Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies-Easter 2
Second Part: Attacks On The Name and Traditions
There
are three main things people attack about this Holy Day:
1.
1.
They claim that it is pagan because the name Easter is from a pagan goddess.
2.
2.
They claim that Easter eggs are a symbol of pagan worship, particularly of that
false goddess in number 1.
3.
3.
They claim that the Easter bunny is a pagan symbol, the consort of the pagan
god-
dess in number 1.
All
of these claims are false.
That’s
not to say that the materialism of modern culture hasn’t obscured the meaning
of Easter through focusing on treats and bunnies. But even though factual
information about the tradition of eggs at Easter is plentiful, and even though
the use of the hare/rabbit has long history in Christian iconography the
propaganda efforts of the anti-Easter crowd and the pagans through all kinds of
media has overcome the truth. And the lies have found a firm footing in the
social awareness of contemporary society. Through venues like the History
Channel, college courses, and popular news media the lies have become accepted
as historical fact.
The
Name of the Holy Day: Easter
As
we have demonstrated in the previous article, the choosing of the date for
Easter had nothing to do with pagan practices. The original dates chosen and
the reasons for ad- justing the methods of determining those dates always had
to do with determining when the Biblical Passover should be observed so that
the festival of the Resurrection could be observed without discord.
While
most languages adapt the word פסח Pesach “Passover” as the term for
Easter/Passover, German and English adopted the local month name. The local
month name was adopted very early, by the records it was adopted while Rome was
still ac- tive.
Alexander
Hislop claimed:
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
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 worship
of Bel and Astarte was very early introduced into Britain, along with the
Druids, “the priests of the groves.” (The Two Babylons, Ch. 3, sec. 2)
Notice
how clever the argument is? Sir Austen Henry Layard just published his first
works on Nineveh in 1848, 1849, and 1853. And in 1853, Hislop, who knew nothing
about cuneiform or ancient Babylonian languages concludes that since the
Babylonian name “Ishtar” sounds like the English word “Easter” they must be the
same!
Just
so that the argument can not be disproved, Hislop claims that the Druids
brought Ishtar to England. This is handy, because the Druids didn’t write
anything down. And those records about Druids by others don’t record any such
migrations or Ishtar wor- ship.
Note
for later: Ishtar’s symbolic animals were the lion, and the horse. The symbols
of Astarte (a goddess of war) were the lion, the horse, the dove, and the sphynx.
And though the are considered “fertility” gods today (instead of just
pornography) there were no bunnies or eggs among the symbols for these false
gods.
But
there is a possibility: Perhaps the word Easter does come from some pagan
goddess.
Was
There Actually a Pagan Goddess Easter, Eostre, Ostara?
A
search of all the ancient literature left by the Germanic, Celtic, English
peoples and their ancestors combined with a search of all ancient literature
about those peoples by their contemporaries up to the 8th century A.D. turns up
nothing.
There
is nothing in any Edda, nothing in any history, nothing. And it is not for lack
of written records about the religious practices and beliefs of those peoples
through those years.
Note
this date, the 8th century A.D. This is when the first mention of a possible
“god- dess” is made. The date of the Easter festival had already been long
established. The use of the term Easter or Ostern (German) had already been
long established.
The
first mention of such a goddess comes from the Venerable Bede in his 725 A.D. De
Temporum Ratione. Bede wrote:
Eostur-monath,
qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illo- rum quæ Eostre
vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cu- jus nomine nunc
Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observatio- nis vocabulo gaudia
novæ solemnitatis vocantes.
The
Complete Works of Venerable Bede, Bd. VI, London 1843 [http://oll.liberty-
fund.org/files/1917/0990.06_Bk_SM.pdf Seite 139 ff.} pp. 178-179 Corpus
Christianorum, Series Latina CXXIII B, Bedae Venerabilis Opera, Bd. VI,2,
Turnhout 1977
English
Eosturmonath
has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called
after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose hon- our 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.
[
Bede: The Reckoning of Time (Liverpool University Press - Translated
Texts for Historians) by Faith Wallis (Apr 1, 1999) p.
54]
It
would seem that Bede, who is listing out the English names of the months in
this chapter, confirms that there was a goddess named Eostre. But neither
Eostre nor a god- dess he mentions in the previous sentence, “Hrethra,” are
found in any other literature from either earlier nor later.
It
is not unlikely that Bede was conjecturing about the origin of the names given
that
month
names have been named after false gods in other cultures; e.g., July, and
August, named after Julius and Augustus upon deification.
We
will see a little later that there is another possibility, especially
considering that all of the other English month names were seasonal
descriptions or events during those times.
January=Giuli;
Sun gets stronger
February=Sol-monath,
Cake baking
March=Rhed-monath,
Otherwise unknown goddess Hretha
April=Eostur-monath,
Otherwise unknown goddess Eostra
May=Thrimylchi,
Milk the cows three times a day Month
June=Lida,
Gentle
July
also=Lida, Gentle
August=Vueod-monath,
Month the tares/grasses
September=Haleg-monath,
Holy Month
October=Vuinter-fylleth;
Winter starting with the full moon Month.
November=Blod-monath,
Cattle slaughter month.
December=Giul;
Sun gets stronger
Claims
are often made by using fake quotations preportedly from Einhard (c. 775 – March 14, 840) in his work Vita Karola Magni 817 to 833 AD.
Examples
of fake quotations:
“Easter
– *Ôstara) was a goddess in Germanic paganism whose Germanic month has given
its name to the festival of Easter. Ôstarmânoth
is
attested as the month-name equivalent to ‘April’ that was decreed by
Charlemagne,
but as a goddess Eostre is attested only
by Bede in his 8th
century work De temporum ratione. Bede states that Ēosturmōnaþ
was
the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in Eostre’s honor...
replaced the “Paschal” observance of Passover.”
–
Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, §29.
“Some
scholars have debated whether or not Eostre is an
invention of Bede’s, and
theories Einhard, connecting Eostre with
records of Germanic Easter customs (including hares
rabbits
and eggs).”
– Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, §29.
Both
of these fake quotes are from the website easter-origins
and are found repeated in dozens of websites.
Here
is Einhard’s actual full section 29 on Charlemagne:
29.
Reforms
It was after he had received the
imperial name that, finding the laws of his people very defective (the Franks
have two sets of laws, very different in many particulars), he determined to
add what was wanting, to reconcile the discrepancies, and to correct what was
vi- cious and wrongly cited in them. However, he went no further in this matter
than to supplement the laws by a few capitularies, and those imperfect ones;
but he caused the unwritten laws of all the tribes that came under his rule to
be compiled and reduced to writ- ing . He also had the old rude songs that
celeate the deeds and wars of the ancient kings written out for transmission to
posterity. He be- gan a grammar of his native language. He gave the months
names
in
his own tongue, in place of the Latin and barbarous names by which they were
formerly known among the Franks. He likewise designated the winds by twelve
appropriate names; there were hardly more than four distinctive ones in use
before. He called Janu- ary, Wintarmanoth; February, Hornung; March,
Lentzinmanoth; April, Ostarmanoth; May, Winnemanoth; June, Brachmanoth; July,
Heuvimanoth; August, Aranmanoth; September, Witumanoth; Oc- tober,
Windumemanoth; Novemher, Herbistmanoth; December, Heilagmanoth. He styled the
winds as follows; Subsolanus, Ostroni- wint; Eurus, Ostsundroni-, Euroauster,
Sundostroni; Auster, Sun- droni; Austro-Africus, Sundwestroni; Africus,
Westsundroni; Zephyrus, Westroni; Caurus, Westnordroni; Circius, Nordwestroni;
Septentrio, Nordroni; Aquilo, Nordostroni; Vulturnus, Ostnordroni. [Life of Charlemagne -- Einhard's Life of
Charlemagne, 19th century English translation by Samuel Epes Turner]
All
Einhard says is that Charles the Great chose to keep the Germanic month names.
There is nothing here that speaks about a pagan goddess named Ostara or Eostra.
There
is one more name with the term Eostra in it from this general period. Eosterwine. (650 – 7 March 686) was the second
Anglo-Saxon Abbot of Wearmouth in Northumbria (England).
Note
that in none of these documents is there anything about who Eostra might have
been, what purpose she might have served, who her consorts might have been. All
the evidence shows us is that the old English had a month with the name Eostra.
It shows us that a well respected writer of the church thought that the month
name had pagan roots. But that name, even if used for the feast of the Resurrection,
was not chosen be- cause the Passover meal was pagan or polluted by paganism.
It would be just like non pagans today using the word Thursday for the name of
a weekday.
No
one heard any more about Eostra/Ostara for a thousand years.
That
should be repeated: NO ONE heard any more about Eostra/Ostara for a THOU- SAND
YEARS!
It
wasn’t until 1835 when Jacob Grimm began publishing his work on Teutonic
Mytholo- gy that the name Eostra as a goddess was noticed again.
Everything
that we think we know about Eostra comes from Grimm. But notice
how what Grimm says is conjecture:
We
Germans to this day call April ostermonat, and ostarmanoth is
found as ear- ly as Eginhart (temp. Car. Mag.). The great
Christian festival, which usually falls in April or the end of March, bears in
the oldest of OHG. remains the name ostara gen. -un ;1 it is
mostly found in the plural, because two days (os- tartagil, aostortaga, Diut.
1, 266a) were kept at Easter. This Ostara, like the AS. Eastre, must
in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose wor- ship was so
firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it
to one of their own grandest anniversaries.(Volume
1, p. 290 bold added)
After
making what now would be rightly considered an illegitimate venture into ety-
mology of the name Eostre, Grimm continues:
Ostara, Eostre seems
therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing
light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily
adapted to the resurrection-day of the Christian’s God. Bon- fires were lighted
at Easter, and according to a popular belief of long stand- ing, the moment the
sun rises on Easter Sunday morning, he gives three joyful leaps, he
dances for joy (Superst. 813). Water drawn on the Easter morning is, like that
at Christmas, holy and healing (Superst. 775. 804) ; here also heathen notions seems
to have grafted themselves on great Christian festivals. Maid- ens clothed
in white, who at Easter, at the season of returning spring, show themselves in
clefts of the rock and on mountains, are suggestive of the an- cient
goddess (see Suppl.). (ibid. 291 bold added)
Remember
what Grimm is working with. He has only Bede and Einhard. Just like you and I
have.
According
to the second volume of his Teutonic Mythology, Grimm even associates the
Easter
egg with Eostra. Though, we shall see, that particularly Christian tradition
pre- dates any mention of Eostra by 500 years. Grimm wrote:
But
if we admit, goddesses, then, in addition to Nerthus, Ostara has
the strongest claim to consideration. To what we said on p. 290 I can add some
significant facts. The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the
reception of spring, particularly in matter of bonfires. Then, through long
ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-
called, which the church itself had to tolerate : I allude especially to the
cus- tom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers
told from the pulpit for the people’s amusement, connecting it with Christian
reminiscences.(Vol- ume 2, p. 780 bold added)
Again,
notice the conjectural language, but also the confidence he seems to have about
his notions.
Everything
else about this so called “ancient” goddess Eostra/Ostara has been made up
since the late 1800s. And it has been made up out of nothing.
Recently
an historian has offered another suggestion. In his article Ostern.
Geschichte eines Wortes [D. H. Green The
Modern Language Review Vol. 96, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 247-249]
Jürgen Udolph suggested that by exampled usages and historical linguistics be-
lieves that the goddess names Ostara and Eostre are false conclusions. Rather
Udolph traces “Ostern / Easter” from a Nordic root ausa “to pour water,”
which was proposed by Siegfried Gutenbrunner in 1966. In this way both the
linguistic form of the word in Bede and Einhard along with the name Eostrewine
can be maintained, the listing of sea- sons and seasonal tasks is maintained in
Bede, there is no need to create a potential mythology. The implication is that
the word Easter would actually etymologically de- rived from the main baptism
service during Easter night.
Before
all Sacramental Christians get excited about this article, we need to remember
that it too is an historical conjecture. But this conjecture seems to address
the evidence as evidence and requires not fanciful and imaginative mythology to
be created in sup- port of it.
On
the use of Ostern as “Baptize” see also “Ostern”,
in: Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, Volume 22, 2000.
The
neo-pagans and wiccans have made up all kinds of claims that the Easter holiday
had to do with fertility and reproduction. They claim that Ashtorah was a
reproductive goddess. There is no evidence in the Bible that the asherah poles
and other references to Ashera or Ashtorah had anything to do with fertility.
And there is nothing that links the Ashtorah of the Bible with the old
Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
Some
modern archaeologists who try to show the evolution of religions in the middle-
east have conjectured that ancient Ugaritic goddess named Athirat might be
linked to the Bible’s Ashtorah even though many Ugaritic documents say
otherwise. A few of these scholars also conjectured that this Ugaritic goddess
might be the equivalent of Babylon’s Ishtar, but this is only conjecture.
So
where are we with real history for “Easter”?
The
word Easter comes either from the old Anglo-Saxon word meaning “to shine”-pos-
sibly to describe the months of the year when the sun began to get brighter and
higher during the day. Or it may come from the word “to baptize” indicating the
Baptisms which took place on Easter. In 1525 William Tyndale used the
Middle-English word “ester” = “Easter” as a translation for Passover and the
day of Christ’s Resurrection. The word had already been long used and
understood as referring to the day of Christ’s Res- urrection when Tyndale made
his translation.
Despite
what modern pagans and wiccans wish the past might have been, there were no
known pagan or wiccan celebrations of a pagan-easter in England or northern
Europe in the period from the Middle Ages through the Reformation and up to the
late 1800s.
So
there are two modern myths that we have debunked: first, it is not true that
the name of Easter came from the worship of a pagan spring goddess; second, it
is not true that the Easter celebration was a celebration of fertility and
reproduction.
Easter
Eggs
Where
did the Easter Egg come from?
There
are several traditions which converge to bring us the Easter egg. And there is
some modern nonsense that really has nothing to do with the use of eggs at
Easter.
First,
there is a sculpture on the Persepolis of ancient Iran of a line of people
bearing gifts on the New Year day celebration on the Spring equinox. One of the
many different gifts carried by the people in this sculpture appears to be an
egg. This was carved by the old pagan Zoroastrians from ancient Persia (modern
Iran).
From
this sculpture modern pagans have conjectured that Christians stole the idea of
using eggs at Easter from the ancient Zoroastrians. The problem is that none of
the writ- ers in the ancient Christian church mention this tradition where they
came into contact with Zoroastrians.
Still,
the modern neo-pagans and wiccans assert that the egg is an ancient sign of
fertili- ty. That seems as bright a claim as saying that water is wet.
Of
the traditions that actually do contribute to Christianity using eggs in the
Easter cele- bration there are three to consider.
First:
In the celebration of the Passover meal, which Christ celebrated the night
before He was crucified, a roasted whole egg is placed as one of six food items
on the Passover plate. The egg, called Beitzah symbolizes the Passover
sacrifice that was offered in the Temple in
Jerusalem and was then eaten as part of the meal on Seder night. The egg
was introduced to the Passover meal after the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D.
The egg was the first dish served at Jewish funerals in the time of Christ’s
ministry on earth. The egg was also used as a symbol of mourning the loss of
the Temple where the Passover Lamb
was
sacrificed. It is usually eaten dipped in salt water which symbolizes the
bitter tears of the people.
Early
Christians in the first and second century continued to celebrate the Passover
along with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Primarily the Passover was
celebrated be- cause of Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper.
Second:
the season preceding Easter is called Lent. The season of Lent is a fast. In the ar- ticle on Lent we saw how ancient this
practice was and where it started. In both the east- ern and western Church
this meant fasting from meat and bird flesh–including eggs. Eggs were used to
break the Lenten fast on Easter Morning. In preparation for this breaking of
the fast the eggs were decorated to commemorate the sacrifice of Jesus Christ
as the Paschal Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world. The breaking
of the shell became a symbol of Christ’s rending of the tomb.
Indeed,
the use of decorated eggs to celebrate Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning
is so widespread across the world and so closely tied with the spread of
Christianity that one cannot call it anything but a Christian tradition. But
that doesn’t keep the neo-pa- gans and modern commentators from trying to claim
that Christian’s “stole” this so- called “pagan” tradition.
So
we turn to the third tradition:
The
Easter Hare
The
typical image used to demonstrate that that the Easter Bunny was the consort of
Os- tara/Eostra is this:
As
we have seen above, Ostara/Eostra didn’t really exist. And since she didn’t
exist she couldn’t have had a bunny as a consort. But where do they get this
ancient looking, ar- chaeological type statue of Ostara and the Rabbit?
The
problem with the image is that it is of a Mayan
goddess (Guatemalen Ixchel). This
false goddess can only be dated back to the 1600s A.D. Wrong continent. Wrong
hemi- sphere. Wrong epoch.
All
those websites, videos, and well meaning people who try to argue that Easter is
pagan and use this picture to do so have a basic problem with honesty.
There
is an interesting doubling up of the Easter bunny with the fictional goddess
Ostara. The modern ‘histories” of Easter tend to claim 1) that Easter was
originally a pa- gan fertility holiday 2) of devotion to the goddess Ostara
(Eastre, however spelled), 3) she used eggs as a symbol of fertility, and 4)
she always carried a pet bunny because it was so fertile. Now, all of these 4
claims are fiction.
So
where did the bunny really come from?
According
to Karl Joseph Simrok’s 1855 book called Handbuch Der Deutschen Mythologie
Mit Einschluss Der Nordischen, “The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always
been an emblem of fertility.” (page 551) The old 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia cites
this as proof that Christians cannot use the rabbit in celebration of Easter.
But I cannot find this sentence in my copy of Simrok’s book. Perhaps mine is a
different edition.
What
is interesting about the rabbit or hare is that it has been used by all kinds
of reli- gions around the world as a symbol. Each religion fitting its own
teaching on the sym- bol of the rabbit. But in most cases the symbol refers to
new life. In the ancient eastern Church the rabbit was used on tombstones and
as a symbol of Christ. One author points out that some early Christians viewed
the rabbit’s hole as a symbol of the tomb of Christ.
Probably
the most complete and systematic study to date is actually Birgit Gehrisch’s Lepusculus
Domini, Erotic Hare, Meister Lampe” Zur Rolle des Hasen in der Kulturgeschichte,
Inaugural-Dissertaion zur Erlangun, VVB Laufersweiler Verlag, Wettenberg,
Germany, 2005.
Christian
art has several examples from the early times through the renaissance of rab-
bits as a symbol of Christ.
To
name just a few The three hare window in
Paderborn, Germany and also in the
monastery
Muottatal in Switzerland, where three rabbits are together in a triangle with
only one ear each showing, symbolizing the Trinity,
There
are actually dozens of examples like this one above scattered all across Europe
and Asia.
Martin Schongauer’s 1470 engraving The Temptation of Jesus has
three by three rabbits at the feet of Jesus Christ.
His
student Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut of 1497 The
Holy Family with the Three Hares showing two hares next to each other and the
other going down toward a hole with a stone rolled next to it;
Hans Baldung Grien 1512-1516 painted the altar for the Freiburg Cathedral with the sec- ond panel
representing Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth where he painted the rabbits about
the feet of Mary and Elizabeth;
Titan’s
Madonna and Child with St. Catherine and a Rabbit which was painted in 1530.
I
picked these works of art because they are all pretty much pre-Reformation.
They demonstrate that the rabbit or hare was used a symbol of Christ and the
Resurrection before the time of the Reformation.
America
owes the use of the Easter Bunny to the Pennsylvania Deutch settlers who came
from Alsace, a German and French area on the border between the two countries.
Back in 1678 Georg Franck von Frankenau in
1682 wrote against the excessive eating of Easter eggs which parents would
leave in the name of the Easter Hare–the Resurrected Christ. The people from
this region settled in Pennsylvania and brought with them their symbolism and
traditions surrounding the hare representing Christ, the egg represent- ing the
tomb, and Christ’s resurrection with the giving and breaking of eggs when the
fast of Lent was ended on Easter Sunday.
Summary
Yes,
Easter, the eggs, the bunny, all of them are still being perverted into
something else by our own society. The devil, the world, and our own flesh
don’t want to hear about Christ’s resurrection and will attack any symbols used
to teach the resurrection.
But
now you know enough of the real history of Easter and the symbols used by the
Christian Church to celebrate this holiday.
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