Posted on 04/10/2020 3:01:19 PM PDT by Kaslin
Maybe youve seen the eyebrow-raising claims on the Internet or elsewhere in the media: rather than celebrating Jesus resurrection from the dead and triumph over crucifixion, Easter is really derived from a pagan holiday. Proponents of this theory point to symbols of rebirth and fertility, like eggs and bunnies, that we see at Easter as proof. But the foundation of the claim that Easter is a pagan tradition is the similarity in names: Easter, they say, is the English translation of Eostre, a Germanic goddess of fertility. (Others claim Easter got its name from the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, or the Ethiopian god Ashtar. That they have trouble keeping their story straight should be your first clue the Easter skeptics dont have much in the way of actual evidence)! Others take the theory even further, arguing that the story of Christs crucifixion and resurrection was lifted from ancient mythologyand therefore cant possibly be true.
Its intriguing stuff for people who wish to deny the divinity of Christ. But, much like the fertility myths surrounding Eostre, these claims are more fiction than fact. For starters, the word for Easter in many languagesincluding Spanish (Pascua), French (Pâques), and Romanian (Pa?ti)is derived from the Hebrew word pesach, or Passover. Christians indeed borrowed many of their Easter traditions from another faith, but it was the monotheistic religion of Judaism, not paganism. Moreover, Ronald Nash, a philosophy professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, spent years thoroughly researching ancient mythology and found no evidence for resurrection stories similar to Christs. He did find a few examples of gods who died and then came back to life, but the circumstances bore no resemblance to Jesus execution and resurrection: None of the so-called savior-gods died for someone else...Only Jesus died for sin. The other dying gods tend to die because of accidents or quarrels. Jesus died once and for all, according to the teachings of the New Testament. Other stories involve the god dying every year, corresponding to changing seasons."
As for Easter eggs and bunnies, there is little evidence that modern Christians lifted these symbols from pagans. In the early years of the Church, eating eggs was forbidden during Lent. Therefore, Christians celebrated the end of Lent and the arrival of Easter Sunday by cracking open beautifully painted eggs. And the Easter Bunny didnt appear until sometime in the 1700s, when German immigrants in Pennsylvania introduced him into their Easter celebrations as a special surprise for children.
In sum, Christians borrowed their Pascal celebrations from the Jewish Passover. Easter traditionswhether its Orthodox Christians in Russia painting elaborate eggs or German Catholics delivering gifts to children from the Easter bunnyhave varied according to regional and cultural traditions, and have changed greatly since the early days of the Church. But none of these traditions seem to have roots in paganism. Those who seek to undermine Christianity might tout this theory to make it seem as if believing in Christs resurrection has as much validity as worshipping animals or fertility goddesses. But the next time you hear these dubious claims about Easter and pagan mythology, remember it is just that: a myth.
Your question is then not where the celebration came from but the name, yet the two are often linked. Let me thus say that it is true that even John Henry Newman states that many things in Catholicism, including holy days "are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church." For "the rulers of the Church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace." (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, Chapter 8. Application of the Third Note of a True DevelopmentAssimilative Power; http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/chapter8.html)
However, not only is what we call Easter a celebration of the fulfillment of Passover, from death to life, and thus we call it Resurrection Day, but even if the name is from paganism, that does not mean it is a celebration of paganism, any more than the use of the name Sunday is.
As for your specific question, a very good article on this is by Roger Patterson at https://answersingenesis.org/holidays/easter/is-the-name-easter-of-pagan-origin/
According to various sources, the name Easter has its origin with a goddess of the Anglo-Saxons named Eostre (also Estre, Estara, Eastre, Ostara, and similar spellings in various sources). It is believed that she is the goddess of the dawn and was worshipped in the spring by pagans in Northern Europe and the British Isles. In The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop claimed Eostre is actually a name derived from the Babylonian goddess Astarte.
Hislops logic becomes incomprehensible in places, and he made fundamental errors demonstrating his thinking to be false. For instance, he argued on a phonetic basis that Eostre from Saxony must be the same as Astarte, Ishtar, and Ashtoreth. This is a leap to consider their relationships based on the sound of the names alone. We might find many examples of words that sound the same in various languages but share no common root or meaning. Hislop attempted to make other connections, but they are unconvincing and do not take into consideration the time these goddesses were worshipped or the importance of the confusion of languages at Babel. He also neglected to consider the relationship between the English and German words used today.
There remains only one written record of a goddess who might be connected to Eostre of the Saxons. The church scholar Bede,2 who lived in modern-day England from AD 673735, recorded the names of several of the goddesses worshipped by early Saxons. He identified Eostre as one whose festivals were celebrated in the month given her name.
Eosturmanath has a name which is now translated Paschal month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.3
Bedes description was tentatively confirmed in the nineteenth century by Jacob Grimm. Grimm was a linguist of the highest caliber who studied and preserved the histories, languages, and traditions of the Germanic peoples, also called Teutonic in older literature. This would include the Franks, Saxons, Angles, Slavs, Vandals, Goths, and others. These groups would have shared a common language family, and Grimm traced the connections among many of their gods and goddesses in his writings. Bede is discussed in the work Teutonic Mythology, first published in 1835.
The two goddesses, whom Beda (De temporum ratione cap. 13) cites very briefly, without any description, merely to explain the months named after them, are Hrede and Eâstre, March taking its Saxon name from the first, and April from the second. We Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ostarmânoth is found as early as Eginhart [c. 800] ([contemporary of Charlemagne]). The great christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in the oldest of [Old High German] remains the name ôstarâ; it is mostly found in the plural, because two days (ôstartagâ, aostortagâ, Diut. 1, 266) were kept at Easter. This Ostrâ, like the [Anglo Saxon] Eâstre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries.
All the nations bordering on us have retained the Biblical pascha; even Ulphilas writes paska, not austro, though he must have known the word; the Norse tongue also has imported its paskir, Swed[ish] pask, Dan[ish] paaske. The [Old High German] adv. ôstar expresses movement toward the rising sun (Gramm. 3, 205), likewise the [Old Norse] austr, and probably an [Anglo Saxon] eástor and Goth[ic] áustr.4
Some scholars have called Eostre an invention of Bede and discount the connections, but the confirmation of Grimm cannot be easily discredited; nor does the quality of Bedes other works lead us to disbelieve him. Grimm established a clear connection between the Anglo-Saxon Eâstre and the German Ostrâ. Similar connections are found in etymologies that describe the origin of Easter from many sources. Ester and oster, the early English and German words, both have their root in aus, which means east, shine, and dawn in various forms.5 These names may have developed independent of the name of the goddess as a reference to the Easter festivals, or they may have been related to her name in some way.
Could There Be Another Origin of the Name Easter? Contrary to suggesting a connection to a Saxon goddess, some have suggested Easter finds its root in the German word for resurrectionauferstehung. In a footnote to his translation of the work of Eusebius, Christian F. Cruse defended the usage of the word Easter:
Our English word Passover, happily, in sound and sense, almost corresponds to the Hebrew [pesach], of which is a translation. Exod. Xii. 27. The Greek pascha, formed from the Hebrew, is the name of the Jewish festival, applied invariably in the primitive church to designate the festival of the Lords resurrection, which took place at the time of the passover. Our word Easter is of Saxon origin, and of precisely the same import with its German cognate Ostern. The latter is derived from the old Teutonic form of auferstehn, Auferstehung, i. e. resurrection. The name Easter is undoubtedly preferable to pascha or passover, but the latter was the primitive name.6
Nick Sayers argued along these lines to suggest that the origin of Easter in English comes from the German:
...The English word Easter is of German/Saxon origin and not Babylonian as Alexander Hislop falsely claimed. The German equivalent is Oster...
n the Hebrew, Passover is Pesach. The Greek form is simply a transliteration8 and takes the form Pascha.
We should also consider the early translations by German and English scholars in this examination. John Wycliffe was the earliest translator to publish a complete New Testament in English (1382), though he did his translation from the Latin Vulgate. Wycliffe transliterated the word pascha to pask, rather than translating it. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German (New Testament in 1522), he chose the word Oster to refer to the Passover references before and after the Resurrection.
William Tyndale translated the Bible into English from the Greek and Hebrew. His New Testament (1525) uses the word ester to refer to the Passover. In fact, we owe our English word Passover to Tyndale...
It would seem from the translations of Luther and Tyndale that by 1500, the word oster/ester simply referred to the time of the Passover feast and had no association with the pagan goddess Eostre...
Could the Meaning of Easter Have Changed over the Centuries?...
Read on if you want. https://answersingenesis.org/holidays/easter/is-the-name-easter-of-pagan-origin/
Easter is the greatest of all “Christian” observances, closely followed by Christmas. It supposedly celebrates the resurrection of Christ. WHY, then, did Paul command the Gentile Christians to “show the Lord’s DEATH” till He come? Jesus Christ Himself celebrated His famous “Last Supper,” with His disciples, proclaiming that a bit of unleavened bread represented His body; that a sip of wine represented His shed blood. This was in commemoration of His DEATH for the sins of all mankind. Why is there no command anywhere in the Bible to celebrate His resurrection? Why did not the apostles celebrate it? Is the “Passover” only “Jewish,” and therefore not Christian? Should Christians observe Easter? Does the Bible command Easter observance? You will be astonished at the answers! Here, from the pages of your own Bible is the PLAIN TRUTH about EASTER and the Passover!
You were born into a “ready-made” world. You had no voice in how it is structured; its customs, traditions, religions, or politics. It took you about two years to learn the language of your parents; about six years to learn your own indigenous alphabet; about seven or eight years to learn to read simple sentences, and to begin to write.
However, from your earliest years, long before you learned to read or write; long before you learned what “research” or “study” was, you heard about the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, and watched, no doubt, hundreds of cartoons and kiddy shows on television. From your earliest years on this earth, your parents were inculcating into your mind the traditions, customs, fables, superstitions and assumptions of their own upbringing.
The point is, you first learned of “Easter,” or other religious customs through your parents or guardians. You did not research history, carefully weigh the facts, and make a reasoned decision to observe “Easter.”
Millions of adults in the western world of professing Christianity have memories of those sleepy mornings when, all excited to be dragged from bed at perhaps 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., they were dressed in frilly little frocks or a new little boy’s suit, complete with clip-on bow tie; white patent-leather shoes, greens and yellowsthe colors of springand trundled off in the family car to an open air coliseum, or perhaps to a hilltop, to join with hundreds or thousands of others in an “Easter Sunrise Service.”
You didn’t know what “Easter” was. Only that it sounded a little like a point on the compass. Of course, the sun rose in the East. Maybe that was it? Or was it merely the opposite of “Wester”? Most likely, if you are like millions of others, you never became curious enough to go to a major encyclopedia and look up the term. We tend to take our environment for granted.
Have you ever looked into the history and origins of Easter?
Naturally, like Christmas, it comes to all of Protestantism from the Roman Catholic Church. However, the universal church got it from much, much more ancient sources.
Here is what the vaunted Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about Easter: “The English term, according to the Ven. Bede ( De temporum ratione , I, v) relates to Eostre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring that the Apostolic fathers [the apostles of Christ] do not mention it and that we first hear of it principally through the controversy of the Quartodecimans are purely accidental” (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. V, p. 224).
A “Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring”? Well, yes, but much, much more than merely a pagan goddess of the rising light of day and spring. She was, in the demented minds of superstitious pagans, a goddess of sex and fertility; of fecundity and procreativity. Her symbols were, most importantly, the egg, and, secondarily, the rabbit. Of course, rabbits don’t lay eggs, but many a child does not learn this until a later age.
Bunnies are cuddly to little children. So are tiny chickens, and gaily-colored eggs. Concerning Easter eggs, the Catholic Encyclopedia somewhat reluctantly admits, “The custom may have its origin in paganism, for a great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring [and therefore directly related to SUN-worship], gravitated to Easter. The egg is the emblem of the germinating life of early spring the Easter rabbit lays the eggs, for which reason they are hidden in a nest or in the garden. The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility In France, handball playing was one of the Easter amusements, found also in Germany The ball may represent the sun, which is believed to take three leaps in rising on Easter morning” (ibid. p. 227).
Dozens of “quaint” customs derived from ancient superstitions and myths. Most revolved around cupidity, and had suggestive fertility rites obvious in their execution. The same source admits, “On Easter Monday the women had a right to strike their husbands. On Tuesday the men struck their wives, as in December the servants scolded their masters In the northern parts of England the men parade the streets on Easter Sunday and claim the privilege of lifting every woman three times from the ground, receiving in payment a kiss or a silver sixpence. In Neumark (Germany) on Easter day the men servants whip the maidservants with switches; on Monday the maids whip the men. They secure their release with Easter eggs. These customs are probably of pre-Christian origin.” (Ibid. p. 227).
These, and many other rituals, were pagan fertility rites, derived from worship of the sun. For example, the same source says, “The Easter Fire is lit on the top of mountains (Easter Mountain, Osterberg) and must be kindled from new fire, drawn from wood by friction; this is a custom of pagan origin in vogue all over Europe, signifying the victory of spring over winter the church adopted the observance into the Easter ceremonies, referring it to the fiery column in the desert and to the resurrection of Christ” (Ibid. p. 227, emphasis mine).
Note that admission carefully, for it lies at the very heart of the matter.
Now, notice the origin of the name “Easter.” Hislop says, “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 Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar” ( The Two Babylons , Hislop, p. 103).
The “h” was silent, just as in the Assyrian “Astarte,” where the last two letters were also silent, giving the identical pronunciation used today, “Easter.”
Of course, as millions know and also observe, “Easter” is preceded by forty days of “Lent.” But where did “Lent” come from?” Is it the past tense of “to lend”? Is it something found in one’s navel? It certainly is not found in the Bible!
Let Hislop answer: “The forty days’ abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess. Such a Lent of forty days, `in the spring of the year,’ is still observed by the Yezidis or pagan devil-worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians. Such a Lent of forty days was held in the spring by the pagan Mexicans, for thus we read in Humboldt [ Mexican Researches, v. i. P. 404] where he gives account of Mexican observances: `Three days after the vernal equinox began a solemn fast of forty days in honor of the sun.’ Such a Lent of forty days was observed in Egypt, as may be seen on consulting Wilkinson’s Egyptians. This Egyptian Lent of forty days, we are informed by Landseer, in his Sabean Researches, was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god” (ibid. p. 105).
There is no part of “Easter” which is not rooted in rank paganism. “But we don’t do it with those pagan meanings in mind,” one might protest. Naturally! That is the whole point! It is the disguise, the deception, the counterfeit which Satan uses to delude and deceive, not a direct admission of the truth.
As Hislop says, “To conciliate the pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy, took measures to get the Christian and Pagan festivals amalgamated, and, by a complicated but skillful adjustment of the calendar, it was found no difficult matter, in general, to get Paganism and Christianity _now far sunk in idolatry _ in this as in so many other things, to shake hands” (Ibid. p. 105).
What does God Almighty say about His people “adapting” pagan rituals and ceremonies into their worship toward the true God? “When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land;
“Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods ? even so will I do likewise .
“Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.
“What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto , nor diminish from it” (Deuteronomy 12:29-32).
When Israel was gradually expanding from a family into a nation while in slavery in Egypt, the people were surrounded by most vile and degrading paganism. The sun, moon and stars were worshipped, as was the Nile River, and dozens of assorted forms of life from crocodiles to scarabs. As a display of God’s wrath, God struck at the “gods” of Egypt with plagues. Not only was this intended to break the back of the world’s greatest power at that time, thus forcing the Pharaoh to release his slaves, but it was also to demonstrate God’s great superiority over the pagan gods of Egypt.
When Israel was brought out of Egypt, God knew they would encounter many heathen, pagan, sun-worshipping nations such as the Hivites, Amalakites, Jebusites, Edomites, Philistines, Perizzites, and many others. All of them practiced the abominable rites of fertility; sun worship! Human sacrifice was not uncommon, as among the Aztecs in ancient Mexico.
Because they were “amazed” at the progression of the seasons; because they believed their antics and sacrifices caused the “sun god” to begin his journey once more into the temperate zones, thus “conquering” winter and causing the life-sustaining crops to grow once again, they observed the movements of the moon and planets; observed “times” and seasons.
But God warned them, “When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.
“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times , or an enchanter, or a witch,
“Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer [one who supposedly foretells the future by communicating with the dead].
“For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee.
“Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God.
“For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do” (Deuteronomy 18:9-14).
Easter, or “Ishtar,” is always observed in the spring, and is replete with fertility symbols! It is nothing less than a carry-over from pagan Babylonian, Greek and Roman sun worship! Its symbols are NOT sanctioned by Jesus Christ or God the Father, but, instead, are CONDEMNED in the Bible!
Parades down Fifth Avenue; an Easter-egg hunt on the White House lawn; sunrise services; the colors of springtime, and the pleasant aroma of “hot cross buns” drifting into the street from restaurants and bakeriesa nostalgic time of the memories of springtime, all buried in the remote past; with no knowledge of the utterly pagan origins. Such is the “Easter” of today.
“In Your Easter Bonnet, with all the frills upon it,” can be heard as children hide “Easter Eggs” around the lawn, busily eating little chocolate bunnies.
It all seems so “innocent,” somehow; so “family” oriented.
Is there a pagan origin of something so innocent-appearing as a “hot cross bun?”
Hislop says, “The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean [Babylonian] rites just as they do now. The `buns’ known too by that identical name, were used in the worship of the queen of heaven, the goddess Easter, as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athensthat is, 1500 years before the Christian era. `One species of sacred bread,’ says Bryant, `which used to be offered to the gods, was of great antiquity, and called Boun.” (Hislops The Two Babylons p. 108).
The origin of the English word is Nordic, and was Bous . It stood for “Horus” and “Taurus,” or the Bull, and ultimately derived from Nimrod. Even today, millions of farmers call their cows, “boss,” or “bossy,” completely unaware of the origin of the custom. The bous or the boun was baked as quite a family affair. Notice what Jeremiah, God’s prophet, said about it: “Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
“The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven , and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
“Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?
“Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched” (Jeremiah 7:17-20).
God thunders at rebellious mankind , “Learn not the way of the heathen!” (Jeremiah 10:2). The “hot cross buns” are Satan’s substitute for the unleavened bread to be eaten during the Days of Unleavened Bread. The “cross” or the “X” is an ancient symbol for the “solar wheel” and is a symbol of the sun, and the non-existent “queen of heaven,” or Semiramus, the mother-wife of Nimrod. Together, the two of them ushered in the ancient “Babylonish MYSTERY” religion; made the deity into a “MYSTERY” to be worshipped by whimsical pagan rites.
Now, notice the biblical reference to sunrise services: “Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’S house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz” [Nimrod; the sun god].
“Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
“And he brought me into the inner court of the LORD’S house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the LORD , and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.” The sun is in the east at its RISING! This is nothing less than a “SUNRISE” servicesun worship at the dawning of the sun!
“Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here? for they have filled the land with violence, and have returned to provoke me to anger Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity: and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them” (Ezekiel 8:13-18).
This is the only place in the Bible where men are described as turning their backs on God’s temple, facing the SUN at its rising, and worshipping the sun!
Any pagan Babylonian who might be brought back to life today would instantly recognize the significance of an “Easter sunrise service.”
The Apostles continued to observe the symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood on the fourteenth of Abib, or Nisan, as the first Hebrew month came to be called following the Babylonian Captivity. The word “Easter” appears nowhere in the Bible in any of its earliest manuscripts. However, hypocritical, lying copyists deliberately changed the Greek word for “Passover,” which is Pasch , from Pesach in the Hebrew. The Spanish word, taken from Latin, is Pascua .
Notice an example of deliberate tampering with the Holy Word of God found in Acts 12:4. I will include the verses around it for the setting: ” Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church.
“And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.
” And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.)
“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 12:1-4). This deliberate insertion into the King James Translation of the Bible is utterly fraudulent, and those who collaborated in its insertion knew it was. The Diaglott , which is a transliteration directly from the original Greek, says, “ and having seized him, he put him in prison, delivering him to four quarternions of soldiers to guard him, intending after the PASSOVER to lead him out to the people.”
Here is the New International version of the same verse: “After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.”
The New Revised Standard has it: “When he had seized him, he put him in prison and handed him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover.”
Here is each word from the fourth verse in Greek, with the accompanying number from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance . Notice carefully the word Pascha for “Passover”: “. . . piazo :G4084 . . tithemi :G5087 . . phulake :G5438 . . paradidomi :G3860 . . tessares :G5064 . . tetradion :G5069 . . stratiotes :G4757 . . phulasso :G5442 . . bouleuo :G1011 . . meta :G3326 . . pascha :G3957 . . anago :G321 . . laos :G2992.”
Now, notice the definition of the word from Strongs G3957: “3957. pascha , pas’-khah; of Chald. or. [comp. H6453]; the Passover .”
Now, notice the marginal notes from Dr. Bullinger’s Companion Bible : “Gr. To Pascha , the Passover. Easter is a heathen term, derived from the Saxon goddess Eastre , the same as Astarte, the Syrian Venus, called Ashtoreth in the O.T.”
God’s word pronounces a CURSE on anyone who would do violence to it; who would assay to either insert words into it, or take words from it (Revelation 22:19). Those who conspired to deliberately insert a purely PAGAN word into the inspired text shall bear their own guilt.
Such a deliberate insertion serves to highlight the lengths to which the apostate church went to ENFORCE “Easter” upon professing Christians. However, the enforcement took many centuries! From the earliest writings of the “ante-Nicene Fathers” as they are blasphemously called (Christ commanded, “Call no man your father on Earth” [Matthew 23:9], obviously referring to a spiritual title , rather than referring to one’s own flesh and blood father), it is obvious that the church Jesus Christ founded continued to observe the Lord’s Supper on the fourteenth of Nisan.
The Catholic Encyclopedia admits: “The dioceses of all Asia, as from an older tradition [note that carefully!], held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should always be observed as the feast of the life-giving pasch , contending that the fast ought to end on that day, whatever day of the week it might happen to be” (ibid. Volume V, p. 228).
But there was never any “fast” prescribed by Christ. The ONLY commanded fast in the Bible is that of the “Day of Atonement” (Leviticus 23:27; Acts 27:9). The writer of the article in the Catholic Encyclopedia obfuscates the important point; i.e., that the early Christians clung to the FOURTEENTH OF NISAN for the Lord’s Supper (commonly called “The Passover”) by writing about a “fast” which may or may not have been at issue. Any such fast was mere human tradition, and not a biblical command. Of course, the Catholic writers are attempting to build a case for “Lent,” which is not mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
Now, notice this blatant admission: “Further, Irenaeus states that St. Polycarp, who, like the other Asiatics [meaning all those in Asia Minor and Palestine], kept Easter [a deliberate insertion! Polycarp had never heard the term, except as Astarte , and would have studiously avoided it! The Catholic writer deliberately refers to Pascha the Passover, as “Easter”] ON THE FOURTEENTH DAY OF THE MONTH, whatever day of the week that might be, following therein the tradition which he claimed to have derived from St. John the Apostle, came to Rome c. 150 about this very question, but COULD NOT BE PERSUADED BY POPE ANICETUS TO RELINQUISH HIS QUARTODECIMAN [fourteenth] OBSERVANCE” (ibid. p. 228 emphasis mine).
Later, under the article “Easter,” the same writer, reporting on the infamous “Council of Nicaea,” which took place in 325 AD, said, “ we may safely infer from scattered notices that the council ruled: (1) that Easter must be celebrated by all throughout the world on the same Sunday; (2) that this Sunday must follow the fourteenth day of the paschal moon; (3) that that moon was to be accounted the paschal moon whose fourteenth day followed the spring equinox this ruling of the Council of Nicaea did not remove all difficulties nor at once win universal acceptance amongst the Syrians the Roman missionaries coming to England in the time of St. Gregory the Great found the British Christians, the representatives of that Christianity which had been introduced into Britain during the period of the Roman occupation [hence, during the days of the apostle Paul and other apostles!], still adhering to an ancient system of Easter-computation which Rome itself had put aside” (ibid. p. 229).
Again, the term “Easter” is deliberately injected into the article. However, the apostles never heard of the word, except in its ancient application to Ashtoreth , or Astarte , the “Venus” of pagans, and would have been outraged to have heard anyone attach such a despicable name to the somber and holy observance of the Lord’s Supper!
The Catholic writer then admits to many points of “obscurity” in the historical records of the controversy which finally led to the Council of Nicaea attempting to FORCE Christians to discontinue observing the Passover on the fourteenth, as Christ had commanded. He says, “There is, for example, the perplexing doubt whether the crucifixion [sic] of Christ took place on the fourteenth or fifteenth of Nisan. The Synoptists seem to favour the latter, St. John the former date.”
But the Synoptists (Matthew, Mark and Luke) did not “favor” the fifteenth at all, and it is because of John’s important statement that the Sabbath which fell on the day following the death of Christ was “an HIGH day,” i.e., the first Day of Unleavened Bread, that it had to be admitted that the death of Christ took place on the fourteenth!
So it was that the stage was set for the monstrous persecutions which followed. For literally centuries, God’s people continued to observe the Lord’s Supper on the beginning of the fourteenth of Nisan, just as Christ had set the example. They were labeled “fourteenthers,” (Quartodecimans) as a derisive term, and were mercilessly hunted down and slaughtered.
Halley’s Bible Handbook says, under the article “Forerunners of the Reformation,” “Albigenses or Carthari in southern France, northern Spain and northern Italy, preached against the immoralities of the priesthood, pilgrimages, worship of saints and images, completely rejected the clergy and its claims; criticized church conditions; opposed the claims of the Church of Rome; made great use of the Scriptures; lived self denying lives and had great zeal for moral purity. By 1167 they embraced possibly a majority of the population of South France; by 1200 very numerous in Northern Italy. In 1208 a crusade was ordered by Pope Innocent III; a bloody war of extermination followed, scarcely paralleled in history; town after town was put to the sword and the inhabitants murdered without distinction of age or sex; in 1229 the Inquisition was established and within a hundred years the Albigenses were utterly rooted out.” The histories show that the “Carthari” (meaning “Puritans” or “pure ones”) were also influenced by the Bogomils in Bulgaria.
History shows that many thousands of believing Christians throughout Europe and the British Isles clung to the fourteenth of Nisan as the true date for the observance of the Lord’s Supper; that it required many hundreds of years for this practice to be stamped out. Even today, remnants of the “Waldenses” exist in Italy, and are the largest Protestant group in that country. Their name is variously determined as coming from Peter Waldo, or their habit of dwelling in the valleys of remote alpine regions in northern Italy, Switzerland, and France. Halley’s Bible Handbook says, “Waldo, a rich merchant of Lyons, South France (1176), gave his property to the poor and went about preaching; opposed clerical usurpation and profligacy; denied the exclusive right of the clergy to teach the Gospel, rejected masses, prayers for the dead and purgatory; taught the Bible as the sole rule of belief and life; their preaching kindled a great desire among the people to read the Bible. They were gradually repressed by the Inquisition except in the Alpine Valleys southwest of Turin where they still are found, the only medieval sect still surviving, a story of heroic endurance of persecutions. Now the leading Protestant body in Italy” (P. 785). The Bogomils, Albigensians, Petrobrusians, Arnoldists, Vaudois, and a large number of other sects, mostly named by their enemies, and mostly termed “heretics,” included many who were “Sabbatarians,” and who kept God’s annual Sabbaths as well.
This was why the “Quartodeciman controversy” raged for so many centuries, as many continued to observe the symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood on the fourteenth of Nisan, as Christ Himself had commanded.
By no stretch of the imagination did the apostles of Christ ever celebrate “Easter” ( Ishtar ), or urge it upon others!
Your manner of answering pegs you, as someone who knows all this stuff.
So, I ask all the questions.
I’m only asking you to explain what you mean.
“Lent” originally just meant “spring” and “lente” is still the Dutch word for “spring.” (Next to Frisian, Dutch is the Germanic language most closely related to English.) “Lent” is related to “lengthen”—it is the time of year when the days are lengthening.
If wicca is taking obscure hindu gods, it isn’t a continuation of European paganism.
Wiccan is a modern, made up religion like Scientology
Ok, that’s a long article of nonsense.
Christians observe Pasqua, the Pascal sacrifice, Passover.
The English speaking world calls it Easter, but formally it is passover.
Christianity since Apostolic times celebrates Passover/ Pasqua
I recall being around four years-old hunting for eggs in the backyard and my brother told me the white dog turds were candy.
The reference to Eostre, if you dig is solely based on Bede’s off handed guess.
There is no evidence for such a goddess existence.
Think of it, thousands of written dedication to Tew, Woden etc but not a single one to any Eostre. And no contemporary source mentions her.onoy bede, 300 years after paganism has died out in England
A “Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring” ?
Well, yes, but much, much more than merely a pagan goddess of the rising light of day and spring.
She was, in the demented minds of superstitious pagans, a goddess of sex and fertility; of fecundity and procreativity.
Her symbols were, most importantly, the egg, and, secondarily, the rabbit.
Of course, rabbits don’t lay eggs, but many a child does not learn this until a later age.
Bunnies are cuddly to little children.
So are tiny chickens, and gaily-colored eggs.
Concerning Easter eggs, the Catholic Encyclopedia somewhat reluctantly admits,
Dozens of “quaint” customs derived from ancient superstitions and myths.
Most revolved around cupidity, and had suggestive fertility rites obvious in their execution.
The same source admits,
These, and many other rituals, were pagan fertility rites, derived from worship of the sun.
For example, the same source says,
Note that admission carefully, for it lies at the very heart of the matter.
Now, notice the origin of the name “Easter.”
Hislop says,
The “h” was silent,
Of course, as millions know and also observe, “Easter” is preceded by forty days of “Lent.”
But where did “Lent” come from ?”
Let Hislop answer:
There is no part of “Easter” which is not rooted in rank paganism.
As Hislop says,
What does God Almighty say about His people “adapting” pagan rituals and ceremonies into their worship toward the true God ?
“Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them,
“Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God:
“What thing soever I command you,
Bump
You are right, but in name only. The oldest religion is the study of nature that the people of the time found overwhelming that could include water, soil, the sun and moon, fire, lightening....things that were beyond their capacity to understand the basics of, but they understood the pieces of. Fire burned, water drowned but tasted good, the more impressive things. So they considered this akin to magic and before the establishment of a God theory we use today in other religions.
But even today’s efforts to define things of this nature are not within the concept. The Oxford dictionary defines witchcraft as “the practice of magic, especially black magic; the use of spells.” They’ve been watching too many movies as this definition puts black magic in and makes it associated with evil that way. The only correct part of that was the last part about the spells as they have spells for about everything. So they have magic, Hollywood has black magic.
Witchcraft is over a thousand years old: Old English formed the compound wiccecræft from “wicce” (”witch”) and “cræft” (”craft”). The word witch was also spelled “wicca” or “wycca” in Old English, and was originally masculine. I somehow can’t see too many men on brooms.
So it is very easy to relate Wicca to witchcraft as it looks so similar and many people understand it that way. Wiccans worship the mother goddess and her companion the horned god. They say both of these deities manifest themselves in nature, which is the same as that original religion that is untitled.
rwood
Again, it references Bede only.
Bede was a Christian monk writing a guess 300 years after paganism died.
There is no other reference to any deity called Eostre
Furthermore, until the reformation, the feast was called the Pasval, passover feast
hmmm
I said “If wicca is taking obscure hindu gods, it isnt a continuation of European paganism.
Wiccan is a modern, made up religion like Scientology”
you write “but in name only”
Huh?
And your point of “the oldest religion” is unprovable - we don’t know the “oldest religion” — Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism,etc. claim to be the “oldest religion” or the “original religion”
Full disclosure - I’m Christian so I’m going to be biased for Judaeo-Christianity.
“witchcraft is over a 1000 years old” — err.. no. Witchcraft was a catch-all phrase used for stuff that was local gods, herbology etc. it was never a united set of beliefs until the 20th century.
Wiccans take 20thcentury ideas and earlier century fairy tales and make them into a religion - no different than Scientology or Jedi-ism
And No, the Lutherans didn't take a pagan tradition, nor did they make anything non-Christian -- the "Easter Hare" originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of passover
Hares are seen most often in the spring. It's their "rutting season," when the simultaneous hectic activities of gorging themselves to make up for their winter fast, mating happen in a sort time
the Dutch call the Easter Hare "Paashaas," using the name "Pasch," which is the universal name for Easter outside of German- and English-speaking countries.
In short, the Easter Bunny isn't religious, but he was invented by Christians fairly recently - later than the reformation
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
Ishtars name is not pronounced anything like the English pronunciation (nor the American nor the Australian etc.) of Easter. It is pronounced exactly how it is spelled: /ˈɪʃtɑːr/. The name Ishtar is a transliteration of the name 𒀭𒈹 (i-tar) in Sumerian cuneiform
Pasha has never been a celebration of Ishtar. The earliest evidence for the celebration of Pascha distinct from the Jewish holiday of Passover comes from Christian texts written in around the middle of the second century AD, which all refer to Pascha as a Christian Holy Day celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.
Of course, these early Christian sources werent written in English -- I'm sure that's a shock to you, but the Bible wasn't written in KJV English, so they dont call the holiday Easter; instead, the holiday was originally known in Greek as Πάσχα (Páscha) and in Latin as Pascha. The name Pascha is derived from the Aramaic word פַּסְחָא (Pasḥā), meaning Passover.
The word for Easter in every single Romance language, in every single Celtic language, and in most Germanic languages is some form of Pascha. English and German are somewhat aberrations in this regard, since the word for Easter in English is Easter and the word in German is Ostern.
Finally Ishtar is derived from the Sumerian Inanna -- and both are goddesses of sex and fertility and neither had eggs or bunnies as symbols for themselves Ishtars primary symbols in ancient Mesopotamia were the eight-pointed star and the rosette and the animals she was most closely associated with were the lion and the dove.
So to conclude - there is nothing connecting Ish-tar with Easter except in the minds of the same folks who believe that the pyramids are spaceships from Uranus
Ēostre is attested by a single extremely brief mention in the treatise De Temporum Ratione (On the Reckoning of Time), written in Latin in around 725 AD by the English monk Bede the Venerable (lived c. 673 735 AD).
In chapter fifteen, Bede claims based on nothing more than a guess that the name of the English month Ēosturmōnaþ came from a pagan goddess named Ēostre who had a festival during that month in olden times. In the original Latin, Bede wrote
Eostur-monath, qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cuius nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observationis vocabulo gaudia novæ solemnitatis vocantes.
Ēosturmōnaþ is the name which is now used "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name
This is the only surviving mention of the goddess Ēostre in any surviving ancient text. There are no inscriptions with her name, no other texts that mention her, and no known surviving temples to her. This one passage from Bede is the only concrete evidence we have that Ēostre was ever worshipped.
Ēostres name appears to be derived from the Proto-Germanic word *Austrǭ, which is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root word *h₂éwsōs, meaning dawn. or "east" -- hence the term "Oster-reich" - Eastern land
So buddy boys - feel free to use this to show that Pasqua has nothing to do with Ishtar, nor with a fake deity called Eostre
AND easter bunnies date to post-Reformation German tradition - just like the Easter Fox, Easter Stork.
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