General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHappy Eostre :)
Easter is a pagan festival. If Easter isn't really about Jesus, then what is it about? Today, we see a secular culture celebrating the spring equinox, whilst religious culture celebrates the resurrection. However, early Christianity made a pragmatic acceptance of ancient pagan practises, most of which we enjoy today at Easter. The general symbolic story of the death of the son (sun) on a cross (the constellation of the Southern Cross) and his rebirth, overcoming the powers of darkness, was a well worn story in the ancient world. There were plenty of parallel, rival resurrected saviours too.
The Sumerian goddess Inanna, or Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake, and was subsequently resurrected and ascended from the underworld. One of the oldest resurrection myths is Egyptian Horus. Born on 25 December, Horus and his damaged eye became symbols of life and rebirth. Mithras was born on what we now call Christmas day, and his followers celebrated the spring equinox. Even as late as the 4th century AD, the sol invictus, associated with Mithras, was the last great pagan cult the church had to overcome. Dionysus was a divine child, resurrected by his grandmother. Dionysus also brought his mum, Semele, back to life.
In an ironic twist, the Cybele cult flourished on today's Vatican Hill. Cybele's lover Attis, was born of a virgin, died and was reborn annually. This spring festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday, rising to a crescendo after three days, in rejoicing over the resurrection. There was violent conflict on Vatican Hill in the early days of Christianity between the Jesus worshippers and pagans who quarrelled over whose God was the true, and whose the imitation. What is interesting to note here is that in the ancient world, wherever you had popular resurrected god myths, Christianity found lots of converts. So, eventually Christianity came to an accommodation with the pagan Spring festival. Although we see no celebration of Easter in the New Testament, early church fathers celebrated it, and today many churches are offering "sunrise services" at Easter an obvious pagan solar celebration. The date of Easter is not fixed, but instead is governed by the phases of the moon how pagan is that?
More
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/03/easter-pagan-symbolism
Oestre/Easter
Although the Christian festival of Easter celebrates the torture and death of Jesus on a cross and, especially, his alleged resurrection, and has links to the Jewish Passover, most people, including Christians, unknowingly celebrate its pagan influences, including the bunny, a symbol of fertility, and colored eggs, representing the sunlight of spring.
It took over 300 years before Christians established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon following the March Equinox at the First Council of Nicaea in 325 C.E. The pagan Easter, however, was celebrated long before Christianity (although the festival went by many names).
In the 8th century, Christian scholar Bede claimed in his book, De temporum ratione, (The Reckoning of Time) that Easter derived from the Saxon Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). The ancient Saxons in Northern Europe worshiped the Goddess Oestre at the time of the Spring Equinox. The Goddess Easter represents the sunrise, spring-time and fertility, the renewal of life.
More>
http://www.nobeliefs.com/easter.htm
Origins of the name "Easter":
The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." 1 Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime. Some were:
Aphrodite, named Cytherea (Lady of Cythera) and Cypris (Lady of Cyprus) after the two places which claimed her birth; 8
Ashtoreth from ancient Israel;
Astarte from ancient Greece;
Demeter from Mycenae;
Hathor from ancient Egypt;
Ishtar from Assyria;
Kali, from India; and
Ostara a Norse Goddess of fertility.
More>
http://www.religioustolerance.org/easter1.htm
villager
(26,001 posts)Carnivale-celebrators everywhere want to know!
Quixote1818
(28,904 posts)muriel_volestrangler
(101,158 posts)These 'links' are made by people with no idea at all about linguistics, and little about mythology either. I think it's a bit insulting to women to lump every single goddess they can think of together as if they're all the same. 'Eostre' is a Germanic goddess, about whom nothing is known apart from the early spring festival (the reference by Bede; that's it. No other ancient reference to her is known).
Astarte is not from Greece - she is a Semitic goddess - there is a link to Ashtoreth and Ishtar. But Semitic languages are completely different from Indo-European ones, and there's a large distance, and no connection, between Germany and Iraq. And Esther is Semitic too.
villager
(26,001 posts)...and how widespread the idea of an Ur-goddess was by tribesfolk around the fertile crescent....
muriel_volestrangler
(101,158 posts)"Easter' and 'Ostern' may be related to Indo-European words for 'dawn' like 'eos' in Greek. But the link between Greek and Germanic is well attested, and you only have to go back a few thousand years for it. There is no link between the Semitic langauges in which 'Ishtar' etc. are found and Germanic, that any linguist can find.
Here's an academic discussion of the origin of the Asherah etc. name: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=teiYbFCsZWAC&lpg=PA50&ots=Fjq6jL_grr&dq=asherah&pg=PA50#v=onepage&q=asherah&f=false . There's nothing about 'dawn', or any connection to a Germanic goddess from 1000 years or more later.
PolitFreak
(236 posts)Blessed Be, either way.
Quixote1818
(28,904 posts)Thats the way the second article has it but not the third???
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)the grafting of the pagan dates and rituals to Christian Liturgical cycles. We celebrated the resurection today and then the kids hunted easter eggs on the parish grounds.
mainer
(12,013 posts)Professor Tabor points out that in the earliest account of Easter, there is no physical resurrection:
"Most scholars are agreed that Mark is our earliest gospel. What few non-specialists realize is that Marks account of the empty tomb stands in the sharpest contrast to those written after him.
Mark 16:1-8 provides the early core account with what scholars consider to be the original version of Mark ending abruptly with verse 8:
And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun was risen. And they were saying among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb? and looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled backit was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, Be not amazed: you seek Jesus, the Nazarene, who has been crucified: he has been lifted up; he is not here: behold, the place where they laid him! But go, tell his disciples and Peter, He goes before you to Galilee: there you will see him, just as he told. And they went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them: and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid.
This is how our earliest manuscripts of the gospel of Mark end!"
http://jamestabor.com/2013/03/31/easter-morning-sorting-through-the-sources-and-traditions/
(p.s., I'm an atheist but it doesn't stop me from being interested in this stuff)
Cleita
(75,480 posts)origins. Also, the early Christians didn't think of themselves as separate from being Jewish so they celebrated Passover.
The Wielding Truth
(11,411 posts)WCGreen
(45,558 posts)We still are worshiping the coming of spring in what ever shape it now manifests.
There is a deep, rooted ritual that makes us celebrate the coming of new beginnings as well as those that fall away.
And if you look back to ancient cultures I will almost guarantee that there has been usurping of local deities for as long as civilization has existed.
Beside that, you, as an American citizen, are free to worship the older mystery religions if you so choose.
Me, well I love the Power of Myth as presented by Joseph Campbell, that we create these stories to help us explain the world around us and how we fit in to the pull of nature.
Btw, the Catholic Church celebrates his rebirth on Easter Sunday. Good Friday is the day Catholics mourn for the death of the savior. Two completely different emotions, one of sorrow and pain and the other with rejoice and spirit.
One more thing, I was raised a Catholic but never confirmed. The last time I stepped into a Catholic Church was to hear my mothers funeral mass.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)just1voice
(1,362 posts)Jokes aside, than you for the historical perspective.
BainsBane
(53,003 posts)Edit: Oops, no r in West. Oeste.
Interesting. Pascua is the word for Eastern in Spanish and Portuguese, and it derives from the Latin for Passover/Easter.
Most Christian holidays correspond with pagan celebrations. Christians obviously superimposed their own celebrations onto existing holidays. You also see the reverse in Latin America, in places like Brazil where days commemorating African deities have been incorporated into the Catholic calendar. The festival for the Yoruba goddess of the sea, Iemanja, is commemorated in Salvador da Bahia by a washing of the steps of the Church of Rio Vermelho.
Here is an actual Lavagem, or cleaning of the steps, for another holiday at the Church of Nosso Senhor do Bonfim cmmemorating Oxala, or the God of light and creation.