Pam:

Howie - MONDAY is APRIL 18 (not the 17th).

Oh Pam. Are you telling me that I earlier misspoke and called Monday the 17th. That's just great. So I took a confusing explanation and made it even more confusing with a mistake.

Apr 3, 2011 -- 10:36PM, Brainscramble wrote:

They are NOT of Christian origin.  Church authorities melded together Christian names with pagan names and dates of already existing pagan holidays.

The celebration of Saturnalia was already celebrated on Dec. 25th, or, the worship of the "Invincible Sun."  They just attached the name of Jesus Christ to it and voila! an already existing holiday that the pagan Romans could now adopt, and they could call it Christian!

And Easter has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity!  It wasn't celebrated by the early Church in the first century, and was drummed up by Church authorities in the waning days of the late first century to, obviously, appeal to pagans, naming the holiday after a pagan goddess (of all things!!) and incorporating pagan symbols and traditions.  What on earth do bunnies and chickies and eggs have to do with Jesus' resurrection?  LOL!  They are overtly pagan symbols of reproduction, reflecting the  focus on things sexual and carnal rather than things spiritual.  Such melding of pagan celebrations with Christian names would certainly have appealed to the pagans, and political stability was what Constantine and the Church Fathers of his day were interested in.

 

Do your homework.  Any encyclopedia will explain what origins these holidays have.

In defense of Brainscramble, she's JW and her religious leaders have spelled all this out in an effort to make themselves very different from non-JW Christians.  Their leaders insist that modern Christians celebrate pagan holidays and refuse to accept that we celebrate Christian events on days that happened to coincide with pagan holidays.  Yes, many Jewish holidays and celebrations have pagan origins, as does Christian baptism and the passing of bread and wine, but there's nothing wrong with that.  Respect for one's god is respect, regardless of the god(s) to whom that respect is paid.  Jesus Himself, in participating in a Jewish mikveh (there was no such thing as a Christian baptism yet, even if His was the first - John was performing mikvehs on Jews (what's the proper grammar for that, by the way?)), showed that God obviously found formerly pagan forms of respect perfectly acceptable when done for Him.

JWs believe that non-JWs don't know the pagan practices on days that are also Christian holidays, and that we manage to honor gods many of us have never heard of, when our hearts and minds are completely focused on God and Christ.  This is why Brainscramble is so insistent that WHAT we celebrate on those dates doesn't matter, it's only the dates on which we celebrate that matter.  It's a JW thing, you'll have to excuse her.

Brain:

*****Yes, I thought the Festival of Unfermented Cakes started after Passover and not in cohesion with Passover.

I understand why you thought they were separate holidays. When the Bible speaks of the holiday it speaks of it as a day of the Pesach (passover), the pesach being the lamb, followed by 7 days of eating unleavened bread. (If you want to be cool, brain, stop calling them unfermented cakes.) So, it sounds to the uninitiated like two separate holidays. They are two parts to the same holiday.

*****So, once again, in very simple terms....why go with the Synoptics and not John?

That could be a whole other thread. The reason the church went with the synoptics is because of the wording when the disciples are told to go look for a place for Jesus to eat the Pesach, the passover lamb.

Mt 26: 19: And the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the passover.

20: When it was evening, he sat at table with the twelve disciples;

Mk 14:12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the passover lamb, his disciples said to him, "Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the passover?"

 Lk22:7 Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the passover lamb had to be sacrificed.

8: So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, "Go and prepare the passover for us, that we may eat it."

It sounds like Jesus is going to eat the Pesach, the passover lamb, the night after the afternoon it was killed. Now if he dies when the lamb was killed, as John describes, how can he have the Last Supper of lamb if he died when the lamb did?

So the traditional view is that Thursday night, after the lamb was killed on Thursday afternoon, the passover holiday begins with a Seder meal, and Jesus, as did the other Jews of his day, ate it that night, Thursday night.  Then on Friday he is crucified and taken down because the Sabbath was going to begin. The gospels talk about Friday as "the preparation day" just as the Jews always did; Friday is the day to prepare for the Sabbath on Saturday.

Those who support John's version say that the Last Supper was not the Passover meal but a meal on Wednesday night and that Jesus was killed when the lamb was in the afternoon on Thurs. Then he was taken down on "the preparation day," Thursday because the holiday was about to begin, not the Sabbath.

I can assure you that "the preparation day" always meant the day before the Sabbath and never the day before the passover holiday began. (I can elaborate on this later if you ask.) There is some confusion, however, by Christians who like John's version. Since every Jewish household had to "prepare" for the Passover (it takes a lot of preparing, believe me), they insist the preparation day was Thursday in preparation for the holiday that began Thursday sundown.  They like this version because a Thursday death better fits 3 days in the tomb than does a Friday death. (I can explain why Friday to Sunday is 3 days if you'd like).

*****So why was John off by one day?

Those who prefer him don't think he was. I don't have a dog in this fight, but I can assure you that the traditional Friday crucifixion of the church and of the synoptics is far better supported by the language of the Gospels when a Jew reads it. It hinges on what day was the "preparation day," and Jews would agree with the traditional church view that it was a Friday.

Christian scholars think that John preferred a Thursday crucifixion for christological purposes,i.e. John wanted Jesus, who was spoken of by the church as being the perfect sacrificial lamb, to be "sacrificed" on the same day, Thursday, as the Jewish passover lamb on Thursday and not the day after on Friday.

*****OK, but  wouldn't Jesus' being killed during Nisan 14 constitute Passover as  being Nisan 14?  He is considered the Passover lamb.

John did say he was crucified on 14 nisan when the lamb was killed during the day,  so that he and the passover lamb would be killed at the same time. And yes, the Church has always compared the passover lamb sacrificed with Jesus

The synoptics imply that Jesus ate the lamb the night of the 15 nisan, sundown after the day of 14 nisan, after the lamb was killed, because he told the disciples to find a place for them to have passover. The synoptics have him beginning the passover holiday after sundown, the 15 Nisan, after the daytime hours that were 14 nisan when the lamb but not Jesus was killed.  In the synoptics, the Last Supper is the Seder meal that begins the passover and Jesus is killed the next day, during the daylight hours of 15 nisan that began sundown the night before.

I am happy to know that JWs do "have support from groups before 325."

Yes, you do. By basing your Lord's Supper on the Jewish passover, you are doing what the earliest Christians probably did. One fly in the ointment, however. You are having your Lord's Supper according to John when most of the evidence points to the Lord's Supper/last Supper being the night of 18 April this year when the Jews have their Seder. But you're close. :-)

Howie:

As for why you think Jews got the date wrong is puzzling.

As I said, I can't compute all the rules for computing the dates.  I'm trying to understand, though.

It's not easy. What looks to your church as 14 Nisan is our 15 Nisan if it's after dark. If they had understood when our days became the next day, they would have had the Lord's supper on Monday night 18 April.

Can we agree that  Jehovah's Witnesses are celebrating Jesus' Passover on a more correct  date---closer to the correct date---than the churches of Christendom,  three days later (?), are celebrating their pagan Easter?  That seems to  be the case.

I get in enough trouble around here on my own. You guys can duke this one out.

>>>Howiedds:  Mk 14:12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they  sacrificed the passover lamb, his disciples said to him, "Where will you  have us go and prepare for you to eat the passover?"

This could have been said as early as 6 pm the day before the killing of lambs.  Sunrise the day is already half over.  Could have even been somewhat earlier if  it was close to say tomorrow's here.  (Just a few minutes, no more than maybe 30)

Just want to make sure you remember to take that into account.  When the day arrived, it was also dark now, so lambs being killed are 15 hours away from the start of that same day.

They were 24 hours ahead of the passover meal at this conversation.  They were talking about de leavening a room now, tonight for passover meal tomorrow.

But this meal tonight while this conversation was going is the last supper, but it is just some kosher boloney sandwiches.

IOW,  "the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they  sacrificed the passover lamb, his disciples said to him,"

if that day were say a Wednesday, then Tuesday evening at 6pm  is when that day began.  However they called it Tuesday until they went to bed, but it was really already the day of the sacrifice.

This was also the same night as the arrest.

Apr 4, 2011 -- 12:15PM, jlb32168 wrote:

Mar 31, 2011 -- 4:59PM, stardustpilgrim wrote:

This year Easter is virtually the latest date it can possibly be.  Without looking it up, who knows (or doesn't know) how the date of Easter is arrived at each year?

For the Eastern Orthodox, Pascha (known as "Easter" among Western, English speaking Christians) takes place on the 1st Sunday after the Jewish Pesach, on or after the first full moon on or after the Spring Equinox and all of that being reckoned according to the Julian Calendar.

There . . . wasn't that easy?

When is Pascha this year?