Easter or Passover?

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, Acts 12:4.

When did Herod intend to bring forth Peter to the people? The new translations seem to be in lockstep. They almost universally say that Herod intended to bring forth Peter after Passover. Why is there a mixup?

The defenders of the word "Passover" point out that the Greek word "Pascha" or "Πάσχα" means Passover. Certainly they are right, but it also means "Easter". If you go to Greece today and say "Pascha", they will think that you are speaking of Easter. Of course that brings up the immediate objection that Greece today speaks a modern Greek. It is not the Greek of the Bible.

We will see that the King James translators differed from modern translators in that they had spent a lifetime immersed in the Ancient Greek Language and that their familiarity with it was far broader than having spent five or six years studying the language in a classroom and using lexicons designed for divinity students.

"Easter" is a word borrowed from pagan origins just as the word "Sunday" was borrowed from pagan origins. The eastern mystics had a feast they called "Ishtar". Just as the Jews did, the eastern mystics used lunar cycles to keep track of seasons. Their lunar cycles corresponded closely to the Jewish lunar cycles. Ishtar and the Passover feast quite often came about at the same time.

Jews lived in Greek-Speaking lands for centuries before the Christian era. The coastal cities were filled with diverse languages and cultures but shared Greek as the language of learning. Latin became the language of government.

Both Ishtar and the Passover were celebrated by some of the inhabitants and traders in those cities at almost the same time. The local Greeks to whom neither feast was native to them called them both by the name "Pascha".

It is no great surprise that the Jewish Greek name for Passover should be the name kept. Alexander the Great had relocated Jews throughout his empire and made them to be administrators and they were important people. Their name for the feast held at that lunar cycle would have been the dominant name used by Greek-Speaking people.

If you learned the Greek language as it is taught today, you would learn it with blinders on and would only see those definitions collated in lexicons compiled in the last century and a half. If you learned the Greek Language in the 16th and 17th centuries you would have learned it by reading all of the Greek playwrights and philosophers as well as every extant government document from the time, letters written and even graffiti. You would have also read the bible in Greek as easily as you could read English.

Who would be best at translating Mark Twain into Chinese today, a Chinese speaker who spent five years learning English in a classroom, or a Chinese speaker who not only spent years in a classroom learning English, but who also spent years reading every 19th century text that he could find written in American English? Such is the advantage the King James translators had in reading and understanding the Greek Bible.

With that said, let us look at the context of the word "Easter" as it is written in the King James Bible and the word "Passover" as written in the new versions.

Acts 12:3 And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.)

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.

What were those days of unleavened bread spoken of in verse 3? To understand that we need to look at the tightly packed week of Passover and the feast that followed Passover.

Leviticus 23:5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD'S passover.

Leviticus 23:6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.

Which feast came first, the Feast of Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread? It is very clear that the Feast of Unleavened Bread takes place immediately after the Passover. What feast is going on when Herod arrested Peter? Look at the sentence in parenthesis, (Then were the days of unleavened bread.) Passover has already happened.

Therefore the King James translators who full well knew that "pascha" could mean both Passover or Easter got it right. Just as the day set aside to honor the pagan sun god which we still call, Sunday is now a day of honor as the first day of the week when we gather together as Christians, the pagan day of "Ishtar" is now the honored day of Easter in which we celebrate the glory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.