A JOURNEY IN FIVE FORMS
You say Easter. Most of Europe says pascha.
Romanian Paște comes from Hebrew pesach, through Aramaic, Greek and Latin — a three-millennium story, from the Exodus night to this year's Easter. The feast's date survived the Quartodeciman wars and the city of Nicaea, and the hinge is a monk from Dobruja, Dionysius Exiguus, who numbered the years of our era.
- pesach → Paște
- five forms, one filiation — shifting senses
- 325
- Nicaea — the decision known from letters, not from canon
- 525
- a monk from Dobruja numbers the first years of the Lord
The word in the five forms of its journey:
- פֶּסַח Hebrew
- פִּסְחָא Aramaic
- ΠΆΣΧΑ Greek
- PASCHA Latin
- PAȘTE Romanian
- THE EXODUS
- NICAEA · 325
- ROME · 525
- TODAY
CHAPTER 1 · EGYPT
A night in Egypt
The name begins as a hurried command: one lamb, one night, one mark on the door. What followed — the passing over — stayed in the word.
That night, every household takes a lamb — chosen on the tenth day of the month (Ex. 12:3), slaughtered on the fourteenth, at twilight (12:6). The blood marks the doorposts and lintel; the meat is eaten in haste, with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, sandals on and staff in hand (12:11).
The promise hangs on one verb: pasach — “to pass over, to spare”. “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (12:13, our rendering). The feast remains “the LORD's Passover” (12:11), “a lasting ordinance” (12:14).
One word, three senses
- The sacrifice
- Ex. 12:27 the Passover sacrifice to the LORD
- The victim
- Ex. 12:21 the lamb slaughtered by each household
- The festival
- Lev. 23:5 the 14th day of the first month, at evening
The three senses follow Brown–Driver–Briggs (H6453).
CHAPTER 2 · THE ROAD
The word travels
From Jerusalem to Alexandria, from Rome to the Romanian lands: five stops, five forms, one filiation — and a meaning that shifts on the way.
Jerusalem
Hebrew and Aramaic: pesach → pascha'
Alexandria
the Septuagint's Greek: πάσχα
Rome
the Vulgate's Latin: pascha
the Romanian lands
Romanian: Paște
A schematic route of linguistic transmission, not a documented itinerary: four stops, each in the dictionaries.
The chain, link by link
פֶּסַח
pesach · Hebrew
“passing” or “sparing” — disputed verb [C01]
BDB H6453 ← H6452
פִּסְחָא
pascha' · Aramaic
the form that enters Greek
Strong G3957: “of Chaldee origin”
ΠΆΣΧΑ
pascha · Greek
the Septuagint “constantly uses the Chaldean form”
Thayer, G3957
PASCHA
pascha · Latin
“post biduum pascha fiet” (Mt. 26:2, Vulgate)
DEX: “Lat. pascha, -ae”
PAȘTE
Paște · Romanian
the regular outcome of Lat. Paschae
DER: Pușcariu 1283; REW 6264
The dictionary siblings
“Lat. Paschae…, cf. it., cat. pasqua, logud. paska, prov. pasca, fr. pîques, port. páscoa, alb. paskë, ngr. πάσχα.” (DER, in the dictionary's spelling)
French now writes pâques — the sense is the same: the great Romance languages, plus Greek and Albanian, keep descendants of pascha.
The plural turned singular
“Rezultatul normal, Paște, a fost considerat ca un pl. f., de unde sing. n. Paște și de aici pl. Paști.” (DER) In short: the inherited form sounded like a plural, so the language rebuilt a singular — and from it, a new plural.
The carol's sibling story — how another feast-word travelled from Rome to the Romanians.
CHAPTER 3 · THE DATE WARS
The feast that lost its minutes
Some kept Easter on 14 Nisan, whatever the weekday; others, on Sunday. Two centuries of quarrel, one ecumenical council — and no reckoning formula surviving from the council.
14 Nisan
whatever the weekday
The churches of Asia, after John's tradition: the exact day, neither adding nor taking away.
Sunday
the day of resurrection
Rome and most churches: Easter on the Sunday after the paschal full moon.
c. 155
Polycarp and Anicetus: peace
“When the blessed Polycarp was at Rome in the time of Anicetus… they immediately made peace with one another, not caring to quarrel over this matter.” Anicetus yielded the Eucharist in church to Polycarp — “and they parted from each other in peace” (Eusebius, H.E. V.24).
c. 190
Victor and Polycrates: rupture
Polycrates of Ephesus: “We observe the exact day; neither adding, nor taking away.” Victor of Rome “immediately attempted to cut off from the common unity the parishes of all Asia… and declared all the brethren there wholly excommunicate.” Irenaeus — the peacemaker — rebuked him (Eusebius, V.24).
325
Nicaea: agreement without its canon
The council asks all for “one and the same day”, but the 20 surviving canons never say which — their titles never mention Easter. The agreement is known from letters, not from law.
The Eusebius passages (c. 190, V.24) are quoted from the NPNF translation.
The 20 canons — with the hole showing
None says when Easter falls. Open the list and search the word yourself — you will not find it:
Show all 20 titles
- The castrated and eunuchs in the clergy
- Neophytes hastily ordained
- Clergy living with women
- The election of bishops
- The excommunicated; synods twice a year
- The precedence of Alexandria, Rome, Antioch
- The honour of Jerusalem's bishop
- Receiving the Novatians
- Men ordained without examination
- Lapsed men ordained unknowingly
- Penance for those who lapsed under Licinius
- Men returned to the army
- The viaticum of the dying
- Lapsed catechumens
- Clergy moving from city to city
- Priests deserting their church
- Usurious clergy
- Deacons overstepping
- Rebaptizing Paulianists; deaconesses
- Standing prayer — the feast's only mention
The “feast” of canon 20 is the Lord's Day and the days of Pentecost — not Easter's date. No canon title mentions Easter; all decided here is that prayer be made standing. (NPNF)
The letter that survived
“…this feast ought to be kept by all and in every place on one and the same day.” (Constantine, in Eusebius, Life of Constantine III.18, NPNF)
The letter lists the churches already united: Rome, Africa, Italy, Egypt, Spain, the Gauls, Britain, Libya, Greece, Asia, Pontus, Cilicia.
Constantine's letter holds harsh attacks on the Jews — we say so plainly, without quoting them.
The second proof: the synodal letter to the Egyptians. “…henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans… and all those who have observed Easter from the beginning.” (NPNF)
No formula for the reckoning there either.
CHAPTER 4 · DOBRUJA → ROME
The monk from Dobruja
Born in Scythia Minor, at work in Rome — and in one row of a table he changed how you count the years, yours included.
Dionysius Exiguus — Dennis the Small — was born in Scythia Minor (today's Dobruja) around 470 and reached Rome, where a continuator writing in 616 calls him “the most learned abbot of the city of Rome”, and Bede calls him abbas.
In 525, at Pope John I's request, he drew a table of 95 future Easters (532–626) with the reckoning rules (argumenta). He refused to count the years by Diocletian — “a tyrant who persecuted Christians” — and counted them from the incarnation instead: the year 525 “since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ”. How he hit the number, nobody knows.
He dated table rows, not history: he never used the count for any past event, and his table was extended to 721 and carried to Britain and Ireland — the world Bede belongs to, with De temporum ratione (8th c.).
- 95
- future Easters in the 525 table (532–626)
- 532
- the years of the Victorian cycle he knew
- 525
- the year of the table — and of the first “years of the Lord”
CHAPTER 5 · THE EXCEPTION
The corner that renamed it
The strip below says pascha — in a dozen ways, from Lisbon to Reykjavík and Moscow. Two languages do not. Not “the Germanic ones”, as often heard: only English and German.
The map speaks for itself
- Pâques French
- Pasqua Italian
- Pascua Spanish
- Páscoa Portuguese
- Paște Romanian
- Πάσχα Greek
- Пасха Russian
- Pasen Dutch
- påske Danish and Norwegian
- påsk Swedish
- páskar Icelandic
- Pasg Welsh
- Easter English
- Ostern German
Every form above is dictionary-checked (DER for the Romance ones; Nordic, Russian and Welsh dictionaries for the rest). Even English once had Pasch — today only Scots Pace keeps it.
Not the Germanic languages — in our strip, only English and German. Dutch and Scandinavian keep pascha.
Bede, chapter 15
Eostur-monath, qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur… a cujus nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant.
Bede, De temporum ratione, ch. 15 (“The English months”), 8th c.
“Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month’… Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.” (Faith Wallis's translation, Liverpool University Press, 1999)
Who was Eostre? Bede is her only story — a goddess with April feasts. Since 1958, over 150 votive inscriptions of the 2nd–3rd centuries to the matronae Austriahenae, found in Germany, lend her a shadow of support: the name surely comes from the austri- stem, akin to Eostre — if Germanic. Beyond that, caution.
The German side fits in one asterisk: in Deutsche Mythologie (1835) Jacob Grimm reconstructs a possible continental goddess *Ostara — the asterisk means “reconstructed, not attested”; it is Grimm's speculation, not the guild's consensus. The Old High German Easter name, ôstarâ, survived mostly in the plural.
The Easter computer
Pick a year from 1900 to 2100. The engine does the Churches' own reckoning: the first Sunday after the paschal full moon — once in the Julian calendar (Orthodox Easter), once in the Gregorian (Western Easter). Both reckonings come out in the civil Gregorian calendar.
Why do they part? One old rule, two calendars: the Orthodox reckoning runs on the Julian calendar, the Western on the Gregorian. In 2100 the gap between the calendars grows from 13 to 14 days — fixed-offset reckonings miss Orthodox Easter by a day; the engine converts exactly.
The civil switch from one to the other — our sibling story, the 1919 calendar.
The table of nearby years
| Year | Western | Orthodox | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 31 March 2024 | 5 May 2024 | 35 days |
| 2025 | 20 April 2025 | 20 April 2025 | the same day |
| 2026 | 5 April 2026 | 12 April 2026 | 7 days |
| 2027 | 28 March 2027 | 2 May 2027 | 35 days |
| 2028 | 16 April 2028 | 16 April 2028 | the same day |
2024–2028, reckoned from the same formulas as the engine above.
When do they meet?
Five years, three answers: together (the same day), close (7 days at most) or apart. The verdicts come from the computer above — never from luck.
Round 1 of 5 · 2026
Round 1: Close
Only 7 days: 5 April / 12 April. Nicaea asked for “one and the same day” — the calendars part them by a week.
Round 2 of 5 · 2024
Round 2: Apart
35 days: 31 March / 5 May. One old rule, two calendars — the widest parting.
Round 3 of 5 · 2025
Round 3: Together
20 April, both. Even the corner that renamed it — the English with Easter, the Germans with Ostern — kept it then.
Round 4 of 5 · 2027
Round 4: Apart
35 days: 28 March / 2 May. The tables of Dionysius roll on, and the parting with them.
Round 5 of 5 · 2028
Round 5: Together
16 April, both — the next meeting. The one after: not before 2031.
14
Nisan
The day two centuries quarrelled over: 14 Nisan, whatever the weekday.
525
Anno Domini
The year of the table in which a monk from Dobruja first numbered the years “from the incarnation”.
Three myths, briefly
What is often heard — and what the evidence says.
“Pascha” comes from “to suffer”
No. Greek pascha transliterates Aramaic pascha' — Thayer says so plainly. The likeness to paschein (“to suffer”) is coincidence — nothing more.
Nicaea fixed the Easter formula
No. The 20 surviving canons hold no reckoning rule — canon 20 speaks only of standing prayer. The “first Sunday after the paschal full moon after 21 March” rule is later practice, not a text from Nicaea.
Easter comes from Ishtar
No. Bede ties Easter to Eostre; the Ishtar link is an 1853 invention of the Scottish minister Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons) — no linguistic foundation, rejected by scholars, reheated as an internet meme after 2000.
Questions from the road
What readers ask — short answers, each with its chapter.
Is Paște a Hebrew word?
Not directly: it is inherited from Latin pascha, which came through Greek from Aramaic, from Hebrew pesach. A filiation in five links, not a direct borrowing — see chapter 2. [C01+C06–C08]
Why do Orthodox and Western Easter rarely coincide?
One old rule, two calendars: the Orthodox reckoning runs on the Julian calendar, the Western on the Gregorian — and this page shows both dates in the civil calendar. Try the engine above: in 2026 they stand 7 days apart; in 2028 they meet. [C18]
Did Nicaea settle the Easter formula?
No. The council asked for “one and the same day”, but the formula survives in no canon kept — what we know comes from letters, and the “Sunday after the full moon” rule is later practice. [C12–C14]
Does pascha come from “to suffer”?
No. Greek pascha transcribes Aramaic pascha' — Thayer says so plainly; the likeness to paschein (“to suffer”) is coincidence — nothing more. [C06]
Does Easter come from Ishtar?
No. Bede ties Easter to Eostre (ch. 15); the bridge to Ishtar is Alexander Hislop's 1853 invention, without linguistic foundation. [C16]
When do the two Easters meet again?
In 2028 (16 April, both) — then not before 2031. The game's verdicts and the nearby-years table come from the same engine. [C18]
In short
The whole story in five lines — each with its chapter.
- The word
- pesach → pascha' → πάσχα → pascha → Paște: one filiation, shifting senses. (ch. 2)
- The quarrel
- 14 Nisan or Sunday; Nicaea asks for “one and the same day” but leaves no formula. (ch. 3)
- The monk
- Dionysius of Dobruja numbers the first “years of the Lord” in 525. (ch. 4)
- The exception
- only English and German renamed it: Easter, Ostern. (ch. 5)
- The reckoning
- one rule, two calendars — the engine above shows them both. (the computer)
Sources: what stands behind each claim
Dictionaries first, old texts in the middle, reckoning last. Each row below is a page claim with its proof.
| ID | Claim | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| C01 | pesach: “passing” or “sparing” — the verb pasach is disputed | BDB H6453 ← H6452 |
| C02 | three senses: sacrifice, victim, festival | BDB; Ex. 12:27; 12:21; Lev. 23:5 |
| C03–C04 | the lamb on day 10, slaughter on day 14, “the LORD's Passover” | Ex. 12:3–14, 21–27 |
| C05 | founding tradition, not reportage: consensus + historical core | Encyclopaedia Judaica; Faust |
| C06 | Greek pascha is an Aramaic transliteration, not “to suffer” | Strong + Thayer, G3957 |
| C07 | Paște < Lat. pascha; Scriban's Lat < Gk < Heb chain | DEX; Scriban, via dexonline |
| C08 | the DER chain + the Romance series + the rebuilt plural | DER, via dexonline |
| C09 | oldest attestation: Coresi's 1581 Homiliary (1914 ed., p. 123) | MDA2 “CORESI, EV. 123”; IA scan |
| C10 | pască < Mod. Gk. πάσχα; păscălie < Mod. Gk. πασχαλία | Scriban; DER |
| C11 | Polycarp/Anicetus c. 155 peace; Victor/Polycrates c. 190 rupture | Eusebius, H.E. V.24 (NPNF) |
| C12 | Nicaea: “one and the same day” from letters, no formula kept | Constantine + synodal (NPNF) |
| C13 | the 20 canons lack the Easter rule (20 = kneeling) | NPNF, the canon text |
| C14 | Constantine's letter: “one and the same day” + the regions | Eusebius, Life III.18–19 (NPNF) |
| C14b | the synodal letter to Egypt: “at the same time with the Romans” | NPNF, the synodal letter |
| C15 | Dionysius: 525, John I, 95 Easters (532–626), years of the Lord | Cath. Enc., New Advent |
| C16 | Easter/Ostern after Eostre; Bede, ch. 15 | Bede, DTR XV (1537 scan); Wallis transl. |
| C17 | in the strip shown, only English and German renamed it; the rest keep pascha | one dictionary per form |
| C18 | the engine: Julian Meeus + Gregorian anonymous; 1900–2100 checked | Tøndering; dateutil, ncal (control) |
| C20 | “a three-millennium story” — cautious phrasing, not a record | from C01+C06–C08, with C05 |
Method, in one sentence: every claim points to the source it can be checked against — and uncertainties appear in the text, marked, never smoothed away.
Dictionaries
- dexonline: Paște (DEX, DER, MDA2, Scriban)
- BDB: pesach H6453
- Strong/Thayer: pascha G3957
- Exodus 12 (BibleHub)
Old texts
- Eusebius, H.E. V (NPNF)
- The Nicaean canons + synodal letter (NPNF)
- Constantine to the churches (NPNF)
- Vulgate: Mt. 26:2 “pascha”
- Bede, De temporum ratione XV (Latin; Noviomagus ed., 1537)
- Coresi 1581, Pușcariu–Procopovici ed. 1914, p. 123
History and reckoning
- Dionysius Exiguus (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (1835), the Ostara chapter
- Tøndering: reckoning Easter (Calendar FAQ)
- The Easter coincidences list (EN-wiki)
- OrthodoxWiki: Pascha (the two reckonings)
- The Septuagint at Alexandria (EN-wiki)
- The 1919 calendar (sibling story)
Type: Fraunces, Newsreader and Atkinson Hyperlegible, under the SIL Open Font Licence; Hebrew, Greek and Cyrillic come from system fonts.