EASTER OR PASSOVER: WHICH IS FOR CHRISTIANS?

Easter or Passover: Which Is for Christians?

By Dexter B. Wakefield

On April 24 last year, billions of people celebrated Easter. About a week earlier, after sunset on Sunday, April 17, many Christians gatherd to observe the biblical Passover. Does it matter which festivals you observe? The answer may surprise you!

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This spring, billions of people will memorialize Jesus Christ’s resurrection by observing the ancient rite of Easter. Although the festival’s name and seasonal observance pre-date Christianity, and the Easter Sunday observance does not even correspond to the actual day of Christ’s resurrection, most professing Christians assume that the non-Christian festival has now been "Christianized" into something of which Jesus Christ would approve.
But is their assumption correct? Christians who study the Bible carefully, who look closely at the historical record, will come to a different conclusion. Rather than commemorate Christ’s resurrection on an incorrect date, they will commemorate His sacrifice by observing the Christian Passover, in the way the early Church did—in the way He instructed—as we find in Scripture. Does this shock you? Read on!



"Christianizing" the Festivals of Ancient Sex Goddesses?

The origins of pre-Christian Easter festivals in pagan cultures are well known in history. In the ancient world, some of the greatest female deities were the various incarnations of the great fertility goddesses known as Ishtar (Babylonian), Astarte (Phoenician), Atargatis (Philistine), Ashtoreth (Hebrew), Eastre (Anglo-Saxon), Ostara (German) and Aphrodite (Greek).
These goddesses are regarded as essentially the same deity, due to the similarities of their mythologies, worship, names and festivals. These factors are what define a deity as its worship moves between cultures. The primary fertility festivals for these deities (and their associated male consorts) were in the spring—a time of renewal and birth.
In The Myth of the Goddess, Anne Baring and Jules Cashford write, "Now we read everywhere of goddesses and gods who take their being from one Primordial Goddess who is the origin of all things.... The goddess has many names and many different tales are told about her, but one story is unvarying throughout the Near East. The goddess becomes separated from the one she loves, who dies or seems to die, and falls into a darkness called ‘the Underworld.’ This separation is reflected in nature as a loss of light and fertility. The goddess descends to overcome the darkness so that her loved one may return to the light, and life may continue.
"Aphrodite is primarily a descendant of the Mesopotamian Goddess Inanna-Ishtar, who became Astarte in Phoenicia and was called Atargatis by the Philistines, and Ashtoreth by the Hebrews. Inanna’s consort, Dumuzi, and Ishtar’s Tammuz became, in the Greek tradition, Aphrodite’s Adonis, the dying and resurrected son-lover of the goddess in a new form.
"The Greek goddess Aphrodite loses her lover, the beautiful Adonis.... Now the goddess no longer rescues him herself, but has to ask the god Zeus to allow him to return to life from spring to autumn, the fertile season of the earth. Finally, Jesus, son of the Virgin Mother, Mary, dies.... Christ is ‘rescued’ by his Father in Heaven, but, like the others, his return coincides with the date of the earth’s regeneration. Easter is celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, so that Christ’s resurrection, like those before him, also reflects the turning of winter into spring" (pp. 145–147).
Another well-known cultural anthropologist, Joseph Campbell, drew the conclusion that the "Christian" practice of Easter "occurs on the date of the annual resurrection of Adonis, which in the Christian cult became Easter. In both the pagan cult and the Christian, the resurrection is of a god" (Occidental Mythology, p. 138).
These authors are expressing a view commonly held among cultural anthropologists that there was a significant continuity in "Christianized" Gentile cultures with their pagan past. They had a tendency, over time, to superimpose Christian themes as a veneer over their existing pagan practices, which were already deeply ingrained in their societies and psyches. They are saying that in history, the incorporation of Easter as memorial to Christ’s resurrection is an adaptation of an earlier pagan resurrection festival. The practice did not originate in Christianity.
While it is true that most professing Christians observe Easter, reasoning that it commemorates Christ’s resurrection, the Bible actually commands Christians to observe a memorial to His sacrificial death! When Christ instructed His followers to keep the Passover with a fulfilled, Christian meaning, it became a memorial to His sacrifice as the Lamb of God—not to His resurrection. Christ avoided confusing the meaning of His unique sacrifice with the well-known pagan "resurrection" rites of His time and before.
In fact, God’s Holy Days do include a date to commemorate the resurrection of faithful Christians at the return of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:12–20, 50–52). That Holy Day is known as the Feast of Trumpets, which occurs in the autumn (Leviticus 23:24), not in the spring. As we shall see shortly, the practice and the meaning of the Christian Passover are explicitly taught in the Bible and were taught by the first-century Church.
Yet, as Christianity spread into Gentile areas, with passing generations, some churches tended to gravitate back toward prior pagan cultural practices of their own societies, and away from religious practices that held associations with Judaism.
As a result, the proper observance of Pasch, or Passover, was changed both in its time and meaning. Historians in main stream Christianity acknowledge the transformation. The New Catholic Encyclopedia explains, "Not only was the significance of the Jewish feast changed by the Christians, but also the date. The Jewish method of fixing the date, the 14th of Nisan, did not confine it to any one [Roman calendar] day; at a very early time [Roman] Christians assigned their Pasch to the Sunday following the Jewish feast" (1967, vol. 5, p. 7). Pasch is Latin for Passover. But upon the change of date and meaning, this celebration is more appropriately identified by the English word Easter.
"The Asiatic practice in the 2d century of observing Easter [Pasch] on the day of the Jewish Passover conflicted with the Roman custom of celebrating Easter on Sunday, the day of the Resurrection.... Originally both observances were allowed, but gradually it was felt incongruous that Christians should celebrate Easter on a Jewish feast, and unity in celebrating the principal Christian feast was called for" (p. 8).
"Quartodecimanism [meaning the practice of observing Passover on Nisan 14 of the Hebrew calendar], prevalent in Asia Minor and Syria in the 2d century, emphasized the death of Christ, the true Paschal victim (John 18:28; 19:42), while Roman practice emphasized the observance of Sunday as the day of the Resurrection.... As Christianity separated from Judaism, Gentile Christians objected to observing the principal Christian feast on the same day as the Jewish Passover" (vol. 12, p. 13).



Christianized Veneer or Solid Scriptural Practice?

It is clear that Easter is a "Christianized" pagan festival. And in Scripture, God strongly condemns attempts to worship Him with practices taken from the worship of false gods. Notice how He instructed Israel:
"When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.’ You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it" (Deuteronomy 12:29–32).
God clearly tells us to avoid recycling pagan religious customs for His worship. We are to worship God as He instructs, not as we might reason on our own. Keeping Easter certainly adds to what God instructed, and rejecting the Christian Passover certainly takes away from what we are told to do as Christians.
Christ said, "‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men" (Mark 7:6–8).