References to Easter are frequent in Tertullian. With regard to the name, it is to be noticed that with him pascha denotes, not the single day of the Easter festival, but a longer period of time, in which a fast was observed and baptism administered,[84] in other words, Passion-tide and the Easter Octave.[85] Moreover, for the actual day of our Lord’s death, he uses the word, parasceve.[86] The festival of Easter, as he further relates, was kept in the first month (i.e. March),[87] and was prefigured by the Jewish Passover.[88] We possess a treatise on Easter, of the year 243 A.D., formerly attributed wrongly to St Cyprian, but, probably, a translation of work of Theophilus of Cæsarea. It is entitled De Paschate Computus, and was written elsewhere than at Rome, in the interest of the Easter cycle of sixteen years drawn up by Hippolytus. The remarks of Hippolytus on the Quartodecimans afford us important evidence for the Ante-Nicene period. “These,” he says, “agree with the Church in preserving all the apostolic traditions, but differ from her in one point, inasmuch as, out of contentiousness, wilfulness, and ignorance, they maintain that the Christian feast must always be kept on the 14th Nisan, no matter on what day of the week it falls.”[89]
If the Arabic Canons ascribed to Hippolytus, especially the twenty-second, are really his, it would appear that he held Easter might be kept in the same week as the Jewish Passover, but on the Sunday, and should be preceded by a week’s fast on bread and water.[90] This date coincides with the Easter cycle of sixteen years drawn up by Hippolytus, and which, after all, is only the Jewish cycle of eight years doubled.
The seventh and sixty-ninth of the so-called Apostolic Canons refer to Easter and its preparatory fast. The seventh is also important on account of what it says about the period within which Easter may fall: “Whosoever keeps Easter with the Jews before the vernal equinox, let him be anathema.” From which it appears that the Jewish Passover could fall before the vernal equinox. The last day of Nisan alone must never precede the equinox, and, consequently, the Passover must frequently have fallen before the 21st March, and may have done so in the year of our Lord’s death.
Of Eusebius’ treatise on Easter,[91] dedicated to the Emperor, only a portion remains and this contains nothing either about Easter or its date. Constantine gratefully accepted the dedication in a letter which Eusebius, not without vanity, incorporated in his Vita Constantini (4, 35). The Emperor’s encyclical,[92] communicating to the churches the conclusions concerning Easter arrived at by the Nicene Council, would have been more deserving of a place in the same work.
2. The Connection of the Christian Festival with the Jewish
The connection between the Christian and the Jewish feasts is both historical and ideal—historical because our Lord’s death happened on the 15th Nisan, the first day of the Jewish feast; ideal, because what took place had been prefigured in the Old Testament by types of which it was itself the antitype.
The Jewish Passover was a repetition of what had taken place on the evening of the exodus from Egypt. On that occasion, the children of Israel had killed a lamb and marked their doorposts with its blood in order that the destroying angel might pass over their houses. Then, dressed for the journey, they had consumed the lamb at a ceremonial meal. This last meal of which the Israelites partook in Egypt on the eve of their departure, i.e. on the 14th Nisan, was of a religious character, and was, on this account, to be repeated every year on the same day, and at the same hour, as a memorial feast, at which each father of a family had to instruct his household in the signification of the rites they were performing.[93]
The manner of celebrating the feast was minutely prescribed. Each householder, for example, had to choose a lamb without blemish of the first year, on the 10th of the first month, i.e. Nisan, as it came to be called later, or, if he had none in his own herd, he must procure one from elsewhere and keep it in readiness for the feast on the evening of the 14th Nisan. The lamb was to be killed, roasted, and eaten by the household, who remained standing, along with unleavened bread, and bitter herbs, nothing being allowed to remain over.[94] From this onwards to the 21st Nisan inclusive, unleavened bread was alone to be eaten, and hence the period from the 15th to the 21st Nisan was called the days of unleavened bread. The first and last days, the 15th and the 21st, were regarded as especially sacred, and servile work was forbidden on them.[95] During the whole week, holocausts, meat offerings, and sin offerings were offered daily in the Temple on behalf of the entire people, as well as offerings presented by individual believers on their own behalf. The 16th Nisan was marked by an offering of a special kind, that of the first-fruits of harvest, consisting of the presentation of a sheaf of ripe barley along with the offering of a yearling lamb.[96] This offering of the first ripe fruits served also to mark the time when the Passover was to be celebrated, for, owing to the fact that the Jewish year did not begin on a fixed date, this had to be in some way determined by a stated event in the order of nature. In Palestine the barley was already ripe by March.
Several of the actions prescribed at the offering of this lamb pointed forward to the atoning death of the Messias, such as the sprinkling of the doorposts with its blood, in order that the destroying angel might pass over the house, and the direction that none of the lamb’s bones were to be broken. There were also several other small particulars which emphasised and completed the ideal connection between the sacrifice of the Passover and that of the Cross, as certain Fathers perceived at an early date.
Isaias, speaking in his prophecy, of the sufferings of the Messias, calls Him the Lamb chosen by God, who bears the iniquity of others.[97] St John the Baptist pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and by the writers of the New Testament the same idea is frequently employed. St John the Evangelist expressly refers to the typical character of the Passover rites, when he applies the passage, “A bone of it shall not be broken,”[98] to Christ on the Cross, and sees its fulfilment in the fact that the soldiers refrained from breaking His limbs. St Paul declares in general that the sacrifice of Christ replaces the Passover, and sees a typical signification in the unleavened bread.[99] It appears, he had no objection to Christians holding a Passover supper, although, elsewhere he expresses himself strongly against their continuing to observe Jewish practices, such as Sabbaths and new moons.[100] As to the Fathers, it is sufficient, to quote Justin and Tertullian,[101] who in particular see in the fact that the Passover lamb was transfixed in two pieces of wood arranged cross-wise, a figure of the Cross in which Christ was stretched. Speaking generally, there is no doubt the Jewish Passover was taken over into Christianity, and thereby its typical ceremonies found their true fulfilment.