Good Friday 2017: Bible Verses, Passages, & Readings

However, the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine is charged with setting the modern Easter date in in June of 325 A.D. at the ancient city of Nicaea (modern Iznik, Turkey), writes the Oxford University Press. The problem was, the only thing everyone knew about the date of Jesus' crucifixion was that it happened around the Jewish celebration of Passover. They write: "Since the date of Passover, then as now, is celebrated in accordance with the Jewish calendar, the correlation with the Julian calendar used by Christians and most other inhabitants of the Roman Empire was always inexact. Some Christians believed that the best way to solve the problem was to celebrate Easter on the first day of Passover according to the Jewish calendar, another group held that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the opening of Passover, while yet another group felt that the timing of the Christian festival should not be determined by the timing of Passover and should instead be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Vernal Equinox."