Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 151, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1919 — LARGELY BASED ON FANCY [ARTICLE]

LARGELY BASED ON FANCY

Dates of World’s Most Momentous Events Conceded to Have No Historical Accuracy. Christian antiquity, against all astronomical possibility, recognized the 25th of March as the actual day of Christ’s death. The opinion that the incarnation also took place on that date is founded on tt Cyprianlc work, “De Pascha Computus.” It argues that the coming of Christ apd his death must have coincided with tpe creation and fall of Adam. And since the world was created in spring, the Savior was also coficeived, and died shortly after the . equinox of spring. Similar calculations are found in the early and later middle ages, and to them, no doubt, the dates of the feast of the Annunciation and of Christmas owe their origin. Consequently the ancient martyrologists assigned to this date the creation of Adam, the crucifixion. the fall of Lucifer* the passing of Israel through the Red sea and the immolation of Isaac. The festival of the Annunciation Is now kept on March 25. which, for a long period, was the beginning of the legal year in England. The earliest authentic evidence of the celebration of the Anouncement by the Angel to the Virgin that she was to conceive and bear a son is in a canon of the council of Toledo, held in 656.