I'm not going to engage in a massive literature search over a dubious premise.Mize said:You're answering my questions with questions.
Mize said:I'm not saying it's inevitably pagan. I'm saying it's most probably... ancient, not even pagan.
You seemed to have just suggested that and what does 'ancient, not even pagan' even mean?
Mize said:"Man, this Jesus guy is alright, but can I still slaughter a goat on X day?"
That's still a big ask because one would need to assume that cities like Antioch and Rome with different cultures, all associated the the Equinox with "rebirth", celebrated it at around the same time and that all Christian communities would have accepted such a proposition. That... would have been unusual.
I could see local popular practices being papered over, but that would have been at a much later date when the Church was stronger and could expect to impose it's will on people. Not when it was a maligned, minority, religious sect born out of a maligned religion.
Some Christians calculated it in relation to the Passover. And how else would you figure out when Jesus died, he was a Jew, as were most of his early followers. It makes sense that they would use their calender.Mize said:Oh, and was it really Jewish? I know that even after the Julian reforms most of the Roman empire still used their own lunar calendar. Was it different from the Jewish one?