A Scientific Examination of the Orthodox Church Calendar

“[…T]he tension between Old Calendar and New Calendar Orthodoxy is by no means an isolated or localized phenomenon[…], and it certainly cannot be reduced to a trivial dispute about the ‘worship of thirteen days,’ as New Calendarist polemics would have it. The notion that the Gregorian Calendar is a ‘necessary corrective’ to the ‘astronomically defective’ Julian Calendar is a pernicious idée reçue perpetuated, unfortunately, even by standard reference works. It is thus all too easy for New Calendarists to set up their straw man of ‘triskaidekemerolatry’ and then knock him down with one blow as superstitiously silly. In fact, the idea that the Church Calendar—the only calendar with Patristic sanction in the Orthodox Church—is scientifically deficient has become so embedded in popular consciousness, that even many of its apologists concede this ‘fact’ in their defenses of the Julian reckoning. Such a concession, however, is wholly unnecessary, for the Church Calendar actually has greater scientific merit than the Gregorian Calendar. Regrettably, this remains one of the ‘best–kept secrets’ in the Orthodox world.” — Foreword