Today, millions of Christians around the world celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ during this season of Easter. But perhaps most don't realise that it was not until the fourth century that Easter was uniformly observed by Christians.

What the earliest Christians observed in memorial of Christ was the Passover, which occurs at this time of the year on Nisan 14 on the Jewish calendar. The Palestinian historian Epiphanius (AD 315-403) said that the 15 Jewish Christian bishops who administered the Jerusalem Church until AD 135 observed the Lord's death on Nisan 14. In the Apostolic Constitutions, an early Christian document, the following rule is laid out: "You shall not change the calculation of the time, but you shall celebrate it with the same time as your brethren who came out of the circumcision (the Jews). With them observe the Passover."

It was anti-Semitism - racism against the Jews, which was responsible for the Christian church's adoption of Easter over the Passover which has Old Testament (Jewish) roots. A brutal and vicious persecution against the Jews had started from early under Emperor Hadrian who outlawed Jewish practices and customs. Jews and Jewish Christians were expelled from Jerusalem after Hadrian had crushed The Barkokeba revolt of the Jews (AD 132-135). With that eviction of the Jews and Jewish Christians came the increasing non-Jewish influence on Christianity, and a rabid anti-Semitism whose relic is still with the Church today. The rejection of the Passover and the substitution of Easter is a manifestation of this malice against the Jews as well as poor hermeneutics of Scripture.

An early Christian controversy was the Quortodeciman Controversy between Christians of the East and the West. The Eastern Christians insisted that Jesus should be memorialised by the observance of the Passover on Nisan 14, while those in the West felt that an independent festival not connected with the Jews should be adopted to celebrate His death and resurrection.

No pretence

Emperor Constantine settled the issue at the Council of Nicea in 325. He made no pretence of his motives for doing so. The following could not be plainer as at the reason for adopting Easter over Passover. "It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin and are therefore deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. Let us then have noting in common with the detestable Jewish crowd: Strive and pray continually that the purity of your soul may not in anything be sullied by fellowship with the custom of these most wicked men (We must) avoid all participation in the perjured conduct of the Jews".

There you have it. With that Easter was imposed on the Eastern Christians who were threatened with expulsion if they continued to meet on the same date that the Jews kept their Passover. But there are a number of reasons why Christians should celebrate the Passover over Easter. First, the Easter ritual has pagan roots and the Scripture is replete with warnings, especially in the Old Testament, against syncretism.

In their work Passover: Before Messiah and After Donna and Mal Broadhurst trace the origin of Easter to Ishtar the Sumerian goddess of love and war who, in Canaan, evolved into a moon goddess and wife of Baal. According o the Sumerian lore, Ishtar was the wife of the Sumerian god, Tammuz. They write: "The worship of Ishtar as nature goddess had spread throughout the ancient world. In Phoenicia and Syria her name had become Astarte'.

Alan Watts in his book Easter: Its Story and Meaning says, "As we go on to describe the Christian observance of Easter we shall see how many of its customs and ceremonies resemble these former rites of the pagan cults).

Says Seventh Day Adventist scholar Samuelle Bacchiocchi in his book God's Festivals in Scripture and History: "Pagan influence can be seen in the replacement of the Passover symbolism of the lamb with that of the Easter hare. The Easter hare was once a bird that changed into a four-footed creature. The hare, or rabbit, became a symbol of fertility. The hare laid eggs which became the symbol of abundant new life of spring.

"The origin of the Easter egg is traced back to the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Babylon, Phoenicia and Greece where the universe is said to have been born from a mighty world egg". So now you know what egg and bunny have to do with Easter.

Line of reasoning

But some Christians will protest my line of reasoning. They will maintain that Christian celebration of Easter today has nothing to do with rabbits, eggs or bun and cheese. Festivals can evolve from pagan roots into genuine, authentic Christian observances, they say. Indeed, they will point out that the biblical festivals, celebrated by the Jews have their own origin in the agricultural festivals which pagans observed before. Even the Seventh-day Sabbath they claim comes from ancient Babylon. So what's the big deal about pagan origins? It just arrant nonsense and runaway fundamentalism devoid of rational analysis and serious theological reflection.

My rejoinder: Passover is a richer, deeper, historically rooted and multi-layered festival, which links the salvation story of Christians with their ancient predecessors of the Old Testament. In other words, here is a festival which celebrates what is paradigmatic of liberation in the Bible: The Exodus as well as our liberation from spiritual Egypt and slavery.

The Passover theme runs throughout the Bible. Indeed, the prophetic writers identify the second coming of the Lord and the gathering of his people as a Second Exodus. Professor Timothy Laniak of the reputable Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary published last year his Shepherds After My Own Heart, which shows the Passover theme running throughout the Bible and climaxing in the book of Revelation where the (Passover) Lamb is prominently featured.

Christians would have a richer celebration of the Lord's Passion, linking that with the greatest previous act in salvation history, the Exodus of the Israelites, from whom Jesus sprang. In one festival one would collapse thousands of years without bifurcating salvation history. Paul in I Corinthians 5 says "Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us" and then urges Christians to "keep the Feast" (both metaphorically and literally)

Where is the resurrection in the Passover? The Passover is tied to the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus in John 6 says He is the true unleavened bread from heaven John represents that bread as giving life. The Christians symbolically eating Christ's body for seven days represents their intake of Christ's resurrected life, therefore it is not true to say that the Passover feast as a whole - meaning the 14th to the 21st - does not include the resurrection. The Church would lose nothing by rejecting Easter for Passover.

The Last Super, which Jesus took was the Passover. The New Testament says so clearly in a number of accounts. The disciples asked, "Where will you have us go to prepare to eat the Passover (Mark 14:12 Matt. 26:17; Luke 22:15). What we call the Lord's Supper or Communion was actually the Passover celebrated on Nisan 14th. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 recounts "the night on which Christ was betrayed" as the night he took the bread and the wine that was the evening ending the 13th and beginning the 14th.

Feast days

The early Christians continued to keep the Old Testament feast days. In Acts 2 they kept the Feast of Pentecost, an Old Testament feast called Feast of Weeks or Feast of First fruits. In Acts 20:6 Luke records that Paul and his team sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread. Philippi was a gentile city. But Christians there were observing the Jewish liturgical calendar and the feast days. Later, Paul talks about keeping Pentecost. In 1st Corinthians 16, he talks about Pentecost outside of a Jerusalem setting.

In Acts 27 we see a reference to the Day of Atonement (called the Fast). Why would Jewish and non-Jewish Christians be keeping these days long after the death of Jesus if they were abolished at the cross? It is time the Christian Church re-examines its Hebraic roots.

Says the accomplished biblical scholar, James Tabor, in his April 2 blog: "It is unfortunate that the liturgical link between Jews and Christians were severed. For more than a century before the Good Friday/Easter Sunday tradition had fully prevailed in the church, thousands of Christians all over the Roman world used to observe what they called Pasch on the 14th of Nisan. They used the Hebrew calendar to determine the proper season. On this day they would remember 'the night he was betrayed' as well as the death of Jesus on the afternoon of 14th of Nisan. Now thousands of Christians have begun to learn about the Passover both in study and direct celebration".

I have been observing it for 33 years. I strongly recommend it.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist who may be reached at ianboyne1@yahoo.com.