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'Nuff said!The name is literally that of a pagan goddess.
Early Christianity often promoted itself by co-opting the rituals, heroes, and festivals of those it came into contact with. Many Christian 'saints' were originally pagan heroes.
Christmas, for example, is clearly NOT the birthday of Jesus since, according to the story, Jesus was born during the tax season. Instead, it is a co-opted version of the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a mid-winter festival.
Easter is names for Astarte, a Canaanite goddess of sexuality (essentially the same as Ashura, as mentioned in the Bible). Many of the rituals are loosely associated with Celtic druidism.
Peter Cotton Tail easter eggs etc......................
Funny, I thought it was the resurrection that was celebrated.why would celebrating an innocent man on a cross being tortured and brutalized to death be paganistic ?
[...] Ostara herself is a shadowy figure in Germanic folklore. Her story begins with Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess who is not documented from pagan sources at all, and turns up in only one early Christian source, the writings of the English churchman Bede. Bede may have been right that there was such a goddess, or he may have been spreading the received wisdom of his era, and scholars have debated this point for years.
Jacob Grimm, the brilliant linguist and folklorist, is one of many scholars who took Bede at his word, and in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie, he proposed that Eostre must have been a local version of a more widespread Germanic goddess, whom he named Ostara. It’s impossible to tell if Ostara as a goddess ever existed outside Grimm’s proposal.
In 1874, in another book also titled Deutsche Mythologie, Adolf Holtzmann speculated about the already-popular German tradition of the “Easter hare” (the tradition from which our Easter bunny derives) by associating it with the goddess, thus claiming for the first time a connection between Ostara and the hare [...]
I remembered a good response but could not remember what it was. Fortunately I was able to find the thread. I remember we had a thread with some sensational and surprising posts on this topic. Here is one of them:Peter Cotton Tail easter eggs etc......................
@RivalNo.
This has been debunked time and time and time again.
It is an argument that betrays ignorance of the origins of Easter (called Pascha elsewhere in the world, after the Jewish word Pesach). The so-called goddess is likely an invention too.
Easter is based on the Jewish holiday Pesach in which lambs are slaughtered (which Christianity associates with Jesus dying on the cross), and celebrates Jesus' resurrection. The egg as a symbol goes back into antiquity and has long been associated with resurrection, new life, for obvious reasons that transcend religious boundaries.
Easter even used to be calculated to coincide with the Pesach holiday until the Christians divorced themselves from Judaism.
It's not Pagan to use an universal symbol, i.e, an egg. It's a cross-cultural practice.
It's pretty obvious it's about Jesus rising from the dead and not some made up Germanic goddess that, even had she existed, would have not been remotely heard of in the Mediterranean world that birthed Christianity .
The more likely etymology of Easter is 'east' i.e, where the sun rises - thus 'dawn', and from here you see the link to the idea of rising and resurrection.
Did anybody force you to participate in these threads?You make the same thread for Easter and Christmas, year after year, like clockwork. It gets the same replies and counter claims each time. Good grief.
No.Is Easter Pagan?
No, it is not. Astarte is connected with the names Aštoreth, Ištar, and Inanna, but not Easter.Easter is names for Astarte
There is no “Ashura” in the Bible. The names “Asherah” and even “Ashtoreth” can be found, but not “Ashura”. The Christian holiday of Easter has nothing to do with Asherah or Ashtoreth.(essentially the same as Ashura, as mentioned in the Bible).
What rituals in particular are you referring to?Many of the rituals are loosely associated with Celtic druidism.
why would celebrating an innocent man on a cross being tortured and brutalized to death be paganistic ?
The name is literally that of a pagan goddess.