The Greek says pascha. The Latin translations say pascha. It's not until we get into 15th century German translations that some form of 'easter' appears - so far that I've found. Of course I haven't searched exhaustively, yet... But I am interested in figuring out when the first use of the word is, and where.
It was a big controversy as early the first few hundred years AD - - should Christians be celebrating the resurrection according to the Jewish calendar, since it occurred and is so closely linked to the feast days of scripture? Or should it be always on a Sunday, because, Sunday, and because, let's distance ourselves from Jews as much as possible, after all they killed Jesus. Nevermind that Jesus was Jewish and all the first Christians and even the first 13 popes.
So in 325 the council of nicea decided, always Sunday, forget the Jews, let's not even use Jewish calendar but use vernal equinox to decide which Sunday. And anyone who does otherwise is kicked out of Christianity.
Pretty sure this is birth of 'easter' as an idea - definitely as what day to celebrate, but not the word easter, because the Latin translations made after this all still say pascha. Never easter.
So, there were some Germanic language bibles in the dark ages, when the holy Roman empire was, and the holy Roman emperor was always king of Germany. Sadly the only copies that still survive do not contain acts. I wondered what they put there - easter? Or pascha?
Because I suspect this was a political move. It is definitely not a translation thing. They put a different word - easter - on purpose. It cannot be a translation thing, because no source text, no Hebrew no Greek no Latin has the word easter in it at all. It has to have been a choice to do something other than translate.
Over time, it started to become synonymous with passover in common thinking. Because people who pointed out the difference were persecuted, excommunicated if they kept passover or celebrated Christ's resurrection on a non-Sunday, and very few people could read and find out themselves. Never among the Jews of course, but by and large for a long time Christians were very antisemitic.
So all this happened. Tyndale put easter in his Bible almost every time passover was mentioned, except a couple places in Exodus where it just made too little sense. You could say, the common people didn't know pascha, they only knew easter by that time, so he's playing to their ears. But it's not accurate. Did he get it from Luther? And this germanic-roman history of substituting the word pascha in the scripture? Maybe. It's a very interesting problem
But it means little. And to the KJV only brothers and sisters, it means nothing at all. To them, the Greek is wrong, Luke was wrong, Paul is wrong. Kjv is right no matter what.
Probably this should all go in a different thread once I learn more about all the history, enough to actually have a firm idea of the story. For now I have little bits here and there, and speculation.