Every year much of the world sees the observance of Easter, which is normally in April but sometimes falls in late March. The origins of the name “Easter” are much more obscure than many realize. According to a Got Questions article (retrieved 4/13/2022): “and paraphrased” [Bede, a monk and historian who lived in the eighth century, stated that April, called Eosturmonath in parts of Europe, was named for Eostre, the goddess of spring, celebrated by Northern European Saxons. Along with this is a theory that the symbol for Eostre was the hare (a fertility symbol) and that a festival was celebrated by these Saxons during the spring equinox, which they called Eastre. It is thought that Bede extrapolated this name from the name of the month, since no evidence of Eostre worship has been found. Likewise, the German folklorist Jacob Grimm, in doing his research in the nineteenth century on the German name for Easter, Ostern (Ostara in Old High German), admitted that while he could find no solid link between Easter and the celebrations of pagans, still assumed that Ostara probably was the name of a German goddess.]
The use of Easter eggs is more obviously Christian, contrary to what some believers have been told. It is known that the egg is an ancient symbol of new life. It is true that eggs have been associated with spring pagan festivals, but for Christians, Easter eggs are supposed to represent Jesus Christ’s emergence from the tomb and His resurrection. One ancient tradition was staining such eggs red, commemorating the blood that Christ shed for us. Green and yellow were other colors used.
Today we dye Easter eggs in many colors, and of course there are many, many candy Easter eggs and bunnies, including chocolate, which are manufactured en masse to meet the high demand for them. There are numerous other traditions and customs associated with Easter, but that is not the purpose of this blog. In concluding this line of thought, every Easter, just like at other holidays such as Christmas, there are the legalists who complain that Christians have appropriated a pagan holiday in celebrating Easter. There are others who think we should still worship on the Sabbath (Saturday) instead of Sunday, and that the Catholic Church changed the Sabbath to Sunday. I get so sick of hearing all this bellyaching and nonsense! Let’s put aside all this spurious griping and focus on what (and Whom) Easter—Resurrection Day—is really about.
In the book of Genesis we learn of Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High, who shared bread and wine with Abram (Abraham) (Genesis 14:18-20). Melchizedek was a type (foreshadow) of Christ (Hebrews 6:13–7:28). What he served Abram portrayed the memorial meal that Christ and His disciples ate at the Last Supper (Luke 22:17-20). In the ancient Middle East, a memorial meal was eaten as part of the sealing of a blood covenant. In Christ a new covenant (testament) was sealed in His blood, so the taking of bread and wine (what we call Communion) was absolutely fitting. But there is more to it than that. The events that befell Christ in the last few days leading up to His death happened during a weeklong holy festival called Passover.
Passover originated with Moses and the ancient Israelites as they were about to leave Egypt. In the book of Exodus, God sends a total of ten plagues upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Stubbornly this hardened pagan leader refused to let Moses and the Israelites go free. The tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, was the one that stung Pharaoh hard enough to finally let them go. Every firstborn in Egypt, whether of man or of beast, would be killed as the Lord passed through the land during the night. God instituted the Passover holiday and feast, and instructed the Israelite households to each take a lamb, kill it, take a hyssop branch, and mark the door posts and lintel (top crossbeam of the doorway) with the lamb’s blood. That way, the Israelites would be protected from this plague (Exodus 11:1–13:16).
Once each year, the Passover was to be observed. To this day the orthodox Jews still do, and so do Messianic Jews (those born Jewish but who accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior), although the sacrificing of lambs is no longer practiced. Attempts to bring back these sacrifices in Israel have been unsuccessful as of this writing (April 2022). On the Jewish calendar, the Passover lambs were selected on the tenth of the month Nisan and killed on the fourteenth of that month.
Jews use a lunisolar calendar, a moon-based calendar with an extra month added between February and March seven times in every 19-year lunar cycle to keep the calendar in step with the seasons of the solar year. Therefore the dates of the Passover activities “move around” relative to our calendar, but they are always on the same dates in the Jewish calendar. Jesus made what is called the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on the tenth of Nisan in 30 AD, which in that year was on “the first day of the week” (Sunday). This, and other Scriptures, lead us to the conclusion that Jesus was crucified on a Thursday, not a Friday.
Most scholars put Christ’s crucifixion in either 30 or 33 AD, pointing out that in those years Nisan 14 would have been on a Friday. When going that far back in time, however, and given the fact that there were various calendars in use then, including the then-relatively new Julian calendar, it can be hard to calculate events down to precise dates, and some authorities have uncovered evidence that the phase of the moon could have been right for 14 Nisan to fall on a Thursday in 30 AD and only in that year in the time frame most scholars accept for Christ’s crucifixion. Since the Scriptures are inerrant, they are our guide.
The Gospel of John points out that the day of the crucifixion was the Preparation Day (John 19:14), the day that the Passover lambs would be killed, and the time that Jesus died on the cross, the ninth hour (3 PM) was the precise time that these lambs were being killed, hence the fact that our Lord is known as the Lamb of God. Just as the timing of the Triumphal Entry is agreed on, so is the day of his resurrection—early on Sunday morning. Later that same Sunday, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, before recognizing the risen Christ, told Him of the crucifixion and that it was three days ago (Luke 24:13-24).
This is important. The Jews reckon a day as being from sunset to sunset. Jesus died on Thursday afternoon and rose at the dawning of Sunday morning. He had told the Jews that just as Jonah was in the fish’s belly three days and three nights, He would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:38-40). In the Thursday afternoon to Sunday morning time line you have the three days and three nights: Thursday day-Friday before sunrise, Friday day-Saturday before sunrise, and Saturday day-Sunday before sunrise.
Despite these facts, it is clear that Jesus and His disciples had already eaten the Passover (Matthew 26:17-21; Mark 14:12-18; Luke 22:7-16). There is an explanation, though. In anticipating His death, Jesus may have wanted to go ahead and celebrate the Passover with His disciples. Since He is God, He had the authority to observe it early. Sometimes the whole timeframe of the Passover festival was called Passover. More than one sacrificial meal (Chagigah) could be eaten, so this could have been what they ate. Again, the Scriptures are our guide, so instead of being contradictory there is, as always, an underlying explanation tying them all together.
In sorting through all this we find there were two Sabbaths, as there always is during Passover: The Passover feast day Sabbath and the regular Sabbath. The way it worked out in 30 AD, they were on consecutive days, Friday and Saturday. There was a special urgency on the part of Joseph of Arimathea to get Jesus’s body back from the Romans and get Him into a tomb—his own new tomb—before the Sabbaths kicked off, and they were apparently successful (Luke 23:50-56). The Jews, remembering that Jesus said He would rise after three days, asked Pontius Pilate to secure the tomb so His disciples could not steal the body and claimed He had risen. Pilate granted their request, so the Jews utilized some guards to seal and watch the tomb (Matthew 27:62-66). Indeed, once the tomb was found empty the Jews did claim Christ’s body had been stolen (Matthew 28:11-15), but we know the truth: Jesus Christ rose from the grave on the third day, and He lives. Hallelujah!
In making a new covenant Christ, in effect, made a new faith. The old covenant satisfied in Judaism was annulled. Now, it is faith in Jesus that saves us. The Jews are still God’s chosen people, but they, like everyone else, have to be saved, and remember, Jesus is their promised Messiah (Romans 11:1-2a, 3:9; Matthew 1:18-23; John 3:16-17, 4:25-26). Still, many of the very first Christians were converts from Judaism, and prior to the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD there was maybe not so much a sense of connectedness to the old faith as there was a realization of what Judaism had pointed to: The coming of the Savior. Early Christian artifacts indicate the use of a fish symbol for Christianity, as well as a symbol combining a cross and a menorah (branched temple lampstand). It was not until after the legalization of Christianity in the early 300’s that the cross became the symbol of our faith. Over the course of time, there began to be a distinction in the Passover observance, apart from the sacrificial system, of course, Christ being the once-for-all sacrifice for us.
Among a number of believers in the very early church, as in the first century and into the second century, in a tradition that may have derived from the Apostle John according to Polycarp, one of John’s disciples, Nisan 14 was celebrated as Passover for Christians. As time went on, in addition to the fact that there was a growing groundswell of anti-Semitism among believers, sentiment grew for the observance of this day on Sunday—Resurrection Day. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD decreed that there should be independence from the Jewish calendar and uniformity throughout the world in observance of Easter. However, there were no explicit rules mentioned on how to compute the date, so there were variations in the early Christian world on when Easter was kept. Several centuries later, in the 600’s AD, the system we know today was adopted, with the observance of Easter falling on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. That is why the date of Easter changes for us each year. Because the Orthodox churches still use the Julian calendar as their ecclesiastical calendar, their dates for Easter, Christmas, and so on are slightly out of sync with the dates we use on the Gregorian calendar.
After Christ’s resurrection a common greeting among Christians was “He is risen,” answered with, “He is risen, indeed.” The Catholics did not change the Sabbath date to Sunday. Even in the Bible we find instances of Christians meeting together on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7; 1 Corinthians 16:1-2). As Gentiles we were not subject to the Jewish ceremonial laws to begin with, and we are not subject to them now since we, as Christians, are under a new covenant, though Seventh-day Adventists and Messianic Jews worship on Saturday rather than Sunday. In the spirit of the early Christians, we should remember the fact of Christ’s resurrection—He is risen indeed—period. Not just on Easter Sunday, not just on Sundays overall, but every day. Because He lives, we have hope. Because Jesus died for our sins, shedding His blood for us, and because He conquered death, rising from the grave, we have eternal life if we put our faith in Him.
It is important to know the real facts of Passion Week—what happened, when things happened, and so forth. Too often we have inherited traditions passed on as the truth, such as Good Friday, which, in fact, are not true, so we need to know what the reality was. Even beyond that, however, it is absolutely vital to know Him, Jesus Christ, as your Lord and Savior. On Resurrection Day we have a special commemoration of what Jesus did for us. On every Sunday we gather together to worship Him corporately. Every day of our lives, we remember and rejoice, knowing He is risen, and that one day He is coming back for us. Amen.
1 Timothy 3:16: And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen by angels, preached among the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18: But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
