Easter is coming!

This year in particular highlights how far traditional Christianity has strayed from the New Testament. Tomorrow is Good Friday when the majority of Christians celebrate the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ.  Yet the New Testament nowhere speaks of Easter – apart from a mistranslation in Acts 12: 3 in the King James Version.  The death of Jesus Christ occurred at the Passover season which included the seven days of Unleavened Bread.

This year, Passover falls a month after Easter.  Calculated according to the Jewish calendar which is a combination of lunar and solar elements rather than the purely solar basis of the Gregorian calendar used throughout the western world, the Jewish calendar requires the addition of an extra month in certain years to keep the calendar in line with the movement of the sun. A starting point for the calculation of the calendar was the need to offer freshly cut barley during the days of Unleavened Bread.  This year saw the inclusion of an extra month to harmonize the calendar with the solar year.  This is true for those who follow the calculations for the calendar as well as for those who observe the growth of barley within proximity of Jerusalem before declaring the start of the new month.

So how did the Christian world end up with a festival observing the death of Jesus Christ so far removed from the calendar date when the event occurred?

Christians today follow the edict of the Emperor Constantine who decreed as a result of the Council of Nicea in C.E. 325, that Easter should be calculated separately from the Jewish festival.  As a result, Christianity today follows a festival that has no connection to the timing given with the Bible. The upshot is that the detail of the event is largely lost. 

We will continue to examine some of these connections as the period of time passes from Easter to Passover.