Thomas Jefferson and Easter

Through a series of cut-and-paste, although mostly cut, Thomas Jefferson created a copy of the Bible that made sense to him. You can read more about Jefferson's editing in the Smithsonian article, How Thomas Jefferson Created His Own Bible.
The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth collects the Gospels into a cohesive narrative, attempting to put the events into chronological order and leaving out those things that are “contrary to reason.”
As a result, the book ends with a part of John 19:31ff and then a pasted piece of Matthew 27:60:

There laid they Jesus, and ... rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.

Jesus died. They put Him in the tomb and walked away. No resurrection.

More on Easter

 

Music

We can be grateful that radio stations and retail music systems haven't given us three months of Easter music in the run-up to the holiday. It would be pretty much Peter Cottontail or Handel's Messiah.

Needing a set of tunes to fill the house while preparing our portion of a fine Easter dinner at Mike and Lynn's, I put together this playlist.

Name	Artist
Helter Skelter	U2
Silver And Gold	U2
Pride (In The Name Of Love)	U2
When Love Comes To Town	U2
The Wanderer	U2
Walk On	U2
Sunday Bloody Sunday	U2
Bad	U2
One	U2
O Mary Don't You Weep	Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band
Jacob's Ladder	Bruce Springsteen & The Sessions Band

Who says that this Easter?

The relationship between the Protestant churches and the early church is, as Facebook would suggest, complicated.

Not only is Easter a movable feast, not fixed to a date on the secular calendar, but there are different ways that the Eastern and Western churches determine the date. All trace their formulas to  the decision of the Council of Nicea in 325. The meeting notes from that council haven't survived, so the calculations are left to the reader. The major points of contention and imprecision are described pretty well in Wikipedia.

So how is it that most Protestant denominations appear to accept the Roman church's designation that a) Easter should happen on a Sunday and b) independently from Passover, upon which the Easter stories are based? (A few Christian groups, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists and Worldwide Church of God, have different views about Easter observances.)  The quarrels among Christians seems less about the conclusion - when and how Easter should be observed - than about who makes the decision. Lutherans can observe Easter today not because the Bishop of Rome says so, but because they arrived at the same conclusion without being told.

Of course, we're reached the point that it's not likely that any major denomination is going to devote time and energy revisiting the fixation of the dates for Easter, or Christmas, for that matter. There's plenty to do with the way things are.

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