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.

The ecstasy and joy that color the narrative of the Book of Acts is comparable to the triumphalism of the story of the Exodus from Egypt as recorded in the Old Testament. This delight and joy are transmitted to everyone who comes to an Orthodox church on Pascha, where the Acts are read not only as an Apostolic reading (at the Liturgy – from Pascha to Pentecost), but also in the evening before the beginning of the Paschal service – in a row, from beginning to end.

3. The Prologue of the Gospel of John—A Discourse on First History

Finally, the third starting point, which will also help us understand why the history of New Testament Tradition and Scripture must begin with Easter.

The Paschal Gospel reading (John 1:1-17) about the Word, Who was "in the beginning" and through Whom "all things were made," gives to the celebrated Pascha of the Resurrection of Christ a universal, universal, even supra-mundane, eternal dimension, that unsurpassed and unrepeatable scale, which is possible only when talking about the creation of the world or only about certain events of the Beginning, which determines the fate of the entire universe and mankind. In the Resurrection of Christ, as the New Testament sees it through the eyes of the Evangelists and other apostles, the work of recreating man, originally conceived by God as His image and likeness, is accomplished and completed. The execution of this task turned out to be difficult, dramatic and long. If death became the fate of any person after the fall of Adam, then it could not but become the fate of Man, who became the Son of God. And He did it to recreate Adam. He communed us in death, so that we might partake of Him in the Resurrection. And this is nothing more and nothing less than the work of recreating man. It took place in Christ's death on the Cross and in His Resurrection. As in the Old Testament, it took place on the sixth day (cf. Gen. 1:31), and ended on the seventh day with God's rest (cf. Gen. 2:2). After death on the Cross on the sixth day of the week of the Passion of the Lord[7] comes the Great Saturday of the Lord's rest, but the rest of death:

Сiz2 Saturday1та е4ст пребл7гославе1ннаz, в не1ййже хрсто1съ u3снYвъ, voskre1snetъ tridnе1ven. [8]

"It is finished" – these were the last words of Christ on the Cross, according to the same Gospel of John (John 19:28, 30). And then the new week begins, "the first day of the week," as all four Gospels emphasize (Matt. 28:1; Mk. 16:2; Lk. 24:1; Jn. 20:1, 19), when everything begins anew: man begins anew his history, he finds himself in a new, or rather, renewed quality, he is in the New Covenant with his God.