Bede's Ecclesiastical History of EnglandBede, the Venerable, Saint
History
Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England
Bede, the Venerable, Saint
England -- Church history -- 449-1066
“There are then three rules given in the Sacred Writings, whereby the time
of keeping Easter has been appointed for us and may in no wise be changed
by any authority of man; two whereof are divinely established in the law
of Moses; the third is added in the Gospel by reason of the Passion and
Resurrection of our Lord. For the law enjoined, that the Passover should
be kept in the first month of the year, and the third week of that month,
that is, from the fifteenth day to the one-and-twentieth. It is added, by
Apostolic institution, from the Gospel, that we are to wait for the Lord’s
day in that third week, and to keep the beginning of the Paschal season on
the same. Which threefold rule whosoever shall rightly observe, will never
err in fixing the Paschal feast. But if you desire to be more plainly and
fully informed in all these particulars, it is written in Exodus, where
the people of Israel, being about to be delivered out of Egypt, are
commanded to keep the first Passover,(953) that the Lord spake unto Moses
and Aaron, saying, ‘This month shall be unto you the beginning of months;
it shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak ye unto all the
congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall
take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a
lamb for an house.’ And a little after,(954) ‘And ye shall keep it up
until the fourteenth day of the same month; and the whole assembly of the
congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.’ By which words it
most plainly appears, that in the Paschal observance, though mention is
made of the fourteenth day, yet it is not commanded that the Passover be
kept on that day; but on the evening of the fourteenth day, that is, when
the fifteenth moon, which is the beginning of the third week, appears in
the sky, it is commanded that the lamb be killed; and that it was the
night of the fifteenth moon, when the Egyptians were smitten and Israel
was redeemed from long captivity. He says,(955) ‘Seven days shall ye eat
unleavened bread.’ By which words all the third week of that same first
month is appointed to be a solemn feast. But lest we should think that
those same seven days were to be reckoned from the fourteenth to the
twentieth, He forthwith adds,(956) ‘Even the first day ye shall put away
leaven out of your houses; for whosoever eateth leavened bread, from the
first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel;’
and so on, till he says,(957) ‘For in this selfsame day I will bring your
army out of the land of Egypt.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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