The Jewish Passover

There is what I call an old Orthodox Christian myth about Pascha that today is the perfect day to explain. Many people believe that since Orthodox Pascha is normally after Western Easter that it is due to the date of the Jewish Passover. It seems like every year I read hundreds of posts claiming that we cannot celebrate Pascha until after the Jewish Passover. This is not true, and this year is as good a year as any to better understand why.

Today is the first day of the Jewish Passover which lasts until April 4th, which happens also to be Western Easter. This year even Western Easter is after the Jewish Passover, so why is Pascha not until May 2nd? The answer isn’t in the date of Passover, but the way we calculate the Spring Equinox. But before I explain that let’s review the history of the calculation of Pascha.

For roughly the first three hundred years of Christianity, there existed no standard calculation to determine the date for Pascha. Many churches would turn to the local Jewish Rabbi for the date of Passover and from there determine a date for Pascha based upon the Holy Scriptures. Clearly our Lord was crucified on the Friday of Passover, so this sort of made sense, but without a standard calculation, Christians throughout the global Church using different methods celebrated Pascha at different times. There were times even in the same cities, parishes would celebrate on different dates. To eliminate the confusion, the First Ecumenical Council established a standard calculation that is still used today. According to that calculation Pascha is to be celebrated as follows.

• The First Sunday
• After the first Full Moon
• After the Spring Equinox

This is where the myth about the Jewish Passover enters our discussion. When this formula was distributed, it was accompanied by a letter from the Emperor who included the phrase, “not celebrated with the Jews.” To explain this, the Church had created a cycle from which to calculate the equinox that did not depend upon the Jewish calculations. This was a specific decision based upon the lack of trust in the Jews at the time. It was as if the Church were saying, “The Jews couldn’t recognize the Messiah. Why should we trust them to calculate Pascha? We’ll do our own calculations.” This, combined with the general prohibition against Christians and the celebration of the Jewish feasts, is what leads to the mythological addition to the formula…. “But AFTER the Jewish Passover.” In fact, this addition is not at all part of the formula.

The Western Church uses the EXACT same formula to calculate Pascha, so why is Pascha not until May 2nd this year, if we are not required to wait until after the Jewish Passover which ends this year on April 4th? The answer is the calendar. The Western Church uses the Gregorian Calendar which is a solar-based calendar. To calculate Pascha, the Orthodox Church uses the Julian Calendar which is lunar-based calendar. The two calendars identify different dates for the equinox, thus the different dates for Pascha. The Julian Calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian Calendar, so on years such as this, when the equinox is delayed, we must wait for another full moon and Sunday cycle.

As a side note, it took roughly four hundred years before the entire Christian world adopted in practice the calculation for Pascha. So, for roughly seven hundred years the Christian world celebrated the resurrection of Christ on different dates. Then it was roughly another seven hundred years until the Western Church adopted the Gregorian Calendar causing another difference in dates. In the two-thousand-year history of the Church, ONLY ONE THIRD of that history has a common date for Christians worldwide to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ.

Let’s wish our Jewish friends a blessed Passover today, and remember…..we don’t have to wait for them to celebrated. It is just a different calendar. I guess this was a good way to end our let’s go public theme for this week’s Daily Lenten Journey.