The Easter Story

A few years ago I had the privilege to preach at a little chapel on the subject of Palm Sunday. As very often happens when I prepare a talk I end up learning a lot and this time was no exception. If you, like me, were brought up on chocolate eggs at Easter time and thought it was all part of the celebration we call Easter (Good Friday, Easter Sunday etc) then you better turn away now unless you are ready to hear the truth about Easter.

First I thought it would be a good idea to find out why Easter was called Easter and where it was in the bible. No problem, right? Wrong! It looks like Easter was originally named after a pagan goddess called Ēostre. The source of this information is an English (Northumbrian) monk called Bede writing in his work called “De temporum ratione” (“The Reckoning of Time”) in 725. Written in Medieval Latin, you can observe his work in the British library. In the 1950’s archeological evidence was found to support his claims.

Whether you believe these claims or not, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has nothing to do with easter bunnies or chocolate eggs or the name “Easter”. You will not find that in the biblical narrative. In fact in other countries like France they celebrate pâques from the Latin pascha which simply translates to “Passover” (its where we get the phrase Paschal Lamb) in the the Hebraic pésakh ( See wiktionary). So mainly English speaking countries like the UK and USA use “Easter” which you can never get from pésakh. Easter is a colloquial term and not a translation of the word that means Passover. We could also talk about the Nimrod, Semiremis and Tammuz legend and where the 40 days of Lent comes from but again you know if you read the biblical narrative it does not feature there. Except Tammuz that is found in Ezekiel 8:14 “…women were there weeping for Tammuz”. – this was idolatry.

So lets turn our attention to what really matters at this time of year, the crucifixion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So what about Good Friday and Resurrection (Easter) Sunday. Surely they are biblical? Well there is no mention of Good Friday and it is almost certainly not a Friday when Jesus was crucified as there would be no 3 days and nights before He was risen on the Sunday, and if there is one thing all Christians agree on (because it written in the bible) Jesus rose early on the first day of the week – Mark 16:9. The reason that Friday was chosen as the crucifixion day is because the bible states that the next day was a sabbath and so the authorities made sure the crucified were dead with enough time for the dead bodies to be removed and buried before the next day. See John 19:31. John also tells us it was a High sabbath which is the clue that this was not the ordinary sabbath on a Saturday. He also tells us that He was crucified on the day of preparation (for the sabbath) which is the day before, which in the Hebrew calendar finishes at sundown.

High sabbaths were examples of a “moed” (a special time) such as the feast of unleavened bread. This particular feast was held on the month of Nissan (Mar/Apr in our calendar) and in particular it starts on the 15th day of the month of Nissan and that is a high Sabbath.

So now we can piece it altogether and we find as in the diagram below that Jesus was crucified on the Hebraic Wednesday not Friday. This all makes sense when you consider the history of Passover and Jesus as our Passover lamb crucified when the Passover lamb was being slaughtered.