Easter Traditions?

[Tcg]

Are there any Easter Traditions that are related specifically to Jesus' resurrection? The Easter eggs hunts, bunnies and pastel-colored candies seem to be a celebration of spring. Certainly, sermons will be preached on Jesus' resurrection, but are there any Easter Traditions that Christians practice with their families that are focused on Jesus?


Tcg

[Difflugia]

Now because he knew before the festival of the Passover that his hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father, Jesus, having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end.

The words "before the passover" are not specific time markers for subsequent events described but an adverbial for what Jesus "knew".

If that were true, you should have been able to find at least one other similar construction in John. Since you instead just asserted your unsupported claim again, I can guess what happened.

At this point, I'm pretty sure I don't need any more support than what I've already given, but I'll add some anyway.

A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John by J. H. Bernard, Volume 2, p. 454.

1. πρὸ δὲ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ πάσχα. δέ is resumptive, the Passover being that mentioned 12:1. What is now to be narrated took place on the eve of the Passover, i.e. on the evening of Nisan 13.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, Volume 1, p. 814

Vv. 1-20. Jesus washes the disciples’ feet and explains His action.—Ver. 1. Πρὸ δὲ τῆς ἑορτῆς τοῦ πάσχα, “before the feast of the Passover,” and therefore it was not the Paschal supper which is now described. According to John, though not in agreement with the Synoptists, Jesus suffered as the Paschal Lamb on the day of the Passover, which in all Jewish households was terminated by the Paschal supper.

To illustrate: Because she knew before she met her husband she wanted a big family, she came off birth control and they started trying for a baby as soon as they were married.

Do you not realize that you a added a second prepositional phrase ("as soon as they were married") for clarity and made the second clause independent instead of subordinate? That right there makes my point that the grammar is important and changing it affects how one reads the passage. Furthermore, the NWT moved the prepositional phrase from the beginning of the sentence as it is in Greek and placed it inside the first subordinate clause.

Let's rewrite your example using the Greek word order and analogous verb tenses (past participle) and see what happens:

Before she met her husband, having known that she wanted a big family, she having come off birth control, they started trying for a baby.

Even selecting the subject matter as you have to give the reader as many extra clues as possible, it's still awkward at best. The wording strongly implies that the "they" includes someone other than her husband because she hadn't met him yet. I've heard people use similar grammar, but that just matches what I said before: if John meant 13:1 to be read the way you do, then he was sloppy.

To see what difference word order makes, now let's rearrange it in the same way that the NWT has:

Having known before she met her husband that she wanted a big family, she having come off birth control, they started trying for a baby.

That reads how you want it to, but that's because it's a different sentence.

There are many, many examples in John's Gospel where the author begins a narrative sequence with a prepositional phrase and intends it to apply to the entire sequence, including many with subordinate clauses with tense structures similar to this one.

Nobody is suggesting the strawman that John is breaking with good grammar or his established writing style

If John meant what you think he did, then I am the one claiming that John broke with both good grammar and his own writing style. That's my argument. Since I'm the one saying I'm making it, it's not a straw man.

only that we stop ignoring the elephant in the room which is the entire adverbial time clause explicitly states what Jesus knew not what He ate:

The elephant in the room is that it reads that way only because the NWT translators rewrote the sentence to match JW doctrine. That's not how the biblical sentence reads, though.

Not: Before the Passover he ate...
But: Before the Passover he knew ...

Actually, the perfect tense on "know" means that Jesus knew before "before the Passover." So, before-before the Passover he knew, before the Passover he ate.

Therefore the dependent clause equals that which Jesus knew before and (for the entire sequence ...) while he was eating and does not establish when he was eating.

A series of unsupported assertions wouldn't really justify a "therefore" even if it were something you were right about.

[JehovahsWitness]

..., the NWT moved the prepositional phrase from the beginning of the sentence as it is in Greek and placed it inside the first subordinate clause.

So what ,its ENGLISH not Greek?! The point isn't translation bound, all the other translations also have John set the scene by discussing what Jesus knew before the event. Unless you can find one that removed the verb "to know" we are just looking at variations that the Greek allows .

Various translations :
https://biblehub.com/john/13-1.htm

[TRANSPONDER]

..., the NWT moved the prepositional phrase from the beginning of the sentence as it is in Greek and placed it inside the first subordinate clause.

So what ,its ENGLISH not Greek?! The point isn't translation bound, all the other translations also have John set the scene by discussing what Jesus knew before the event. Unless you can find one that removed the verb "to know" we are just looking at variations that the Greek allows .

Various translations :
https://biblehub.com/john/13-1.htm

I'm not certain what the argument is here - whether it's John 13 1 or something else, but that's clearly before the Passover week had got going even if that 'before' related to the first day. But it still seems to me that what matters is that, unless you can show that there was a known separate and particular feast to be eaten 'Temple feast' (1) I think you called it, for which the Priests had to stay ritually clean, it is legitimate to suppose that John means the regular Passover feast and to reject your apologetics excuse to try to wish away this contradiction.

Oh....a p.s point I remember that debates about Greek parts of speech cropped up before in respect of the 2nd census. Namely whether Luke 2.2 says Augustan 'enrollment' was when Quirinus was governor or before Quirinus was governor, the apologetic being to wish the census of Quirinus on Herod and reconcile the dates of Luke and Matthew. The argument was whether 'pro' meant 'when' or 'before'. The consensus of Greek speakers was that 'before' was not grammatically correct. My more non -specialist argument was that it made no sense in the context. Surely you'd say it was during the time of such and such a governor, not before Quirinus was made governor a decade later. It so happened that (so far as I am concerned) the only case the Bible apologists had was that there was no known governor of Syria after Varus, and that was just about the last year of Herod, so the 'census' could be slipped in there at the same time as the massacre of innocents of Matthew, even though Josephus has evidently never heard of either event.

Where I saw that put paid to was Josephus making it clear that, following the death of Herod and Archelaus having to go to Rome to argue which of Herod's sons should rule Judea, Varus was putting down Judean revolts, and so was acting governor until the next Governor was appointed. Thus there are no misssing governorships and no 'before' governorship of Qurinus, making debate about parts of speech otiose.

(1) at least my week - long 'bread feast' is know to Judaism whereas your 'Temple feast' is apparently not.

[Difflugia]

So what ,its ENGLISH not Greek?!

If you think the English doesn't apply, then what was your illustration supposed to show?

The point isn't translation bound, all the other translations also have John set the scene by discussing what Jesus knew before the event.

You're right as far as it goes, but "the event" is the Last Supper, which itself took place before the Passover.

Unless you can find one that removed the verb "to know" we are just looking at variations that the Greek allows .

No, they're not all allowed by the Greek. The translations that explicitly apply "before the Passover" to the first clause do so by changing something about the Greek sentence. The first to do so on the Bible Hub page you linked is the New Living Translation. It puts a period after the "having known" clause to end the sentence there, but it also must change the verb from a perfect participle to imperfect "non-participle." A phrase with a participle acts as an adjective, which means that any translation that does that is splitting off part of the sentence that is incomplete (i.e. lacks a subject and main verb), then changes the sentence so that the participle becomes the main verb. I can illustrate this in English:

I, having enjoyed the last of my tea, went to the store to buy more.

The phrase "having enjoyed" is the form in English that the past participle takes. Rather than directly being the predicate of the sentence, it acts as an adjective describing the state of the subject. The sentence can't sensically be ended after the clause containing the participle:

I having enjoyed the last of my tea.

In order for that to make sense, the verb has to change to a different form:

I enjoyed my tea. (imperfect past)
I had enjoyed my tea. (perfect past)

Even though the past perfect is constructed in English using a participle, in Greek it is not! In Greek, a participle always represents an adjective form (and even takes adjective case endings), so it cannot make sense as the predicate of a sentence. That means that any translation that splits the sentence into two like that is changing the grammar of the sentence in order to preserve a meaning dictated by doctrine, not by the text. In order to admit a number of the translations there, the Greek verb would have to be spelled differently. If there's some other reason to think that's what John meant, then that would mean his grammar was wrong.

[JehovahsWitness]

The point isn't translation bound, all the other translations also have John set the scene by discussing what Jesus knew before the event.

You're right as far as it goes, but "the event" is the Last Supper, which itself took place before the Passover.

You'll need more than John 13:1 to establish that ; and if you are referring to John 18:28 I have already addresses that verse post #184

[TRANSPONDER]

The point isn't translation bound, all the other translations also have John set the scene by discussing what Jesus knew before the event.

You're right as far as it goes, but "the event" is the Last Supper, which itself took place before the Passover.

You'll need more than John 13:1 to establish that ; and if you are referring to John 18:28 I have already addresses that verse post #184

And I have debunked what was in that post, unless you can validate your claim of some sort of secondary 'Temple' feast (1)which the Priests still had to eat after the friday daytime events, otherwise there is no credible alternative to John assuming the Seder feast was on the Saturday and it was Not the last Supper. Between my rule of fingers and thumb and Difflugia's Greek grammar, you seem to have nothing but faithbased denial, since your referring back to previous debunked posts will not argue your case.

(1) yes, #171 quotes your mention of 'the TEMPLE BASED festival of unleaven bread. " Which as i pointed out (as you did) was week long and not something that had not yet been 'eaten' but would be eaten after the Friday events.

[Difflugia]

You'll need more than John 13:1 to establish that ;

So, the extent of your justification is to just repeat your assertion? Perhaps you should type it in all caps. This is the internet, so I think that counts.

and if you are referring to John 18:28 I have already addresses that verse post #184

I find that delightfully funny. Your post #184 relies on the accuracy of your assertion that John's Last Supper is also the Passover Seder. Since you've spectacularly failed to build the case for your reading of 13:1 on anything other than stubbornness, it looks now like your entire claim is based on the debate equivalent of closing your eyes, plugging your ears, and stamping your feet.

[JehovahsWitness]

You'll need more than John 13:1 to establish that ;

So, the extent of your justification is to just repeat your assertion? Perhaps you should type it in all caps. This is the internet, so I think that counts.

and if you are referring to John 18:28 I have already addresses that verse post #184

... Your post #184 relies on the accuracy of your assertion that John's Last Supper is also the Passover Seder.

With good reason, see post #154

[Difflugia]

See post #154

I did. We already discussed why it doesn't help your case.

[JehovahsWitness]

(1) yes, #171 quotes your mention of 'the TEMPLE BASED festival of unleaven bread. " Which as i pointed out (as you did) was week long and not something that had not yet been 'eaten' but would be eaten after the Friday events.

If you are claiming in the first century the festival of unleaven bread started on the 14th , not the 15th that seems to be untrue , see post #131


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