The Adaptation of the Quartodecimian Festival of Unleavened Bread in the Account of Victor in the Liber Pontificalis

I have been arguing here that the original understanding of the Resurrection had it occur on 21 Nisan. It is well established that Origen knew of this understanding and the argument is unmistakable in the Marcionite version of our letter to the Corinthians (in the Marcionite canon - 'the letter to the Alexandrians'). I have discovered that many academic papers have already anticipated my discovery of the existence of a 'Christian festival of Unleavened Bread' (which is strangely both reassuring and disappointing!). Yet no one seems to have uncovered this one.

Eusebius makes clear that Irenaeus was key to reconciling the Quartodecimianists to the habit of others who always celebrated Easter on Sunday. I don't know what we can make of anything related to Irenaeus and the Commodian Era. But have a look at what is written in the Liber Pontificalis about the compromise during the reign of Commodus:

He [Victor] instituted an inquiry among the clergy concerning the cycle of Easter and the Lord's Day for Easter and he gathered together the priests and the bishops. Then Theophilus bishop of Alexandria was questioned and in the assembly it was decided that the Lord's Day between the 14th day of the moon in the first month and the twenty first day of the moon should be kept as the Holy Feast of Easter. [Book of Popes p. 19]

What I find so interesting about this is (a) it reflects the exact situation Eusebius cites from Irenaeus' writings (i.e. that the exact 'orthodoxy' of Easter calculation was not yet determined - at least from the Roman chair) (b) that the Alexandrian Church was made to accommodate themselves to this new orthodoxy (c) that the Roman practice of celebrating Easter on Sunday was colliding with (at least according to the Liber Pontificalis) the Alexandrian practice of celebrating a 'Christian' Festival of Unleavened Bread where (at least traditionally) baptism must have been celebrated on 21 Nisan (just as Origen declares).

The more I look at it the more I think that Schenke's point that LGM 1 (the first addition mentioned in Secret Mark) was - like the story of the Transfiguration with its 'after six days' - originally conceived by Mark as a 'preview' of the Resurrection, now certainly identified (at least in Alexandria) as the seventh day Festival of Unleavened Bread, the day the Apostle uses to introduce baptism in relation to the crossing of the Red Sea.

I think Origen's language in Peri Pascha is decisive on this point for he speaks of two weeks - one before, the other after (it must be imagined) the fourteenth of Nisan each as 'creation' weeks, one 'invisible,' the other 'visible.' This seems to reflect the LXX (and SP) idea that God completed his work on the sixth day even though a seven day week is still inferred.