Yes, I know the monthly calendars above are difficult to read but the first month says 'February' and the second month (in the gaudy Irish green) says 'March.' Yes I drew them from 2007 but the point is still the same. In 2007 March 25th fell on a Sunday as it did in the year of the Passion.
Now I know that tradition says that the Alexandrian Easter moved as the first moon of Nisan changed each year. I am not sure yet whether or not this was actually true. I just happen to be quite certain that this was how the Alexandrians must have understood the liturgical year looked in the year of the Passion (and how the liturgical year looked every nineteen years thereafter).
I have spent a lot of time developing the original understanding of what the heretical festival called 'the redemption' (which appears in the writings of Irenaeus and others who followed him) must have looked like. I have based my calculations on Exodus 13 and the Pidyon Haben ritual which developed out of it and which I think was seminal in the development of both the gospel and the original Lenten festival.
I only want to demonstrate that when you count thirty days from February 23rd (now the feast day of Polycarp but originally - I have argued - associated with St. Mark) you end up exactly on March 25th the traditional Alexandrian date for Easter Sunday (and reflected in countless witnesses outside of Alexandria too).
This is exactly how the Pidyon Haben was counted too.
Notice also that February 23rd the former day of St. Mark also falls on a Friday, the sixth day of the week.
Remember what Macarius of Memphis told us about Alexandrian tradition before the meddling hands of the Byzantines:
It was thus that there was introduced a custom to please the people and the rule of the see of Mark the Evangelist was changed. They knew not that touching this day, and on it, there were numerous virtues, mysteries and interpretations. And this because it is the consummation of the sacred quarantine and is the day of the fast. It is told that this is the day on which the Lord Christ baptized his disciples. This is the sixth day of the week, figure of the sixth millenary, on which God the Word was incarnate and delivered Adam and his posterity from the domination of the enemy over them and freed them from his enslavement. And it became the day of baptism. This is why the patriarch of Alexandria performed it on the consecration of the chrism, which is the oil of the balm, and of the oil of gladness, which is the olive, and of the water of baptism and he baptized then the people of every land.
We have since demonstrated that the Alexandrians kept a fast on the sixth day which extended into the seventh thus connecting them with the Marcionites.
I just wanted the reader to have something to look at as we develop what the original Lenten festival in Alexandria looked like and its connection with Secret Mark. I should mention also that the same pattern can be reconstructed using the Coptic months of the year (which are all thirty days long) given the fact that what is now Polycarp's feast day is exactly thirty days from Easter Sunday (the extra two days added to Polycarp's day compensate for February only having twenty eight days).
I just couldn't find an easily downloadable Coptic calendar ...
