The words passover, pasch, easter, all basically refer to the same thing from an historical point of view. If some take the position that a Christian festival is intended I think they bear the burden of proving it from context. Why the translators chose to retain "easter" in this one place is not obvious. I don't think it can be shown they deliberately retained it to justify an ecclesiastical custom. They may have thought that the time referent was the most important part of the text, and so they retained "easter" to enable the reader to understand when this occurred. Whatever their intention, if we know that "easter" is basically the same as "passover," we have gained an insight into the time this happened, and our understanding is the better for it. Just as with the weights and measures, or with some regional areas, a more generic term can help the reader to get his bearings where a technical term might be confusing. Translation is better than transliteration in this respect.
"Easter" in Acts 12:4(AV)-is it justifiable?
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Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
Thank you for a clear explanation, Matthew.
God'sElectSaint
Puritan Board Freshman
Hi Chris! Thank you for your comments brother they are appreciated. And you make excellent point here. Easter isn't the most literal translation but I'd say acceptable given the full context. Would I personally prefer "passover" here? Yes I would. Of course I don't hold a candle,in terms of textual expertise, to these exceptional 1611 translators. I like a literal translation but yet I do understand enough to know that there are exceptions where a word for word rendering wouldn't quite capture the meaning of the original properly. For instance the KJV uses the term "God Forbid" quite frequently which is not a literal rendering but I believe the NASB's "May it never be!" is more literal(correct me if I am wrong here guys, I am by no means fluent in Greek. I rely upon commentaries and lexicons like strongs) Yet I think the NASB's rendering though literal is kind of awkward and doesn't quite capture the strong negative of the original which I believe "God forbid" does. Of course that is only the position from a laysman.
Greetings Joe!I thank you as well for your comments here. I try to be reasonable with this Joe, though I admit a bias towards the KJV. And thank you for the Bishops' Bible reference, you are correct sir! I just looked at it on e-sword. That sheds a lot of light on things actually. And your right we can't know for sure the exact motives for this rendering and I'd rather not speculate too much further. Like I said I have a great trust in the Authorized Version but am not of the tribe that would consider it perfect. Of course the more I study and research the claims for and against I find it to be far from a noble relic of inferior 17th scholarship as many would have me to believe.
Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
Some more thoughts on the word Easter in the AV. (Just as an aside, while it is true the 1560 Geneva Bible had Passover at Acts 12:4, the 1557 had Easter; though my 1599 has Passover also.) The issue is, is the rendering of Pascha / Passover into Easter an “error” at 12:4 as some here have claimed, or just a sloppy translation? Just as Tyndale’s genius was responsible for coining the English word Passover, even so his use of Easter—which was already in use, and he was in Germany in 1525, and possibly saw Luther then, and likely knew of Luther’s Oster at 12:4—was another mark of his genius with languages when his New Testament appeared at the end of that year.
Here is an excerpt from Nick Sayers’ article, Why we should not Passover Easter:
Hebrew Pesach became Greek Pascha
In most languages the word for Easter is exactly the same as the word for Passover, so the relationship between the feast of Passover, and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is directly linked. A few examples are; Latin Pascha, French Pâques, Italian Pasqua, and Dutch Pasen. All these words mean both Easter and Passover, only the context formulates the difference. With the exception of English and German, all other European languages do not have separate words for Easter and Passover, but simply use a single term derived from Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover.
In one way, this is an advantage to the believer, who immediately associates Jesus Christ as the Passover Lamb. Whether reading the New or Old Testaments, the association between Christ and the Passover is clearly seen. This was also the case in the original Greek language which uses the Greek word Pascha for both Passover and the resurrection of Christ. This has been the same for 2000 years in the Greek. Even if you look up [in] a modern Greek dictionary it will tell you that Pascha means both Easter and Passover. This was also the case in English until Tyndale coined the term Passover. But as we shall see, the English rendition of Easter and Passover in the King James Bible is superior and needs to be exalted into its rightful place in English Bible versions, dictionaries and Christian literature again. This does not conclude that the English is superior to the original Greek, which is a form of Ruckmanism [a false teaching], but in this particular instance there is a special feature in the KJV, which is made clear in the original Greek when read in context, but is made abundantly clear by the scholarship of the KJV translators. Just as most Bibles include things like capitalisation of deity or have the words of Christ in red, and other helps, so too did the KJV translators make the Old Testament Passover and New Testament Easter easier for the reader to understand in context.
[End Sayers]
__________
In both the English and the German a word was coined to differentiate the old from the new Passover, and we know that the Lamb of God was resurrected from the dead. If one does not like the Easter / Oster word for the resurrection of the Lamb from His sacrificial death in your Bible, okay, but I wouldn't knock this proper rendering in the King James. Tyndale had Ester (for Easter) 14 times, and other of its cognates in the NT referring to the Passover and its activities, while the King James translators wisely used it only once, for the Easter / Oster / resurrection of Christ at 12:4.
And as far as saying that Christmas recalls the Roman Catholic’s “Christ’s Mass”, I would answer that our language has changed since the time of the Reformation, and when seculars and many Protestants use the expression it has no connection for them with a Roman Mass, just as our weekdays were names after pagan deities—such as Thursday for Thor, Friday for the goddess Frigg, Saturday after Saturn, and so on—and no one declines from using the weekday names because of ancient associations that have no such meaning for us in 2015. Some folks are fettered to Rome by their opposition to it, though that beast and Babylon is not what it was—mostly defanged—and we look for another monster with our blood on its mind.
Here is an excerpt from Nick Sayers’ article, Why we should not Passover Easter:
Hebrew Pesach became Greek Pascha
In most languages the word for Easter is exactly the same as the word for Passover, so the relationship between the feast of Passover, and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is directly linked. A few examples are; Latin Pascha, French Pâques, Italian Pasqua, and Dutch Pasen. All these words mean both Easter and Passover, only the context formulates the difference. With the exception of English and German, all other European languages do not have separate words for Easter and Passover, but simply use a single term derived from Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover.
In one way, this is an advantage to the believer, who immediately associates Jesus Christ as the Passover Lamb. Whether reading the New or Old Testaments, the association between Christ and the Passover is clearly seen. This was also the case in the original Greek language which uses the Greek word Pascha for both Passover and the resurrection of Christ. This has been the same for 2000 years in the Greek. Even if you look up [in] a modern Greek dictionary it will tell you that Pascha means both Easter and Passover. This was also the case in English until Tyndale coined the term Passover. But as we shall see, the English rendition of Easter and Passover in the King James Bible is superior and needs to be exalted into its rightful place in English Bible versions, dictionaries and Christian literature again. This does not conclude that the English is superior to the original Greek, which is a form of Ruckmanism [a false teaching], but in this particular instance there is a special feature in the KJV, which is made clear in the original Greek when read in context, but is made abundantly clear by the scholarship of the KJV translators. Just as most Bibles include things like capitalisation of deity or have the words of Christ in red, and other helps, so too did the KJV translators make the Old Testament Passover and New Testament Easter easier for the reader to understand in context.
[End Sayers]
__________
In both the English and the German a word was coined to differentiate the old from the new Passover, and we know that the Lamb of God was resurrected from the dead. If one does not like the Easter / Oster word for the resurrection of the Lamb from His sacrificial death in your Bible, okay, but I wouldn't knock this proper rendering in the King James. Tyndale had Ester (for Easter) 14 times, and other of its cognates in the NT referring to the Passover and its activities, while the King James translators wisely used it only once, for the Easter / Oster / resurrection of Christ at 12:4.
And as far as saying that Christmas recalls the Roman Catholic’s “Christ’s Mass”, I would answer that our language has changed since the time of the Reformation, and when seculars and many Protestants use the expression it has no connection for them with a Roman Mass, just as our weekdays were names after pagan deities—such as Thursday for Thor, Friday for the goddess Frigg, Saturday after Saturn, and so on—and no one declines from using the weekday names because of ancient associations that have no such meaning for us in 2015. Some folks are fettered to Rome by their opposition to it, though that beast and Babylon is not what it was—mostly defanged—and we look for another monster with our blood on its mind.
God'sElectSaint
Puritan Board Freshman
As always Steve awesome information! Steve, have you considered writing a book in defense of the KJV and or the TR and the various textual and translation issues that surround it? You seem to have done a remarkable amount of research on the topic. But anyways I wanted to offer something interesting from the "Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges". Surprising, because from what I have noticed from reading it on e-sword is that they often hammer the KJV's translation choices and side with the 1885 RV on most passages. Interestingly enough they don't do that for their note in Acts 12:4, it reads as follows: "intending after Easter (the Passover)] The rendering “Easter” is an attempt to give by an English word the notion of the whole feast. That this meaning and not the single day of the Paschal feast is intended by the Greek seems clear from the elaborate preparation made, as for a longer imprisonment than was the rule among the Jews. Peter was arrested at the commencement of the Passover feast (14th of Nisan), and the king’s intention was to proceed to sentence and punish him when the feast was at an end on the 21st of Nisan."
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