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
Well now, did Jesus say "three nights and three days" or "three days and three nights"?
If He was buried 6:00 Passover Wednesday evening and rose from the grave 6:00 Saturday Sabbath evening, then we have "three nights and three days", thus no literal fulfillment of His words.
However, if His burial took until dawn Thursday morning [Luke 23:54], and He was raised from the grave at dawn Sunday morning [Matthew 28:1-2] then His words "three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" are literally fulfilled in correct order. Isn't that right???
Matthew 28 1: In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. 2: And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.
Jesus did say: "three days and three nights", didn't he?
I absolutely agree, there is no discrepancy at all. He was in the tomb 3 days and 3 nights. Thanks.
Umm, I guess that you haven’t read http://www.annomundi.com/bible/three_days.htm have you?
This article is consistent with the Church’s beliefs and with mine. The claim is that consistently throughout the Bible, the 3-day period is experienced over and over and this article shows numerous examples of how 3 days and 3 nights is actually experienced over the time period of whatever is left of today, tomorrow and the next day.
The author actually has a link to another article he had written previously that supported a Thursday death and burial. He has since come to a different conclusion and that is contained in this article.
Which begs the question; Why are you here? If your church has it all figured out, why do you post anything here at all? Every one of your posts ought to read, "Because my church says so".
incidentaly this is also the reason Christians celebrate on Sundays; its the day the ressurection occured.
Jesus sent the Apostles to the heathens and those who have fallen away. I can do no less. :)
But I must learn as well. If I stand in need of correction, I’d appreciate some, well, correcting. This debate has also served to strengthen my own knowledge of the Faith, since there are some mighty interesting points brought up.
Exactly true. And also the day that the Jews celebrated First Fruits fulfilled by the Resurrection and the Feast of Weeks which was fulfilled on Pentecost Sunday --- another reason. Thank God for those Sundays.
Actually, Jesus sent the Apostles to the lost sheep of Israel. He sent Paul to the heathen.
First: If it was the majority of the day or night, then that might be considered as a day or a night, but if it is just a snippet at the end or beginning, then hardly could that be considered as such.
Second: The three days and three nights has to be fulfilled. Using the "part = a whole" argument, the shortest the three day period could be is: part of a day + a full night + a full day + a full night + a full day + part of a night. That means that He had to be buried atleast by Thursday. Friday won't work.
Third: Jesus was not buried until after evening on Passover. Joseph of Arimathea did not even go to Pilate until evening [sunset] had come. That rules out one of your three days needed in your accounting.
Finally: The Passover Crucifixion was in 30 AD and Passover in 30 AD was a Wednesday not a Friday.
Sorry; the successors of the successors of the original 12. You are, of course, correct.
Well, Jesus died at 3:00 in the afternoon. There is still a large portion of the day left.
If the 3 days and 3 nights, as postulated by the Church and many others, actually means, as shown numerous times throughout the Bible, as on the third day - as it also says in the three other Gospels - then Friday does work.
And are you really sure that Jesus really did die in 30 AD?
i beleive it was a wednesday in 33 ad also...
How much of the day was left after the soldier, sent by Pilate at the request of the Jews as sunset was fast approaching, broke the legs of the two and thrust a spear in the side of Jesus, after which Joseph went to Pilate?
And Matthew 27:57-58 says: "When the evening was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph...He went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus...".
And Mark also says in 15:42: "And now when the evening was come... Joseph of Arimathaea ... went in boldly unto Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus."
The day of Passover ended at evening and the body was still not buried.
If we can get a handle on the length of His public ministry, then we can be pretty sure. Are there any clues as to the length of his public ministry from the scriptures?
there are a few likely candidates, but personally i’d say that anyone which rejects the ressurection being on a Sunday is pretty suspect.
Matthew 27:
57
34 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was himself a disciple of Jesus.
58
He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over.
59
Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it (in) clean linen
60
and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb and departed.
61
But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained sitting there, facing the tomb.
62
35 The next day, the one following the day of preparation, 36 the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate
63
and said, “Sir, we remember that this impostor while still alive said, ‘After three days I will be raised up.’
64
Give orders, then, that the grave be secured until the third day, lest his disciples come and steal him and say to the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead.’ This last imposture would be worse than the first.” 37
Doesn’t this say that He was buried that same day? Context, people. Context. Ya gotta read the whole thing. :)
First Passover [John 2:13]; Second passover [John 6:4}; Third Passover [John 13:1]. This would indicate a minimum of three years and He began his ministry at the age of 30 [Luke 3:23].
Since He was born in the Fall of the year....His ministry probably lasted about 3 1/2 years.
There are only two years (nearby) with a Passover on a Wednesday that would qualify as the year of crucifixion....A.D. 30 and A.D. 27. If he were 33 1/2 years old at death in 30 A.D. he would have been born in 3 B.C. Herod died in either 1 or 2 B.C. depending on the historian so the birth date was probably 3 B.C.
http://catholicknight.blogspot.com/2007/04/exact-date-of-christs-crucifixion.html says that:
The subject of Jesus’ crucifixion, particularly the date, is a sore one for many Christians. The precise year of his crucifixion has been debated by scholars for centuries. Within the last 100 years, some groups have even called into question the day of his crucifixion, with a few groups insisting on Wednesday being the day of the event. If we go by the ‘Bible Alone’ without ever taking outside sources into consideration, one can see how this confusion might come about. However, all the clues we need for this little mystery are laid out for us plain to see, in black and white, just waiting for us to do our homework. The evidence is plentiful, once we’re ready to start looking into what non-Biblical sources say about the astronomical events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Phlegon was a Greek historian who wrote an extensive chronology around AD 137:
In the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (i.e., AD 33) there was ‘the greatest eclipse of the sun’ and that ‘it became night in the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea.’
Phlegon identifies the year and the exact time of day. In addition, he writes of an earthquake accompanying the darkness, which is specifically recorded in Matthew’s Gospel.
This event could not have been a solar eclipse in the classic sense. In other words, whatever caused a shadow to fall over the earth, and the sun’s light to be blotted out, could not have been the moon. As the moon is always in the completely opposite position in the sky during the full moon phase, which is what Passover always falls on. Furthermore, solar eclipses just last a few minutes, never three hours. The three-hour “eclipse-like” event is a historical fact, and accounted for by non-biblical (even non-Christian) authors, including Pontius Pilate no less, who wrote in a report to Tiberius Caesar the following account...
Now when he was crucified darkness came over all the world; the sun was altogether hidden, and the sky appeared dark while it was yet day, so that the stars were seen, though still they had their luster obscured, wherefore, I suppose your excellency is not unaware that in all the world they lighted their lamps from the sixth hour until evening. And the moon, which was like blood, did not shine all night long, although it was at the full, and the stars and Orion made lamentation over the Jews because of the transgression committed by them.
Pilate’s account to the blood red moon also helps us confirm not only the year, but the actual day. NASA has already accounted for the only kind of eclipse that can happen in a full moon phase, which is a lunar eclipse, frequently known to give the moon a “blood red” appearance, particularly when they are seen only partially. NASA pinpoints this event to April 3rd, 33 AD. The following chart is their report, which can be viewed on NASA’s actual website here...
Finally, we must look to the Jewish calender to verify that a Passover did occur on this date. Indeed it did. Nissan 15, the customary day for Passover, would have fallen on Saturday the 4th of April in 33 AD. That would have made this particular Saturday a “high sabbath” which is mentioned in the gospel accounts, and it would have made Friday the 3rd of April the day of preparation, when the lamb sacrifice was slaughtered in the Temple. This would have put Jesus crucifixion at exactly the time when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered, just hours before sunset, when Nissan 15 began on the Jewish calendar. (Remember, the Jewish calendar begins each day at sundown not midnight.) Typically, the Passover meal would have been eaten that Friday evening in 33 AD. However, the gospels tell us that Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples the night before — Thursday. This may be accounted for by the probability that Jesus was using the Essene calendar for the calculation of Passover.
Pope Benedict XVI, in his Holy Thursday homily for 2007 pointed out that Jesus; “celebrated Passover with his disciples probably according to the calendar of Qumran, that is to say, at least one day earlier — he celebrated without a lamb, like the Qumran community who did not recognize the Temple of Herod and was waiting for a new temple.”
So there you have it folks. The definitive date of Jesus’ crucifixion is settled by two undeniable astronomical events. The first extraordinary, recorded in the gospels, and confirmed by the written testimony of non-Biblical authors. The second quite ordinary and predictable, easily calculated and illustrated by the experts at NASA. Finally, we have the confirmation of the Jewish calendar, which confirms a Passover preparation on this very day, just as the gospels tells us. Jesus Christ was crucified at high noon, and died at 3 pm, on April 3rd, 33 AD.
I reject it totally and unequivocally. Scripture is extremely clear...he was resurrected late on the Sabbath. Even the Douay/Rheims says so [Matthew 28:1] And in the end of the Sabbath, when it began to dawn towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalen and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre. What does this say? Does it say early Sunday morning? No! It says "In the end of the sabbath". At this point in time.......the tomb is empty!
Here is the King James....In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre.
Here is the Latin Vulgate....vespere autem sabbati quae lucescit in primam sabbati venit MariaMagdalene et altera Maria videre sepulchrum It says the same thing!
Here is Young's Literal Translation"...And on the eve of the sabbaths, at the dawn, toward the first of the sabbaths, came Mary the Magdalene, and the other Mary, to see the sepulchre.
You folks just cannot let go of this myth! Our Saviour was resurrected on the Sabbath and to ignore plain scripture is not only "pretty Suspect"....as you say....it is downright wrong! Just why do you think these verses say Sabbath? The Mainstream church is living a lie and many are being led astray.
This all takes place after preparation day has ended, between evening and dawn of the next day, at night:
Matthew 27: 57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was himself a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over. 59 Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it (in) clean linen 60 and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb and departed. 61 But Mary Magdalene and the other Mary remained sitting there, facing the tomb.
This takes place after dawn during the next day, thus calling it "the next day" after the preparation. :
62The next day, the one following the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, “Sir, we remember that this impostor while still alive said, ‘After three days I will be raised up.’ 64 Give orders, then, that the grave be secured until the third day, lest his disciples come and steal him and say to the people, ‘He has been raised from the dead.’ This last imposture would be worse than the first.”
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