Dating the Council of Nicaea:
http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php/topic,52083.0.html#.UKtFouQp9kYHere is a summary...
The Council of Nicaea could not have taken place before the year 876-877 AD:
Despite the fact that no original Easter edicts of the Nicaean council remain, it is said that the Council issued its edicts in the alleged year 325 AD, when the the actual methods of calculating the Easter dates had already been well developed, and the Easter date table that had been used for centuries had been compiled. The latter is quite natural, since every 532 years, the Christian Easter cycle repeats from the very start the Paschalian tables for each year of 532 were in existence.
THE NICAEAN COUNCIL OF 325 AD CONTRADICTS THE PASCHALIA
There is a traditional consensual opinion according to which the Paschalia church calendar was canonized during the first Ecumenical Council in Nicaea. Nobody seem to be aware, however, that all of this blatantly contradicts Scaliger's dating of the Nicaean council 325 AD, and the epoch of the IV century AD in general.
The matter here is that the Paschalia consists of a number of calendarian and astronomical tables. The time of their compilation can be calculated from their contents qv below. In other words, the Paschalia can be dated by its astronomical contents. We see that the resulting dating of the Paschalia contradicts the dating of the Nicaean Council as the IV century AD.
The contradiction had been discovered a long time ago, and it was mentioned in the beginning of the XX century by Easter table specialists. However, to this day, there has been no comprehensive explanation of this phenomenon given.
Let us turn to the canonical mediaeval ecclesial tractate - Matthew Vlastar's Collection of Rules Devised by Holy Fathers, or The Alphabet Syntagma. This rather voluminous book represents the rendition of the rules formulated by the Ecclesial and local Councils of the Orthodox Church.
Matthew Vlastar is considered to have been a Holy Hierarch from Thessalonica, and written his tractate in the XIV century. Today's copies are of a much later date, of course. A large part of Vlastar?s Collection of Rules Devised by Holy Fathers contains the rules for celebrating Easter. Among other things, it says the following:
The Easter Rules makes the two following restrictions: it should not be celebrated together with the Judaists, and it can only be celebrated after the spring equinox. Two more had to be added later, namely: celebrate after the first full moon after the equinox, but not any day it should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the equinox. All of these restrictions, except for the last one, are still valid (in times of Matthew Vlastar the XIV century Auth.), although nowadays we often celebrate on the Sunday that comes later. Namely, we always count two days after the Lawful Easter (that is, the Passover, or the full moon Auth.) and end up with the subsequent Sunday. This didn't happen out of ignorance or lack of skill on the part of the Elders, but due to lunar motion.
Let us emphasize that the quoted Collection of Rules Devised by Holy Fathers is a canonical mediaeval clerical volume, which gives it all the more authority, since we know that up until the XVII century, the Orthodox Church was very meticulous about the immutability of canonical literature and kept the texts exactly the way they were; with any alteration a complicated and widely discussed issue that would not have passed unnoticed.
This means that we can hope for Matthew Vlastar's text to give us a precise enough account of the opinions held by the Constantinople scientists of the XIV century, in regard to the Easter issue. As we can see, Matthew Vlastar tells us the following:
In addition to the two Apostolic Easter rules, namely:
1) Not celebrating Easter together with the Judaists.
2) Only celebrating Easter after the spring equinox.
The Elders of the Council that introduced the Paschalia added two more rules for certainty, since the previous two do not define Easter day explicitly enough:
3) Only celebrating Easter after the first full moon in a given spring. That is, after the Passover that is often called Lawful Easter in Christian clerical literature that is, Easter celebrated in accordance with the Law of Moses or, alternatively, that of the 14th Moon.
4) Easter cannot be celebrated on any weekday; the celebration is to occur on the first Sunday following this full moon, or the Passover.
THE FOURTH RULE BROKEN
The first three rules of four were still quite valid in the XIV century, according to Vlastar, whereas the 4th rule of Easter Sunday being the first Sunday after the full moon was already broken.
Furthermore, Matthew Vlastar gives a perfectly valid astronomical explanation of why the rule was broken. The reason is that the Circle for Moon (Methon's Cycle) isn?t completely precise. There is a very slow shift of real full moon dates in relation to the ones stated by the Circle for Moon that the Elders of the Council may have been unaware of. However, in the age of Matthew Vlastar, knowledge of the shift already existed. Vlastar was aware of it and gave its correct value about 24 hours in 300 years.
This is why no less than two days should pass between the full moon and Easter (according to Vlastar, and applicable to his age). The matter is that the calculations of the Christian Easter are based on the calendar with its Circle for Moon values, as opposed to real full moon dates given by astronomy.
When, over the passage of time, a two-day discrepancy between the Paschalian Circle for Moon and the real full moon schedule had evolved, this could not fail to impact the distance between the astronomical spring equinox and Easter Sunday. If the previous distance equalled zero or more (so that Easter could not come before the full moon), it became equalling two or moreso that the Easter could not come earlier than two days after the full moon.
However, most often the amount of days separating the full moon and Easter Sunday, exceeded two, anyway, since the rules have it so that one had to wait for the Easter's advent from the vernal full moon and until the closest Sunday, that is, about three days (half a week) in average, and more than two days in most cases.
So the two-day gap that had accumulated by the age of Vlastar did not always manifest, and no rules were broken in the years when several days had to pass between the full moon and Easter.
However, in certain years, when the distance proved less than two days, the 4th Easter rule was broken, namely, Easter Sunday fell on the second Sunday after the vernal full moon. For example, if the Passover falls on a Saturday, Easter has to be celebrated the next day, on Sunday.
Thus, we know a lot, almost everything, about the Paschalia. So, why the astronomical context of the Paschalia contradicts Scaliger's dating (alleged 325 AD) of the Nicaean Council where the Paschalia was canonized?
This contradiction can easily be seen from the roughest of calculations.
1) The difference between the Paschalian full moons and the real ones grows at the rate of one day in 300 years.
2) A two-day difference had accumulated by the time of Vlastar, which is roughly dated 1330 AD.
3) Ergo, the Paschalia was compiled somewhere around 730 AD, since
1330 - (300 x 2) = 730.
It is understood that the Paschalia could only be canonized by the Council sometime later. But this fails to correspond to Scaliger's dating of its canonization as 325 AD in any way at all!
Let us emphasize, that Matthew Vlastar himself, doesn't see any contradiction here, since he is apparently unaware of the Nicaean Council's dating as the alleged year 325 AD. A natural hypothesis: this traditional dating was introduced much later than Vlastar's age. Most probably, it was first calculated in Scaliger's time.
The conclusion we came to:
FIRST STATEMENT:
The Council that introduced the Paschalia according to the modern tradition as well as the mediaeval one, was the Nicaean Council could not have taken place before 784 AD, since this was the first year when the calendar date for the Christian Easter stopped coinciding with the Passover full moon due to slow astronomical shifts of lunar phases.
The last such coincidence occurred in 784 AD, and after that year, the dates of Easter and Passover drifted apart forever. This means the Nicaean Council could not have possibly canonized the Paschalia in IV AD, when the calendar Easter Sunday would coincide with the Passover eight (!) times ? in 316, 319, 323, 343, 347, 367, 374, and 394 AD, and would even precede it by two days five (!) times, which is directly forbidden by the fourth Easter rule, that is, in 306 and 326 (allegedly already a year after the Nicaean Council), as well as the years 346, 350, and 370.
Thus, if we're to follow the consensual chronological version, we'll have to consider the first Easter celebrations after the Nicaean Council to blatantly contradict three of the four rules that the Council decreed specifically for this feast! The rules allegedly become broken the very next year after the Council decrees them, yet start to be followed zealously and in full detail five centuries (!) after that.
Let us note that J.J. Scaliger could not have noticed this obvious nonsense during his compilation of the consensual ancient chronology, since computing true full moon dates for the distant past had not been a solved problem in his epoch.
A satisfactory coincidence of calendarian Passover full moons with the astronomical ones had only existed between 700 AD and 1000 AD (by which we mean their occurrence within the range of 24 hours from each other). Prior to that, the calendarian full moons have always taken place after the Passover ones, and after 1000 AD, the opposite started to happen. The beginning of the 13th Great Indiction (877 AD) falls on the period of ideal coincidence of Passover and astronomical full moons.
This means the Paschalia could only have been compiled in the period between the IX and XI centuries AD.
Propter hoc, the dating of the Nicaean Council (as the Council that had introduced the Paschalia) is only possible, within the timeframe of the VII-XI centuries, the most probable one being the epoch of the X-XI centuries, after the year 877 AD.
SUMMING UP THE DATINGS OF THE NICAEAN COUNCIL
The Paschalia could have been compiled in the following timeframe:
- not any earlier than 784 AD by the actual definition of Easter;
- not any earlier than 700 AD by the coincidence of Paschalian and astronomical full moons;
- not any earlier than 700 AD by the Palm of Damascenus;
- not any earlier than 743 AD according to Matthew Vlastar;
Hence, the Paschalia was first compiled earliest around the second half of the VIII century AD. The Paschalia was canonized at the Nicaean Council that took place in the XI-XIV centuries. The Paschalia might well have contained certain astronomical concepts of the VII-XI centuries that had already been a part of the ecclesial tradition by that time.
The greatest of all British historians, Edwin Johnson, demonstrates how the official history of England has been falsified at least after 1530 AD; how the four Gospels and the Pauline epistles were written during the Renaissance:
http://www.egodeath.com/edwinjohnsonpaulineepistles.htmHistory: Fiction or Science? volume III: Almagest was written during the Renaissance, N. Copernic and his works invented at least 100 years later in time.
http://new-chrono-book.livejournal.com/2125.html