imagined power. Between the betrayal of Jesus and the similar betrayals of local Christian leaders lies about a half century hiatus. Other betrayals may have occurred, obscured from our view. The legacy of Judas was alive and well at the end of the first century.

---

[1] John Gee, “James, First and Second Peter, and Jude: Epistles of Persecution,” in The Life and Teachings of the New Testament Apostles: From the Day of Pentecost through the Apocalypse, ed. Richard Nietzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010), 190.

[2] Pliny, Epistles 10.96.6.

[3] Eusebius, History of the Church, 3.19.1-20.8.

[4] Pliny, Epistles 10.96.2.

[5] Eusebius, History of the Church, 3.32.1-3.

[6] Eusebius, History of the Church, 3.32.7.

[7] Clement of Rome, Corinthians, 1.1.

[8] Clement of Rome, Corinthians, 3.4.