heaven, whenever they celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany they would, on the very next day, begin a fast of forty days and would break it in the same manner our Lord Jesus the Messiah had done. For when our Lord the Messiah was baptized in the Jordan he withdrew into the wilderness and remained there fasting for forty days, and whenever the Jews proclaimed their Passover the Christians would observe their Pascha at the same time.

Accordingly, those patriarchs devised a calculation for Pascha so that the Christians would fast forty days and break their fast on the day of Pascha, thereby bringing their joy to completion.

I say: It is related of the Messiah that, after He had fasted forty days following His baptism, He used to celebrate the Jewish feast together with the Jews and did not hold a festival immediately after His fast. The Christians followed Him in this for a period: they would fast forty days after the Epiphany—which corresponds to the baptism—and then celebrate the feast together with the Jews.

Later on, however, they innovated a change in the fast: they no longer fasted immediately after the Epiphany but moved the fast to a time when their festival would coincide with that of the Jews—namely, the Pascha of the Messiah, which is the time of His resurrection from the tomb.

He said: King Marcus died, and after him Commodus Caesar ruled in Rome for twelve years. During his reign, in the land of the Greeks, in the city of Aphragamis, there lived Galen the sage, master of the medical art, and Galen states in the catalogue of his works that he brought up King Commodus.