I am glad Bernard A. Vassallo (March 10) is now appreciating the inherent difficulty in correlating various dates during the centuries and religions. The major pitfall is that he is using the Gregorian calendar to decide dates according to the Hebrew calculations. The Hebrew calendar has had many substantial changes during the Jewish history and is very complex, even for the Jews themselves. The present Hebrew calendar cannot be used to calculate Biblical dates because new moon dates may be in error by up to four days, and up to four months. This accounts for the irregular intercalation (adding of extra months) that was performed in three successive years in the early second century (according to the Talmud).

Today's generation can easily appreciate these problems. Easter had started as the Jewish feast of Passover.

The date of Easter was established by the First Council of Nicaea (325) which decreed that the major Christian festival had to fall on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon following the vernal equinox. Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on March 21 (regardless of the astronomically correct date), and the "full moon" is not necessarily the astronomically correct date.

The date of Easter, therefore, varies between March 22 and April 25, a variance of 34 days. In contrast to this, the eastern Christians still base their calculations on the Julian calendar whose March 21 corresponds, during the 21st century, to April 3 in the Gregorian calendar, in which calendar their celebration of Easter therefore varies between April 4 and May 8. Thus taken at extremes, there could be a variance of more than 13 days between the two Christian calculations and in turn gives a practical example of the variances between calendars.

Certain apologists consider the reference to the "fast" as of great importance. One must appreciate that the writer Luke could very well have been two different persons. In any case, the Acts of the Apostles were written for the Jews and the Greeks. To Luke, the Maltese were barbarians and therefore very little importance was given to such races. I wish the readers would appreciate that no one particular word should be taken out of context.

In scientific research one starts with known or easily identified facts. The most clear-cut reference is the date when Paul arrived in Syracuse. This is quoted to be May 28 (according to the Julian calendar). Therefore with correction to the present calendar, this would be approximately May 15. Thus if Paul sailed from Malta around May 10, at most he would have been in Syracuse by this known date.

Finally, I must stress that not even the most learned scholars would ever dream of interpreting the Jewish calendar of the first century as its details have been lost and, unless resurrected by some archaeological discovery, it is impossible to correlate it with the present dates.

These are the facts as known to date.