What was the likely order of celebrating Easter among the early Christians?

Asia Minor Christians do not have their own Tertullian. The surviving historical information does not give a complete picture of the order of celebrating Easter in the churches of Asia Minor; and therefore, scientists who set out to present the celebration of Easter according to the Judeo-Christian rite as fully and clearly as possible were forced to fill in the gaps in the monuments with their own assumptions and came to a wide variety of results. Since hypothetical judgments are inevitable when discussing this issue, it would probably be most convenient to begin with an assumption and end by verifying it with historical data. What was the likely order in which the early Jewish Christians celebrated Passover? The apostles did not impose any obligations in relation to rituals on the Jewish believers, and the question of whether or not to observe the decrees of the ritual law was left to the decision of each person’s conscience. But just like ap. Paul, who so clearly preached about Christian freedom in relation to the ritual law, himself observed some of its decrees, for example, “shaved his head according to the vow at Cenchrea” (Acts 18:18) and undertook a trip to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost there (Acts 18:21; Acts 20:16), then it can be assumed with a significant degree of probability that the Jews, even after converting to Christianity, continued to observe their usual ( Acts 21:21) rituals. It is all the less likely that Jewish Christians would refuse to celebrate such a solemn holiday as Easter, with which they had so many bright memories. Jewish Christians celebrated Easter, of course, with the same rituals as all Jews: they ate the Passover lamb if they were in Jerusalem, limited themselves to one Easter supper (with unleavened bread), if they were not in Jerusalem (the Passover lamb was a sacrifice and could only be offered in the church), and beforehand they probably fasted from morning to evening. Celebrating Easter primarily in the Old Testament, Christians, of course, celebrated it on the same day as the Jews - the 14th of Nisan and rarely the 13th. There is no doubt that Christians had to give a Christian character to the Old Testament holiday, remembering the New Testament events closely connected with it. The connection of the holiday with New Testament events may have been determined by the Christian’s view of the chronology of the Gospel events: whoever was convinced that Christ ate Passover on the 14th of Nisan, for him the Easter holiday was a New Testament holiday in honor of the establishment of the Holy Eucharist, the remembrance of the last supper of Jesus Christ with his disciples, etc. p.; who, on the contrary, believed that the Lord suffered on the 14th of Nisan - for him the Old Testament Passover was a year-long remembrance of the suffering and death of the Savior. But another alternative is possible, and it seems even more likely. If pagan Christians followed the order of the Gospel events in celebrating Easter, then this fact cannot be turned into a requirement obligatory for Jewish Christians. The first, one might say, creatively created their holiday, painted on a background covered with the contours of a Christian painting, and therefore the image drawn by them (pagan Christians) is very distinct; on the contrary, Jewish Christians were limited in their creativity by the Old Testament form of the holiday; instead of creating forms corresponding to the Christian idea, they had to adapt the New Testament idea to the Old Testament form. There were many points of contact between the Old Testament holiday and Gospel history, and they could give direction to the thoughts of a Christian, independent of any chronological view. A Christian might think that Christ ate the Passover lamb on Nisan 14; but before him (the Christian) lay the Passover lamb, whose bones he should not have broken; and this circumstance reminded the believer of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, of Christ crucified, whose legs were not broken (John 19:33). Another could hold the view that the 14th of Nisan is the day of the Savior’s suffering on the cross; but during the Easter supper, the Christian received the cup of thanksgiving, and this reminded him of the last supper of Jesus Christ, at which He established the sacrament of the Eucharist. Thus, the very ritual of the Old Testament holiday provided many reasons not to separate, but to combine in memory the events of the last two days of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. But there is still a side to the Old Testament holiday that could influence the formation of the difference between the Passover of Jewish Christians and the Passover of Gentile Christians. The memories of the Savior's suffering on the cross, evoked by certain features of the Old Testament Easter, can only cause sorrow in a Christian if he treats them according to the indications of his feelings. Meanwhile, the Old Testament Easter is a holiday of deliverance, bright, solemn, and therefore should have aroused a joyful mood in those celebrating. This influence of the Old Testament holiday led Jewish Christians to contemplate the very sufferings of the Savior from a different point of view from which pagan Christians contemplated them: Jewish Christians focused their attention not on the historical, but on the dogmatic side of the Lord’s suffering on the cross - on their relationship to the cause of the salvation of mankind. Therefore, Easter among Jewish Christians retained the character of a holiday, while among pagan Christians, the memory of the suffering of the Savior gave rise to fasting; therefore, the Easter of Jewish Christians can more fairly be called the Easter of salvation. It is highly probable that the Jewish Christians also celebrated the day of the resurrection of Christ, but on which day of Nisan it is impossible to decide a priori: the choice of the day was probably based on the chronological view of the believers. In order to judge the extent to which the historical data on the basis of which conclusions are drawn about the celebration of Easter in the churches of Asia Minor and which should, however, serve as a touchstone for any hypothesis, are incomplete or uncertain, one only needs to compare those programs for the Asia Minor rite that were proposed at different times. The question of how close the celebration of Easter in the churches of Asia Minor was to the Jewish celebration of Easter was resolved very differently, a) Previous scientists even believed that Christians of Asia Minor ate the Paschal lamb until the end of the 2nd century. b) Others (Bleek - Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Berlin, 1866. S. 194. – Gieseler, S. 211, Neander, S. 381) believe that Asia Minor Christians ate only the Easter supper (with unleavened bread). c) Others think that all the similarities were limited only to the day of Passover, the 14th of Nisan (Schaff, S. 315, Kurtz, S. 243–244, Hefele, ibid., S. 873, finally Shürer). d) Some even deny this last similarity (Alt, Caspari, cited by D. A. Khvolson). There are equally different answers to the question of when and what events of gospel history were remembered in the churches of Asia Minor. a) Some believe that the 14th of Nisan was dedicated to the memory of the last supper of Jesus Christ, the 15th to the memory of the Savior’s death on the cross, and finally, the 17th to the memory of the resurrection of Christ. b) Others claim that the 14th of Nisan was dedicated to the memory of the Savior’s death on the cross, and the 16th to the memory of His resurrection. c) Gieseler (S. 211) states that “there is no trace of the celebration of Easter Sunday by the Christians of Asia Minor” and there was only a week-long holiday of the resurrection. d) Some (Steitz, Scherdlin and Weitzel ar. Schürer, S. 202) believe that Asia Minor Christians postponed the celebration of the resurrection of Christ until the first Sunday following the 14th of Nisan, and this Sunday had the character of an annual holiday among them, as in the West. e) Schürer believes that the 14th of Nisan in the churches of Asia Minor was a holiday not in honor of any separate New Testament event, but in honor of the very fact of redemption, in which all the individual moments of the history of redemption were united, and that it was, in the strict sense, a one-day holiday. f) But the program proposed by Alt is particularly original (Der Christliche Cultus. IIAbth. Berlin. 1860, S. 17). He proceeds from the assumption that all Jewish months began on Saturday and that therefore the 14th of Nisan always fell on a Friday. The Christians of Asia Minor began their holiday on Thursday evening (hence, according to the currently used date - the 13th of Nisan), and ate the Paschal lamb (sic); then, in fasting and prayer, they remembered the gospel events from the farewell speech of Jesus Christ to His burial, and while the Jews began to celebrate their Easter on Friday evening, the believers continued their fast until the morning of Nisan 16, from which their solemn celebration of the resurrection of Christ began. Thus, according to Alt, the entire dispute between Christians about the day of Easter comes down to a pure misunderstanding: Asia Minor Christians celebrated the Resurrection of Christ on the same day, fasted on the same days as Western Christians. This conclusion, as well as the assumption that contradicts all historical data that the 14th of Nisan always fell on a Friday, deprives this hypothesis of significance in the most essential points of the question of Easter in Asia Minor. A comparison of all scientific assumptions shows that the question of whether and when the Asia Minor Christians celebrated the day of the Resurrection of Christ constitutes the darkest point in the entire question of celebrating Easter. It is impossible to refer to any positive evidence in favor of resolving this issue in a positive sense, and perhaps the only argument for such a decision is the correct assumption that the Christians of Asia Minor could hardly exclude the holiday of the resurrection from the circle of annual holidays, which was celebrated even every week. Other points of the issue under consideration are no longer so controversial. Thus, most scientists define the day of Easter celebration in the churches of Asia Minor in the same way. All sources speak of the 14th of Nisan, and the assumption that Easter in Asia Minor was celebrated on the 13th of Nisan is based only on a conditional, not strictly proven understanding of the fact that the Christians of Asia Minor traced their practice back to the Evangelist John. There is no direct and clear evidence that the Christians of Asia Minor ate unleavened bread during the Easter week, or that their Easter holiday began with the Easter supper. Church writers do not attribute this custom even to the fourteeners who separated from the church. But an indirect indication of the celebration of Easter with Jewish rituals can be seen in the contrast between Asia Minor Christians and Roman Christians as τηρο ϋ ντες and “μη τηρο ϋ ντες.” It is known that the verb “τηρε ΐ ν” in the New Testament sacred books is used in the sense of “observe ritual regulations” (Acts 15:2–3; Acts 21:25). “This man is not from God,” they said about Christ, “because he does not keep the Sabbath (το σ ά ββατον ου τηρε ί),” that is, the Jewish decrees on keeping the Sabbath. Finally, the words of Polycrates that his predecessors “always celebrated the day when the people (o λα ό ς) left leavened bread” (Eusebius, V, 24), if they are not allowed to be interpreted as Rufinus did, but understood in accordance with the context, contain an indication of the observance of Jewish Easter rites in the churches of Asia Minor. Rufinus translates the words of Polycrates as follows: “qui omnes ita observarunt hunc diem, ut conveniret cum illo, quo fermentum judaeorum populus aufert”; but Polycrates does not mention the Jews either in the preceding or in the following words, and therefore by “the people (about λα ό ς) who left leavened bread” one should understand not the Jews, but Christians from the Jews" (N.V. Cheltsov. History of the Christian Church. p. 307). It can be said with greater justification that in Asia Minor Easter was celebrated in memory of the suffering of the Savior than that it was dedicated to the remembrance of the events of the previous day. The latter opinion is based on the very probable assumption that the Asia Minor Christians represented by Polycrates believed that Christ ate His last supper on the day of the Jewish Passover and thereby sanctified the custom of celebrating the 14th of Nisan. Indeed, there is reason to think that this was a generally widespread opinion in the churches of Asia Minor, because this was the opinion held by the Fourtecostals of the time of Eusebius (his “Περ ί της του π ά σχα εορτ ή ς” (Schürer. S. 230–232) written in a refutation of this view of the eastern bishops - the fourteeners). But it does not follow from this that on the 14th of Nisan they were supposed to celebrate the memory of the last supper of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, the very term “σωτ ή ριον”, applied by Eusebius to the Easter of the churches of Asia Minor, is used by the modern historian St. Athanasius to mean Good Friday (“σωτηρ ί α”. Athan. ep. encycl. ad ep. p. 4.1. pp. ar. Guericke, S. 169). And Theodoret directly says about the Fourteeners that they, referring to the Evangelist John, “triumphant” on the 14th day of the moon the memory of the suffering (of the Savior) μην. fabul. III, 4.1. You might be interested in: