On the Sunday Special episode of Human Events Daily, host Jack Posobiec spoke with author and Catholic commentator Dr. Taylor Marshall to discuss the cultural importance of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and how it is not legend, but historical truth.
"We have to remember on this Easter that all the other religions have prophets, teachers—so called—but Jesus Christ, the Messiah, rose on the third day," Marshall said. "It's a historical claim. It's not just a myth. It's not a legend. We truly believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and rose on the third day and, and as you just mentioned, the events in Holy Week are all linked up so that in the eyes of the earliest Christians, they perceived it as one event."
Posobiec had previously mentioned that the Western Church misses "the massive metaphysical implications" of the events of Holy Week or how the factual events of what happened to Christ approximately 2000 years ago has a profound impact on truth and causality in today's world.
The two men discussed Holy Week, which begins on Palm Sunday, an event depicted in all four Gospels where Christ enters Jerusalem riding a donkey and believers put palms on the ground before him. Then on Holy Thursday, Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper. After his Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane he was captured following his betrayal by Judas.
Marshall said that what follows is the passion, the scourging, the crucifixion, and the death on Good Friday, followed by the harrowing of Hell, which is Christ descending into the realm of the dead, and then his "miraculous, glorious resurrection" on Easter Sunday.
"All of that is a package," Marshall said. "It all fits together."
The men then broke down the three days between Holy Thursday and Easter Sunday are referred to as the Triduum, which means three days in Latin, or Pascha, the Greek word for Passover. The Triduum as referred to by the Romans and the Pascha by the Greeks helps ensconce the events of Holy Week in a moment in time in the first century, signifying Christianity spread to non-Jewish cultures and that those cultures created traditions and language to praise and remember the historical relevance of those holy days.
Posobiec, a Catholic, noted how his wife comes from the Eastern Orthodox tradition where Pascha is much more commonly used than here in the West.
By tracing the exactitude and historical relevance of Holy Week, and how it's importance was sustained through the two men were able to debunk attempts to paganize Easter.
"You get those sort of pop history articles around this time of the year," Posobiec said. "'Oh, Easter is based on this ancient pagan holiday and the bunny and all this and it's like, no, that's literally just the language of English that does that."
"In almost every single other country in the world, they actually refer to it as Pascha," he added.
