TSIYON NEWS

Tonight is Passover and you are invited to join us via our live stream!

I'll give you all the particulars about that a bit later in this newsletter, but 1st let's consider one of the main objections to Passover we've all heard from some of our friends and relatives. Typically, that objection goes something like this:

"Passover is just for the Jews, so I don't celebrate that.  We Christians celebrate Easter. The apostle Paul didn't celebrate Passover either, because, as Paul explained, the Law does not apply to those who are saved through faith in Christ." - (Many sincere Christians)

Christians may be surprised to learn that they (sort of) already celebrate a version of Passover, which they call "Easter" - at least according to the King James Version (KJV) Bible. The word "Easter" appears in only one place in the KJV Bible, and that is quoted below:

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible lists every word in the KJV Bible and assigns a number to it. That number, in turn, lists the Hebrew or Greek word that the English word is translated from, along with the definition of the original language word. For example, in the verse above Strong's indicates the word "Easter" is translated from the Greek word: G3957 Pasha. The definition Strong's gives of that word is "the Passover."

Interestingly, the New King James Bible (NKJV) departed from the use of the English word "Easter" in that verse, and uses the word "Passover" instead, as does every other modern English language Bible I've checked this in.

Actually, many Christian reference works continue to use the word "Easter" in the same way as the KJV did, even putting this word "Easter" in the mouths of so-called "early Christians". This gives the impression that "early Christians" celebrated a holiday other than Passover called "Easter" - which some now call "Resurrection Day".

Historically speaking, "Easter" in Christianity did not arise until hundreds of years after the time of Christ, in the early medieval period. The earliest recorded use of "Easter" as Christian celebration can be traced back to the Venerable Bede, an Anglo-Saxon monk and historian, in his work De Natura Rerum written in the 8th century (approximately 731 AD). Bede noted that the term "Easter" was derived from the name of the pagan goddess Eostre, associated with spring and fertility. Hence, the bunnies and the colored eggs. This pagan festival was eventually adapted by Christians to refer to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As the Bible faithfully records, Yeshua, His apostles, and other early believers all kept the Passover. There was no dispute about this until well after the apostles were dead, from the late 2nd century to the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. This is called The Quartodeciman Controversy. Basically, those disciples of Yeshua who continued to follow the ways and teachings of the apostles continued to keep Passover as the apostles had taught - on the 14th Day of Aviv (Nisan). This date was set using the Bible's lunar calendar, as originally set according to Scripture. The Roman calendar didn't play nice with the Bible's lunar dates. So, eventually the Gentile believers under the influence of Rome preferred to move their celebration to the same day as the sun worshippers of Rome, namely Sunday. This resulted in what was essentially a new Gentile Christian holiday, which in turn, eventually morphed into Easter.