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PASSOVER OR EASTER - WHICH IS BIBLICAL?

“When the LORD your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going in to dispossess, and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, beware that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?'  You shall not behave thus toward the LORD your God, for every abominable act which the LORD hates they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods.  Whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to nor take away from it” (Deuteronomy 12:29-32).

God warned us - Israel then, Christians now - not to adopt pagan customs.  However, we have chosen not to heed God’s warning.  Many traditional Christian doctrines and celebrations - such as going to heaven or hell when we die, the immortality of the soul, and Christmas - are rooted in paganism.  So is Easter.

“Easter, a Christian festival, embodies many pre-Christian traditions. The origin of its name is unknown. Scholars, however, accepting the derivation proposed by the 8th-century English scholar St. Bede, believe it probably comes from Ēastre, the Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated a month corresponding to April. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox; traditions associated with the festival survive in the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored Easter eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring, and used in Easter-egg rolling contests or given as gifts” (MSN Encarta, article on Easter).

Easter eggs, the Easter bunny, the Easter fire, and the word Easter itself: what do they have in common?  They originated in paganism, as the Catholic encyclopedia admits: 

a)      Easter eggs: “Because the use of eggs was forbidden during Lent, they were brought to the table on Easter Day, colored red to symbolize the Easter joy. This custom is found not only in the Latin but also in the Oriental Churches. The symbolic meaning of a new creation of mankind by Jesus risen from the dead was probably an invention of later times. The custom may have its origin in paganism, for a great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring.” 

b)      Easter bunny: “The Easter Rabbit lays the eggs, for which reason they are hidden in a nest or in the garden. The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility.”  

c)      Easter fire: “The Easter Fire is lit on the top of mountains (Easter mountain, Osterberg) and must be kindled from new fire, drawn from wood by friction (nodfyr); this is a custom of pagan origin in vogue all over Europe, signifying the victory of spring over winter.”  

The word Easter is derived from “Eostre, a Saxon goddess celebrated at the spring equinox” (The Oxford Companion to the Bible, pg. 173).  Eostre is also known as Ostara.  “In ancient Anglo-Saxon myth, Ostara is the personification of the rising sun. In that capacity she is associated with the spring and is considered to be a fertility goddess. She is the friend of all children and to amuse them she changed her pet bird into a rabbit. This rabbit brought forth brightly colored eggs, which the goddess gave to the children as gifts. From her name and rites the festival of Easter is derived” (Encyclopedia Mythica). 

            The Easter egg, bunny and fire, and the word Easter, are pagan.  Is it too farfetched to assume that the Easter celebration is also pagan?

The Bible does not contain the word “Easter.”  Moreover, the Easter celebration remembers Jesus’ resurrection (on the wrong day, by the way).  But Jesus commanded His disciples, then and now, to observe His death until He returns.  God commands us to remember Jesus’ death, and hence the reason for His sacrifice (our sins), during the Passover season. “For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed” (I Corinthians 5:7).  Why, then, do we celebrate Easter?  Why not Passover? 

More on the pagan origins of Easter 

“What means the term Easter itself?  It is not a Christian name….Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven” (Alexander Hislop, The Two Babylons, pg. 103).   Hislop also demonstrates that many Easter customs, including hot cross buns, are pagan. 

            Lent is a forty-day period of fasting, prayer and penitence before Easter.  Lent, too, is pagan: “The forty days' abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess. Such a Lent of forty days, `in the spring of the year,' is still observed by the Yezidis or pagan devil-worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians. Such a Lent of forty days was held in the spring by the pagan Mexicans, for thus we read in Humboldt [Mexican Researches, v. i. P. 404] where he gives account of Mexican observances: `Three days after the vernal equinox…began a solemn fast of forty days in honor of the sun.' Such a Lent of forty days was observed in Egypt, as may be seen on consulting Wilkinson's Egyptians. This Egyptian Lent of forty days, we are informed by Landseer, in his Sabean Researches, was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god" (The Two Babylons, pg. 105).

There’s no doubt about it: the roots of Easter are pagan.  God commands us to not keep pagan customs. Why, then, do we keep Easter? 

The Early Church 

“The divine authority of Moses and the prophets was admitted, and even established, as the firmest basis of Christianity” (Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 1, pg. 451).  In his magisterial history of the decline of the Roman Empire until the fall of Constantinople in 1452, Gibbon includes a succinct and insightful history of the early centuries of Christianity.  He affirms what most scholars believe, and indeed, what the Bible states: early Christians were considered a sect of Judaism. 

The earliest Christians kept the law of God as found in the first five books of Moses. They observed the holy days and festivals of God. They did not observe Easter and Christmas; those celebrations, which are rooted in paganism, arrived centuries later.  Jesus Himself validated the law and holy days of God:  “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.  For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.  Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:17-19).   

Heaven and earth have not passed away.  According to Jesus, neither have God’s laws and holy days (including the seventh-day Sabbath).  Man, however, has ignored Jesus’ teachings and replaced them with worldly traditions.  “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8). 

What happened? 

The divergence of early Christianity from God’s laws and holy days took a long time.  “The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews; and the congregation over which they presided united the law of Moses with the doctrine of Christ (emphasis mine)….But when numerous and opulent societies were established in the great cities of the empire, in Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, the reverence which Jerusalem had inspired to all the Christian colonies insensibly diminished.  The Jewish converts, or as they were afterward called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes, that from all the various religions of polytheism inlisted (sic) under the banner of Christ” (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, pg. 453). 

            Luke records that Roman and Jewish authorities labeled the apostle Paul as a leader of this sect of the Nazarenes: “For we have found this man a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5).  These Nazarenes (or earliest Christians) believed not in the destruction of God’s laws, holy days, and festivals.  Instead, they clung to the belief in the validity and permanence of God’s laws, holy days and festivals (Matthew 5:17-19). 

The Roman and Jewish authorities considered the Nazarenes (or earliest Christians) to be a sect because they believed that Jesus had fulfilled the role of the prophesied Messiah.  That was the main difference between the earliest Christians and other Jews.  (Other differences involved the role of Mosaic Law in salvation and the sacrificial system.)

            During the second half of the first century, the Jewish people in Judea revolted against Roman rule.  Josephus is our primary source for the first Jewish revolt of 66-70 AD.  He describes their unhappy ending during the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman general Titus (son of Roman Emperor Vespasian).  “But when they went in numbers into the lanes of the city, with their swords drawn, they slew those whom they overtook, without mercy, and set fire to the houses wither the Jews were fled, and burnt every soul in them, and laid waste a great many of the rest; and when they were come to the houses to plunder them, they found in them entire families of dead men, and the upper rooms full of dead corpses, that is of such as died by the famine; they then stood in a horror at this sight, and went out without touching anything. But although they had this commiseration for such as were destroyed in that manner, yet had they not the same for those that were still alive, but they ran every one through whom they met with, and obstructed the very lanes with their dead bodies, and made the whole city run down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men's blood. And truly so it happened, that though the slayers left off at the evening, yet did the fire greatly prevail in the night, and as all was burning, came that eighth day of the month Gorpieus [Elul] upon Jerusalem; a city that had been liable to so many miseries during the siege, that, had it always enjoyed as much happiness from its first foundation, it would certainly have been the envy of the world” (Josephus, War of the Jews, Book 6). 

            The Romans sacked Jerusalem, killing many of its inhabitants and destroying the Herodian temple in which Jews worshipped.  “The ruin of the temple, of the city, and of the public religion of the Jews, was severely felt by the Nazarene” (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, pg. 453).  In the aftermath of this revolt, the Roman Emperor renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, and ordered a general persecution against the Jewish religion.  In order to escape persecution, the Nazarenes appointed a gentile bishop to lead them.  This bishop convinced many of them to renounce Mosaic Law and the holy days and festivals found in Leviticus 23.  However, some Nazarenes did not comply with this order.  “The name of Nazarenes was deemed too honourable for those Christian Jews, and they soon received from the supposed poverty of their understanding, as well as of their condition, the contemptuous epithet of Ebionites.  In a few years after the return of the church of Jerusalem, it became a matter of doubt and controversy, whether a man who sincerely acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation” (ibid, pg. 455, emphasis mine).

            The Nazarenes (or Ebionites) melted into obscurity: “The unfortunate Ebionites, rejected from one religion as apostates, and from the other as heretics, found themselves compelled to assume a more decided character; and although some traces of that obsolete sect may be discovered as late as the fourth century, they insensibly melted away either into the church or the synagogue” (ibid, pg. 455).

            The separation of church and the synagogue (or more aptly, Christians from God’s laws, holy days and festivals) was almost complete by the end of the first century.  Then, in 135 AD, a false messiah named Bar Kochba led a second revolt against Roman rule.  “The one thing that does happen in the second revolt, though, is [that] the self-consciously apocalyptic and messianic identity of Bar Kochba forces the issue for the Christian tradition. It appears that some people in the second revolt tried to press other Jews, including Christians, into the revolt, saying, ‘Come join us to fight against the Romans. You believe God is going to restore the kingdom to Israel, don't you? Join us.’ But the Christians by this time are starting to say, "No, he can't be the messiah -- we already have one." And at that point we really see the full-fledged separation of Jewish tradition and Christian tradition becoming clear” (from Jews and the Ancient World, companion text from the PBS Frontline special, From Jesus to Christ, a portrait of Jesus’ world.       

How Easter replaced the Passover 

The earliest Christians kept the law of God, including the holy days and festivals that begin with Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23).   We have seen how the forces of history led later Christians to renounce Mosaic Law and God’s festivals and holy days.  These laws (such as the seventh-day Sabbath) and holy days and festivals were considered too Jewish, and no one wanted to be associated with the persecuted Jews in the last half and first half of the first and second centuries.  Therefore, they sought replacements; hence the creation of Easter and Christmas as replacements for Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. 

            The latent paganism of the gentile converts also contributed to the gradual renunciation of God’s laws, holy days, and festivals, as found in the Old Testament.           

Still, in the fourth century, some plucky Christians celebrated Passover and not Easter.  “Churches celebrating Pascha (Passover) on 14 Nisan, known as Quartodecimans…were a minority” (Encyclopedia of Catholicism, pg. 438). This reminds us of Jesus’ prediction that the “gates of Hades,” of the grave, will never prevail over the Church.  To this day, a relative few Christians keep the Passover and other holy days of God. 

Why do most Christians refuse to observe God’s annual Holy Days? 

Millions of Christians, and specifically their pastors and leaders, refuse to observe the holy days and festivals of God.  Centuries of tradition rooted in paganism have buried God’s truth.  These sincere Christians are unaware of what the holy days and festivals mean.  They are not Jewish holy days and festivals.  “And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: The feasts of the LORD, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts” (Leviticus 23:1-2).  They are God’s holy days and feasts.

Sure, the holy days and festivals of God were first centered on Israel. But the holy days and festivals represent many things.  They teach us about the past. They teach us about the future.  They’re symbolic.  They are signs between God and His people: “You shall surely observe My Sabbaths; for this is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I am the LORD who sanctifies you” (Exodus 31:13).  Not the Sabbath, but the plural “Sabbaths,” which encompass the seventh-day Sabbath and the Holy Days.  (God says that we must refrain from working on the holy days; they are thus considered Sabbaths, or days of rest.)

These holy days and festivals point to Jesus Christ:  

1        Passover: Jesus is the Passover lamb which was slain for us; 

2        Festival of Unleavened Bread: Jesus was unleavened. Biblically, leaven symbolizes sin. Jesus referred to Himself as the “bread which came down from heaven.” Jesus was sinless, or unleavened; 

3        Festival of the Firstfruits (alternately called Feast of Weeks, later known as Pentecost):  Jesus is the First of the firstfruits of God, and Christians are also called firstfruits who receive God’s Holy Spirit, which was first made available in a transformative way on the first Day of Pentecost (Acts 2);  

4        The Memorial of Blowing of Trumpets heralds the return of Jesus to the earth;  

5        The Day of Atonement depicts Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on our behalf (and the binding of Satan for one thousand years following the return of Jesus);

6        The Feast of Tabernacles represents Jesus ‘tabernacling’ in the flesh for 33.5 years, and He was probably born on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles; and  

7        The Last Great Day foreshadows Jesus as Judge in the judgment period of the second resurrection.(When all those who have not known Christ will have an opportunity for salvation.) 

Since the holy days and festivals (collectively referred to as Sabbaths in Exodus 31:13) are Christ-centered, and since they are “signs” between God and His people, why have millions of mainstream Christians unwittingly replaced these sacred days and festivals with pagan Easter and Christmas?

The First Passover 

The first Passover was unique.  Subsequent Passovers remembered the events that occurred during that first Passover: the death of the Egyptian firstborn; the saving blood of the sacrificial lamb that spared the Israelite households from a similar fate; the exodus from Egypt. 

The Israelites were slaves in Egypt .  Knowledge of God’s laws, the seventh-day Sabbath, and the annual seasons, became lost during that time.  The Israelites accepted Egyptian gods and philosophy, and were thus ignorant of God’s laws and holy calendar.

Enough was enough: God chose to deliver the Israelites from bondage.  At that time He began to reveal His annual holy days and their importance: “Now the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, ^‘This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you’” (Exodus 12:1-2).  This month, called Abib (Exodus 13:4) and later Nisan (Nehemiah 2:1), was the beginning of God’s holy calendar.  

God instructed the Israelites to sacrifice a spotless lamb and put its blood on their doorposts. This happened during the afternoon of the fourteenth day of Abib.  During the early portion of the fifteenth day of Nisan, the death angel passed over these Israelite houses on his way to kill the firstborn of the Egyptian households.  Later in the day the Israelites began to leave Egypt; destination: the land promised to Abraham’s descendants. 

God chose to save His people - the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - and to establish them as His nation.  They endured forty subsequent years of trial and testing in the Sinai wilderness.  The older generation - everyone twenty years and older at the time of the Exodus - failed that trial. They bickered constantly and on several occasions expressed their desire to return to Egypt.   Eventually God enabled their children, the second generation, to enter the promised land.

The Old Testament Passover reminded the Israelites that God passed over their houses and struck the firstborn of Egypt, which provoked the Pharaoh to release them from their bondage.  The Feast of Unleavened Bread reminded them about their exodus from Egypt.

 The Old Testament Passover season (Passover day and the ensuing seven festival days of Unleavened Bread) had great spiritual significance, with respect to the plan of God.  The land of Egypt represents this evil world over which the Christian must overcome.  Just as the Israelites were actual slaves, we are slaves to our passions and carnal natures, and to the institutions, religions, and customs of this world.

The older generation perished in the wilderness.  This typifies the death of our “old man”(Ephesians 4:22), which dies in the baptismal waters: “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?  Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4).  The blood of the sacrificial and spotless lamb saved the ancient Israelites from death.  Likewise, “for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: our Passover Lamb has been killed for us” (I Corinthians 5:7). 

The New Testament Passover 

Jesus had always kept the Passover.  “His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. And when He was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast. When they had finished the days, as they returned, the Boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem. And Joseph and His mother did not know it” (Luke 2:41-43).  However, He missed the traditional Passover celebration of the last year of His life.  He was the Passover sacrifice in that year.

His last meal, several hours before the traditional Passover lamb was slain, is recorded in the four Gospels.  Here is John’s account: “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself.  After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, are You washing my feet?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.’ Peter said to Him, ‘You shall never wash my feet!’  Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.’ Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!’  Jesus said to him, ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.’ For He knew who would betray Him; therefore He said, ‘You are not all clean.’  So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you?   You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am.  If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:1-15)

In addition, during the meal Jesus introduced the symbols of the bread and wine.  “And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you.  For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.  But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom” (Matthew 26:26-29).

The unleavened bread became symbolic of Jesus’ broken body on the stake, and the wine of His shed blood for the remission of sins. 

As with the first Passover, this event was unique.   

“For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” 

        Jesus became our Passover.  He is the Passover.  When we eat the unleavened bread and drink the wine, we’re celebrating not the Old Covenant Passover, but the New Covenant Passover.  “Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.  Therefore let us keep the feast (of Unleavened Bread), not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Corinthians 5: 7-8).  Paul urged the Corinthians, and is urging us, to observe the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread not in commemoration of the original Passover and Exodus, but in remembrance of Jesus’ sacrifice for us.  (Paul urged a gentile church - the Corinthians were located in Corinth, Greece - to observe holy days and festivals first mentioned in the Old Testament.  This confirms that the laws, holy days and festivals were not nailed to the stake, commonly referred to as the “cross.”)

            God commanded Israel to eat unleavened bread for seven consecutive days during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.  Despite the original injunction’s relation to the Exodus, there is unmistakable spiritual significance in eating unleavened bread after commemorating Jesus’ death on Passover.  “‘No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall all be taught by God.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.  Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.’  The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves, saying, ‘How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?’  Then Jesus said to them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven--not as your fathers ate the manna, and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever” (John 6:44-58).    

Leaven represents sin. Jesus was our Passover, and He commands us to commemorate His death by eating unleavened bread and drinking wine.  By eating unleavened bread on that day, and during the ensuing Feast of Unleavened Bread, we’re remembering Jesus as our unleavened, or sinless, sacrificial lamb.  And because leaven represents sin, we’re also remembering to put sin out of our lives, just as we put physical leaven (symbolic of sin) out of our households.    

The necessity of observing Passover, or rather, the Lord’s Supper

 Every year God’s people assemble on the fourteenth day of Nisan, after sunset and the end of the thirteenth day.  We assemble in commemoration of Jesus’ last supper.  Jesus was unable to have that last traditional Passover meal because He became the sacrificial Passover lamb several hours after His last supper.  Technically, we don’t keep the Passover because Jesus has become our Passover.  Instead, we observe the Lord's Supper. 

This observance is the event of the year.  It’s the annual festival that points to the way of salvation: acceptance of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus our Passover.  Without such acceptance, we’re without hope. Therefore, if you believe in the necessity for salvation, you must keep the Lord’s Supper every year, on the beginning of the fourteenth day of the first month in the Hebraic calendar, which corresponds to our March or April.  You must also keep the ensuing Feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasts seven days.  There is no alternative.

Footnote:

Acts 12:4 

"And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.

[Four quaternions of soldiers] That is, sixteen, or four companies of four men each, who had the care of the prison, each company taking in turn one of the four watches of the night.

[Intending after Easter to bring him forth] Meta (NT:3326) to (NT:3588) pascha (NT:3957), After the Passover. Perhaps there never was a more unhappy, not to say absurd, translation than that in our text..." (Adam Clark Commentary) 

The term Easter, inserted here by OUR translators, (emphasis mine) they borrowed from the ancient Anglo-Saxon service-books, or from the version of the Gospels, which always translates the  (NT:3588) pascha (NT:3957) of the Greek by this term; e.g. Matt 26:2: Ye know that after two days is the feast of the Passover. The Anglo-Saxon has: "Wite ge that aefter twam dagum beoth Eastro." Matt 26:19: And they made ready the Passover. The Anglo-Saxon has: "And hig gegearwodon hym Easter thenunga" (i.e. the paschal supper). Prefixed to Matt 28:1, are these words in Anglo-Saxon: "This part to be read on Easter even(ing)." And, before Acts 12:8, some similar words. Mark 14:12: "And the first day of unleavened bread when they killed the Passover." The Anglo-Saxon has: "And tham forman daege azimorum, tha hi Eastron offrodon." Other examples occur in this version. Wycliff used the word "paske", i.e. Passover; but Tyndale, Coverdale, Becke, and Cardmarden, following the old Saxon mode of translation, insert "Easter": the Geneva Bible very properly renders it the "Passover". There are several Saxon spellings of the name of the goddess Easter, whose festival was celebrated by our pagan forefathers in the month of April; hence, that month, in the Saxon calender, is called "Easter month". Every view we can take of this subject shows the gross impropriety of retaining a name every way exceptionable, and palpably absurd.  (Adam Clark Commentary).   

Regarding this same verse Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary states, "Intending after Easter, [meta (NT:3326) ta (NT:3588) pascha (NT:3957)] - it should be, 'after the Passover:' that is, after the conclusion of the festival. (The word employed in our King James Version being an ecclesiastical term of later date, is improperly used here.)

(from Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1997 by Biblesoft) 

It is quite evident that the term Easter is a mistranslation inserted by translators.  The Greek word used here in this verse is pascha and should be rendered Passover.  Does it not make you wonder why these two words were interchanged?  A brief study of the words Ishtar, Astarte, Ashtoreth or even Easter should give you the answer.

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