ALT-1 Past Disputes over the Date of Easter
I used to wonder what the big fuss over the Easter date was about. Now I know and it's, well, kinda complicated.
The trouble began way back when the early Jewish believer in Christ really still felt like an integral part of Israel - by the ties of blood and law and the affection of his heart - because for some time after the Resurrection he still attended Temple in Jerusalem even though he differed from his unbelieving brethren by his faith in the Lord. In other words, could a Christian find happiness in the land of the Rabbi?
Judging by the mainly hostile reactions to the Jewish believers, when Sabbath versus Sunday became a bone of contention, the very thought was unthinkable. The mood of Judaism was most felicitously captured when to the daily prayers of the synagogue were added the words: "And for the Apostates let their be no hope . . . let the Nazarenes (Jewish Christians) be blotted out of the Book of Life." All righty, then.
Then, after 100 A.D. or so, I found that the most heated controversy was really not between Synagogue and Church, but within the Church itself, revolving around how the date of Easter was to be determined. The story of the early Christian world is fascinating, and no doubt quite violent. When I first began looking into the prospects of doing an article on the dispute over Easter in the second and third centuries, I was afraid I wouldn't understand all the early church politics. My fears were not completely unfounded.
I already knew that the Passover of the Jews and the Last Supper, when the Lord and His twelve disciples reclined around the passover table hours before His death, fell on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month of Nisan. But I soon found that the churches of Asia Minor preferred to celebrate Easter - Christ's victory over death - on the same day as the Passover, merging into one complete story both deliverance and resurrection from the dead. I also found that there have always been a relatively small number Christians who still keep Passover, although with a new understanding, as a harbinger of events which that festival foreshadowed but had now gloriously come to pass.
In Rome, though, the celebration had changed from the 14th of Nisan to the Sunday following the first full moon, after the spring equinox, and given the name Easter. I also learned that nowhere will you find that any of the Apostolic Fathers imposed Easter on their members. Polycarp, one of the three chief Apostolic Fathers and the only one whose life spanned from the time of Paul (c. 60 AD) all the way into the reign of Marcus Aurelius (circa 165), was the remaining link to the apostolic past.
Polycarp, who was a disciple of John the Apostle before his death in exile on the island of Patmos, was having none of it. By the time he reached Rome to face off against Anicetus, who was practically the Pope of Rome, he was already a very old man. Still, he was a staunch defender of apostolic tradition, especially against heretics. And I found it interesting that Polycarp, in his feeble condition, could not be persuaded to relinquish the things he'd learned from the Apostle John. Nothing was decided, and for another hundred years East and West agreed to disagree. That is, until the Roman trend became law in the year 325 A.D. at the Council of Nicaea.
Polycarp was eventually martyred, however, for refusing to burn incense to a Roman Emperor.
I've often wondered what the origin of Easter was. Now I know and wish I didn't.
