We use the terms “Passover” and “Feast of Unleavened Bread” interchangeably. In the Torah, however, the terms are distinct. The Passover (pesach, פָּסַח) refers to the actual sacrifice that occurred on the fourteenth day of the month. The Festival of Unleavened Bread refers to the seven-day festival that begins that day at sunset—the fifteenth day of the month. (Remember that the Bible reckons sunset as the beginning of a new day.) Although the Torah uses the two terms differently, in Judaism today we speak of “keeping Passover” in reference to the whole seven-day festival. In reality, no one can “keep Passover” because we have no Temple in which a Passover sacrifice can be made. We can, however, keep the seven days of Unleavened Bread.

In the Gospels, the term Passover (Pesach) appears transliterated into Greek as pascha (πάσχα). The word occurs twenty-nine times in the New Testament. The New Testament uses it to refer to both the Passover sacrifice and the seven-day festival of Unleavened Bread.

Inexplicably, the King James Version of Acts 12:4 chose to translate the word as Easter:

And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. (Acts 12:4 KJV)

Neither the believers in Acts 12 nor Herod Agrippa were celebrating a festival called Easter that year. In the days of the apostles, the believers honored Yeshua’s resurrection through the celebration of Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Easter was a much later innovation in Christian evolution.