From Passover to Easter

If you're into history, religion, or both, you'll be fascinated to know how the celebration of Passover in early Christianity became Easter. My friend, Ronald L. Dart, has been doing an interesting series on Christian Holidays, which you can find on the Born To Win Audio Page. Register and log in...it's free with no hassles.

You can read From Passover to Easter right here. Whether you hear the audio or read the text, you'll find them interesting and informative.

Occasionally, when I have said that “Easter” is nowhere mentioned in Bible, someone reminds me of the incident where Herod has arrested Peter, and put him in prison, “intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people” (Acts 12:4). The problem is that the Greek word translated “Easter” is the Greek Pascha, which, everywhere else it is used in the New Testament, is translated, “Passover.” So why, 1600 years later, did the King James translators use Easter instead of Passover here?

As early as the third century, the entire church had begun to confuse Easter and Passover. How did it happen that the early church stopped observing the Passover and began observing Easter?

First, realize that at the beginning, this was not a Passover/Easter controversy. It was a calendar controversy. It was a question of when the church would observe Pascha, which is the Greek and Latin word for Passover. The issue is confusing, because even modern English works, when citing early Greek and Latin documents, translate Pascha as “Easter.” When discussing the Jewish observance, they render Pascha as “Passover.”

Good reading for the Holy Week.