Easter and Passover: On Calendars and Group Identity
以复活节与逾越节日历分离为案例，研究社会群体如何通过历法手段表达自身独特性，并探讨早期教会通过时间隔离强化基督徒与犹太人社会区隔的过程。
Based on a case study of the calendrical dissociation of Easter from Passover, this paper examines the way in which social groups use calendrical means to express their distinctiveness vis-a-vis other groups. It explores the early Paschal controversies within the context of the Church's attempts to establish its own unique identity as distinct from the Synagogue, claiming that the temporal segregation of Easter from its Jewish precursor was part of a general effort to emancipate the ecclesiastical calendar from the Jewish calendar and, thus, actually to promote the social segregation of Christians from Jews. The paper demonstrates that, as a symbolic system that is commonly shared by a group of people and is unique to them, the calendar accentuates the similitude among group members-thus solidifying their in-group sentiments-while, at the same time, contributing to the establishment of intergroup boundaries that distinguish, as well as separate, group members from outsiders.