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The Quartodecimans and the Synoptic Chronology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
Extract
There is hardly a point in the whole Quartodeciman question that has not, at one time or another, been vigorously contested. Since the days when the Tübingen school interpreted the struggle to support their separation of the Fourth Gospel from the Johannine Tradition, there has grown up a veritable library of controversial literature on the subject. Perhaps the most judicious statement of the problem in English appeared in Stanton's The Gospels as Historical Documents (Part I, pp. 173–197), which was dependent upon Schürer's De Controversiis Paschalibus (1869). Since that time, however, the question has been re-opened by Schmidt's learned Excursus appended to his text of the Epistola Apostolorum. Dating this work in the 60's of the second century, he claimed that in Chapter 15 there was a reference to the Paschal controversy that confirmed his view. Furthermore, he contended that this section of the Epistola had once for all settled a number of uncertain problems. Chief among these was the significance attached by the Asiatic Church to the 14th of Nisan. Schmidt concluded from the words, “But do ye commemorate my death,” that on this day the Easterners celebrated the Passion. Henceforth it would be impossible to claim that the Quartodeciman rite implied a Christian “Passover” which commemorated the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist (pp. 600–601). Indeed, he went so far as to urge that the whole Asiatic practice was centered in the Passion to the exclusion of the Resurrection. Contrasting the Quartodeciman with the Catholic custom he wrote, “Dort Passah, hier Ostern!” (p. 579).
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References
1 See especially Hilgenfeld, Der Paschastreit der alten Kirche (1860).
2 For surveys of the earlier literature I may refer the reader to Schürer's De Controversiis Paschalibus, 1869, which with some emendations, was published in German in Zeitschr. für d. hist. Theol., 1870, pp. 182–184; to Stanton's The Gospels as Historical Documents, pt. I, 1903, pp. 173–176; and to Carl Schmidt's Die Passahfeier in der kleinasiatischen Kirche (Texte und Untersuchungen, vol. XLIII, 1919, Excursus III, pp. 577–578).
It is not necessary here to classify all the diverse views of scholars on the Paschal Question. Suffice it to say that the main issue which will concern us is the significance that the Asiatics attached to Nisan 14. Was it the date of the Passion or of the Last Supper? The former thesis was vigorously upheld by Weitzel in his Die christliche Passahfeier der dreiersten Jahrhunderte, 1848, and in his essay in Studienund Kritiken, 1848, No. 4. He was followed by Hefele, History of the Christian Councils, vol. I, 1894, pp. 80–83, and 298–341 (the later treatment in the French edition, Histoire des Conciles, vol. I, pt. I, 1907, pp. 133–151; 450–488, is fuller, and on this basic point Hefele changed his mind, p. 146); by Kidd, History of the Church to 461, vol. I, 1922, pp. 355–357; 376–378; and by Schmidt, op. cit. The latter contention was defended by the Tübingen school and is best studied in Hilgenfeld's Der Paschastreit der alten Kirche, 1860. The distinctive value of Schürer's work, which still seems to me one of the best treatments of the subject, lies in the fact that he urged the same thesis without the Tübingen bias. He was followed by Luthardt, St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel, English translation, 1897, pp. 154–165, and by Stanton, op. cit., pp. 173–197. The main point these authors stressed was that the Quartodeciman observance celebrated the Divine Redemption typified by the ancient Passover, which the Lord had eaten on the night before the Passion.
More recently there have appeared a number of important articles that may be mentioned:
Hugo Koch, Pascha in der ältesten Kirche, in Zeitschr. für wissen. Theol., vol. LV, 1914, pp. 289–313; Peter Corssen, Das Osterfest, in Neue Jahrbücher für das klass. Altertum, vol. XXXIX, 1917, pp. 170–189; F. E. Brightman, The Quartodeciman Question, in J. T. S., 1924, vol. XXV, pp. 254–270; and Karl Holl, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. II, 1928, pp. 204–224, on a fragment from Epiphanius.
3 In Texte und Untersuchungen, vol. XXXIII, 1919, pp. 577–725.
4 Brightman's theory is, of course, in conflict with Epiphanius and Socrates, whose accounts it would seem are due to a misunderstanding of Eusebius (p. 263). Certainly one is not disposed to trust Epiphanius at every point, since his grasp of any subject is seldom lucid, and his obscurity and confusion reach a pitch when he deals with the Quartodecimans and the Audians.
5 The very “John” to whom Polycrates refers (H. E. 5. 24. 3) is characterized by a phrase from the Fourth Gospel. He is ὁ ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος τοῦ Κυρίου ἀναπεσών.
6 Ed. Dindorf, in Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae, 1832, vol. 1, pp. 12–15.
7 I.e., Ebionite Quartodecimans (Hefele, History of the Christian Councils, 1894, vol. I, p. 312). Kidd (History of the Church to 461, vol. I, 1922, pp. 355 ff., 376 ff.) follows Hefele's view. Clement's treatise thus supplemented, and did not attack, the Quartodeciman pamphlet of Melito. Eusebius is not clear on the relation of these two works. He merely says that Melito's occasioned Clement's (H. E. 4. 26. 4). Melito is cited as a Quartodeciman by Polycrates (H. E. 5. 24. 5). One may add that in the later French edition, Histoire des Conciles, vol. I, pt. 1, pp. 135 and 139, Hefele changed his mind on this whole question.
8 Schmidt, op. cit., p. 630.
9 See his article on The Easter Controversies of the Second Century in The Contemporary Review, vol. VI, Sept.–Dec. 1867, pp. 101–118.
10 Op. cit., p. 265.
11 Early Church History to 431, 1912, vol. I, p. 264.
12 So Brightman, op. cit., p. 625.
13 E.g., Duchesne, Early History of the Christian Church, English ed., 1909, vol. I, p. 209.
14 As far as the West is concerned, the harmony of the Gospels on the Johannine chronology was supported by two arguments. Hippolytus claimed that the logion οὐκέτι ϕάγομαι τὸ πάσχα meant that Christ only had an ordinary supper before the Passion. Clement, on the other hand, cited the fact that the priests did not enter the Praetorium, from fear of defilement (John 18. 28). By this he showed that the Jews ate the Passover on the following evening, after the Crucifixion. Moreover, he defended the agreement of the Gospels by claiming that on the 13th Christ “taught the disciples the mystery of the type (of the Passover).” The Last Supper was thus only a mystical anticipation of the true Passover-Passion of the next day. Such is the typical exegesis of the distinguished Alexandrine, who always had a happy facility for explaining away difficulties. In a later period the discrepancy was explained by the assumption that Christ ate the Passover at the legal time, but that the Jews deferred it to the 15th to accomplish His death (so Eusebius, De Solemnitate Paschali, 12. P. G. 24, col. 705).
The endless difficulties of the Passion chronology, and the amazing conjectures no less ingenious than involved, that the Church brought forward to meet them, are well reflected in the fragment from Epiphanius edited by Holl in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur K. G., vol. II, pp. 204 ff. There Epiphanius claims the Jews celebrated the Passover two days in advance of the proper date — on Tuesday instead of Thursday. This accounts for the fact that Jesus ate the Passover before He suffered. But this was not their only error. In Haer. 51. 26 Epiphanius claims that even Thursday was not the correct date. The 14th really fell on the Friday, if it was rightly reckoned.
15 The practice of the early British Church may possibly be a guide in this connection. Their calculations for Easter were certainly derived from the West, and in the fifth century they retained not only an obscurantist cycle, but also an ancient method of relating the days of the week to the Paschal Moon. Easter Sunday could fall “a quarta decima usque ad vicissimam lunam” (Bede, H. E. 2. 4). Thus Easter Sunday was celebrated on or after Nisan 14. This, as Bede remarks (2. 19), was contrary to the Nicene ordinance. Whether this really represents the ancient Roman method of calculation is indeed open to doubt. In the later strife with Alexandria, Rome insisted that Nisan 16 was the first possible date for Easter Sunday. Holl (op. cit., II, p. 218) suggests, by referring to Hippolytus, that this may have been due to an emphasis upon the 14th as Good Friday. Brightman, however, has well shown (op. cit., p. 257), that Good Friday was a far later development that we are accustomed to assume.
16 Evidently from Epiphanius, Haer. 50. 2.
17 The other passages are in Justin, Trypho 111 (where the arrest of Jesus is dated ἐν ἡμέρᾳ τοῦ Πάσχα. That the Passover evening was clearly reckoned as belonging to the Passover day, see Anatolius of Alexandria in Euseb. H. E. 7. 32. 18); in Iren. Adv. Haer. 4. 10. 1 and in Tert. Adv. Jud. 10. The last two references are excursions into prophecy and cannot be pressed. The important factor in Tertullian's reference is that he thinks that the slaying of the Passover lambs did not coincide with the Passion in point of time. If his phrase prima die azymorum is accurately used, the Passion must have followed the Passover meal.
18 As well as the earlier work of Billerbeck and Dalman (Jesus-Jeshua), I may cite Jeremias's recent treatise, Die Abendmahlsworte Jesu (1935) and Torrey's article in J. B. L., vol. L, 1931, pp. 227–241.
19 As, for instance, by Branscomb in his recent Commentary on Mark in the Moffatt Commentary Series, 1937, p. 252.