Is Easter Pagan?

[rational experiences]

Does a human own O earth or does out of space own planet earth?

Out of space does that we know doesn't name nor controls it just supports.

So a human tradition isn't any particular term on earth.

If you however said the time of year owned a humans experience you would tell a human a story why. And what the human experience was.

As a human living on the planet counting.

So if you said the occurrence was moon related you would alter the date of the celebrated memory.

Life survived.

You would claim the moon once correlated women's menstrual cycles. Not anymore.

You would say human life was the woman's egg ovah ova. As only humans count cycles.

You would say the moon related to water mass on earth shifting.

Relating to huge earthquakes sky rendering and darkness.

The day you thought life would end on earth.

So you survived and celebrated life living instead.

Stating life nature garden dies and goes dormant into a death...
but survived. Life newly born springs back into life. But in opposition on earth.

A memory.

So hu man's said food was considered important. Bread a mainstay in life. Crops attacked in the field and crop the seed of bread.

So they made a human reminder of why life nearly died. Temple science causes. Fallout. Crop circles.

Chocolate was Mayan aztec history. Also were historic using temple life attacked sciences.

Wood a hard body nothing like our skin was meant to be honoured. As scientists should never thesis blood flesh life as compared to nature's biology of wood.

We already learnt how ignorant a scientist is.

 

[stanberger]

Funny, I thought it was the resurrection that was celebrated.

 

[stanberger]

nah. the whole thing

 

[Augustus]

The name is literally that of a pagan goddess.

In English, perhaps, and indirectly (it was possibly the name of a season/month, not a specific feast day).

When you think about it, English is widely known to be massively important to Early Christians in the Middle East and North Africa because the King James Bible, The One True Bible, was written in it.

Nearly as important as Northern European Paganism was....

It's a brilliant argument. Can't see how anyone could disagree with such impeccable logic

Following this logic, it would mean Easter is Pagan in English but Jewish in my native language.

And basically every other language except English and German...

Eostre was a pagan goddess of fertility (Spring time festival regarding the return of life to the land/crops/animals/etc...). Her name was taken as Easter.
Eggs -- again, a big symbol for fertility and upcoming life is all from Eostre's celebrations.

Made up nonsense that people get suckered by every year

Eostre is mentioned in precisely 1 source, Bede, and he says absolutely none of this.

It's basically Protestant anti-Catholic Polemic from the 19th C uncritically repeated as fact by 'rational sceptics' and 'freethinkers'.

 

[Father Heathen]

Following this logic, it would mean Easter is Pagan in English but Jewish in my native language.

What does English have to do with it?

 

[ChristineM]

Easter = Eostra

Eostra, a pagan (germanic) goddess of dawn who celebrated the spring equinox.

 

[Spiderman]

Does a human own O earth or does out of space own planet earth?

Out of space does that we know doesn't name nor controls it just supports.

So a human tradition isn't any particular term on earth.

If you however said the time of year owned a humans experience you would tell a human a story why. And what the human experience was.

As a human living on the planet counting.

So if you said the occurrence was moon related you would alter the date of the celebrated memory.

Life survived.

You would claim the moon once correlated women's menstrual cycles. Not anymore.

You would say human life was the woman's egg ovah ova. As only humans count cycles.

You would say the moon related to water mass on earth shifting.

Relating to huge earthquakes sky rendering and darkness.

The day you thought life would end on earth.

So you survived and celebrated life living instead.

Stating life nature garden dies and goes dormant into a death...
but survived. Life newly born springs back into life. But in opposition on earth.

A memory.

So hu man's said food was considered important. Bread a mainstay in life. Crops attacked in the field and crop the seed of bread.

So they made a human reminder of why life nearly died. Temple science causes. Fallout. Crop circles.

Chocolate was Mayan aztec history. Also were historic using temple life attacked sciences.

Wood a hard body nothing like our skin was meant to be honoured. As scientists should never thesis blood flesh life as compared to nature's biology of wood.

We already learnt how ignorant a scientist is.

We love you.

 

[Spiderman]

Today is 04/04, Heath Ledger the Joker's birthday, and last 04/04 was Easter Sunday.

On that day I looked at a picture of Georgann Hawkins and said i would give the money to my neighbor to buy his car part.

But I told her I was really giving the money to her, an offering to Georgann Hawkins.

after I gave the guy the money, I found out his last name was Hawkins. I literally gave the money to Hawkins, was stupefied!

 

[Augustus]

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.

I like them.

Offers great evidence that "rational sceptics" are just as gullible as those they mock on other threads whenever they are provided with emotionally and ideologically satisfying nonsense.

Obviously they are equally incapable of learning that lesson too though

 

[Ella S.]

I like them.

Offers great evidence that "rational sceptics" are just as gullible as those they mock on other threads whenever they are provided with emotionally and ideologically satisfying nonsense.

Obviously they are equally incapable of learning that lesson too though

I appreciate you clarifying the misconceptions, regardless.

 

[PruePhillip]

Peter Cotton Tail easter eggs etc......................

Yes it is. There is no Easter in the Apostolic Church. Indeed Paul warned about those who were observing
special days and months. Taking a Jewish or Pagan observance and adding Christian themes to it doesn't
make it Christian - it makes the inventor a false Christian.

 

[Ella S.]

Yes it is. There is no Easter in the Apostolic Church. Indeed Paul warned about those who were observing
special days and months. Taking a Jewish or Pagan observance and adding Christian themes to it doesn't
make it Christian - it makes the inventor a false Christian.

Why? Do you believe that there's something blasphemous about Easter? What are your thoughts on the Eucharist?

 

[RestlessSoul]

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.

It’s becoming traditional then? Like chocolate eggs.

 

[Debater Slayer]

I haven't seen solid evidence that Easter is pagan in origin. I'm unsure about certain symbols that have become associated with it, such as eggs and bunnies, but a claim like this seems to me to require considerable evidence and not just a superficial association of one form or another.

For example, Encyclopedia Brittanica explicitly states that the origin of the holiday's name isn't pagan, contrary to an oft-repeated claim:

The English word Easter, which parallels the German word Ostern, is of uncertain origin. One view, expounded by the Venerable Bede in the 8th century, was that it derived from Eostre, or Eostrae, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. This view presumes—as does the view associating the origin of Christmas on December 25 with pagan celebrations of the winter solstice—that Christians appropriated pagan names and holidays for their highest festivals. Given the determination with which Christians combated all forms of paganism (the belief in multiple deities), this appears a rather dubious presumption. There is now widespread consensus that the word derives from the Christian designation of Easter week as in albis, a Latin phrase that was understood as the plural of alba (“dawn”) and became eostarum in Old High German, the precursor of the modern German and English term. The Latin and Greek Pascha (“Passover”) provides the root for Pâques, the French word for Easter.

Easter | Origin, History, Name, Facts, & Dates

Parenthetically, I'm concerned about the readiness with which I have seen a lot of anti-religious and anti-theistic people accept claims like this one and the claim that Christmas is a pagan holiday without sufficient evidence from scholarly and academic sources. The relatively uncritical acceptance of some claims that seek to undermine certain religious beliefs--as well as the casual dismissal of context when discussing scriptural interpretations--was one of the main reasons I distanced myself from "New Atheism."

I believe any bona fide skeptic should uphold rigorous standards of evidence and not flout them when they're ideologically inconvenient.

 

[Glaurung]

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.

They should collate all the OP's threads on the subject and pin it somewhere. It would save the OP from any need to post it again as people can just add to the pinned thread every Christmas and Easter.

 

[exchemist]

Peter Cotton Tail easter eggs etc......................

Do you really have to do this one yet again? It was done to death 2 years ago, in this thread, which you started: Is Easter Pagan? Why celebrate it?

No, Easter is not pagan. See post 39 for why not.

 

[joelr]

Passover is Jewish. Much of Easter, from a Christian perspective, is a form of Passover modified to reflect the Passion of Christ. Ash Wednesday, fasting, communion, etc. are all Christian elements.

Christianity is as Pagan as all the mystery religions. Fasting is very old, Plato would not accept students who were not in a fasted state.

The Relationship between Hellenistic Mystery Religions and Early Christianity:
A Case Study using Baptism and Eucharist
Jennifer Uzzell

-It is interesting that Celsus refers to Christianity and the “other mysteries”. Clearly he regards Christianity as a Mystery religion of a particularly low and degenerate sort.

-That early Christianity should continue to practise baptism as a sign of membership of the new society and for the forgiveness of sins is not surprising. Nor is it surprising, given the proximity and cultural interaction between the Jewish and Hellenistic worlds, that baptism should bear some formal and even functional similarity to ritual bathing practised by the Mysteries. What is surprising, however, is that at least some Christians, among them one of the most innovative and influential thinkers of the early Church, should come to understand baptism in terms of an apotheosis with a dying and resurrected deity securing a new risen life “in Christ”. The idea of a god in human form is utterly alien to Judaism (and indeed even Paul stops short of saying this unambiguously). The idea that a human could become one with God and share in his “risen” life is even more inconceivable. It is difficult to see how these ideas in particular could have entered the mind set of early Christians had they


-Perhaps the clearest point of contact between the Mysteries and Christian Eucharist, and one of which the Church Fathers were painfully conscious, lay in a sacramental meal of bread or cakes and wine mixed with water in which initiates to the cult of Mithras participated. In Mithraism we see a religion based around a semi-divine hero who kills a bull, so releasing its blood on to the earth in an act of creation and salvation. He demands high moral standards from his followers who participate in a sacramental meal which commemorates the last earthly meal of Mithras before returning to the heavenly realm in the chariot of his father the Sun. His followers organise themselves into small communities where they refer to each other as “brother”. They meet in buildings which bear more than a passing resemblance to the earliest basilicas and like many of the Gnostic Christian communities. They seek salvation from the debased material world through a spiritual ascent through the spheres. Mithras was expected to return to earth to lead his followers in a final cataclysmic battle between good and evil.


It is beyond doubt that substantial similarities exist between the rituals of baptism and Eucharist and the various sacral meals and initiations practised within the Mystery religions. These similarities extend beyond the forms of the rituals themselves into the purpose, symbolism and function of the rituals.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

1. Cadbury Creme Eggs are the main Easter treat.
a. They are indulgent.
b. They are primarily chocolate.

2. Christians are against indulgence.

3. Chocolate was misappropriated by Christians from the Mesoamerican people, who were pagan.

Therefore, Easter is pagan.

<Drops mic>

 

[exchemist]

The name is literally that of a pagan goddess.

......of Northern Europe.......

......which is therefore irrelevant, as Easter is a Christian festival and therefore comes from the Levant/Mediterranean. Easter is based on the Jewish Passover.

Like the Jewish Passover, it happens to occur in the N Hemisphere springtime and in Northern Europe - only - has taken a name derived from earlier tradition. In the Latin and Greek languages of the Mediterranean it is called Πάσχα, Pascua, Pâques, Pasqua....... for Passover.

It has F-all to do with pagan goddesses.

 

[Colt]

Peter Cotton Tail easter eggs etc......................

Its was a Pagan holiday that was adopted by Christianity when the 2 religions merged.