By Andrew Hodkinson
When Yeshua said, ‘It is written’ there can be little doubt that these were revolutionary words. It was a challenge to religious authority to come back to scripture, which sadly challenged some of their unlawful traditions. This teacher from Nazareth would eventually be deemed by the Jewish establishment a ‘heretic’ needed to be slain for the sake of the people. To them, these words were leaven needing to be purged from the Jewish nation as He boldly stated that the talmudic traditions of their elders had no right to ever negate the commandments of God. For challenging their traditions of racism, elitism and religious pride, Yeshua would be scourged with the cat of nine tails. The envy of many would mean this did not suffice and so that ancient Jewish throng would fight for Him to be crucified as well. Religious clergy may have everything to do with the scriptures as they should, but we must remember a lesson from history – you are in dangerous territory when challenging religious traditions.
Christians have forever pointed to this stumbling block of the Jewish nation with many casting judgments over the centuries. Yet, as Messiah taught the reflective nature of our faith, surely believers should not be so concerned with the speck in their brother’s eye and ask whether there is a glaring plank blinding our own eyes towards our own traditions. Two thousand years have passed since ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ and the question arises as to whether our religious leaders are concerned with their own traditions being biblical. How does Christianity shape up to what is ‘written’? Does it even matter for us or was this just a standard that Messiah would keep Judaism accountable to?
Growing up in the church, the most meaningful tradition I inherited from my Protestant parents was that of the long Easter weekend. I am sure that this would be no different to those raised in the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Church. Sure, Christmas has the glitz and glamour, but in a deep spiritual sense, the death, burial and resurrection of the Messiah will always be a highlight of our walk. It is the crescendo of the gospel accounts and that which ties our love to Yeshua – a lamb slain from the foundation of the earth and the one who conquered the grave. The tradition is beautiful, it is meaningful, it has depth to life’s very meaning, but I’m sure in the first century the Jews felt no different about their traditions that apparently forsook scripture. The important question remains – Are our traditions built on what was written down or just a commandment of men wandering away from scripture? As Paul would highlight concerning the eventual falling away of all traditions that are not consistent with the word.
Col 2:22 Which all are to perish with the using;) after the commandments and doctrines of men?
The Easter holiday tradition is overdue for a re-examination and when holding traditions to the light of the word, we don’t have far to look. Truth is, Easter as a title for the holy season of our redemption is a peculiar English word to choose. Most Westerners don’t realise that our use of the word Easter in the anglosphere and missionised lands is nothing like the word used by the broader Church. In terms of ‘it is written’, well let’s be honest… it isn’t. There is no underlying holiday in all of the New Testament that has a Greek form of Easter. The King James Version has blatantly added it once incorrectly, but fortunately since then all translations have abandoned this error. Even an old British monk understood Easter’s unique use among Saxon people.
“Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.” (The Complete Works of Venerable Bede, Bd. VI, London 1843 Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CXXIII B, Bedae Venerabilis Opera, Bd. VI,2, Turnhout 1977)
I would perhaps have asked the Venerable Bede to rather call it ‘the time honoured name of the old pagan observance’. Whatever the case, Easter is related to the indo-european word *aus-, related to words like ‘austra’ or ‘east’ and the goddess Eostre was thus connected to the dawn and the eastern rising of the sun.
The Old English Ēostre is therefore a distant cognate of numerous other dawn goddesses attested among Indo-European-speaking peoples, including Uṣás, Ēṓs, and Aurōra. In the words of the Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, “a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn is supported both by the evidence of cognate names and the similarity of mythic representation of the dawn goddess among various Indo-European groups. (Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 1-884964-98-2.)
The use of pagan names for months is nothing new, Aprilis was a goddess and the Jews have many months in their religious calendar related to the religion of Babylon. However, although the Jews may have acquired a month named after Semaramis’ son Tammuz who was the sun god Nimrod reincarnated, they would never change a biblical holiday’s name and call it Tammuz just because it happens in that Babylonian month! That would be patently wrong and yet the English (and Germanic cousins) strangely didn’t just keep their holiday in the original pagan month name of Eostre, but they then chose to assert the name of that month onto the scriptural holidays of that time. Bizarre.
Fortunately the Venerable Bede points us to a more biblical expression when speaking of the ‘Paschal month’. This is in keeping with the Catholic and Orthodox traditions which refer to this time as pascha, which is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew pesach translated by Tyndale as ‘passover’. The connection between the pagan Eostremonath and the Paschal month is only due to the season of spring; the Saxon rituals of Easter otherwise have nothing else in connection with scripture.
The scriptural month of Passover is described in this manner:
Deu 16:1-2 Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the LORD thy God: for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night. Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the LORD thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD shall choose to place his name there.
The month of the pascha (passover) was biblically in the month of Abib and in the Northern Hemisphere it was always at the end of winter and the beginning of Spring. A good Hebrew translation for Abib is a young ear (of grain) and pointed specifically to a stage of development of barley and such grains that grow naturally in the Middle East at this time. The Jews in time would call the month of Abib – Nisan, after their sojourn in Babylon, but would never think of calling the Hebrew pesach or the Greek pascha – Nisan. The only connection with Nisan was that the original Abib was in this same Babylonian month of spring. Nisan otherwise has nothing to do with Passover and certainly it would be folly to ever rename Passover – Nisan. Yet, even though the evidence shows that Easter is no translation of the Greek pascha, the Church blatantly uses it again and again thinking that this is a legitimate translation of pascha. It is high time we ditch this tradition.
The next question to explore is the meaning of pascha and the church traditions surrounding it. The Church’s has a long tradition concerning the pascha that was expressed in Eusebius’ writings in this way:
And first of all, it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. For we have it in our power, if we abandon their custom, to prolong the due observance of this ordinance to future ages, by a truer order, which we have preserved from the very day of the passion until the present time. Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way… Beloved brethren, let us with one consent adopt this course, and withdraw ourselves from all participation in their baseness… being altogether ignorant of the true adjustment of this question, they sometimes celebrate Pascha twice in the same year. Why then should we follow those who are confessedly in grievous error? Surely we shall never consent to keep this feast a second time in the same year… It is, then, plainly the will of Divine Providence (as I suppose you all clearly see), that this usage should receive fitting correction, and be reduced to one uniform rule. (Eusebius (1890a). Philip Schaff; Henry Wace (eds.). Life of Constantine. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series. Vol. 1. Translated by Ernest Cushing Richardson. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co.)
It is clear that the Protestant Church, the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Church have a strong tradition that it was ‘the will of Divine Providence’ that they must change the pascha of the Jews and do it according to a ‘truer order’ that required ‘a different way’. The Church was told that this was ‘received from the Saviour’ Himself and that all believers were to keep ‘one uniform rule’ in this regard.
Let us examine the pascha of the Jews that comes from scripture to understand the different Church tradition:
Exo 12:6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.
Lev 23:5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover.
Num 9:5 And they kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month at even in the wilderness of Sinai: according to all that the LORD commanded Moses, so did the children of Israel.
Num 28:16 And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the passover of the LORD.
Jos 5:10 And the children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and kept the passover on the fourteenth day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho.
2Ch 30:15 Then they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the second month and the priests and the Levites were ashamed, and sanctified themselves, and brought in the burnt offerings into the house of the LORD.
2Ch 35:1 Moreover Josiah kept a passover unto the LORD in Jerusalem: and they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month.
Ezr 6:19 And the children of the captivity kept the passover upon the fourteenth day of the first month.
Eze 45:21 In the first month, in the fourteenth day of the month, ye shall have the passover, a feast of seven days; unleavened bread shall be eaten.
The original description of the pascha was that it was to be kept on the 14th of the first month called Abib. If some had not prepared in time, they were allowed to keep it a month later. Church tradition has a uniform rule that its new pascha is kept on the Sunday where they remember the resurrection. Thus it is called Paschal Sunday in the rest of the Church and not Easter Sunday. The original scriptural context specified a day in the month, and the church tradition would specify a Sunday of the weekly cycle.
A change in definition clearly happened, the next burgeoning question is – By whom? There should be somewhere in scripture a smoking gun where the Messiah said, ‘I do not want you to keep the pascha as the Jews do it.’ This pursuit of understanding whether the Messiah did or didn’t change the timing of the pascha is of huge importance to the tradition of resurrection Sunday and whether the pascha of the church is possibly fraudulent.
Where did Messiah state the transferal of definition of pascha to the new tradition that requires:
- It must be on a Sunday, the first day of the week
- It is always after the spring equinox
- It is always after the full moon that follows the equinox
- It is no longer about the original lamb meal
- It is no longer about the 14th day of the first Hebrew month
Where did these new laws governing this interpretation come from? Where Jews are considered ‘pharisaic’ for keeping the law, let us at least point out that most are at least biblical and church tradition has plenty of laws of its own and who knows where they come from? Some may say – ‘Who cares? Jesus is my pascha! He fulfilled the Jewish rite and therefore we can make the pascha whatever we want!’ A dangerous line to take. Perhaps there may be some validity in the argument of fulfilment, but should fulfilment nullify how holidays are to be kept and would justify believers not doing it as it is written? Does it mean we can build definitions that reject the biblical account?
The facts are simple, the pascha once represented a holy day kept on the 14th of the first Hebrew month of Abib and in time it became the first Sunday after a full moon in spring. Someone made this change! Did Messiah? Did the Apostles? Did later generations? A change was made and the question remains – ‘By whom?’ If not in the mind of God, this is just a tradition which the Church keeps in vanity!
Mat 15:7-9 Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Next article will look at the Quartodecimens and the Nazarene sect in the question of defining the apostolic testimony concerning the pascha.
