based on when the Jews celebrated the festival. Thus in his letter to Victor,
Polycrates describes the 14th of the moon as‘the day when the people (i.e. the
Jews) dispose of the leaven’(EusebiusHE5. 24. 6), i.e. when the Jews prepared
for the festival of Unleavened Bread (which began on the 15th) by throwing
out all leaven from their homes. This reference to a real-life Jewish practice,
indeed a public, outdoor activity that he and other Christians in Ephesus could
easily have observed, rather than for example the sacrifice of the paschal lamb
(on the 14th), which in this period would have been a purely theoretical,
biblical notion, suggests that it was the actual, observable practices of real Jews
that determined, for him and other Christians, the date of the 14th of the
month.^77 Yet dependence on the Jews was not the bone of contention between
Polycrates and Victor. It would not be surprising, indeed, if the Christians of
second-century Rome depended on the Jewish date of Passover in exactly the
same way—except that instead of celebrating Easter on the Jewish Passover,
they waited for the following Sunday (this is assumed by Grumel 1960: 163).
Evidence in theWest of such dependence on the Jews, and of the uneasiness
that some early third-century Christians may have experienced as a result, is
found in pseudo-Cyprian’sDe Pascha Computus, written in 243CEthough of
unclear precise provenance (see briefly Chapter 6, near n. 91). The importance
of this treatise is that it is the earliest known literary account of an Easter cycle.
In its opening, pseudo-Cyprian states as follows the purpose of his cycle:‘to
show that it is possible for Christians never to stray from the way of truth and
walk in blindness and stupidity behind the Jews, as if not knowing on which
day Easter should occur’.^78
This passage clearly suggests that until then, Christians in theWest had
been following the Jews for determining the date ofluna XIV—even if Easter
was observed, in theWest, on the following Sunday. As the author explains,
the introduction of afixed Easter cycle would enable Christians to become
independent from the Jews and Jewish practice. This explicitly stated motiva-
tion suggests that Easter cycles in the early third century responded to a need
for Christians to dissociate themselves from Jews and their Jewish origins and
thus‘part ways’from Judaism.^79
(^77) Stern (2001) 222–3. If no Jews were present or available for Christians to follow, Christians
are most likely to have determined the date ofluna XIVin the same way as the Jews, i.e. by
observing the new moon in the early spring. The determination of the date of Easter would thus
have been purely empirical in this period, and largely dependent on Jewish practice. 78
...ostendere nunquam posse Christianos aviaveritatis errare et tamquam ignorantesquae
sit dies Paschae, post Iudaeos caecos et hebetes ambulare: Ps-Cyprian,De Pascha Computus,1
(PL4, 1025B, Ogg 1955: 1, Strobel 1984: 44). This translation, following Ogg, is grammatically
and contextually preferable to the translation in Stern (2001) 223, where I tookcaecos et hebetes
to refer to the Jews.
(^79) Richard (1974) 309, Stern (2001) 223–6. A further possible motivation, suggested by
Holford-Strevens (2008) 165–6, might have been to facilitate the calculation of the dates of
Lent, after it became customary to begin the fast on afixed number of days (e.g. 40) long before
Sectarianism andHeresy 389