Easter (in Gk. pascha, which also means Passover). The earliest and greatest annual festival of the Christian calendar. On the basis of the evidence quoted by Eusebius (EH 4.24.1–8), its existence can certainly be traced back to the time of Anicetus and Polycarp (c. 155) and probably to the time of the birth of Polycrates (c. 125). The reference in Epistle of the Apostles 15 may also date from c. 125. It is likely that the festival arose at Antioch c. 110, out of the weekly commemoration of Christ’s resurrection on Sunday, the intention being to give special prominence to that Sunday which fell nearest to the actual season of the resurrection, i.e. the Sunday next after the Jewish Passover on 14 Nisan.
In the 2nd century, the small province of Asia observed Easter on 14 Nisan itself, whereas virtually the whole of the Christian world outside observed it on the Sunday following, and this has given rise to an alternative explanation of the origin of Easter. It has been supposed, notably by B. Lohse, that the practice of the province of Asia was the original Christian practice, and was a continuation of the observance of the Passover itself by Jewish Christians in NT times. However, it is very hard to understand why Jewish-Christian practice should have been preserved in Asia (a largely Gentile area, evangelized by the author of Col. 2:16–17 and Gal. 4:9–11) but not in Palestine or Syria (where there were more Jews than anywhere else, and where Jewish Christianity had its centre). So it is better to see the practice of Asia as presupposing the existence of Easter Sunday, and as an attempt to achieve greater precision than the rest of the Christian world, by transferring Easter from the Sunday after the Passover to the Passover itself. There is no evidence, incidentally, for the hypothesis that the church of Asia was celebrating Christ’s death and the rest of the church his resurrection. The ancient Easter day celebrated both events (the separate Good Friday first appears in the 4th century).
The practice of Asia gave rise to an internal controversy between Melito and Claudius Apollinaris (c. 150–60) and to the world-wide Quartodeciman (‘about the fourteenth’) controversy (c. 190) in which the non-Asian view prevailed. Up to this point, all Christians dated Easter by following the decision made each year by the Jews about the Passover, which was still being fixed by observation; so they kept Easter either on the Sunday following the Jewish festival or (in Asia) on the actual Jewish festival day. However, since this dependence aroused Jewish mockery, in the 3rd century Christians began to fix Easter independently, by astronomical calculation. The problem they faced was to reconcile the Jewish lunar year with the standard solar year of the Roman Empire. For this purpose the Roman church used a doubled 8-year cycle, and later an 84-year cycle, while the Alexandrian church used the Metonic cycle of 19 years, which was the most accurate of the three, and ultimately prevailed everywhere. In the meantime, however, the second great Easter controversy arose, between those who had begun to fix Easter astronomically, and those who continued to be guided by Jewish practice, and to hold it on the Sunday after the Passover. This controversy (often confused with the Quartodeciman, causing Quartodecimanism to be thought more lasting and widespread than it was) was resolved in principle by the Council of Nicaea in 325, the decision being in favour of the new method. The dissidents this time were not the church of Asia but the churches of Syria, Cilicia and Mesopotamia.
The subsequent Easter controversies arose from the different methods of calculating Easter. The 7th-century controversy over the Celtic Easter was due to the Celtic churches having retained the 84-year cycle after Rome had abandoned it. The controversy extending from the 16th century to our own day over the Julian and Gregorian calendars is due to the slight but accumulating inaccuracy in the Roman solar year, as established by Julius Caesar. By 1582 this had become significant enough for Pope Gregory XIII to have it corrected, but churches out of communion with Rome were naturally slow in adopting his reform. It was not adopted in England until 1752, when new Easter tables were introduced into the Book of Common Prayer; many of the Eastern churches have still not adopted it. Since Easter is a movable festival, related to the moon, it coincides in the Julian and Gregorian calendars about once every three years; but the fixed festivals, such as Christmas, now fall thirteen days later in the Julian calendar than in the Gregorian. The modern secular concept of a fixed Easter, which would mean abandoning the Jewish lunar year altogether, has met with some degree of favour in the Western churches but none in the Eastern, where the only interest is in an agreed Easter.
Already in the 2nd century the Easter celebrations were being continued over the following seven weeks, and a preparatory period of one or more days of fasting (the ultimate source of the later Lent) was also being added. The uniquely early origin of Easter, the scale of its celebrations, and the heat with which its date was debated, all bear witness to the unrivalled importance of Christ’s death and resurrection (the actual fulfilment of the ancient pascha) in primitive Christian thinking.
Bibliography
R. T. Beckwith, ‘The Origin of the Festivals Easter and Whitsun’, SL 13 (1979), pp. 1–20; J. G. Davies, Holy Week (London, 1963); A. A. McArthur, The Evolution of the Christian Year (London, 1953); T. Talley, ‘Liturgical Times in the Ancient Church: the State of Research’, SL 14 (1982), pp. 34–51.
