“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) sits at the heart of a long dispute over translation, preservation, and meaning. Bryan C. Ross wrote Don’t Passover Easter to take that verse seriously within a KJV-only, right-division / Mid-Acts posture, and to show that a careful reading of language and history supports the translators’ choice rather than proving an error.
The controversy is well summarized in Ross’s introduction: critics charge that the Greek pascha always means “Passover” and that the KJB’s lone rendering of pascha as “Easter” in Acts 12:4 is an anachronism or mistranslation; defenders have pushed back, insisting context supports the KJV wording. Ross lays out both positions from the outset and explains that the debate often rests on assumptions about the English word “Easter” and the Greek pascha (the Textus Receptus contains pascha 29 times, the KJV renders it “Passover” 28 times and only once as “Easter”).
Dr. Samuel C. Gipp’s long‑used KJV defense is quoted and examined in the book: Gipp argued that Herod, a pagan, would have been observing a pagan festival (identified with Astarte/Ishtar) and that the translators providentially rendered pascha as “Easter.” Ross records Gipp’s line of reasoning and how many King James advocates followed it, but he also shows why that defense is not the final answer—Gipp’s reconstruction depends on assumptions about calendar practice and etymology that do not withstand fuller scrutiny.
Ross then traces the true linguistic and historical picture. The etymology of the English word “Easter” derives from the Germanic word for east/dawn (Old English/Old Germanic elements relating to sunrise), not from a Semitic Ishtar/Astarte connection as Alexander Hislop later asserted. Ross cites authoritative English resources (the OED and historical use) and shows that “Easter” historically served as a word for the Jewish Passover in English usage well before Tyndale’s 1530 rendering of the Hebrew ‘pecah’ as “Passover.” He also points to Luther and Tyndale’s renderings and to early Anglo‑Saxon usage (West‑Saxon texts) that reflect “Easter”/Ostern as a fitting English equivalent for pascha in many contexts.
From that combined historical and lexical work Ross reaches the conclusion stated in the book: the KJV’s “Easter” in Acts 12:4 refers to the Jewish feast (the paschal season), not a later Christianized or purely pagan festival. The book emphasizes that the error in many modern objections is to conflate a word’s remote origin with its later biblical and Christian usage; likewise, the book cautions against the opposite error—asserting that every instance of “Easter” must point to a pagan celebration in Luke’s narrative.
Pastorally and devotionally, Ross writes from a KJV-only and rightly divided standpoint: he treats language, history, and the providence of Scripture with humble care rather than polemical certainty. The practical upshot for the reader is simple and pastoral—do not let Acts 12:4 be used to undermine confidence in the KJV by assuming a careless mistranslation; nor should we use the verse to justify unhelpful conflations of Christian truth with pagan rites. Read the KJV in its historical-linguistic setting, hold to the Pauline grace message and rightly divided ministry the author honors, and let sober study guard both conviction and charity.