Sardica Paschal Table - Significance For The History of The Computus

Significance For The History of The Computus

The Sardica document, if it is accurate in its report of the dates of 14 Nisan for the Jewish community in some eastern Mediterranean city, corroborates the complaints of Christian writers of the 3rd and 4th centuries AD that some Jews set 14 Nisan before the spring equinox. This was one of the chief reasons given by Christians for their attempts to develop an independent calculation to determine the date of the Easter festival—to compute, in effect, a "Christian Nisan", and set Easter accordingly—rather than relying on information from Jewish neighbors about when Jewish Nisan would fall. Additionally, if Schwartz's emendations are accepted, they show the dates following a pattern in which the Christian dates for Nisan 14 agree with the Jewish dates whenever the latter fall on March 21 or later. Both emended columns employ a constant epact of 11 for the difference between the Julian and lunar years: Each year's date is 11 days earlier than the preceding year's, or 19 days later if the 11-day deduction would result in a Christian date earlier than March 21, or in a Jewish date earlier than March 1.