{"id":14149,"date":"2015-02-17T17:11:40","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T17:11:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=14149"},"modified":"2015-02-17T17:11:40","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T17:11:40","slug":"the-annals-of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-11-part-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2015\/02\/17\/the-annals-of-eutychius-of-alexandria-10th-c-ad-chapter-11-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"The Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c. AD) \u2013 chapter 11 (part 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next chunk of the 10th century Arabic Christian Annals<\/span> of Sa`id ibn Bitriq \/ Eutychius begins with words that indicate that the text as we have it has been re-edited at a later time<\/em>.\u00a0 We’re still wading through dull\u00a0twaddle about the Council of Nicaea.<\/em><\/p>\n

12. Sa`id Ibn Batriq, the doctor, said: “I wanted to know on what day of the week Our Lord Jesus Christ was born,\u00a0on what day was crucified, and in which months of the year these days took place (35). After careful research and having compared the years, I discovered that he was born on the twelfth of the solar cycle, in [9] of the number of the lunar cycle. The epact of the\u00a0sun was one, and that of the moon [28]. Now December 1 was a Saturday, and the first of K\u012bhak was a Tuesday.\u00a0 Thus\u00a0our Lord Jesus Christ was born on December twenty-fifth, that is the twenty-ninth of K\u012bhak and the day of the glorious birth of Christ our Lord was a Tuesday.\u00a0 The day\u00a0he was baptized\u00a0is then found in fourteen of the number of the cycle of the sun and in nineteen of the number of the cycle of the moon.\u00a0 And\u00a0the epact of the\u00a0sun was three and a half and\u00a0a quarter, while that of the moon was [11]. The first of\u00a0January was then a Thursday, and the first of the month of T\u016bbah was a Saturday.\u00a0 His glorious baptism took place on Tuesday, January 6th, therefore,\u00a0i.e. on\u00a0the eleventh of\u00a0T\u016bbah.\u00a0 The day of his saving crucifixion fell on nineteen of the number of the cycle of the sun and in fourteen of the number of the cycle of the moon. The epact of the sun was seven and a half, as the moon was [14]. The first of March was then a Thursday and the first of the month of Baramh\u0101t a Sunday. The Passover of the Jews then happened on Thursday March 22nd, i.e. twenty-sixth of Baramh\u0101t. This means that our Lord Jesus Christ ate the Passover with his disciples on Thursday, was crucified on Friday March 23rd,\u00a0i.e. 27\u00a0Baramh\u0101t, and rose again on Sunday March 25,\u00a0i.e. the twenty-ninth of Baramh\u0101t (36).\u00a0 The Christians, however, as we have said, celebrated the feast of the Baptism, and began to fast\u00a0from the\u00a0end\u00a0[of that feast-day]\u00a0for the forty-day period after which they broke their fast, and celebrated their Passover when the Jews did, the day on which they stopped fasting.\u00a0 After\u00a0the three hundred and eighteen Fathers forbade them to do\u00a0this, and arranged that Easter for Christians\u00a0should be celebrated on the Sunday following that of the Jews, thus forbidding them to celebrate it together with them\u00a0or before them,\u00a0and taking care\u00a0to celebrate it always after the Passover of the Jews.<\/p>\n

They forbade bishops\u00a0to have a wife. This is because\u00a0from the time of the apostles\u00a0to the council of three hundred and eighteen of them, they had wives,\u00a0and if anyone of them was made bishop and\u00a0was married, the\u00a0wife was left with him and was not sent away, except for the patriarchs: as, in fact,\u00a0those without a wife never elected as patriarch one that was married.”<\/p>\n

13.\u00a0As for\u00a0Alexander, he deprived of the patriarchal dignity Ash\u012bll\u0101 his companion, who had been patriarch of Alexandria before him, for he welcomed Arius and contravened what his master, the martyr Peter, patriarch of Alexandria, had told him to do.<\/p>\n

As for the three hundred and eighteen, they\u00a0each returned to their homes\u00a0with great honour. King Constantine issued three edicts (37):\u00a0in the first he required\u00a0the tearing down of idols and putting to death all those who worshiped them;\u00a0in the second he provided that\u00a0rhetoric was limited to children of Christians and that only they\u00a0might be\u00a0designated as prefects and generals, and he ordered that the third Friday in Easter and\u00a0after\u00a0people should refrain from work and war. King Constantine commissioned Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, to search for the site of the tomb and the Cross and to build churches there (38).<\/p>\n

14. Helena, mother of Constantine, said: “I made a vow to go to Jerusalem, to find the holy places and rebuild them”.\u00a0 Constantine then gave her a lot of money and Helena, together with Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, went to Jerusalem with the intent to seek the Cross.\u00a0 Finding the place, Helena collected a hundred men from among the Jews who lived in Jerusalem and Galilee, and\u00a0she\u00a0selected ten.\u00a0 Of\u00a0these she\u00a0chose three, one of whom was called Judas. She asked them to indicate the [holy] places but they refused saying: “We do not know anything of this place.”\u00a0 [Helena]\u00a0had them\u00a0thrown in a dry water well and left them there for seven days, without food or water.\u00a0 The one\u00a0of them who was called Judas told his companions that his father had shown him one day the places that the woman wanted to know from them, and\u00a0which his father had\u00a0learned from\u00a0his grandfather. Then the two cried out from the well, were pulled out and told Helena that Judas had told them. Helena gave orders to whip him until he decided to confess\u00a0his knowledge of\u00a0the places.\u00a0 They went out together and he led them to the place where they found the Sepulchre and the Cranion, now reduced to a\u00a0great garbage dump. Then [Judas] prayed saying: “Lord God, if this is the place where is located the\u00a0Sepulchre and\u00a0the ground shakes violently, and fire comes out\u00a0because of this, I shall believe.”\u00a0 The ground shuddered, there came out a fragrant smoke and the man believed.\u00a0 Helena then ordered\u00a0area of earth\u00a0that covered it to be removed, and there came to light the Sepulchre and Cranion and three crosses were found.\u00a0 Helena said: “How will we know which of these three crosses was that of Christ the Lord?” There was, near there, a man suffering from a serious illness, of which he despaired\u00a0that he could be\u00a0healed. On him were laid the first and second crosses, but he was not cured and only when the third cross was laid on did the patient get up, completely healed (39). Helena realized then that this was the cross of Christ, our Lord, to be exposed to the veneration [of the faithful].\u00a0 She enclosed it\u00a0in a case of gold, and took it with her, along with everything that had been buried, and that had belonged to Christ our Lord, to bring everything to Constantine, her son.\u00a0 She had\u00a0built the Church of the Resurrection, built Golgotha, and the church of Constantine, and leaving, ordered Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, to build other churches. This happened in the twenty-second year of the reign of Constantine. From the birth of Christ, our Lord, to the finding of the Cross had passed three hundred years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The next chunk of the 10th century Arabic Christian Annals of Sa`id ibn Bitriq \/ Eutychius begins with words that indicate that the text as we have it has been re-edited at a later time.\u00a0 We’re still wading through dull\u00a0twaddle about the Council of Nicaea. 12. Sa`id Ibn Batriq, the doctor, said: “I wanted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[672],"class_list":["post-14149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-eutychius"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}