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
..there is no Christianity without Resurrection Sunday...
**************
It certainly wouldn't be as uplifting.
You're mixing up the religion of Judaism with biblical commandments of Jesus Christ. When you reject biblical holy days, you are rejecting the instructions of Christ himself to his followers.
You fail to recognize that Christ lived under the old covenant, and that we now live under a new covenant.
Sure there is. The Roman church didn't adopt Easter/Resurrection Sunday as an official church practice until 325 AD....almost three hundred years after the death of Christ. Christianity can, does and will exist without man created holidays. Christ insured this when he created holy days.
..let me clarify
No Resurrection--No Christianity...
I was making a joke. Uplifting? Get it?
No atoning death (at Passover), no Christianity. Many people were resurrected. Lazarus and the saints in Matthew 27 for example. The resurrection would have been meaningless without his perfect sinless life and his atoning death.
No replies for a while, I’ve got to go for a while to a formal service honoring the Lord on this day. Perhaps diego, Chuck and kerryusama04 can answer any pressing questions.
24 posted on 04/03/2007 8:53:41 AM MDT by jkl1122
The New covenant of Jeremiah 31:31 ?
b'shem Yah'shua
Je. 31:31 “The time is coming,” declares YHvH,
“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house. of Judah.
Galatians 4:9-11
But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?
Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years.
I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain.
Or, if you'd rather...
Galatians 4:21-26
Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman.
But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise.
Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children.
But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all.
Christ did not give us a Spirit of bondage (to days, and months, and times, and years), but a Spirit of freedom.
The Christians I know, who worship on Sunday, worship God. The only way for your statement to be true is if God is the Evil One. Is that what you are saying?
The resurection is the crux of Christianity.
It’s been ripped off by a few other religions, and there’s been a whole lot of spinning other religious traditions to make them look similar but neither of those changes the fact.
Exactly.
Hebrews 8:7-13
(7) For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.
(8) For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:
(9) Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.
(10) For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people:
(11) And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
(12) For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
(13) In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.
I disagree, the focus is on not putting a stumbling block in front of weaker members using legalism, but instead to build them up and accept them.
If you read all of Romans 14 in context there are a number of things that should leap out at you.
If you want to see it in context you will have to include the first half of chapter 15 as well. Even though it is marked as a different chapter you can see how easily it flows from the previous chapter and is the concluding remarks on the same subject.
May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. . .
And some president of the US, Lincoln(?), mandated that Thanksgiving Day be celebrated.
His mandate had absolutely nothing to do with what was being done prior to that. Thanksgiving was already being celebrated all over the place.
Similarly, Sunday worship was already taking place, even from New Testament times.
9 posted on 04/03/2007 7:47:08 AM MDT by pgkdan
Pagan Sunday worship did not begin until hundreds of years
b'shem Yah'shua
after Yah'shua's resurrection on the 17th of Nissan,
as a New Beginning for mankind. see Genesis 8:4 for a forshadowing
It’s not about the bunny. Come to Second Baptist. Tell your Peeps.
What are you trying to say? In plain English please.
Yeah, I believe Passover is the only Holy day the Israelites were COMMANDED to celebrate. Since Christ is our Passover lamb, we are commanded to celebrate it too. If we don’t, we jolly well better be celebrating that other one.
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