What Elements Went Into Making The History Of Easter A Fascinating [spin]Subject
November 3, 2009
Easter the history includes not only the history of the Easter holiday and Easter season, but
also the words and traditions that we use today in celebration of Easter. Click through here for additional
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Easter the history includes the etymology of the word Easter which goes back to the Greek
Pascha, meaning Passover, the Hebrew holiday. Easter and Passover both stand for life. For Christians
Easter is a celebration of Christ’s resurrection, while for Jews Passover relates the story of the
angel of death killing every first born but passing over homes marked with blood, the Jewish homes. Passover has another connection to Easter in that the Last
Supper is believed to have taken place either just before or during Passover. English uses a different word for the holiday name, derived from Eostre
in Old English, the name of a Germanic Month, although most romantic languages like Italian and
Spanish still use a word similar to Pascha, such as the Spanish La Pascua.
In Easter the history
for Christians the Easter season, or Eastertide, is important. The season used to last only
the forty days from Easter until Ascension Day, when Christ rose into heaven, but now is marked for 50
days ending in Pentecost when it’s said the Holy Ghost visited the apostles. Pentecost is linked to the Jewish Shavout, which celebrates the giving of
the Ten Commandments 50 days after the beginning of the Exodus. You can gain extra worthwhile info
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There were many
disputes as to the time and specific date for Easter. The last of these was known as the
Quartodeciman. It was a dispute based on
a difference of one week, whether to celebrate Easter on the Hebrew Nisan 14 or one week later. Passover Proper, held on Nisan 14, is the day people get ready for the Feast of
Unleavened Bread. Only the Christians in Phyrgia, located in Asia, celebrated
Easter on this day, while everyone else marked it as the next Sunday. That was because
Nisan 14 could fall any day of the week, while most Christians wanted to celebrate Easter on a
Sunday. Originally the dispute was
only verbal, and the Bishop of Rome took no action. But about 20 years later the Bishop of Rome excommunicated all the Bishops of
Asia minor over the practice of celebrating on Nisan 14. You should gain
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There’s another element to the controversy in that Christians had to rely on Jews to set the
date for Nisan 14, and thus for Easter whether or not it fell on that date or on the following
Sunday.
It was possible, depending on the decision
of Jewish leaders, to have two Nisan 14’s within the span of less than a year. The whole
thing was cleared up with the First Nicaea Council who separated Easter from the Jewish calculations
for Passover.
Wikipedia has a very interesting entry for Easter the History and the date calculation of
the holiday.
