Easter and Passover, why not on the same date?

[colliric]

Can someone tell us just when the early Christian church stopped celebrating Passover?

I was under the impression that Jewish holy days were still being celebrated and interspersed<sp?> within early Chrisitian practices. When were they purged from our services?

Officially at least with passover, it was at the famous Council of Nicaea in 325AD when the catholic church legislated that we were to celebrate passover on calculations done with the rule that Passover occurs the first full moon after the equinox which was the Jewish method of calculation at the time. This rule was to remain constant as infallible doctrine and eventually caused the Catholic church’s dating and the Jewish dating to collide. In the 4th century the Jewish method changed from astronomical calculations(through observing the moon’s actions physically) to predicted astronomical calculations based on the meteoric cycle. This was so that they didn’t need to observe the moon every single year and their dates were fine for a very long time as the anomoly was not noticable until the Jewish dates started falling ahead of the astronomical lunar scheduling, this ment for a long time the Catholic Church simply held the Christian passover celebration(which is easter) for the whole Passover week.

In 1582 the Church realized it needed to revise those calculations itself because the Jewish system no longer followed completely the biblical astronomical rules of dating passover. The seed for this change had been set in 325AD. In that council it was also decided to legislate on the Sunday ressurection observance as being the main celebration rather than the singular days of passover.

 

[colliric]

Current historical evidence suggests that in the early second century, the Church at Rome began celebrating the day of Jesus’ resurrection on the Sunday following the Passover of the 14th of Nisan (Abib). Through the influence of Victor I, bishop of the Church at Rome (c. 189-98), the observance of the resurrection grew in popularity in the Christian world, eventually overshadowing the Apostolic Passover tradition (as referred to by the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp), although many small groups throughout the world, especially the Churches in Asia Minor, held to the Apostolic tradition of celebrating the Passover on the 14th of Nisan (see Quartodecimanism).
(wikipedia)

yes, it was 325 when it was officially legislated on by the church of Rome although it had been practiced for sometime before that.

 

[chrisb]

All the petty bickering aside… this was a very informative thread. Thanks to all of my Christian Brothers and Sisters and our elder Brothers and Sisters in the Jewish Faith for the in-depth explanation of all that complex astro/lunar calendar… eer ‘stuff’.

What is the deal with the Old Julian Calendar that the Old Believers (Old Calendar Orthodox) Use?

Pax, Salve, Shalom!