Posted on 04/03/2007 6:31:28 AM PDT by DouglasKC
Every spring, the anticipation and excitement of Easter is electrifying for many people. Churches prepare elaborate Easter programs that illustrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Parents take time to color Easter eggs and hide them so their children can hunt for them.
It's typical for TV movies this time of year to depict Easter as an enjoyable occasion of renewed happiness. Television advertisements and commercial businesses also get very involved with Easter as they offer colorful Easter baskets, Easter costumes and chocolate rabbits to celebrate this great religious event.
Many churches advertise outdoor Easter sunrise services, with any and all invited. Weather permitting, the Easter celebration is visually reinforced by watching the sun rise in the east.
But what do bunnies and colored eggs have to do with Jesus' resurrection?
And if this celebration is so important, why didn't Jesus teach His apostles and the early Church to observe it? The books of the New Testament were written over a span of decades after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection, yet nowhere do we see so much as a hint of any kind of Easter celebration.
So where exactly did Easter and its customs come from? Why do hundreds of millions of people celebrate the holiday today?
Can we find Easter in the Bible?
Easter is considered the most important religious festival in today's Christianity. "The Easter feast has been and still is regarded as the greatest in the Christian church, since it commemorates the most important event in the life of its Founder" (The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1986, Vol. 2, "Easter"). Given its popularity, one would think that surely this observance is found in God's Word.
Some cite Acts 12:4 as authority for celebrating Easter. But there's a problem in that Easter isn't really mentioned there at all. The King James Bible translators substituted "Easter" for the Greek word Pascha, which means "Passover." "The word [Easter] does not properly occur in Scripture, although [the King James Version] has it in Acts 12:4 where it stands for Passover, as it is rightly rendered in RV" (ibid.).
The vast majority of Bible translations recognize this error in the King James Version and rightly translate the word as "Passover" in Acts 12:4. The truth is, "there is no trace of Easter celebration in the [New Testament]" (ibid.)
Where did Easter come from?
If Easter isn't found in the Bible, where exactly did it come from? And just exactly what does the name Easter mean?
It's important to review credible historical sources to understand the celebration's true history. For example, The Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us: "At Easter, popular customs reflect many ancient pagan survivals—in this instance, connected with spring fertility rites, such as the symbols of the Easter egg and the Easter hare or rabbit" (15th edition, Macropaedia, Vol. 4, p. 605, "Church Year").
In the ancient world of the Middle East, people were far more connected to the land and cycles of nature than we are today. They depended on the land's fertility and crops to survive. Spring, when fertility returned to the land after the long desolation of winter, was a much-anticipated and welcomed time for them.
Many peoples celebrated the coming of spring with celebrations and worship of their gods and goddesses, particularly those associated with fertility. Among such deities were Baal and Astarte or Ashtoreth, mentioned and condemned frequently in the Bible, whose worship typically included ritual sex to promote fertility throughout the land.
It was only natural to the peoples of the ancient Middle East to incorporate symbols of fertility—such as eggs and rabbits, which reproduce in great numbers—into those pagan celebrations for their gods. As The Encyclopaedia Britannica notes above, Easter eggs and the Easter rabbit are simply a continuation of these ancient spring fertility rites.
Nineteenth-century Scottish Protestant clergyman Alexander Hislop's work The Two Babylons is still considered a definitive work on pagan customs that survive in today's religious practices.
On Easter, he wrote: "What means the term Easter itself? It is not a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country. That name, as found by [early archaeologist Sir Austen Henry] Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar" (1959, p. 103).
The name Easter, then, comes not from the Bible. Instead its roots go far back to the ancient pre-Christian Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, known in the Bible as Astarte or Ashtoreth.
Ancient resurrection celebrations
What did worship of this goddess Ishtar involve? "Temples to Ishtar had many priestesses, or sacred prostitutes, who symbolically acted out the fertility rites of the cycle of nature. Ishtar has been identified with the Phoenician Astarte, the Semitic Ashtoreth, and the Sumerian Inanna. Strong similarities also exist between Ishtar and the Egyptian Isis, the Greek Aphrodite, and the Roman Venus.
"Associated with Ishtar was the young god Tammuz [mentioned in Ezekiel 8:14], considered both divine and mortal . . . In Babylonian mythology Tammuz died annually and was reborn year after year, representing the yearly cycle of the seasons and the crops. This pagan belief later was identified with the pagan gods Baal and Anat in Canaan " (Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 1995, "Gods, Pagan," p. 509).
Alan Watts, expert in comparative religion, wrote: "It would be tedious to describe in detail all that has been handed down to us about the various rites of Tammuz . . . and many others . . . But their universal theme—the drama of death and resurrection—makes them the forerunners of the Christian Easter, and thus the first 'Easter services.' As we go on to describe the Christian observance of Easter we shall see how many of its customs and ceremonies resemble these former rites" (Easter: Its Story and Meaning, 1950, p. 58).
He goes on to explain how such practices as fasting during Lent, erecting an image of the deity in the temple sanctuary, singing hymns of mourning, lighting candles and nighttime services before Easter morning originated with ancient idolatrous practices (pp. 59-62).
Another author, Sir James Frazer (1854-1941), knighted for his contributions to our understanding of ancient religions, describes the culmination of the ancient idolatrous worship this way: "The sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy . . . The tomb was opened: the god had risen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation.
"The resurrection of the god was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave. On the morrow . . . the divine resurrection was celebrated with a wild outburst of glee. At Rome, and probably elsewhere, the celebration took the form of a carnival" (The Golden Bough, 1993, p. 350).
A new celebration with ancient idolatrous roots
In various forms, worship of this god under the names Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, among others, spread from the outer reaches of the Roman Empire to Rome itself. There a truly remarkable development took place: Early Catholic Church leaders merged customs and practices associated with this earlier "resurrected" god and spring fertility celebrations and applied them to the resurrected Son of God.
The customs of the ancient fertility and resurrection celebrations weren't the only ones morphed into a new "Christian" celebration, but they are among the most obvious. After all, many historians readily admit the origin of the name Easter and the ancient fertility symbolism of rabbits and decorated eggs (which you can verify yourself in almost any encyclopedia).
Frazer observes: "When we reflect how often the Church has skilfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis" (p. 345).
He goes on to note that the desire to bring heathens into the Catholic Church without forcing them to surrender their idolatrous celebrations "may have led the ecclesiastical authorities to assimilate the Easter festival of the death and resurrection of their Lord to the festival of the death and resurrection of another Asiatic god which fell at the same season . . . the Church may have consciously adapted the new festival [of Easter] to its heathen predecessor for the sake of winning souls to Christ" (p. 359).
Surprisingly, the celebration of Easter didn't finally win out until A.D. 325, nearly 300 years after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection!
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains in the section titled "The Liturgical Year," "At the Council of Nicaea in 325, all the Churches agreed that Easter . . . should be celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon . . . after the vernal equinox" (1995, p. 332).
Up until this time, many believers had continued to commemorate Jesus' death through the biblical Passover as Jesus and the apostles had instructed (Luke 22:19-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Now, however, with the power of the Roman Empire behind it, the Catholic Church enforced its preference for Easter. Those who wished to continue to observe the biblical Passover had to go underground to avoid persecution.
Would Jesus Christ celebrate Easter?
The record of the New Testament is clear: The faithful members of the early Church continued to observe all that the apostles taught them, as they were taught by Jesus Christ. The record of history is equally clear: In later centuries new customs, practices and doctrines were introduced that were quite foreign to the original Christians, forming a new "Christianity" they would scarcely recognize.
So a key question is, should a Christian follow what Jesus taught or what later religious teachers taught?
It's always a good idea to ask the question, what would Jesus do?
If Jesus were in the flesh today, would He celebrate Easter? The simple answer is No. He does not change. "Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever," as Hebrews 13:8 tells us (emphasis added throughout). Jesus never observed Easter, never sanctioned it and never taught His disciples to celebrate it. Nor did the apostles teach the Church to do so.
Today, Jesus would observe the biblical Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread as Scripture teaches and as He practiced and taught (John 13:15-17; 1 Corinthians 5:7-8). In fact, He specifically said that He anticipated observing the Passover with His true followers "in My Father's kingdom" after His return (Matthew 26:26-29).
The feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread have deep meaning to Christ's true disciples. They reveal aspects of God's plan for the salvation of humanity—commemorating the fact that Jesus died for us and lives in us and for us (1 Corinthians 11:26; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:3-4).
Should you observe Easter?
If you want to be a true disciple of Christ Jesus, you need to carefully examine whether your beliefs agree with the Bible. It is not acceptable to God to merely assume that He approves of or accepts non-biblical celebrations, regardless of whether they are done for proper motives.
The fact is that God says, "Learn not the way of the heathen"—those who don't know God's truth (Jeremiah 10:2, King James Version).
His Word gives us explicit instructions regarding worshipping Him with practices adopted from pagan idolatry: "Do not inquire after their gods, saying, 'How did these nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.' You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way; for every abomination to the Lord which He hates they have done to their gods . . . Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take away from it" (Deuteronomy 12:30-32).
Jesus Christ now commands everyone to repent of following all man-made religious traditions: "Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30; compare Matthew 15:3).
Will you honor Christ's lifesaving instructions so that God can bless you? He said: "If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor" (John 12:26).
God wants you and me to obey His life-giving Word. When we do, we can serve Christ as His ambassadors on earth. There is no greater calling on earth and throughout time. For your ongoing happiness and security, turn to God now and seek His complete and perfect way. GN
But they were gathered together on Resurrection Sunday on the first day of the week when Jesus visited them later that day, right? and then again on Pentecostal Sunday, they were gathered in the upper room when the Holy Spirit fell on them. Those are examples aren't they? They are examples of God being in the midst of his people on the first day of the week in a very special way with visitations that gave birth to the Church.
It's still kicking. So let's whack that old horse one more time. How does your church determine the day of Pentecost?
In a way, you are correct. This does not change the fact that Christians are not required to celebrate the holy days given to the Jews.
You’re messing with me, right?
If you call on the Name Of Yah'shua, it is not a question of salvation.It is a question of worship and obedience.
b'shem Yah'shua
Nope --- I'm from the "Show Me" state. Show Me the scriptures ---
Was the day of First Fruits, aka Bikkurim, one of the seven Feasts of Leviticus 23 celebrated on its own day and distinct from the Feast of Weeks, or was it part of the Feast of Weeks?
When you look at the original Greek it does not say "First Day of the Week." [John 20:19] It being, therefore, evening, on that day, the first of the sabbaths, and the doors having been shut where the disciples were assembled, through fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and saith to them, 'Peace to you.......and they were assembled, not for any religious service, but for fear of the Jews! This is why I say the entombment was late in the afternoon and the resurrection, being 72 hours later, would have given Our Lord ample time to visit the Apostles as they were gathered together.....on the Sabbath.....for fear of the Jews.
And then again on Pentecostal Sunday, they were gathered in the upper room when the Holy Spirit fell on them. Those are examples aren't they?
I don't believe they were in the upper room at this time but were gathered together for Pentecost. My belief is that this would have been a Friday , Sivan 6, A.D. 30. This would have been 50 days from the start of the "Count of the Omer" on Nisan 16.
And....they would have been gathered together on Pentecost no matter what the day happened to be as God had directed it in [Leviticus 23:16-17].
The ball is in your court, not mine. You have to show the Sabbath being repealed. That's the way law works. You can't simply say omission is permission. When Paul wrote this:
All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, (II Timothy 3:16)
Just exactly what scripture was he speaking of? Was he speaking of the Gideon's Bible that he picked up at the Corinthian Holiday Inn Express, or was he speaking of Moses and the Prophets?
When Jesus said this:
Matthew 22: 37 Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment.
He was actually quoting Moses!
Deuteronomy 6: 4 Hear, O, Israel. The LORD our God is one LORD. 5 And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6
And how does scripture tell us we know we love God?
By this we know that we love the children of God, whenever we love God and keep His commandments. (I John 5:2)
And, for those divisive Christians who still hold to ethnicity being a component to salvation, I serve up the scripture that allows us to partake in the New Covenant:
Galatians 3: 28 There cannot be Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is no male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise.
So, if you contend that one adjective Christian is different than some other adjective Christian, perhaps you might consider this:
Leviticus 19: 34 The stranger that dwells with you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself. For you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. 35 You shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in measures and weights, or in quantity. 36 You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 37 And you shall observe all My statutes and all My judgments, and do them. I am the LORD.
For if God was so meticulous as to express justice when dealing with strangers in matters of commerce, how much more so will He deal equitably with matters of the soul?
I reject any theology that says different people are held to different standards. Differnent measures of the same standard, sure (Luke 12:47-48), but completely different standards, no way. This same evil has plagued mankind for millenia: I'm better than you, you filthy _______. I will eat grapes while you build me a pyramid you filthy ______. Nope, nobody has to sit in the back of the bus, nobody has to get cooked in an oven, nobody has to watch mothers try to cover their children and protect them from poison gas, and God does not judge people differently because of race. Period.
Isaiah 66 23 And it will be, from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, all flesh will come to worship before Me, says the LORD.
Forgive me, but I’m still hung up on the 72 hour business.
Following the Gospel of John:
30
14 When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.” And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.
31
Now since it was preparation day, in order that the bodies might not remain on the cross on the sabbath, for the sabbath day of that week was a solemn one, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs be broken and they be taken down.
32
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and then of the other one who was crucified with Jesus.
33
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs,
34
15 but one soldier thrust his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out.
35
An eyewitness has testified, and his testimony is true; he knows 16 that he is speaking the truth, so that you also may (come to) believe.
36
For this happened so that the scripture passage might be fulfilled: “Not a bone of it will be broken.”
37
And again another passage says: “They will look upon him whom they have pierced.”
38
17 After this, Joseph of Arimathea, secretly a disciple of Jesus for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus. And Pilate permitted it. So he came and took his body.
39
Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds.
40
They took the body of Jesus and bound it with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom.
41
Now in the place where he had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been buried.
42
So they laid Jesus there because of the Jewish preparation day; for the tomb was close by.
1
1 2 3 On the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
2
So she ran 4 and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they put him.”
3
5 So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
4
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first;
5
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
6
When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths 6 there,
7
and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
8
Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.
9
7 For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.
10
Then the disciples returned home.
11
8 But Mary stayed outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
12
and saw two angels in white sitting there, one at the head and one at the feet where the body of Jesus had been.
13
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.”
14
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus.
15
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thought it was the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.”
16
Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” 9 which means Teacher.
17
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, 10 for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
18
Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.
19
11 12 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
So:
We know that He died at 3:00 pm.
He was taken down that day. And, presumably to avoid work on the next day (Sabbath), they buried him that evening.
So they waited until the first day of the week (Sunday) to visit His tomb. If this was a Sabbath during the week, they wouldn’t have waited to further visit His tomb, would they? And since He died at 3:00 in the afternoon, and Mary of Magdala came to Him early in the morning when it was still dark, it wouldn’t be whole days anyway.
So it still makes sense to me that He died on Friday afternoon and was entombed. Nobody did anything Saturday but went to His tomb early Sunday morning.
Still not getting the 72 hours.
This does not mean that they will worship Him ONLY on the sabbath. It means that they will worship Him every day of the month [from one new moon to another] and every day of the week [from one sabbath to another]. Everyday would be a day of worship.
I reject any theology that says different people are held to different standards.
And yet the Law of Moses did just that. The Jews were given special blessings and a land by virtue of a Law that held them to standards higher than those of the Gentiles around them. It came with blessings and curses.
And in the NT Church the Jewish believers held themselves to higher standards. Note at the Council of Jerusalem that only 4 things were required of the new Gentile believers by the Jewish Apostles, and yet these same Jewish Apostles saw themselves as still bound by parts of the Law [Acts 21:24-25].
Mat 12:39 But He answered and said to them, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign. And there shall be no sign given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
Mat 12:40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the huge fish, so the Son of Man shall be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
I've got no scripture for this, but I reckon Jesus' followers went to His tomb a lot more than is recorded.
It's also neat to note that they were still strictly observing the Sabbath here, even after Jesus broke it down for them. You see, the body could not hang on the tree "all night", but since the next day was a holy sabbath, they would not have been able to attend to His body until the Sabbath had passed, and thus He would have hung on the cross "all night".
Deu 21:22 And if a man has committed a sin worthy of death, and if he is put to death and you hang him on a tree,
Deu 21:23 his body shall not remain all night on the tree. But you shall surely bury him that day (for he that is hanged is accursed of God), so that your land may not be defiled, which Jehovah your God gives you for an inheritance.
Diego is much more studied on the time line than I. If you have more in depth questions on this, you might want to ping him. The way I see it, it doesn't matter what day Jesus was resurrected, only that He spent somewhere close to 72 hours in that tomb. Because if he didn't, we're all screwed.
The Hebrew nation was indeed set apart, but as a light. Others could join it, and I imagine during Solomon's reign, many did. Moses' wife was not Hebrew, heck many think she wasn't even white.
Salvation is only through Abraham, those who believe in Jesus are adopted into the promise. A new promise has not been made. Who is the Israel of God?
Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Gal 3:29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.
ping to 333
Is that article defending Friday/Sunday or opposed to it? By my math, Friday evening to Sunday morning isn’t three days and three nights. Heck, it’s barely more than 36 hours.
Did you read the article? It is pretty self explanatory.
I read it, it talks about 3 days and 3 nights being an idiom, but I don’t know the authors point of reference.
There is a footnote at the bottom of the article with regards to the Hebrew idiom that is being discussed.
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