"Resurrection Sunday" or "The Passion of the Bunny"?

[norml]

Where did "Easter" get its name? Where did the concept of an Easter egg and bunny originate?

The name "Easter" has its roots in ancient polytheistic religions (paganism). On this, all scholars agree. This name is never used in the original Scriptures, nor is it ever associated biblically with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For these reasons, we prefer to use the term "Resurrection Sunday" rather than "Easter" when referring to the annual Christian remembrance of Christ's resurrection.

Ancient origin

Most reference books say that the name "Easter" derived from the Eastre, the Teutonic goddess of Spring. Although this relationship exists, in reality, the origin of the name and the goddess are far more ancient - going all the way back to the Tower of Babel. The origin begins not long after the biblical Flood.



The Flood was a divine judgment sent on mankind after evil had become all pervasive and all people everywhere were totally unresponsive to God. The Bible says that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5, NKJV). It is not difficult to imagine that life must have been almost unbearable at this time in history. God gave humankind a second chance by preserving the righteous man Noah and his family (a total of 8 people).

After the Flood, Noah had a talented, but evil, great-grandson named Nimrod (Genesis 10:6-10) who rebelled greatly against God. The Bible says that he was "a mighty one"<1> Jewish tradition indicates that Nimrod was a tyrant "who made all of the people rebellious against God."<2> It is evident from history that Nimrod was not only a political leader, but also the lead priest of a form of occultic worship.<3>

snip

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t020.html


Posted: 2004-04-07 23:00
"The Passion of the Bunny" ??

GLASSPORT, Pa. -- A church that put on
an Easter show said it was trying to
teach about Jesus Christ.

But the people who saw the show say
they were upset by performers who
broke eggs and pretended to whip
the Easter bunny.

People who attended Saturday's performance of an Easter celebration at a memorial stadium in Glassport, Allegheny County, quoted performers as saying "There is no Easter bunny."

Melissa Salzmann said the program was inappropriate for young children. She said her son cried and asked why the bunny was
(being) whipped.

snip

http://smirkingchimp.com/viewtopic.php?topic=38804&forum=14


Web Results 1 - 10 of about 75,300 for "resurrection sunday". (0.27 seconds)

Sponsored Links

Custom Easter Banners
Custom & Stock Easter Banners
24 hour turn around
www.amplifydesigns.com


Tip: Save time by hitting the return key instead of clicking on "search"

Annie's Resurrection Sunday PageOne of the BEST ways to celebrate "Resurrection Sunday" is to start it with a Sunrise Service ... Don't forget to say Happy Resurrection Sunday this year! ...
www.annieshomepage.com/resurrectionsunday.html - 20k - Cached - Similar pages


What is the origin of Easter? - ChristianAnswers.NetFor these reasons, we prefer to use the term "Resurrection Sunday" rather than "Easter" ... How is the date for Easter (Resurrection Sunday) determined? ...
www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t020.html - 23k - Cached - Similar pages


The Resurrection of Jesus Christ ("Easter") - ChristianAnswers.NetHow is the date for Resurrection Sunday determined? Answer ... Mormonisn - What is the significance of Resurrection Sunday for Mormons? Answer ...
www.christiananswers.net/easter.html - 22k - Cached - Similar pages
< More results from www.christiananswers.net >


Resurrection Sunday?The practice of renaming Easter as "Resurrection Sunday" seems to ... Hence, the similarity to Easter or "Resurrection Sunday" fails on this count as well. ...
www.planetkc.com/puritan/ Articles/ResurrectionSunday_f.htm - 39k - Cached - Similar pages


The Easter SeasonEaster or Resurrection Sunday is the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus the Christ from the dead. Even before theologians explained the ...
www.cresourcei.org/cyeaster.html - 31k - Apr 12, 2006 - Cached - Similar pages


Resurrection SundayResurrection Sunday - What is the significance of this celebrated Easter holiday? Why is it important to Christianity and those who believe in Jesus?
www.allaboutjesuschrist.org/resurrection-sunday-faq.htm - 11k - Cached - Similar pages


Easter and the fifty day Resurrection seasonIf death is our just and 'natural' end, then what is Resurrection Sunday about? Simply this : the One who made it all loves us so much that losing us is a ...
www.spirithome.com/resurrex.html - 14k - Cached - Similar pages


Welcome to Living Rock Ministries Resurection SundayResurrection Sunday- not Easter! Living in a small community my husband and I received several mass mailing postcards from local churches asking us to ...
www.livingrockministries.com/righteousness2003RS.htm - 12k - Cached - Similar pages


Resurrection Sunday Art Prints - Artwork Celebrating Palm Sunday ...Resurrection Sunday art prints celebrating Palm Sunday can be purchased at great savings at Christ-Centered Art.
www.christcenteredmall.com/ stores/art/resurrection_sunday.htm - 27k - Cached - Similar pages


"Testament of Jesus" in His Resurrection, Sunday: The Lord's Day"Testament of Jesus" in His Resurrection, Sunday: The Lord's Day.
biblia.com/jesusbible/passion16.htm - 21k - Cached - Similar pages


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22resurrection+sunday%22&btnG=Search

[Erika]

1. I wish all these religious myths would stop

The Christians are as bad as any other group. The pagans saw "spring" as a rebirth and the Christians horned in with the resurrection.

Yet, no one worries about how we are killing the planet and there may well be few "springs" left.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

11. No faiths spring forth from a vacuum

I wouldn't say the Christians "horned in." They were human, they experienced Spring, they came up with a holiday just like the pagans did. The pagans didn't have the holiday market cornered and closed up.

Whether you think it is true or a myth is really not consequential, because there are people who DO believe it.

Like me. And I respect your beliefs, as well, whatever they are.

Peace and happy spring!

T-Grannie

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Many, many pagan themes were incorporated in the church in order to get

the ancient pagans to join it. (Shhhh. Don't tell that to the true believers.)

[cynatnite]

7. If we did, they'd say it's a war on christianity

:eyes:

[TallahasseeGrannie]

12. Oh, you can tell me

and I'm a true believer. We're not all idiots. Just some of us.

[Kutjara]

3. Eastros

I believe that Eastros was the festival of Astarte (or Eastarte). Astarte was the mother of Adonis. Her festival was held at the Spring equinox to pray for a fertile growing season. It was a moveable feast, dependent on the lunar cycle. The Romans appropriated the festival of Eastros as part of their worship of all things Greek.

During the time of early Christian persecution by the Romans, Christians would disguise their commemoration of Christ's death within the existing Eastros celebrations.

We get estrogen from the same source, recognising its important role in fertility.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

13. And it makes sense, then, that the Easter egg is

a symbol of the holiday. Not only the fertility aspect, but also the metaphor of breaking through the prison of the shell to birth.

mmmm. Egg salad. I see a big bowl in my future!

[madeline_con]

4. Ishtar...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar

[BrklynLiberal]

5. Pagan Roots of Easter

Easter falls in the Spring, right around the Vernal Equinox, and is a most amazing season indeed. Plants come alive again from the winter season, when they seemed to be dead.

Primitive cultures found this to be a very sacred and holy thing, and have honored it in many ways down thru recorded history. And, as one might expect, it has been invariably symbolized by the rebirth of a dead deity. From linguistic evidence, I feel we can safely assume that this concept is at least 30, 000 to 50, 000 years old, and perhaps older.

Spring has been, and is, the season for much merrymaking and fun, much of the time with an emphasis on sexual fertility. New Orleans' famous Mardi Gras, or Rio de Janeiro's Carnival are two good examples of modern spring festivals with a blatant sexual aspect, when "all rules are off" and almost anything can happen. These festivals in the Christian world end at Lent, when forty days of penitential fasting ensue before Easter itself.

<snip>

Lambs were sacrificed in the Temple at Jerusalem, and from this sacrifice comes the symbol of Jesus as the "Lamb of God," the final and perfect sacrifice.

Jesus, "on the night that he was betrayed," apparently celebrated Passover with his disciples (and thus established the Christian Communion rite). This is why Easter is so close in timing to Passover.

But many Christian Churches, in the early days of Christianity, could not agree on the date of Easter. This was the primary disagreement between the Celtic (Culdee) Church and Rome for many years, with the Celtic Church keeping the holiday on the fourteenth day after the paschal moon (according to the rule of the Council of Arles in 314 CE, and in spite of St. Augustine and the "Synod of the Oak") and the Roman observing it between the fifteenth and twenty-first. This was pretty much settled at the famous Council of Whitby in 664 CE, with Aldhelm, the Bishop of Sherborne, persuading the Celtic Christians in Cornwall to conform to the Roman usage in the early part of the eighth century CE.

Easter is apparently named after the pagan goddess Eostre (Latin: Oestre), an Anglo-Saxon maiden-goddess of fertility. Some might link her to Ishtar / Astarte, the Middle Eastern goddess, but such a link is only apparent. The identification of Ishtar with Astarte was instituted by Sargon the Great when he engaged in his wars of conquest, to make his goddess the goddess of the conquered areas.

The similarities in names are probably because of the very early lingual connections mentioned above. Their languages have a common Indo-European ancestry, and god-names change slowly indeed.

<snip>

The Easter Rabbit is very interesting, and one of the oldest symbols of the Spring. In Indo-European mythology, the hare is sacred to the Goddess, being supposedly seen in the markings on the moon (another goddess symbol, though not universal by any means).

In Germany, children were told that the Easter Hare would bring them eggs on Easter if they were good. This is the origin of our Easter Bunny. It is first mentioned in Germany in the 1500's.

Eggs are an obvious symbol of rebirth. In the eyes and mind of men they seem to be a miraculous springing forth of life from a cold and dead object. Mithras, Tammuz, Re (Egypt), Brama (India) and P'an Ku (China) all were said to have been born from eggs. The link to Easter is an obvious one.

We don't know when the custom of eggs at Easter originated. There is a grave excavated at Worms, Germany that contains two goose eggs painted with stripes and dots, but it is unknown if the grave is Christian. We do have evidence of Easter eggs from 11th Century CE Poland and from Britain ca. Edward I.

Pope Gregory the Great (590-604 CE) forbade eggs during Lent, and they therefore became a great delicacy after Lent at Easter.

<snip>

All things are made new in Spring ..... even old mythos! The absorption into Christianity of the old pagan myths and legends is only natural; we see it again and again, even in the pagan mythos .... a new religion takes from the old such things as it can use to it's own profit. We can certainly see this in the Wiccan adoption of the (originally Christian and symbolizing the Five Wounds of Christ) pentagram!





http://www.locksley.com/6696/easter.htm

[Berry Cool]

6. I had a feeling that the first time I looked at a church board and saw

services being advertised as "Resurrection Sunday," that I was seeing yet another modern example of "Christian political correctness" at work.

I guess now if you want to be a "real" Christian, you can't celebrate Easter--you can celebrate only "Resurrection Sunday."

Look for a new "war on Christmas" soon--this one to be waged by the "Christian political correctness" gang. They won't want to call it Christmas anymore because "Christmas" has "mass" in it and "mass" implies Catholicism and "popishness." They'll stop referring to it as anything but "The Nativity of Our Lord" and insist on everyone else doing the same, lest they be considered popish or pagan.

[BrklynLiberal]

8. It is truly getting to the point of absurdity.

What will they do when they discover that Jesus was not REALLY born on December 25th..but sometime in the Spring according to what has been deduced by the idea that shepherds and sheep were in the fields and the reported locations of the stars that guided the Three Wise Men? (Shhhhhhhhh It is so much more meaningful to coincide his birth with that of the start of the new year, and the winter solstice, when all the other pagan births are celebrated.)

Winter Solstice has been celebrated in cultures the world over for thousands of years. This start of the solar year is a celebration of Light and the rebirth of the Sun. In old Europe, it was known as Yule, from the Norse, Jul, meaning wheel.

Today, many people in Western-based cultures refer to this holiday as "Christmas." Yet a look into its origins of Christmas reveals its Pagan roots. Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the birthday of the "Invincible Sun" in the third century as part of the Roman Winter Solstice celebrations. Shortly thereafter, in 273, the Christian church selected this day to represent the birthday of Jesus, and by 336, this Roman solar feast day was Christianized. January 6, celebrated as Epiphany in Christendom and linked with the visit of the Magi, was originally an Egyptian date for the Winter Solstice.

Most of the customs, lore, symbols, and rituals associated with "Christmas" actually are linked to Winter Solstice celebrations of ancient Pagan cultures. While Christian mythology is interwoven with contemporary observances of this holiday time, its Pagan nature is still strong and apparent. Pagans today can readily re-Paganize Christmastime and the secular New Year by giving a Pagan spiritual focus to existing holiday customs and by creating new traditions that draw on ancient ways

Gift Giving - The Christians attribute the giving of gifts at Christmas to the wise men who brough gold, frankincense and myrrh to the newborn Jesus. But this tradition was common well before the time of Jesus, during Saturnalia.

The Ancient Roman Festival of Saturnalia
Saturnalia is one of the best known ancient celebrations of the Winter Solstice. The name comes from the Roman God Saturn, who ruled over agriculture. He was the main God honoured at this time, after the fall crops had been sown. Saturnalia lasted for several days (typically 7, but various officials changed the length of the festival on a few occassions). Saturnlia was the greatest festival of the Roman year, and was marked with great feasting, gift-giving, dancing, playing, and relaxing. Homes were decorated, work was suspended, and there was general merry-making done by all

[TallahasseeGrannie]

16. I honestly can't think of any person I know

who thinks Jesus was born on December 25th. And I've known that since I was a child. This is not news to the Christian Community.

And I don't particularly care what date he was born. I do like Christmas as a celebration of Winter, however. But I'd be happy with the concept in August just as well. But in order to have a liturgical year, there has to be some pattern of dates. And so we have what we have.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

14. Very informative post!

Thanks for the research, and I never knew the origin of the Wiccan pentagram. Everything really IS connected, isn't it?

T-Grannie

[NAO]

9. WaronEaster.org (nice poster)

http://www.waroneaster.org

[NAO]

10. An Easter Challenge for Christians - read Bible and tell us what happened

http://www.ffrf.org/books/lfif/stone.php

Leave No Stone Unturned
An Easter Challenge For Christians

I HAVE AN EASTER challenge for Christians. My challenge is simply this: tell me what happened on Easter. I am not asking for proof. My straightforward request is merely that Christians tell me exactly what happened on the day that their most important doctrine was born.

Believers should eagerly take up this challenge, since without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. Paul wrote, "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." (I Corinthians 15:14-15)

The conditions of the challenge are simple and reasonable. In each of the four Gospels, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the book: Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul's tiny version of the story in I Corinthians 15:3-8. These 165 verses can be read in a few moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative of the events between the resurrection and the ascension: what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when; and where these things happened.

Since the gospels do not always give precise times of day, it is permissible to make educated guesses. The narrative does not have to pretend to present a perfect picture--it only needs to give at least one plausible account of all of the facts. Additional explanation of the narrative may be set apart in parentheses. The important condition to the challenge, however, is that not one single biblical detail be omitted. Fair enough?

read more of the Easter Challenge, with hints and tips...
http://www.ffrf.org/books/lfif/stone.php

[TallahasseeGrannie]

15. I hear all the versions

of the Gospels during Holy Week, so there is no reason for me to read it. I know it all by heart anyway.

The Gospels are discrete, different and individually unique writings. Good luck in finding consistency in anything 2000 years old. Good luck in finding consistency in anything that deals with faith!