for creating for themselves a dissident or heretical identity—it was a way of
playing heresy.^180
ConclusionThe Councils of Arles and Nicaea, in the early fourth century, introduced
major changes not only to the Christian reckoning of the date of Easter, but
also, more generally, to the perception inWestern culture of the function of
the calendar within society. Until this period, calendar diversity had been
common in the ancient world, especially in Greece, Asia Minor, and the Near
East, as well as among Jewish, Christian, and probably other Diaspora com-
munities; it was a fact of life that no one seemed to have regarded as a problem.
(^180) Besides seeking a heretical identity, it is also possible that Quartodecimans and Novatians
were motivated by a Judaizing interest, but this has been grossly overstated in modern scholar-
ship. Socrates (5. 21. 6–17; 7. 5. 2) does claim that Sabbatios was influenced by his Jewish
background, and John Chrystostom does insinuate (in his third homily‘against the Jews’; see
above) that those who were to celebrate Easter early would actually participate in the Jewish
Passover. But the Syrian tradition of celebrating Easter‘with the Jews’, which Chrysostom was
opposing, is presented in the sources as quite anti-Judaic. It is formally prescribed in the
Didascalia(21), a text written in 3rd-c. northern Syria (or elsewhere in the Roman Near East:
Metzger 1985–7: i. 16) and preserved in full in a 4th-c. Syriac version (Vööbus 1979: ii. 23,
27 – 8), as follows:‘begin (the fast) when your brethren who are of the people (the Jews) perform
the Passover’, and‘when therefore that people performs the Passover, do you fast. And be careful
to complete your vigil within their (feast of ) unleavened bread’(Vööbus 1979: iv. 196, 202);
another version, cited by Epiphanius,Panarion70. 10. 2, 11. 3, reads:‘reckon ye not (i.e. some
fixed Easter cycle), but celebrate when your brethren of the circumcision do; celebrate with
them’, and‘when they feast, mourn ye for them with fasting, for they crucified Christ on the day
of the feast; and when they mourn on the Day of Unleavened Bread and eat with bitter herbs,
then feast ye’(Williams 1987–1994: ii. 412–3). Both sources suggest that the Syrian observance of
Easter‘with the Jews’consisted in the Christians fasting (for Lent) on the date when the Jews
were feasting (Passover), and then feasting (at Easter) when the Jews were mourning by eating
unleavened bread; thus observing the same dates as the Jews was not a Judaizing practice, but
quite on the contrary it served the purpose of drawing out and enhancing the contrast between
the Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter. This intended contrast is also explicit in Aphrahat’s
twelfth Demonstration (written in Persian Mesopotamiac.344CE: Pierre 1989: 578, Gerlach
1998: 266–9, Stern 2001: 69 n. 68), and is compatible with the wording of the Novatian
pronouncement at Pazos, as reported by Socrates (see above, n. 167). In the context of the
Novatians, Mitchell (2005) 220–1 interprets‘with the Jews’as meaning that they‘actually
attended the Jewish Passover festival’, but this is not the normal meaning of the phrase in
Patristic sources (which Mitchell seems not to be aware of; see e.g. Epiphanius 9. 2); there is no
evidence or reason to assume that Novatians or even Sabbatios ever participated in the Jewish
Passover. Note that the phrase‘with the Jews’is similarly used in a purely calendrical sense (i.e. in
the sense of‘on the same date as the Jews’) in 3rd–5th-cc. Hebrew rabbinic sources, with
reference to the Samaritan Passover (tPish:a2: 2, ed. Lieberman, p. 145;pPesah:im1: 1, 27b
(
im
yisrael). Finally, the theory that the Montanists Judaized by following the Jewish 364-day
calendar (Ford 1966: 145–7, followed by Mitchell 2005: 219, although he then inconsistently
suggests, p. 221, that they followed a lunar calendar), is completely unconvincing, if only because
the Montanists’fixed Easter date of 6 April (see above, near nn. 158, 171) could not have been
maintained in a 364-day year.
422 Calendars in Antiquity