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Why do Copts celebrate Easter on April 15 and Armenians on April 8?
Dear fellows,
Can anybody clarify me why does the Armenian Apostolic Church celebrate Easter on April 8?
As I know that the Armenian Church is a sister church of the Coptic Church. Both are Orthodox. Both are non-Chalcedonian churches. Both follow the same Oriental tradition.
Why does the Armenian Church celebrate like Catholics?
Can anybody clarify me why does the Armenian Apostolic Church celebrate Easter on April 8?
As I know that the Armenian Church is a sister church of the Coptic Church. Both are Orthodox. Both are non-Chalcedonian churches. Both follow the same Oriental tradition.
Why does the Armenian Church celebrate like Catholics?
Comments
St. Pope Demetrius the Vinedresser.
thanks. even though i was readings about him a couple days ago.
I know that the Copts use the Coptic calendar.
BUT the major Orthodox Feasts coincide with the same Feasts in the Russian Orthodox Church and in the Greek Orthodox Church, however the Russians and Greeks use Julian calendar.
For example Easter in the Coptic Church coincides with Easter in the Russian and Greek Churches always. The same is Christmas. However the Copts use the Coptic calendar and the Russians and Greeks use Julian calendar.
What calendar does use the Armenians? And how do they calculate Easter?
The calculation of Easter was corrected by the Alexandrians under Pope Demetrius. But other churches have taken credit for the epoch dating.
I'm not sure what the Armenian use for Easter calculations. According to the official site, the Armenian church adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1923. HH Catholicos Aram I has been trying to merge the two dates into one with ecumenical talks with Pope Benedict and other churches since 2003. There are some websites that say the Armenians use the Julian Calendar.
I would assume the Armenians calculate Easter like all other churches that use the Gregorian calendar.
Both Catholicoi jurisdictions use the Gregorian Calendar.
The only place for a merger of the dates would be for the jurisdiction in Jerusalem. The Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem is subordinate to the Holy See of Etchmiadzin in Armenia. H.B. Torkoom Manoogian recently went to his rest. The Brotherhood of St. James is against any possibility of adopting the Gregorian Calendar. HH Aram I cannot negotiate on behalf of the Jerusalem Patriarchate.
N.B.: In the Armenian Tradition--the title Patriarch is subordinate to the Episcopal title "Catholicos".
For all intensive purposes 99.9999% of the Armenian Church uses the Gregorian Calendar.
This is the Tradition and this is what we have received.
Pope Demitrius was a leader in fixing the Pascha and the Church of Alexandria was the one to determine when it is to be celebrated.
This is the Tradition and this is what we have received.
i don't think this goes against what remenkimi said. i did read in a book (don't remember where) that the calculation between the two calendars (the egyption and the jewish) was already done by some scholar but our simply used that calculation/formula to set the right dates.
intensive purposes
*intents and purposes
What happened, you're normally very wordy? :)
Yes, I really found that the Armenian Church lives according to Gregorian calendar.
BUT they celebrate Christmas and Epiphany on January 6, Circumcision on January 13, Candlemas on February 14, Annunciation April 7.
So they have a mixture of both calendars Gregorian and Julian. But in Jerusalem they live according to Julian calendar. They don't give the dogmatic character to the calendar.
Uf, how hard is this. Why during so many years the sister non-Chalcedonian churches didn't came to the common calendar?
Uf, how hard is this. Why during so many years the sister non-Chalcedonian churches didn't came to the common calendar?
I believe at some point of time ALL churches, before the first schism followed the same dates of celebrating the feasts.
The calendar itself is not of value, the importance which the Fathers especially felt was that all Christians should keep Easter at the same time.
If the calendar is not changed to take account of astronomical reality then Christmas will be celebrated in the Summer.
But not all countries celebrate Nativity during the Winter. So why does it matter for us if it falls in August? Is the season more important than the date?
Humans have created many calendars with greater or lesser accuracy. The Julian was quite accurate, but not as accurate as the Gregorian, and it is now so inaccurate that it is already noticeably so. If it will continue to become more and more detached from the universe then it is not suitable as a calendar. It needs some revision. That is all the Gregorian calendar does. It is not some monstrous novelty. All it does is reduce a leap year every 100 years or so. The months are the same names and the same length.
If everyone adopted it then it would be a non-issue because we would all follow the ancient rules for calculating Easter, and would keep all the feast on the same date.
The Julian calendar was itself a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar in 45 BC. Greek astronomers were aware of the errors in their previous calendar since the 2nd century BC. But even the revised Roman calendar left an error which meant that every 400 years it became 3 days out of sync. All the Gregorian reform does is revise the calendar again to make it more accurate compared to the universe itself. This was not an assault on Orthodoxy but was simply another revision in a long line of calendar revisions.
The Church established Christmas as a Winter festival. It seems to me to be perverse to allow it to become a Summer one (in the Northern Hemisphere) simply by deciding that one revision of the calendar is OK, but a second revision is not. Easter has always been a Spring festival. It would seem very odd to celebrate it in the middle of Winter when everything is dead, rather than in the Spring when everything is coming alive.
I think it a sign that we should never have gone there. It was not meant for humans.
lol
The calendar itself is not of value, the importance which the Fathers especially felt was that all Christians should keep Easter at the same time.
But Fathers also felt that Easter should never fall on the Passover. Yet the Gregorian date of Easter has overlooked this. The Gregorian calendar has its own faults also.
Everything else you said, Fr Peter, makes sense on a macro level. But when you look at the details and have a thorough study of Christian dates, we will see that most Fathers did not concern themselves with Christmas feast and they disagreed on the actual date. Christmas wasn't celebrated until St John Chrysostom made it a separate feast from the Theophany. It was St John Chrysostom who began the movement for December 25th/January 7th. December 25th is in itself an arbitrary date. It is exactly 9 months prior to the Annunciation feast (another arbitrary date) which fell on March 25/Baramhat 29 because March25th/Baramhat 29 was the Spring Equinox. In other words, the Annunciation feast was celebrated on the Spring Equinox (according to St Gregory Thaumatagurius). The beginning of Spring is the beginning of life. That is why both the Annunciation and Resurrection feasts are commemorated on Baramhat 29. There was never any proof (until St John Chrysostom who magically found a record in the Roman archives) that Jesus was born on December 25th. There is no proof that the Annunciation of Archangel Gabriel occurred on the Spring Equinox. And the Spring Equinonx does not occur on the same date every year. There is no record of the exact date of Jesus' crucifixion and Resurrection. We don't even know what year it is.
I also want to add that in order for the Coptic Church to celebrate Christmas in the summer (6 months later) due to an error in the Julian calendar will take 25,560 years. I don't think this really justifies changing the calendar.
I don't disagree with your assertion that the calendar should be changed. I agree all Christians should celebrate feasts together, especially Christmas and Easter. But even if you correct the calendar so every Christian celebrates Christmas and Easter together, you'll have to decide when the rest of the Lord's feasts should be celebrated (Transfiguration, Annunciation, Wedding of Cana, Entry into Egypt, Entry into the Temple, Theophany, etc). Then there's other feasts such as The Nativity of the Theotokos, Presentation of the Theotokos, Dormition/Assumption of the Theotokos, Cross Feasts and common saint feasts (such as St George, St Mary of Egypt, St John the Baptist, etc). All of these dates will have to change. Now it's no longer a simple matter of adjusting for calendar correction. It will become, as you said in another thread, changing Tradition "such that the Tradition seems to many people to be untraditional."
And the Guardian of Credibility is right, "humans only belong in America".
It seems to me that the argument against the Gregorian calendar from some posts here come from a supposition that it is not 'Orthodox' or traditional. But the fact is that the calendar is not only to help mark our feasts but also to be correct astronomically (as much as possible). I don't think it is wise in this day and age for the church to insist on celebrating the Nativity for example on January 7th when what we actually doing is saying that December 25th actually arrives 13 days later. Revising and correcting our calendar wouldn't change anything about our faith. As others have mentioned, we don't really know exactly when Christ was born (just that it might be sometime in the spring or summer). A change in our calendar doesn't discredit any aspect of our faith or our Tradition but I can see why minority Christians in certain parts of the world such as Egypt would feel hesitant to change it.
Why would not the world be perfect and we all live happily and celebrate all the feasts together?
[quote author=Father Peter link=topic=13080.msg153767#msg153767 date=1332875323]
The calendar itself is not of value, the importance which the Fathers especially felt was that all Christians should keep Easter at the same time.
But Fathers also felt that Easter should never fall on the Passover. Yet the Gregorian date of Easter has overlooked this. The Gregorian calendar has its own faults also.
Two comments: First, if the Jews were to follow the Gregorian calendar (and they don't), the Passover will always be before the Gregorian Easter. We can't say that we shouldn't use an accurate method of calculating for the date of Easter just because of the stubbornness of the Jews with their calendar.
Secondly, and more importantly, the Council of Nicea stated that Easter is to be celebrated on the first Sunday after fourteen days from the New Moon that occurs after the vernal equinox. Fourteen days after the New Moon is not necessarily a full moon, so it is not (by definition) after the Passover!
Also, for Christmas, if we don't change to the Gregorian Calendar by the year 2100 A.D., starting from that year we will be celebrating Coptic/Julian Christmas 14 days after the Gregorian Christmas, which would be on January 8 (or January 9 in a leap year). I can't imagine the confusion of Egyptians then, who already struggle in their faith because of the difference in dates today.
I credibilize your post.
LOL, what a verb that is.
Also, 'accredit' is for people who can't spell credibilize.
Two comments: First, if the Jews were to follow the Gregorian calendar (and they don't), the Passover will always be before the Gregorian Easter. We can't say that we shouldn't use an accurate method of calculating for the date of Easter just because of the stubbornness of the Jews with their calendar.
You are assuming the Gregorian date is "an accurate method for calculating the date of Easter". It's not. No one knows the exact date of Christ's Resurrection. The only thing more accurate about the Gregorian calendar over the Julian calendar is the calculation of the solar year (365.2425 days (365 days 5 hours 49 minutes 12 seconds)), a reduction of 10 minutes 48 seconds per year compared to the Julian calendar. In addition, the solar year is not always exactly the same duration every. There are fluctuations in the earth's orbit. Eventually the Gregorian calendar will also be inaccurate. Either way, neither calendar is an accurate way to calculate Easter. The Epoch only calculates when the Resurrection feast is to be celebrated relative to conventional methods of dating based on 2 criteria: 1. After the new moon after the spring equinox and 2. After the Jewish Passover. It's irrelevant if the Jews change their calculation. It only matters that we don't celebrate our Passover with the Jews. This maybe true. Nicaea did not specify the Passover. However, the Epoch calculation that was ratified by Nicaea (presumably by Pope Demetrius) factors in the date of the Jewish Passover. The formula includes language that pushes the date after the Jewish Passover. So it is necessary to be after the Passover. Since when did the Church change a feast date because of a scheduling conflict or societal confusion? It's irrelevant who will be confused. It's irrelevant if every Copt wants Christmas to move to December 25th. It is the decision of the Church through the Synod. And as far as I know, there has never been a change in a fixed feast date or the calculation of a movable feast date in the Coptic Church, even when our own sister churches have different feast dates.
I will reiterate. Changing the dates of Christmas and Easter do not detract from our faith or Tradition. The problem will come after you change these 2 dates. If your core requirement or motivation for changing these 2 dates is to have all Christians celebrate the feast on the same day, then you will have to apply this to all Christian feasts. And if the new date is not "more accurate" in relation to the feast (ie, Is December 25th more accurate calculation for Christ's birth than January 7th? Or are we changing the date for social conformity) then how will you justify changing ALL feast dates for the sole purpose of conformity and not for accuracy? And of course, then you will have to contend on which date to change the feasts to? Will there be a rule that the date will become whatever the majority currently celebrates? If not the majority rule, then will the majority agree to the minority's dates? Will all Roman Catholic and New Calendarist Orthodox Churches move Theophany to January 19th, instead of January 7th or January 6th? Who decides and how? And more fundamentally, why? Why are we so overly concerned with copying others?
What do you mean? It was certainly after the Jewish Passover, which had to be on the 14th day of the month of Nissan.
I am claiming that the WHOLE Coptic calendar needs to be updated. The Gregorian calendar is accurate, and almost exactly the same length as the tropical year, and will remain accurate for thousands of years to come.
This isn't an issue of faith. It's an issue of calculations. The Coptic Calendar has been updated twice in history (both times before Christ), and there's nothing wrong with updating it again to reflect correct calculations of time - regardless of whether a Pope found that out or a secular scientist did the calculations.