Dionysius Exiguus, On Easter (translation from Latin to English)
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/pearse/morefathers/files/dionysius_exiguus_easter_01.htmExiguus assigns the date of March 24, year 563 AD, for the Passover.
http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/easter/easter_text4a.htmHowever, in the year 563 AD, the Passover fell on March 25.
Dr. G.V. Nosovsky:
Dr. G. Nosovsky:
We don’t have to observe the sky or perform astronomical calculations every time; compiling a table of March and April full moons for any given period of 19 years should suffice for further reference. The reason is that the phases of the moon recur every 19 years in the Julian calendar, and the recurrence cycle remains unaltered for centuries on end – that is, if the full moon fell on the 25th March any given year, it shall occur on the 25th of March in 19 years, in 38 (19 x 2) years, etc.
The malfunctions in the cycle shall begin after 300 years, which is to say that if we cover 300 years in 19-year cycles, the full moon shall gradually begin to migrate to its neighbouring location in the calendar. The same applies to new moons and all the other phases of the moon.
Ecclesiastical tradition, in accordance with the New Testament, tells that Christ was resurrected on March 25 on Sunday, on the next day after Passover, which, therefore, fell in that time on March 24 (Saturday). These are exactly the conditions used by Dionisius in his calculation of the date of the First Easter.
Dionysius supposedly conducted all these arguments and calculations working with the Easter Book. Having discovered that in the contemporary year 563 (the year 279 of the Diocletian era) the First Easter conditions held, he made a 532-year shift back (the duration of the great indiction, the shift after which the Easter Book entirely recurs) and got the date for the First Easter. But he did not know that Passover (the 14th moon) could not be shifted by 532 years (because of the inaccuracy of the Metonian cycle) and made a mistake: "Dionysius failed, though he did not know that. Indeed, if he really supposed that the First Easter fell on March 25, 31 A.D., then he made a rough mistake as he extrapolated the inaccurate Metonian cycle to 28 previous cycles (that is, for 532 years: 28 x 19 = 532). In fact, Nisan 15, the Passover festival, in the year 31 fell not on Saturday, March 24, but on Tuesday, March 27!". [335, pg. 243: I.A. Klimishin, Calendar and Chronology, in Russian, Nauka, Moscow, 1985]
That is a modern reconstruction of what Dionysius the Little did in the 6th century. It would be all right, but it presupposes that near Dionysius' date of 563 A.D. the 14th moon (Passover) really fell on March 24. It could be that Dionysius was not aware of the inaccuracy of the Metonian cycle and made the mistake shifting Passover from 563 to the same day of March in 31 A.D.
But he could not have been unaware of the date of Passover in the the almost contemporary year 563! To that end it was sufficient to apply the Metonian cycle to the coming 30-40 years; the inaccuracy of the Metonian cycle does not show up for such intervals.
But in 563 Passover (the 14th moon) fell not on March 24, but on Sunday, March 25, that is, it coincided with Easter as determined by the Easter Book.
As he specially worked with the calendar situation of almost contemporary year 563 and as he based his calculation of the era "since the birth of Christ" on this situation, Dionysius could not help seeing that, first, the calendar situation in the year 563 did not conform to the Gospels' description and, second, that the coincidence of Easter with Passover in 563 contradicts the essence of the determination of Easter the Easter Book is based on.
Therefore, it appears absolutely incredible that the calculations of the First Easter and of the Birth of Christ had been carried out in the 6th century on the basis of the calendar situation of the year 563. It was shown in Sec. 1 that the Easter Book, used by Dionysius, had not been compiled before the 8th century and had been canonized only at the end of the 9th century. Therefore, the calculations carried out by (or ascribed to) Dionysius the Little had not been carried out before the lOth century.
www.chronologia.org/en/es_analysis2/index.html (pages 390 - 401 and 401 - 405)
Exiguus, the central pillar of the official historical chronology, could not have made such a colossal mistake UNLESS his works/biography were forged/falsified at least five centuries later in time.
In the official chronology, Bede, Syncellus, Scaliger, Blastares, and Petavius base their calculations on Exiguus' methods and data.
D" PARAMETER: MOON'S ELONGATION PARADOXThe Moon's Acceleration
"Understanding the moon's orbit around Earth is a difficult mathematical problem. Isaac Newton was the first to consider it, and it took more than two centuries until the American mathematician George William Hill found a suitable framework in which to address this question.
The concern is with the acceleration, D'', of the moon's elongation, which is the angle between the moon and the sun as viewed from Earth. This acceleration D'' is computable from observations, and its past behavior can be determined from records of eclipses. Its values vary between -18 and +2 seconds of arc per century squared. Also, D'' is slightly above zero and almost constant from about 700 BC to AD 500, but it drops significantly for the next five centuries, to settle at around -18 after AD 1000. Unfortunately this variation cannot be explained from gravitation, which requires the graph to be a horizontal line.
Among the other experts in celestial mechanics who attacked this problem was Robert Newton from Johns Hopkins University. In 1979, he published the first volume of a book that considered the issue by looking at historical solar eclipses. Five years later, he came up with a second volume, which approached the problem from the point of view of lunar observations. His conclusion was that the behavior of D'' could be explained only by factoring in some unknown forces.
Newton's results can be interpreted similarly: if we exclude the possibility of mysterious forces, his graph puts traditional ancient and medieval chronology in doubt."
https://web.archive.org/web/20120323153614/http://www.pereplet.ru/gorm/fomenko/dsec.htmIt is important for some computational astronomical problems to know the behaviour of D'' -- the second derivative of the Moon's elongation - as a function of the time, on a rather long segment of the time line. This problem, particularly, was talked about during the discussion organized in 1972 by the London Royal Society and British Academy of Sciences. The scheme of the calculation of D'' is as follows: we are to fix the totality of ancient observations of eclipses, then calculate. on the basis of the modern theory, when these observations were made, and then compare the results of the calculations with the observed parameters to evaluate the Moon's acceleration.
Newton: "The most striking feature of Figure 1 is the rapid decline in D'' from about 700 to about 1300 ... . This decline means (Newton, 1972b) that there was a 'square wave' in the osculating value of D''... . Such changes in D'', and such values,
unexplainable by present geophysical theories ... , show that D'' has had surprisingly large values and that it has undergone large and sudden changes within the past 2000 yrs".
D" parameter, new chronology of history:
Dr. Robert Newton, Two Uses of Ancient Astronomy:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120531060430/http://www.pereplet.ru/gorm/atext/newton2.htmPhil. Trans. R. Soc. Land. A. 276, 99-110 (1974)
Dr. Robert Newton, Astronomical Evidence Concerning Non-Gravitational Forces in the Earth-Moon System:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120531054411/http://www.pereplet.ru/gorm/atext/newton1.htmAstrophysics and Space Science 16 (1972) 179-200
Each and every astronomical recording supposedly made in the period 700 BC - 1000 AD is proven to be false.
When was Ptolemy's Star Catalogue in 'Almagest' Compiled in Reality? Statistical Analysis:
https://web.archive.org/web/20131111204106/http://www.hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/fomenko/fomenko3.pdfhttp://www.chronologia.org/en/es_analysis2/index.htmlAppendix 2. When Was Ptolemy's Star Catalogue Really Compiled? Variable Configurations of the Stars and the Astronomical Dating of the Almagest Star Catalogue:
pages 346 - 375
The Dating of Ptolemy's Almagest Based on the Coverings of the Stars and on Lunar Eclipses:
https://web.archive.org/web/20131111203642/http://www.hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/fomenko/fomenko4.pdfhttp://www.chronologia.org/en/es_analysis2/index.htmlpages 376 - 381
https://web.archive.org/web/20131111203642/http://www.hbar.phys.msu.ru/gorm/fomenko/fomenko4.pdf (section 3: The Dating of the Lunar Eclipses and Appendix 2: The Table of the Almagest's Lunar Eclipses)
http://www.chronologia.org/en/es_analysis2/index.html (pages 382 - 389)
Both works appeared in the Acta Applicandae Mathematicae (17 - 1989 and 29 - 1992).