Easter in Acts should we passover the KJV

Easter in Acts should we passover the KJV

 

One of the most common examples used to demonstrate that the KJV has errors and is not a correct translation is the KJv and its usage of the word Easter in Acts 12:4. It is claimed that Easter is an incorrect translation and should be Passover,r which is evidence that the KJV has mistakes.

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. KJV

Most other versions read Passover and not Easter, I shall just give a couple of examples here.

Acts 12:4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover. NIV

Acts 12:4 And when he had seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending after the Passover to bring him out to the people. ESV

The Greek word is pecach( Pronounced Pesak). This word is found 29 times in the New Testament. The KJV translates it as Passover 28 of those 29 times with just this one occurrence of Easter in Acts 12:4.

It is argued that the word pecach means Passover and thus the translation Easter is incorrect.

Now as already stated the KJV translators rendered pecach as Passover in 28 places, it is very evident that they were fully aware what pecach meant. So did they have a moment of insanity in Acts 12:4? Did they forget what pecach meant for a verse? Did they try to deceive or just translate this incorrectly on accident?

What I have found, chatting to many that attack the KJV and its Easter usage, is that most have not actually studied the subject, they have not tried to understand why the KJV reads Easter here while it reads Passover in all other places. They simply say that the KJV is incorrect as Easter is incorrect. It is asserted that pecach means Passover and so Easter is incorrect.

 

Here we are going to delve a bit deeper into the reasoning behind the translation Easter to give a bit of historical background to the reading and yes, there is a historical background to the translation…who knew?

Although the KJV gets the brunt of the accusations against it, the KJV was not the first English Bible to use the word Easter.

The Tyndale Bible, The Great Bible, the Matthews Bible the Geneva Bible 1557 and the Bishops Bible that preceded the KJV all used the word Easter within their translations. We shall look a bit closer at this as we go along.

First, we need to give an explanation of where we get the English word Easter from. In order to do that we need to take a look at the Greek word pecach itself and its meaning.

The Greek word pecach comes from the Hebrew word pascha (pronounced Paskah) As the pescha was unique to Israel there was no such word in the Greek language. The Greek word was created and was transliterated from the Hebrew.

This word was then translitered in the Latin when the Bible was translated into Latin. Again, the Latin language had no equivalent of the Hebrew pascha as it was unique to the Israelites.

The Latin becomes pasch.

When Whycliffe translated the Bible into English in 1382 from the Latin Vulgate he simply took the Latin and translitered it into English using either Pask or Paske. This included in Acts 12:4

Matthew 26:2 Ye witen, that aftir twei daies pask schal be maad, and mannus sone schal be bitakun to be crucified Whycliffe.

Acts 12:4 And whanne he hadde cauyte Petre, he sente hym in to prisoun; and bitook to foure quaternyouns of knyytis, to kepe hym, and wolde aftir pask bringe hym forth to the puple. Wycliffe

Now we have to do a little bit more study into history to get the understanding of the word Easter.

After the death burial and resurrection of Jesus, Christians celebrated the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Jesus died and resurrected at the time of the Jewish Pesach so the celebration of the resurrection was also at this time.

This celebration, while at the time of the Jewish pascha was not the Jewish pascha. It was the Christian celebration of the resurrection.

This is where things get a little complicated. In many languages, the Jewish celebration of Pesach and the Christian celebration of the resurrection are known by the same name. There is no distinction. This is still true in Latin.

In Modern Greek today the word pecach predominantly means Easter, however, it can also mean the Jewish Pascha. This is usually clarified by calling it the Jewish pascha not simply Pascha which would refer to Easter.

However, in Old Saxon English the word “Easter” was often used to refer to the Christian celebration while the word pask was also used. Pask also referred to the Jewish Passoever. 

These words were interchangeable and synonyms of one another.

In the Old Saxon Bibles translated into English done between the 10th and 12th Centuries, we find the Old Saxon English word Eastro instead of Pask or Paske.

 

Matthew 26:2 Wite ge J?aet aefter twam dagum beoS Eastro, and mannes Beam by^ geseald, J)aet he sy on rode ahangen.

Eastro comes from the Germanic words Ester and Stehen.

Ester means first and Stehen means to stand. These words were derived from the Old German word auferstehen which means resurrect.

The Old Saxon English word Eastro was a reference to the resurrection. It was not solely used this way and also was used to refer to the Jewish Pascha as evident in the Saxon Gospels translation.

 

Luke 1:78 Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us,

Luke 1:78 ynna forgyfenysse, ];urh inno^as ures Godes mildheortnysse, on Jam he tis geneosode, of east-dale up-

The rising of the sun (rises in the east), the resurrection, east…..Jesus rose at the rising of the sun.

 

In 1522 Martin Luther translated the Bible into German and used the word oster which comes from the word Ost which means east.

When Tyndale translated the New Testament he used Ester (or Easter) fourteen times, Esterlambe eleven times, Esterfest once, and Paschall Lambe three times.

Tyndale also translated the first 5 books of the Old Testament. However, when he came to the Hebrew Pesach he did not think that Ester, which,  while used to refer to the Jewish Pesach in the New Testament which, was also used for the resurrection, was a good word to use in the Old Testament. Tyndale thus coined the term Pass over. (This later becomes one word Passover)

Tyndale was the first English translator to use the word Passover. Today when someone refer to the Jewish Pasach as Passover they are  using the word that Tyndale had created.

From that point the English terms Passover and Ester were used synonymously. While Ester would also mean resurrection or the celebration of the resurrection, it also was used to refer to the Jewish “passover”.

The translations that followed the Tyndale Bible would also use Ester and Passover synonymously. Ester was used to refer to the Jewish passover.

In the Great bible they used Passover 14 times and easter 15 times. Including in Acts 12:4 it reads Easter

The 1557 edition of the Geneva Bible had Passover 28 times and easter in Acts 12:4

This was removed in the 1560 edition being changed to passover.

Coverdale has easter in Acts 12:4

Acts 12:4 Now whan he had taken him, he put him in preson, and delyuered him vnto foure quaternions of soudyers, to kepe him: and thought after Easter to bringe him forth to the people.

Matthews Bible

Acts 12:4 And when he had caught hym, he put hym in pryson, & deliuered hym to .iiij. quaternions of soudyers to be kept, entendynge after Easter to bryng hym forth to the people.

Bishops Bible

Acts 12:4 And when he had caught hym, he put hym in pryson also, and delyuered hym to foure quaternions of souldiers to be kept, intendyng after Easter to bryng hym foorth to the people.

The Bishops Bible also reads easter in John 11:55

So we see that at the time that the King James Bible was translated the English word Easter was also used as a synonym for the Passover. While the word Easter over time would lose the passover as a definition and today only refers to the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. The only argument against the KJV’s usage of Easter would be that today the English word Easter does not also mean Passover and so Easter is no longer the correct word to use, but rather passover would be correct. This could be used as an example of where the KJV is outdated but it cannot in any way be used as an example of where the KJV was incorrectly translated.

 

But we cannot finish this study here, there is actually more to the usage of the word Easter in Acts 12:4. While it has been demonstrated that the word Easter in the KJV is not an incorrect translation, we should still ask, if the word Easter was a Synonym for Passover, why did the KJV chose only Acts 12:4 to use the word Easter? Why did they not use this word elsewhere?

The reason could very well be as simple as Acts 12:4 is the ONLY place in the New Testament where a New covenant time frame is in reference.

John uses the passover of the Jews. It is written from a post resurrection timeframe where christians already had their own passoever.

Jesus our passeover 

1 Corinthians 5:7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

Not the same passoever as the Jews but our passover

 – Pourge therfore the olde leven that ye maye be newe dowe as ye are swete breed. For Christ OURE ESTERLAMBE is offered vp for vs. Tyndale

 

 – Pourge out therfore the olde leuen, that ye maye be new dowe, like as ye are swete bred. For we also haue an EASTER LAMBE, which is Christ, that is offred for vs. Coverdale

 – For Christ oure EASTERLAMBE  is offered vp for vs. Matthews Bible 

 

John distinguishes and uses passover of the Jews….this indicates that there is a different passoever as John is not writing to Jews.

John 2:13 And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,

John 6:4 And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.

John 11:55 And the Jews’ passover was nigh at hand: and many went out of the country up to Jerusalem before the passover, to purify themselves.

Eusebius tells us that Christians kept the saviours Paska

“A question of no small importance arose at that time. For the parishes of all Asia, as from an older tradition, held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should be observed as the feast of the Saviour’s paska. It was therefore necessary to end their fast on that day, whatever day of the week it should happen to be. But it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this time, as they observed the practice which, from apostolic tradition, has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast on no other day than on that of the resurrection of our Saviour.” (Church History, Book V, 23:1)

 

While the Jews would have been celebrating their passover, the Christians were celebrating their own, the resurrection of the Christ which would be known as easter. Easter is thus the modern word to refer to the christian celebration that would have occured at the same time as the Jewish passover.

The Lords supper is a christian way of referring to the passover meal.

 

 

The Quartodeciman Controversy

The Quartodeciman Controversy

The Quartodeciman Controversy was an early dispute in the Christian church (2nd century) about when to celebrate Easter. The word Quartodeciman comes from the Latin for “fourteenth” (quartodecimus), because the debate centered on whether Christians should observe the feast of Christ’s resurrection on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan—the date of Passover according to the Hebrew calendar.

• The Quartodecimans (mainly in Asia Minor) argued that since Jesus died at Passover, the correct way to honor the event was to celebrate the Christian feast on that same date each year, regardless of the day of the week it fell on. Their practice emphasized continuity with the Jewish calendar and the biblical Passover.

• Churches in Rome and elsewhere, however, preferred to celebrate Easter on a Sunday, the day of Christ’s resurrection, independent of the 14th of Nisan. For them, the symbolism of the “Lord’s Day” outweighed the connection to the Jewish festival.

The controversy became heated in the late 2nd century. Around 190 CE, Pope Victor I attempted to excommunicate the Quartodeciman churches of Asia Minor for refusing to adopt the Sunday practice. His action sparked pushback from other bishops—most notably Irenaeus of Lyons, who urged patience and unity, reminding Victor that earlier church leaders had tolerated diversity on the issue.

Although the Quartodeciman practice persisted for some time, the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE eventually settled the matter by decreeing that Easter should always be celebrated on a Sunday, and not directly tied to the Jewish Passover calendar.

The Quartodeciman Controversy: A Clash Over Easter

In the 2nd century, long before the church settled into the familiar rhythms of Easter Sunday, Christians found themselves divided over a simple but explosive question: When should the resurrection be celebrated?

In the churches of Asia Minor, where the apostle John had once ministered, many believers held firmly to celebrating Easter on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan—the same day as the Passover meal. For them, this was deeply symbolic: Christ had died as the true Passover Lamb, and it was only right to honor that connection every year on the exact same date. Because “fourteen” in Latin is quartodecimus, these Christians became known as the Quartodecimans.

But in Rome and much of the wider church, a different view prevailed. Leaders there insisted Easter must always fall on a Sunday, the day Christ rose from the dead. The date didn’t matter—the day of the week did. For them, Sunday was the “Lord’s Day,” the weekly celebration of resurrection, and Easter should crown it with special meaning.

The clash came to a head around the year 190. Polycarp of Smyrna, a revered bishop and disciple of John, had earlier visited Rome to defend the Quartodeciman practice. Though he and the Roman bishop Anicetus couldn’t agree, they parted as friends. But a few decades later, the Roman bishop Victor I tried to settle the matter by force: he excommunicated the Quartodeciman churches for refusing to conform.

The move sparked outrage. Irenaeus of Lyons, one of the most respected voices of the day, wrote to Victor urging peace. He reminded him that earlier bishops had disagreed over Easter without breaking fellowship. Diversity of practice, Irenaeus argued, need not destroy the unity of the church.

In the short term, Victor’s hardline stance softened, and the Quartodecimans remained in communion with the wider church. But the controversy left a mark. A century later, at the Council of Nicaea (325 CE), the decision was finally made: Easter would always be celebrated on a Sunday, independent of the Jewish Passover.

 

Today when say the word Easter we are referring to the Christian celebration of the resurrection. However, that has not always been the case. Not only has this celebration not always been known by this name, but Easter has not always just meant this celebration

 

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