Around the months of March and April every year, I have listened and read, again and again, the yearly denunciations of the continuous use of the name “Easter” for the festival of the events commemorating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This year is no exception as many popular and well-informed writers have begun rehashing the yearly rituals. Having made the Bible an open book (except for the Seven Seals in St. John’s Revelations), it is not uncommon to have strong and contradicting opinions on biblical issues. However, since the Bible should always be allowed to explain itself, I humbly wish to refer to a short passage of the Bible that may shed some light (I suppose) to the discussion.
According to our learned theologians, Easter was properly the English transliteration of a pagan festival called Eoster, which was created to celebrate fruitfulness of mankind (or of whatever gods the so-called pagans had in mind), while the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (as recorded in many chapters of the Bible, for example Matthew Chapter 27, Verses 45 – 66 and Chapter 28) fulfilled the symbolically prophesied killing of Christ in the killing of a special lamb by Israelites while in Egypt (as instructed by the Lord) and their being able to escape from their first sons being killed by the angel of death if the blood of the said lamb was applied to the door-posts and lintels of their homes a night before they left Egypt: This is the so-called first Passover as recorded in the Old Testaments of the Bible in Exodus Chapter 12, which symbolically represented what God had in mind for the entire world, while its modern fulfilment in Jesus Christ also happened at the very period of the Jewish commemoration of the century-old first Passover.
The core of the argument is that the symbolic Passover of Exodus and its eventual fulfilment in Christ (in the Gospel) have had nothing to do with the pagan festival of Eoster and that the age-long tradition of the remembrance of Christ’s death and resurrection is neither an Easter nor an Eoster, and should be called properly identifying name, if it is at all to be celebrated by Christians the world over. The mathematicians also have the same reservations in the naming of the smallest super-field of the real number system, which was single-handedly (mis-) named by the Prince of Mathematics, Carl Frederick Gauss, as the complex number system. The consensus is that there is nothing complex in the complex number system.
Even though, every Christian believes that beyond eating hot cross buns and coating Easter eggs, we should focus more or totally on the gains of the Passover or Christ’s resurrection (translated as Ajinde Kristi in Yoruba Language) and indeed, there are available many sermons on this vast theme of the scriptures, it is equally important to address any inherited mis-naming whose dangers could become more pronounced and dis-advantageous to Christian faith when such wrong names are further mis-translated into local languages. It will, however, shock most of my readers that Christ’s death and resurrection are (according to the Bible, Old and New Testaments) matters of fruitfulness (quoting directly from the words spoken by Christ himself) and this, in my opinion, might have been the biblical source of the historic swap of the name Passover or Christ’s resurrection with Eoster or Easter.
I quote John Chapter 12, Verses 23 – 24 as follows:
‘And Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ (Authorised King James Version).
Anyone who cared to read the quoted passage from Verse 20 would understand that some learned (but confused) Greeks (from a non-Jewish country; in short from a ‘pagan’ country), who came to worship in Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover, went back to their country with the divinely informed impression that Christ must die and then resurrect and that His death and resurrection is very much liking by Christ himself to the fruitfulness experienced of a planted corn of wheat. It is easy from this time on to imagine what followed when on their way back or at home, these Greeks and their disciples got the gospel news of Christ’s resurrection. They will forever think of Christ’s resurrection as bringing forth fruit and might want to change their immediate environment and cultural festival by preaching that true fruitfulness is in Christ. I could picture these Greeks preaching to their people, saying: true Eoster is in Christ. In this light, John Chapter 12 Verse 32 (Authorised King James Version) may now be interpreted as: And I (i. e., Jesus Christ), if I be lifted up (resurrected) from the earth (i. e., after my death), draw all men unto me (become pollinated and fruitful as of a planted corn wheat). Thus fruitfulness is an aspect of the consequence of His death and resurrection: Christ died to produce and present His kinds to God.
The encounter of these Greeks with Christ might have been the reliable biblical source of the connection between the two “fruitfulnesses” and of the coming together of Eoster and Christ’s resurrection to give us Easter. It is at this point that the historians and anthropologists would be needed. But most Christians do not seem to care much about the naming ceremony of the festival (as long as nobody wishes to compete with them by celebrating Eoster again) as much as they care about the gains of the events. However, during the stay-at-home COVID-19 year 2020 Easter-Celebration, we may find a detailed explanation in a (Sunday School) lesson, number 220 titled “Jesus Predicts His Death and Resurrection” freely available at : www.apostolicfaithweca.org .
There are. however, biblical justifications from our vantage position for abandoning the name Passover. An immediate justification of the need to replace the name Passover in our modern times is the fact that Christ’s resurrection is less concerned with the sudden appearance of a novel sword-drawn angel of death passing over the land but more of the gospel of life that removes an already established death sentence over humanity. Another justification for dumping the name Passover is that the very first Passover or what was pointing to the so-called first Passover (but was never called a Passover) happened in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve was clothed (or, simply put, forgiven) with the skin of an animal (maybe a lamb) by God. It is believed that an animal was killed in the garden in order to make use of its skin and hence, blood was shed. Thus all these three Passovers have the theme of redemption (from sin or from death) at their cores and should have informed the naming.
As much as I do not think the name Easter should suffer the same fate as Passover did, the season is essentially a redemption festival or a resurrection festival, for those who celebrate it.
Dr. Olufemi O. Oyadare is a Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
