Around 6 or 4 B.C., Jesus was born in Israel at the end of the reign of Herod the Great. He spent His childhood and youth with His parents in Nazareth and was brought up in Jewish traditions. Having reached the age of about 30, he received Baptism from John the Baptist and for about three years[5] preached the approach of the Kingdom of God, without writing anything himself. He had disciples who followed Him everywhere. His preaching bore witness to an understanding of the religious aspirations of the Jewish people, to a subtle and profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, as well as to a penetrating vision of human psychology and human nature in general. The miracles and signs that He performed gave special weight to His preaching, so that at times whole crowds of people followed Him. They even wanted to make Him their king, first placing Him at the head of a national liberation movement to overthrow the "impious" rule of the Romans.

But gradually the number of disciples devoted to Him decreased. Firstly, even they, close disciples, did not understand much of what their Teacher said. Secondly, His preaching increasingly irritated the religious ruling elite of Judaism. Finally, condemned by the Jewish religious leaders, with the sanction of the Roman authorities, He was crucified on April 7 or 9, 30.

That seemed to be the end of it.

However, His Resurrection, or rather, His repeated appearances to His disciples, the Risen One, and then the descent of the Holy Spirit (as a kind of new quality of Jesus' presence among them) completely transformed the consciousness of the disciples. This led them to finally see in Jesus something they had not seen, nor could they have seen before, when they followed Him. This can be compared to the effect of a developer in photography: under its influence, after some time, captured events that once occurred appear.

The apostles had to remember what He said and did, and ponder, trying to understand the meaning of the mystery. At first, however, the disciples remained faithful Jews who saw in their Master the fulfillment of the Scriptures, in contrast to those who did not accept Him. The Scriptures, that is, the Bible, for them were what we now call the Old Testament. However, a few decades later, the Jerusalem Temple, the religious center of Judaism and the first Christians, was destroyed (70 AD). Then the disciples and those whom they converted to Christianity realized that they were the Christian Church, living by its own Tradition and its own rules of life.

Thus, the Resurrection of Jesus transformed the disciples, regenerated them after they were scattered like sheep without a shepherd, and gave birth to them anew as disciples who saw Their Teacher in a new way. The disciples became the Church, the new Israel, the New Testament people of God.

Before we dwell on what they saw, what happened to them, and how they began to talk and preach about it, let us give an important analogy.

There is a clear parallel between the two Passovers – the Old Testament and the New Testament. Both Easters are the feasts of the Beginning. Let us remember: within the framework of the course of the Old Testament, it was with the Pascha of the Exodus that we began the history of Holy Tradition and the Scriptures of the Old Testament. After all, the Exodus is experienced as the birth of the chosen people and as the beginning of life in the Covenant that God made with His people. Then the people came to know their God not only as the God of their ancestors—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—but also as Savior, Deliverer, and Redeemer. The memory of the saving God, which was preserved in tradition and constantly experienced in divine services, made a religious community out of the people – the Old Testament Church, the people of Israel.

It is no accident that the New Beginning, the New Testament Pascha of the Resurrection of Christ, coincided, as it were, with the feast of the Beginning in the Old Testament, the Old Testament Pascha. For Christians, Easter is also a liberation and a starting point for the new life of the people of God. The two Paschas (Old Testament and New Testament) are two key milestones in the entire history of the Testament: first the Old, then the New.

2. The Book of Acts—The Book of the Beginning of the Church

Why, beginning with the feast of Pascha, is the Book of the Acts of the Holy Apostles read in the Orthodox Church during the Liturgy?

This is a book about the first days and years of the life of the Church. It reflects the ecstatic state in which the first Christians lived, inspired by the very recent events associated with the Resurrection of the Lord. After all, a whole host of witnesses told about it live. Among them were not only the twelve apostles (including the newly-elected Matthias, see Acts 1:21-26), but also many others. From the very beginning and throughout its history, the Church has been an assembly that proclaims first of all the Resurrection of Christ. She still does this, expressing this message in missionary preaching, in her worship, and, in one way or another, in her theology.

Thus, in Acts we are again talking about the Beginning, here we are talking about the starting point of the historical existence of the Church. After all, it is not only the fact of the resurrection of one Man that is important. No less important is the fact that this fact is perceived as a symbol of faith of the community of disciples (the Church) – both in their assembly and in the personal plan of each one. Otherwise, there would be no Church, and there would be no Holy Scripture of the New Testament.