Ted MacNeil wrote:
> Actually, no. Easter is a Sunday. Passover is a Thursday or Friday.
and he is very nearly right this time. The modern rules for determining the
date of Easter were promulgated as a part of the Gregorian calendar. These
rules are the work of Christoph Clavius, who
o ensured, definitionally, that Easter would always fall on a Sunday, and
o attempted to ensure that East and Pesach/Passover would very seldom fall on
the same date.
In fact, Easter and Pesach fall on the same date three times during the next
11,000 years; and Pesach does not always fall on a Thursday or Friday.
A full discussion of these issues will be found on pp. 50-53 of
Dershowitz, Nachum, and Edward J. Reingold, Calendrical calculations,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997,
which is the canonical reference for its subject.
John Gilmore Ashland, MA 01721-1817 USA
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