Page 7 - Easter The Untold Story

HOW EASTER CAME TO BE OBERVED ON SUNDAY
The Quartodeciman Controversy
According to the New Testament, the earliest Christians commemorated the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ annually on Nisan 14, the day Jesus was crucified. The New Testament, however, neither commands nor records any formal, institutionalized celebration of Jesus' resurrection.
For example, note the instruction of the apostle Paul: "For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed [Nisan 14], took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way, after supper he took the cup saying, 'This cup is then new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.' For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes" (1 Corinthians 11: 23-26).
Gradually, however, the Christian Church deemphasized the commemoration of Jesus' death in favor of celebrating his resurrection. The Church eventually discarded Nisan 14 and adopted what came to be known as Easter Sunday to celebrate the resurrection.
Controversy over the date occupied no small amount of the Church's attention for quite some time. Those who held to Nisan 14 came to be known as Quartodecimans, from the Latin word for 14.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica records: "Although the observance of Easter was at a very early period the practice of the Christian church, a serious difference as to the day for its observance soon arose between the Christians of Jewish and those of Gentile descent, which led to a long and bitter controversy. The point at issue was when the Paschal fast was to be reckoned as ending. With the Jewish Christians, whose leading thought was the death of Christ as the Paschal Lamb, the fast ended at the same time as that of the Jews, on the fourteenth day of the moon at evening, and the Easter festival immediately followed, without regard to the day of the week. The Gentile Christians, on the other hand, unfettered by Jewish traditions, identified the first day of the week with the Resurrection, and kept the preceding Friday as the commemoration of the crucifixion, irrespective of the day of the month" (11th edition, article "Easter").
Some biblical scholars feel that "the very Jewish-looking practice of the Quartodecimans, in celebrating Easter not on Sunday (though they did observe Sundays) but on Nisan 14, was a continuation of the customs of the early Jewish- Christian community in Palestine" (Studia Liturgica, Vol 13, No. 1:1-20, 1979).