“The times of the Birth and Passion of Christ, with such like niceties, being not material to religion, were little regarded by the Christians of the first age. They who began first to celebrate them, placed them in the cardinal periods of the year”

—  Isaac Newton

Vol. I, Ch. 11: Of the Times of the Birth and Passion of Christ
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: The times of the Birth and Passion of Christ, with such like niceties, being not material to religion, were little regarded by the Christians of the first age. They who began first to celebrate them, placed them in the cardinal periods of the year; as the annunciation of the Virgin Mary, on the 25th of March, which when Julius Cæsar corrected the Calendar was the vernal Equinox; the feast of John Baptist on the 24th of June, which was the summer Solstice; the feast of St. Michael on Sept. 29, which was the autumnal Equinox; and the birth of Christ on the winter Solstice, Dec. 25, with the feasts of St. Stephen, St. John and the Innocents, as near it as they could place them. And because the Solstice in time removed from the 25th of December to the 24th, the 23d, the 22d, and so on backwards, hence some in the following centuries placed the birth of Christ on Dec. 23, and at length on Dec. 20: and for the same reason they seem to have set the feast of St. Thomas on Dec. 21, and that of St. Matthew on Sept. 21. So also at the entrance of the Sun into all the signs in the Julian Calendar, they placed the days of other Saints; as the conversion of Paul on Jan. 25, when the Sun entered Aquarius; St. Matthias on Feb. 25, when he entered Pisces; St. Mark on Apr. 25, when he entered Taurus; Corpus Christi on May 26, when he entered Gemini; St. James on July 25, when he entered Cancer; St. Bartholomew on Aug. 24, when he entered Virgo; Simon and Jude on Oct. 28, when he entered Scorpio: and if there were any other remarkable days in the Julian Calendar, they placed the Saints upon them, as St. Barnabas on June 11, where Ovid seems to place the feast of Vesta and Fortuna, and the goddess Matuta; and St. Philip and James on the first of May, a day dedicated both to the Bona Dea, or Magna Mater, and to the goddess Flora, and still celebrated with her rites. All which shews that these days were fixed in the first Christian Calendars by Mathematicians at pleasure, without any ground in tradition; and that the Christians afterwards took up with what they found in the Calendars.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The times of the Birth and Passion of Christ, with such like niceties, being not material to religion, were little rega…" by Isaac Newton?
Isaac Newton photo
Isaac Newton 171
British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern c… 1643–1727

Related quotes

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it's not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

As quoted by William Rees-Mogg in The Times [London] (4 April 2005) {not found}. Gandhi here makes reference to a statement of Jesus: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 16:13); also partly quoted in Christianity in the Crosshairs: Real Life Solutions Discovered in the Line of Fire (2004, p. 74 books.google http://books.google.de/books?id=I7_5OM2VWuMC&pg=PA74) by Bill Wilson.
A variation is found in Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal & Gandhi Research Foundation's website mkgandhi.org http://www.mkgandhi.org/africaneedsgandhi/gandhi's_message_to_christians.htm. Christian missionary E. Stanley Jones, who spent much time with Gandhi in India, is said to have askedː “Mr Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is it that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?". To this, Gandhi is said to have repliedː “Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It is just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ”. Jones would write a book called " Mahatma Gandhi: An Interpretation https://archive.org/details/mahatmagandhiani000019mbp" (1948), where he included excerpts of his personal correspondance with Gandhi, but he did not include this conversation.
No further sources for Gandhi have been yet found; but a similar quote is attributed to Bara Dadaː "Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians -- you are not like him." Source - Jones, E. Stanley. The Christ of the Indian Road, New York: The Abingdon Press,1925. (Page 114)
Disputed

Martin Heidegger photo

“Form displays the relation [to beings] itself as the state of original comportment toward beings, the festive state in which the being itself in its essence is celebrated and thus for the first time placed in the open.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

Source: Nietzsche (1961), p. 119

“Within a short time after the alleged crucifixion of the Master Jesus - at any rate from the time when the Christian Scriptures began to have circulation in the Mediterranean world - and all through the Middle Ages and till nearly our own days, men quarreled and fought about the documents composing the Christian New Testament, not only with regard to just what these documents had to say, but about mere words and phrases, and also as regards their age, and as regards who wrote these various Christian Scriptures.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Story of Jesus (1938), Chapter 1

Harun Yahya photo

“Some Muslims imagine that being against Christians' celebrations during Christmas that take place once a year is a great way of striving on the path of God. Instead of being false heroes on that day, they should preach religion all through the year and talk about Islam and preach the miracles of the Qur’an.”

Harun Yahya (1956) Turkish author

30 December 2013.
A9 TV addresses, 2013

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religion, even at times with Christianity. The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland's great line in the Chanson: 'Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Surprised by Joy

Surprised by Joy (1955)

Robert Maynard Hutchins photo

“The Great Conversation began before the beginnings of experimental science. But the birth of the Conversation and the birth of science were simultaneous. The earliest of the pre-Socratics were investigating and seeking to understand natural phenomena; among them were men who used mathematical notions for this purpose. Even experimentation is not new; it has been going on for hundreds of years. But faith in experimentation as an exclusive method is a modern manifestation. … It is now regarded in some quarters … as the sole method of obtaining knowledge of any kind.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

“Christ, addressing Himself to the labourers of His time, proclaimed for the first time the worthiness both in material and a spiritual sense of all work.”

Eric Roll, Baron Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005) British economist

Source: A History of Economic Thought (1939), Chapter I, The Beginnings, p. 41 ( See also.. 1 Corinthians 3 - 9.. KJV )

Felix Frankfurter photo

“In the first place, lawyers better remember they are human beings, and a human being who hasn't his periods of doubts and distresses and disappointments must be a cabbage, not a human being. That is number one.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Reported in Proceedings in honor of Mr. Justice Frankfurter and distinguished alumni at the meeting of the Council, Harvard Law School Association in Cambridge, April 30, 1960.
Other writings

Voltaire photo

“You have already heard that the Quakers date their epoch from Christ, who, according to them, was the first Quaker.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

The History of the Quakers (1762)
Context: You have already heard that the Quakers date their epoch from Christ, who, according to them, was the first Quaker. Religion, say they, was corrupted almost immediately after His death, and remained in that state of corruption about sixteen hundred years. But there were always a few of the faithful concealed in the world, who carefully preserved the sacred fire, which was extinguished in all but themselves; till at length this light shone out in England in 1642.
It was at the time when Great Britain was distracted by intestine wars, which three or four sects had raised in the name of God, that one George Fox, a native of Leicestershire, and son of a silk-weaver, took it into his head to preach the Word, and, as he pretended, with all the requisites of a true apostle; that is, without being able either to read or write. He was a young man, about twenty-five years of age, of irreproachable manners, and religiously mad. He was clad in leather from head to foot, and travelled from one village to another, exclaiming against the war and the clergy.

“As long as we are celebrating a woman vice chancellor because she is the first or a woman chief judge because she is the first, then we have not arrived. We look forward to the time when we will have many women in such positions and we will be celebrating so many of them.”

Grace Alele-Williams (1932–2022) mathematician

Source: https://www.agnesscott.edu/lriddle/women/williams.html Prof. Grace in an interview in THISDAY Online, November 16, 2004.

Related topics