Easter myths versus Passover truths

At Easter just past, our son won 88 crème eggs for his correct guess in a count-the-egg competition. But what is it about the confectionary eggs and chocolate bunny rabbits of a Spring festival that helps us to commemorate the glorious Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ?

As every educated Christian knows perfectly well, Jesus was not born at Christmastime but some time in the Autumn, possibly on or around the Hebrew Feast of Trumpets or Tabernacles. But how many believers, I wonder, are equally aware that Christ did not rise from the tomb on Easter Sunday?

What’s the difference and what’s the point? In other words, does it really matter? I think it does because I strongly believe that there is no such thing as ‘Bible trivia’ but that every jot and tittle of the Holy Scriptures has been enshrined exactly where God wants it to be, and we do the Word of God a profound disservice whenever we disregard what God says and replace it with our own traditions. And, although I do not consider it wrong or sinful per se, to seek to honour God by celebrating Easter, I would suggest that the Christian Church has historically erred in departing from the Biblical model observed by Jesus and ordained by God, and replacing it with pagan imagery that cannot hope to reveal the same truths that God intended that his people should learn.

This article is intended to equip the sincere seeker after truth with some of the tools necessary to become a theological sleuth, so that we might examine together some of the chief differences between Easter and Passover and consider what impact a proper understanding of the truth can have on our walk of faith with the Lord.

Easter is what it says on the packet - a Spring fertility festival originally in honour of the pagan goddess Oestre (pronounced ‘easter’).

Many ladies of a certain age especially, may be already be thinking that the name looks oddly familiar. And so it should, because the word Oestre shares the same etymology as oestrogen, the female sex hormone. Nor is this a co-incidence, because Oestre was the female fertility diety associated with Spring and new life after the long death of Winter.

That’s why she is celebrated with eggs and rabbits, both symbols of fertile fecundity and, in the case of eggs doubly appropriate because of the explicit connection with the female oestrus cycle.

Prior to her appearance as the Northern European deity Oestre, however, this particular pagan goddess was already well known by a variety of similar names including the Greek Astarte; the Phonecian or Canaanite Asherah; the Sidonian goddess Ashtoreth, worshipped by Jezebel; the Mesopotamian Ishtar (also pronounced Easter); and Egypt’s Isis. What they all had in common was their pagan fertility identity, because they were essentially similar names for the same deity, and while Astarte is the Greek for of Ishtar, she was also accepted by the Greeks as Aphrodite, the mother of Eros (the Greek equivalent of the Roman goddess Venus, mother of Cupid).

All in all, not a very Christian crowd, even though some of them appear in the Bible; except that there, in the Old Testament, God explicitly proscribes their worship and rites. Several were also afforded the title ‘Queen of Heaven’ or ‘Lady of Heaven’ and most of their cults practiced some form of ritual prostitution and fornication, while an Asherah was also the name given to a phallic pole involved in such rites.

Many critics of Christianity and apologists for paganism, and so-called ‘free-thinking’ have observed that while Easter joyfully celebrates Springtime, new life and fertility, the Jewish Passover that it has largely superseded is nothing more than a dark commemoration of death and suffering. This, of course is complete and utter nonsense, but does show the risk that Christianity has historically run by entertaining syncretism. This is the term used to describe an attempt to reconcile differing belief systems by compromise and adaptation, and derives from the Greek Sunkretismos, which was once a confederation of Cretan communities.

It is precisely the same reason that Christians have conflated the pagan midwinter festivals of Saturnalia and Yule into Christmas, and celebrate the Autumnal pagan festival of Samhain as Hallowe’en.

I could go on about the pagan aspects and origins of Easter, but I think I’ve made my point and don‘t intend to labour what can easily be studied by anyone with access to a good encyclopaedia or internet browser. What I much prefer to focus on is not the pagan traditions that attached themselves to the Church but the Biblical traditions that most of the Church seems to have abandoned. And that means taking a closer look at Passover, which Yahweh ordained and Jesus observed, as well as the entire early Church.

But why has Easter replaced Passover as a Christian festival? Well, it certainly wasn’t God’s idea but rather a political decision on the part of an increasingly politicised church that began to sideline Biblical teaching in favour of expediency. And this was partly fostered by a spirit of anti-Semitism that gradually grew in the early Church as a reaction to the increasing antipathy of Jewish religious leaders towards what they saw and persecuted as the heretical cult of Christianity.

Had Christianity just been another religion, then Judaism could have let it go as just another infidel cult, like Caesar worship or Zoroastrianism, but because Christianity rested its claim on the worship and divinity of a Jewish Messiah, who they claimed to be the fulfilment of the Hebrew Scriptures, that was something that could not be tolerated and eventually led to an increasingly bitter internecine feud between two factions which had initially co-existed relatively peacefully, with followers of the Nazarene Carpenter often solidly rooted in their local synagogues..

Gradually, this changed and in time followers of both faiths tried to play Rome off against their adversaries with accusation and counter accusation, leading to a vacillating Roman persecution against both religions until eventually Christians began to get the upper hand and rise to prominence in the Roman establishment. This culminated in 315 AD when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion of the Empire followed by Emperor Theodosius who made it compulsory in 380 AD.

When that happened, many old scores were settled and many of those now regarded as the Church Fathers used the whip hand given to them to obscure Christianity’s Jewish roots altogether. And this included Passover.

Ever since that time, Easter and Passover have seldom coincided, only ever doing so by accident as the two festivals are calculated quite distinctly.

As we shall see in due course, the dates governing the calculation of Passover have a great Biblical significance that has been largely obscured by its substitution with Easter. However, in order to understand why this is, we must first understand the fundamental differences between the Gregorian and Hebrew Calendars.

The dominant calendar in the world today is essentially Roman and was mainly devised by the Roman dictator Julius Caesar. Often mistakenly thought of as an Emperor of Rome, Caesar was actually assassinated before he could attain that office and the title was first held by his nephew Octavian, who was given the honorific of Augustus. And it is from these two men that we have the names of two of our months - July and August.

Caesar radically reformed the Roman calendar in 46 BC, simplifying its somewhat complicated 355-day year into something more closely resembling what we know today, creating what became known as the Julian Calendar, comprising of 365 days divided into 12 months. This is also known as a solar calendar, being based on the period of Earth’s rotation around the Sun, which occurs approximately every 365¼ days. The ancient astronomers were well aware of this discrepancy and the extra quarter days were duly accumulated and added to every fourth year, creating a 366-day leap year.

Even today, we still use Roman names for our months. In the old Roman year these began with:

Ianuarius, named after the two-faced Roman God of the threshold, Janus, who could look in both directions at the same time; in this case, from the Winter Solstice;

Februarius, the months of purification;

Martius, after the Roman God of War - Mars, as this month heralded the end of winter and the time armies could again march to battle;

Aprilis, traditionally thought to mean opening - referring to tree blossom;

Maius, after a Greek goddess of fertility of that name;

Iunius, named after Juno, the wife of Jupiter (the Roman equivalent of Hera, wife of Zeus);

The latter months were simply designated by their number- reckoned from March, which until relatively recently was considered the first month in which the New Year fell, hence:

Quintilis, the Fifth month;

Sextilis, the Sixth month;

September, the Seventh month;

October, the Eighth month;

November, the Ninth month; and

December, the Tenth month.

Up to this time Roman months were of varying lengths as follows:

January - 29 days

February - 28 days

March - 31 days

April - 29 days

May - 31 days

June - 29 days

July - 31 days

August - 29 days

September - 29 days

October - 31 days

November - 29 days

December - 29 days

And, as already mentioned this resulted in a 355-day year, which was compensated for by the periodic insertion of a leap year with thirteen months. This intercalary month (Intercalaris ) was 27-days long and inserted between February and March, when the number of days in February was reduced from 28 to either 22 or 23.

I did warn you it was complicated.

The Julian reform saw the abolition of Intercalaris and the introduction of our more familiar 365-day year, and later the months of Quintilis renamed Iulius (July) in honour of Julius Caesar, and Sextilis renamed Augustus (August) in honour of Augustus Caesar. Thus we now have:

January - 31 days

February - 28 days (with 29 every fourth year)

March - 31 days

April - 30 days

May - 31 days

June - 30 days

July - 31 days

August - 31 days

September - 30 days

October - 31 days

November - 30 days

December - 31 days

Even here, the days alternate irregularly, so that many of us remember them by the quaint mnemonic:

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November.

All the rest have thirty-one,

except February alone,

Which has Twenty-eight days clear,

And twenty-nine in each leap year.

Such was its accuracy and facility that Julius Caesar’s reformed calendar remained unaltered for centuries, but even a small degree of drift becomes amplified over so long a time and by 1582 the calculation of festivals such as Easter had grown completely out of synch with astronomical observations.

As a result, in that year Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull reforming the calendar to unify what had become a skewed calendar year with the astronomical year, by shedding no less than 10 days from the calendar.

Which is why we no longer adhere to the Julian but to the Gregorian Calendar, after Thursday the 4^th of October was followed by Friday the 15^th of October, in 1582.

Notice, however, that only their numbers changed while the days themselves remained consecutive. In other words, whilst the 4^th of the month was followed by the 15^th, Friday nevertheless still followed Thursday.

Another complication was the Reformation which was at its height in 1582, which meant that Gregory XIII’s papal bull went largely ignored by many nations for years, or decades afterwards. Indeed, in the case of Russia, the Gregorian Calendar was only adopted as late as 1918.

According to canon law, Easter is calculated as the first Sunday after 14^th day of the lunar month that falls on or after the 21^st March, known as the vernal equinox.

To complicate matters, however, whilst the Western Church calculates Easter according to the Gregorian Calendar, the Eastern Orthodox Church still uses the old Julian Calendar.

However, irrespective of whichever calendar they may choose, neither Easter is calculated to coincide with Passover which is calculated quite differently according to a completely different calendar.

Lastly, I should mention that Judaism in Jesus’ day was very different to today. Although Judaism has always had its separate factions and traditions (denominations almost) the walls separating them today are fewer and less precipitous today than in the First Century.

Yes, there are Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi, there are Conservative synagogues and Reform, and so on. And one thing that surprises many Gentiles is that there are many Jews who do not believe even in God, because the term Jew is both racial and religious and it is quite possible to be one without the other. Nevertheless, even among non-believing Jews there is an overall consensus about most Jewish traditions because the predominant surviving faction is Rabbinical Judaism.

This was not the case in Jesus’ time, when there were over a dozen major sects of Judaism; which is one reason why the Messianic sect that evolved into Christianity was initially able to find itself a comfortable niche in many Jewish communities.

The early Church spoke the same language, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, attended the same synagogues and observed the same festivals and holy days as their other Jewish brothers and sisters. And they were tolerated as fellow Jews because if Jews had not tolerated one another’s differences the nation would have been in chaos.

Because Jews was split into theological and political parties, such as the Sadducees (who were a byword for severity in the application of Torah), the Pharisees (many of whom were equally known for their leniency and open-mindedness), the fiery Zealots, and the monastic Essenes; into which mix emerged the sect of the Nazarene or Nazrim, the followers of Yeshua HaMashiah.

This meant that not all Jews were agreed on certain aspects of the interpretation of Torah and calculation of its holy days and festivals. As a result various factions observed the same feasts on different days, and some even reckoned the day to begin at sunrise and not sunset.

Precisely why all of this is important we shall shortly discover.

Common to almost all calendars, however, is the seven day week, but here again the Hebrew Calendar does things differently.

Unlike our own culture in which each weekday has a name: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc. the days of the Hebrew week are simply known by their numbers, with the sole exception of the seventh day which is always called the Sabbath.

The Hebrew weekdays with their English translation and Western equivalents are listed as follows:

Yom Rishon (First Day) approximating to Sunday

Yom Sheni (Second Day) approximating to Monday

Yom Shlishi (Third Day) approximating to Tuesday

Yom Revi’i (Fourth Day) approximating to Wednesday

Yom Chamishi (Fifth Day) approximating to Thursday

Yom Shishi (Sixth Day) approximating to Friday

Yom Shabbat (Sabbath Day) approximating to Saturday

Shabbat literally means rest and in addition to the weekly Sabbaths Israel also celebrated the seven annual Sabbaths detailed in Scripture which unlike the weekly Sabbaths could fall on any day of the week. In addition to these were certain festivals and holy days which, although sacred, did not constitute actual Sabbaths because work was not prohibited on them. In other words, while all Sabbaths are holy days, not all holy days are Sabbaths.

Furthermore, another feature of the Hebrew weekdays, and the reason they only approximate to ours, are there commencement at sunset, unlike our own reckoning that each day begins at midnight.

The Hebrew Calendar is the calendar used by the Jewish people to calculate the holy days and festivals that they still observed to this day, and is based on the instructions given by God himself in the Torah.

Unlike our Gregorian Calendar, which is solar, the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar hybrid, which is to say its months are based on lunar months, but the years is variable to accommodate the Earth’s orbit of the Sun.

Our word month simply means a division of time based upon the Moon’s orbit around the Earth - hence a ‘Moonth’ of time, if you will. And like ours, the Hebrew Calendar is divided into twelve of these, which are:

Nisan (bud) or Aviv (Spring) - 30 days

Iyar (blossom) - 29 days

Sivan (to mark or appoint) - (30 days)

Tammuz (heat) - 29 days

Av (father) - 30 days

Elul (search) - 29 days

Tishri (beginning) - 30 days

Cheshvan (eighth month) - 29 or 30 days

Kislev (security) - 29 or 30 days

Tevet (ten) - 29 days

Shevat (rod) - 30 days

Adar (beauty) - 29 days

The reason the months alternate in length is because the natural lunar month is 29½ days long, hence most Hebrew months vary between 29 and 30 days in length. But I should also mention here that not all Hebrew months are named in the Bible but are often referred to by their numbers which is probably just as well, because names can vary a bit as can their translations because many are not Hebrew at all but were acquired from other languages during Judah’s Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC. Tammuz, for example is a pagan Babylonian god.

Furthermore, the Hebrew calendar has another striking peculiarity in having more than one starting point, in fact four, the main two of which are the Sacred and Civil New Years. And, while the Sacred Year begins on the first day of the first month of Nisan, the Civil Year starts on the first day of the Seventh Month of Tishri, which to this day is still celebrated as the Jewish New Year, anciently called the Feast of Trumpets but in modern times has become known as Rosh Hashanah (literally, Head of the Year).

So, Hebrew years are of no fixed length, but may vary between 353, 354, 355, 383, 384 or 385 days long depending a number of factors. But whatever their variable duration, no Hebrew year is 365¼ days long, with most falling inconveniently short of a solar year which, like the old Roman calendar, is compensated for by the periodic insertion of an intercalary month, except this time placed at the end of the year following Adar and is called Adar II, which has 30 days.

In this way, the Hebrew year has kept pace with its astronomical counterpart for millennia, despite having no set equivalence to our Gregorian year.

As we have seen, the Hebrew Sacred Year begins on the New Moon which marks the First Day of the First Month of Aviv. Many translations render this Abib because the Hebrew letter beit doubles for both our consonants ‘b‘ and ‘v’, but Aviv is more correct and indeed, we see it preserved today in the city of Tel Aviv or Hill of Spring.

New Moons were in fact calculated astronomically by the appointed Temple authorities, so that the correct dates could be accurately observed even when the sky was overcast and no moon was visible. Another astronomical aspect that had become a matter of calculation rather than observation was sunset for much the same reason, because it had originally been calculated as the moment when the first star could be seen to twinkle in the sky as the sun sank below the horizon. However, even on a clear night, the first visible sliver of a full moon or twinkle of a star are very subjective observations, depending on the individual observer’s acuity of eyesight, which is why official calculation superseded individual observation in determining the Sacred Calendar.

This, along with the vagaries of variable years, could have made the calculation of the beginning of Aviv quite problematic, but was resolved by making the First Day of the Seventh Month of Tishri the standard by which all other days were calculated. So, the First of Tishri was actually calculated first, from which the beginning of Aviv was back-calculated.

Once all that kafuffle had been sorted by the appointed authorities the faithful would have found the annual festivals relatively simple to work out because of God’s instructions in the Torah, nowhere more clearly than in Exodus 12:1-6.

Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, "This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.

“Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbour shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.”

Notice here the instruction to ‘all the congregation of Israel…that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses.’ That’s why knowing the first day was so important, so that the tenth day could be carefully observed, as we see in the New Testament account in John 12:12-16.

The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.

So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!"

And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it is written, "Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt!"

His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him.

Notice that the reason the crowd had gathered was because they heard Jesus was coming, but the reason they were all there in the first place was to ‘keep the feast’, referring to the Passover.

We call this event the Triumphal Entry, and still commemorate it on what we call Palm Sunday, but it actually took place on the tenth day of Aviv as commanded by God - the day on which the sacrificial lambs were brought in before the Passover.

This is because, unbeknownst to everyone else then present, Jesus was the fulfilment of the type they were enacting. Jesus, of whom John the Baptist had said in John 1:29,

"Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

The palm fronds strewn before him, are the reason we call this particular procession the Triumphal Entry, because this was a symbol of Victory. And when they cried out: "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!" the crowd were making reference to Psalm 118, verses 25 and 26, towards the end of a section of Scripture (Psalms 113-118) known as The Great Hallel - from the same Hebrew root word for praise as Hallelujah.

One of the things that confuses many believers is not the idea that Jesus is our Passover, and fulfilled the Old Covenant type on the Cross, but that he said during the Last Supper in Luke 22:15:

"I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”

How, sceptics ask, could Jesus be the fulfilment of the Passover and yet observe it the previous evening? Surely there cannot be two Passovers. Or did Jesus just change it?

The answer is quite simple once you understand something I mentioned earlier - that different Jewish sects kept the same festivals on different dates and there is some evidence to suggest that the Passover Seder Jesus observed with his disciples had been arranged by Essenes.

Mark 14:12-17 fills us in somewhat on the background:

And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, "Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?"

And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, 'The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?' And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us."

And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. And when it was evening, he came with the twelve.

And just in case you were wondering whether Mark was getting his holy days confused, we should check in Mark 15:42-45, immediately after the Crucifixion.

And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph.

A couple of interesting things emerge here which clarify a number of points that have confused many.

First of all, Jesus said, "Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him…”

Anyone with knowledge of First Century Judean society would know that men did not fetch water - women did that, which is why this particular man would have been so conspicuous. But it also tells us that he was probably part of a community in which there were no women - a monastic community - he was an Essene, or a member of some similarly dissident non-mainstream Jewish sect.

The other thing is the mention in Chapter 15 of the urgency driving the burial of Jesus ‘when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath’.

It is largely from a misunderstanding of this scripture that the myth of Christ’s Crucifixion on Good Friday has arisen, when in fact, he was crucified on the Wednesday.

How do we know? Because the Bible tells us. Remember the instructions in Exodus 12, verses 3 and 6?

“Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household…and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.”

This instruction was given for two reasons: Firstly, it gave the family opportunity to have their lamb examined by the priest and declared spotless and without blemish. Secondly, it gave them the chance to bond with the lamb by taking it into their home and feeding it, maybe their children would even have played with it. So, that on the fourteenth day, when its throat was cut at its sacrifice, they would feel real pain and a real sense of its loss. God never intended that his people should regard animal sacrifice lightly or flippantly, because the animal was meant to represent the sacrifice of his precious Son, Jesus.

But notice that it occurred on the fourteenth day of the first month. If the tenth day that year fell on the Sunday or Yom Rishon, that would have made the fourteenth day a Wednesday or Yom Revi’I, because Hebrew reckoning of days always includes the day from which any count is made as day one. This confirms something we read in Matthew 12:38-40.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered him, saying, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you."

But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to spot the discrepancy that if Jesus was crucified on a Friday (Yom Shishi) and rose on a Sunday (Yom Rishon), with the best will in the world he could not possibly have been ‘three days and three nights in the heart of the earth’ as he had prophesied. But if he was crucified on the Wednesday (Yom Revi’i) the whole fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy would fit God’s timetable with immaculate precision.

The Good Friday myth simply arises from a customary Gentile misunderstanding of the Hebrew Calendar resulting in a misreading of Mark 15:42-43 which we read earlier.

And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the Council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

As we have already noted, every Hebrew day except the Sabbath is simply referred to by its number, according to which our Friday is Yom Shishi or ‘Sixth Day’. However, as the day prior to a Sabbath, it is also known as the Day of Preparation during which those tasks prohibited by the Torah to be performed on the Sabbath must be completed in advance.

We also know from Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34 and Luke 23:44 that Jesus died on the Cross 'about the ninth hour', which is about three o‘clock in the afternoon by our reckoning because in those days the hours of daylight were counted from dawn which would have been about six in the morning, that close to the equinox. Sunset would have been about six in the evening, so the disciples had only three hours in which to walk to Pilate’s palace, obtain permission and then bury Jesus in Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb before the Sabbath.

So, that meant it was Friday, right? - Wrong!

It meant that it was Passover, which according to Deuteronomy 16:1-8 is immediately followed by the annual Sabbath of the First Day of Unleavened Bread.

"Observe the month of Aviv and keep the Passover to Yahweh your God, for in the month of Aviv Yahweh your God brought you out of Egypt by night. And you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to Yahweh your God, from the flock or the herd, at the place that Yahweh will choose, to make his name dwell there.

You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction - for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste - that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.

No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the flesh that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all night until morning.

You may not offer the Passover sacrifice within any of your towns that Yahweh your God is giving you, but at the place that Yahweh your God will choose, to make his name dwell in it, there you shall offer the Passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, at the time you came out of Egypt. And you shall cook it and eat it at the place that Yahweh your God will choose. And in the morning you shall turn and go to your tents. For six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to Yahweh your God. You shall do no work on it.”

Essentially, the Feast of Unleavened Bread abuts onto Passover, but is actually distinct from it, although Jewish tradition has tended to conflate the two and refer to both as the Passover. In fact, however, while Passover is a holy day it is not a Sabbath, whereas the first and last day of the Feast Unleavened Bread are Sabbaths.

Missing this crucial point has caused much of the Church to veer into legalism over the centuries, because this seven day festival underscores the New Covenant reality that because of Jesus’ finished work on the Cross, commemorated at Passover, we can enter into the Sabbath rest of God, as sin (like leaven) has been removed completely from the believer’s life.

So, where are we so far? - Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey on the tenth day of Aviv (Palm Sunday) and dies on the Cross on the fourteenth day which is Passover (Wednesday) immediately prior to the annual Sabbath of the First Day of Unleavened Bread (Thursday). Remembering that the Hebrew day begins at sunset, so the day we call Thursday actually begins at sunset on what we call Wednesday.

So, Jesus spent Wednesday evening to Thursday evening - one day and one night - in the tomb. Then, Thursday evening to Friday evening - two days and two nights. And Friday evening to Saturday evening - three days and three nights. After which Jesus rose from the grave just as twilight began on the Saturday evening, at the cusp of the first day of the week.

That’s why all four Gospels tell us that the women who went to finish preparing Jesus’ body with spices very early on the Sunday morning, before the sun had risen, discovered that his body was already gone. He’d been up since the night before.

But look again and still more secrets are revealed.

By rising at twilight of the Saturday, Jesus can quite legitimately be said to have risen on the Sunday, by God’s reckoning. That places his resurrection on the seventeenth day of Aviv. But why is that significant?

Well, Jesus’ death and resurrection were accompanied by several peculiar events, an unnatural darkness that fell between the sixth and ninth hours (midday to three o’clock in the afternoon) (Mark 15:33). The heavy veil of the Temple ripped like a rag from top to bottom. But the events I want to focus on are the two earthquakes that occurred; one when Jesus died and another when he rose again.

Here are their accounts, first of all in Matthew 27:51-54,

And, behold! The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And the earth quaked, and the rocks were sheared, and the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose, and coming out of the tomb after His resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. But the centurion and those guarding Jesus, seeing the earthquake, and the things that took place, they feared greatly, saying, ‘Truly this One was Son of God’.

And in Matthew 28:1-8,

But late in the week, at the dawning into the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.

And behold, a great earthquake occurred! For coming down from Heaven, and coming up, an angel of the Lord rolled back the stone from the door and was sitting on it. His countenance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And the keepers shook for fear of him and became like dead men.

And the angel answered and said to the women, ‘Do not fear, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And, behold, he goes before you into Galilee. There you shall see him. Lo, I have told you.’

And they quickly departed from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring his disciples word.

Those who do not understand Greek could be forgiven for assuming that the second earthquake occurred as the women arrived, but it is clear from the Greek aorist tense employed by Matthew, and the other Gospel accounts, that this is a parenthetic reference to an event that had occurred earlier.

In their own right, the two earthquake accounts would be dramatic enough, but they do not stand alone because of when the second one occurred, thereby linking them to an earlier type in Genesis. You see, because we know that Jesus was crucified on the fourteenth day of Aviv and rose three days later, his resurrection and the second earthquake actually occurred on the seventeenth. And what makes the seventeenth significant is something we read Genesis 8:4.

And in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat.

Compare this with Genesis 7:11,

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, in this day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of the heavens were opened up.

Notice how death came with an earthquake on a particular seventeenth day in Genesis 7, but salvation was completed when the Ark rested on another seventeenth day in Genesis 8. Nor should this come as any surprise because Noah’s Ark is itself a type representing Christ, in whom mankind was sealed by God and saved from the wrath of his judgement.

No wonder then that the number 17 is said to be the number of ‘victory‘, ‘safety’ and ‘security’, or as I would prefer to put it: Christ’s victory, and our salvation.

So, there we have it: another perspective on Passover and I hope, a deeper understanding of the Gospel than the Easter tradition alone could ever hope to provide.

As I said at the beginning, it is not a sin nor ever wrong to desire to honour and glorify God, and if we can do that while observing Easter then so much the better. But what a pity that in promoting its own agenda the Church has abandoned such a rich seam of truth in the Passover.

One of the teaching tools of every rabbi, and one Jesus was fond of is the use of keshers. These are references used to link the hearer to wider principles through the vehicle of just one scriptural example. Sometimes Jesus would use just a line or a sentence, which was usually enough to remind the Jewish ears of his listeners of perhaps several chapters from one or more books of the Bible.

So, perhaps it is because he foresaw what was coming to the Church and what would happen to his truth, that he instituted the Lord’s Supper to act as a kind of kesher by performing the remnant of the whole that Passover was once intended to represent.