Why are there two dates for Easter?

[JulieB67]

But does this mean we should stop celebrating Easter

It's up to the individual I would think. But there are no instructions on doing so in bible.

 

[The Liturgist]

But does this mean we should stop celebrating Easter

No, absolutely not. We preach Christ Crucified to spread the Good News of the Resurrection. The idea of not celebrating the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord, God and Savior is to me literally unthinkable, frankly.

 

[mama2one]

When is Easter? And why does the date keep moving? | YourCentralValley.com



"The changing date for Easter Sunday relates to the way the Earth moves in the Solar System. According to EarthSky.org, Easter Sunday is usually the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the Vernal Equinox (also known as the Spring Equinox or March Equinox), when the sun crosses over from south of the equator to north of the equator. The day the Vernal Equinox takes place can be predicted years in advance, meaning the day Easter Sunday is celebrated can also be predicted years in advance."

confusing for young child to celebrate b'day on Easter one yr but not next yr; they insist their birthday is on Easter

 

[prodromos]

The reasons I read Jesus probably did not die on a Friday are:

1. He told his disciples, "Like Jonah was in the belly of a big fish for three days and three nights, I will be in the belly of the earth for three days and three nights." Friday afternoon to Sunday morning is 2 nights, so it is mathematically and scientifically impossible for Jesus to die on a Friday and rise on a Sunday if he was buried that long.

This is an example of synecdoche, where the whole implies the part or the part implies the whole. In this case three days and three nights are three "whole" days which imply the "part" of Friday, "all" of Saturday, and "part" of Sunday. There are many examples of synecdoche throughout Scripture.

2. The two women named Mary came to visit Jesus before dawn on Sunday morning. He was gone then. So we can't count Sunday as the third day after Friday afternoon because Jesus actually rose on Saturday night - his second night in the belly of the earth.

For the Jews, the day begins at sunset. Sunday began at sunset after the Sabbath, so about 10 hours of Sunday have passed before the women came to the tomb at dawn.

3. Passover is a Jewish Sabbath day no matter what day of the week it falls on. None of the Gospels state it must have been the regular weekend Sabbath; instead, they all are clear there was a Passover Sabbath that week. There could have been two Sabbaths.

The Passover was called a "Holy Convocation" and not a "Sabbath". On the Sabbath, no work could be done whereas on the Passover they were allowed to prepare food. The fact that the day before was called the preparation means the next day was a weekly Sabbath, as they had to prepare food ahead of the weekly Sabbath. So there were not two Sabbaths.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

My position is that scripture does not tell us to celebrate Easter explicitly. Or, being "very clear" as OP claimed. If so, chapter and verse would have been cited and we would have already put this thread to bed.

1 Corinthians 5:8
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

 

[seeking.IAM]

1 Corinthians 5:8
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Is the application of this scripture to Easter your personal interpretation or that of Orthodox Christianity? I have never considered "feast" in this context to apply to Easter. I reckon I tend to apply it to the Eucharist. Indeed, in the Eucharistic liturgy of The Episcopal Church, the congregations responds, "Let us keep the feast."

 

[The Liturgist]

1 Corinthians 5:8
Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Ah you are clearly correct, and I was mistaken that the directive was implicit.

 

[The Liturgist]

Is the application of this scripture to Easter your personal interpretation or that of Orthodox Christianity? I have never considered "feast" in this context to apply to Easter. I reckon I tend to apply it to the Eucharist. Indeed, in the Eucharistic liturgy of The Episcopal Church, the congregations responds, "Let us keep the feast."

Forgive me but I don’t think it matters because in the Eucharistic theology of most churches, the Euchaeist is understood to be a memorial of the death and resurrection of our Lord, and the Orthodox Divine Liturgy is written so as to summarize the entire Economy of Salvation.

 

[GodLovesCats]

Is the application of this Scripture to Easter your personal interpretation or that of Orthodox Christianity? I have never considered "feast" in this context to apply to Easter. I reckon I tend to apply it to the Eucharist. Indeed, in the Eucharistic liturgy of The Episcopal Church, the congregations responds, "Let us keep the feast."

I never believed in the Eucharist. Biblically, Communion can only be symbolism. It is very important to do regularly at church, but definitely not literally ingesting Jesus Christ because He is at the right hand of His Father in heaven.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Is the application of this scripture to Easter your personal interpretation or that of Orthodox Christianity? I have never considered "feast" in this context to apply to Easter. I reckon I tend to apply it to the Eucharist. Indeed, in the Eucharistic liturgy of The Episcopal Church, the congregations responds, "Let us keep the feast."

Why do you think it needs an interpretation? It is very unambiguous and clear IMO...

 

[seeking.IAM]

Why do you think it needs an interpretation? It is very unambiguous and clear IMO...

It is unclear to me, so I was merely trying to understand another perspective.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

It is unclear to me, so I was merely trying to understand another perspective.

It is in the context of 1 Corinthians 5:7 ...Pascha

 

[ViaCrucis]

There are specific instructions in the Old Testament to celebrate Passover. That is why practicing Jews eat the exact same meal every year.

Christians don't celebrate the Jewish Passover (they can, if they want, but historically it has never been Christian practice). What Jesus instructs is the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper.

Easter, or Pascha, is the Christian Passover. There's no biblical commandment to celebrate it, there's not biblical commandment to celebrate any special days or holy days. So all Christian holy days are not from God's commandment, but out of our freedom of conscience in Christ (Romans 14:5-9).

In the ancient Church there were two different ways Christians celebrated Easter: The Quartodecimans celebrated Easter on the same day as the Jews celebrated Passover, Nissan 14th on the Jewish calendar (hence Quartodecimanism = Fourteen-ism); this was the common practice in some parts of the East, such as Anatolia. Others celebrated Easter on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover, in keeping with Jesus having been raised on the first day of the week.

By the 4th century Quartodecimanism had largely fallen out of favor. And at the Council of Nicea one of the side-issues which the Council dealt with was how to bring conformity to the Church over when to celebrate Easter. All Churches have, since the Council of Nicea, followed the same Paschal Computation (how to calculate Easter). Both East and West, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, non-denominational, Pentecostals, Catholics, Orthodox, etc all follow the same Paschal Computation established at Nicea all those centuries ago.

The short answer for the difference between the Eastern Churches and the Western Churches on when to celebrate Easter simply boils down to the fact that the Eastern Churches have continued to use the Julian Calendar, while the Western Churches have adopted the Gregorian Calendar (the 1582 reforms to the Julian Calendar, where we dropped 10 days from the calendar to readjust the calendar to the true solar year). And since then the Julian Calendar has continued to drift, increasing the disparity between the two calendars.

In other words, both East and West follow the same method of calculating Easter, but we have different calendars and so Western Easter occurs earlier than Eastern Easter, simply because the Western Calendar is a number of days "earlier" than the Julian. So, for example, Eastern Christmas still occurs on December 25th, but December 25th on the Julian Calendar is January 7th on the Gregorian Calendar.

But we are still using the same way to calculate Easter, which has remained basically unchanged since Nicea almost 1,700 years ago. We just have a difference between our calendars, and ours is currently 13 days ahead of the Julian.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[The Liturgist]

Christians don't celebrate the Jewish Passover (they can, if they want, but historically it has never been Christian practice). What Jesus instructs is the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper.

I don’t think Nicene Christians should, for two reasons:

1. The Christian passover, or Pascha, known in some countries with Germanic languages as Easter, is the Christian continuation of Passover, with the focus shifting to the all atoning sacrifice of Christ our God on the Holy Cross, of whom the lambs were really a foreshadowing, as we see reflected by the Holy Apostle St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:7. So theologically, it is most correct to celebrate the Passover in the context of His passion and Resurrection, whether on Pascha (Easter Sunday) itself or else when we partake of the Eucharist in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, and His glorious Passion, His supreme sacrifice for us, and His despoiling of Hades and His Resurrection and later Ascension to Heaven.

2. As a Nicene Christian, in accepting the Symbol of Faith (the Creed) adopted at Nicaea in 325 and refined at Constantinople in 381, I feel obliged to accede to the other acts of those councils and the very reasonable canons adopted at Nicaea and to a much lesser extent, Constantinople. I think we should strive to in accordance with the guidance provided by the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Fathers, including most notably St. Athanasius of Alexandria, who aside from defeating Arius at that Council, also gave us our New Testament canon, the definitive prototypical text On The Incarnation, and the pioneering work of mystical theology that is the Life of St. Anthony. Thus, I believe the formal celebration of, as opposed to informally observing, for example, the old Judaic versions of Pascha and Pentecost, which have been superseded in Christianity (whereas Purim and Shavuot were not superseded and to me that if there should be a large increase in conversions of Jews to liturgical Christianity, it would make sense to retain those feasts with minor changes in the hybrid Judeo-Christian liturgy one might expect to form, in order to introduce a Christogical, Soteriological and Eschatological dimension).