Is Easter Pagan?

[Augustus]

Hm.. well I think there has to be more to look at with the 'egg' question. People looking more directly to nature for their sense of religion, probably had strong thoughts about the egg as a symbol, obviously. It was surely another symbol that represented a door between life on earth, and the worlds beyond. It fits in well with the idea of a co-blossoming springtime sun, the enthusiastic rays of which I just witnessed a moment ago, through the cloudiness. The tomb of jesus might be likened to an egg. I don't know. There's something fishy here

Or people just had lots of eggs lying around after giving up animal products for lent (which we know they did) ...

 

[Clara Tea]

Hm.. well I think there has to be more to look at with the 'egg' question. People looking more directly to nature for their sense of religion, probably had strong thoughts about the egg as a symbol, obviously. It was surely another symbol that represented a door between life on earth, and the worlds beyond. It fits in well with the idea of a co-blossoming springtime sun, the enthusiastic rays of which I just witnessed a moment ago, through the cloudiness. The tomb of jesus might be likened to an egg. I don't know. There's something fishy here

The age old question: which came first, the chicken or the egg. Obviously the egg came first.

In order to be a chicken, every cell in the chicken has to be a chicken cell. That is from an egg that divided multiple times.

In order to be a chicken egg, just that one celled egg has to be a chicken egg. Thus, the simplest solution is the right one.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

The age old question: which came first, the chicken or the egg. Obviously the egg came first.

In order to be a chicken, every cell in the chicken has to be a chicken cell. That is from an egg that divided multiple times.

In order to be a chicken egg, just that one celled egg has to be a chicken egg. Thus, the simplest solution is the right one.

You seem to describe a sort of chicken/egg fractal pattern

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Or people just had lots of eggs lying around after giving up animal products for lent (which we know they did) ...

Well what do other cultures that we know are 'pagan' or 'animist,' or less biblically influenced, think about eggs, in terms of symbolism or spiritual significance. And if there is something to that, how would that be non-applicable to the pre-christian europeans? And then, wouldn't it sort of bleed over into the christian theological landscape, like you probably get when they want to compare the phoenix to jesus, for example

 

[Clara Tea]

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

Punxsutawney Christ? Punxsutawny Easter Bunny? If He sees His shadow we have two more weeks of winter?

Perhaps the messages of Christ are more imporant the the miracles?

 

[Clara Tea]

You seem to describe a sort of chicken/egg fractal pattern

Fractal patterns spontaneously emerge during bacterial cell growth


I think that it is no coincidence that fractal patterns look so similar to life:

From very simple math equations we get highly complex images (fractals).

From very simple DNA, we get highly complex life, in which each cell seems to communicate with every other cell to tell it where to go and what to do relative to the location of other cells. Otherwise, we might grow an ear on our back, or have cells grow without bound (cancer?).

A fractal pattern generally has warts on it, which are slightly distorted smaller versions of the original pattterns.

The fractal, above, looks something like an octopus.

The fractal, above, looks something like a nautalus or snail.

Leaves?

Some kind of sea creature?

 

[lostwanderingsoul]

Nope, that's not how it works, as that approach is like "guilt by association".

There's a common Buddhist saying that "When pointing at the moon, it's important to remember that the end of your finger is not the moon". IOW, it's what the symbol symbolizes in one's religion or denomination that's important, not what some other religion might use the symbol for. No one has a patent on using the egg as a symbol.

Absolutely. No one has a patent on the egg. It only matters if you care what God says. In Jeremiah 10:2 God says we should not learn the ways of the heathen. Eggs and rabbits were a heathen sign of fertility. They have nothing to do with Jesus. So God says do not take those pagan symbols and give them new meaning. Why not celebrate Easter with crosses or something else related to Jesus. The largest church in the world would rather take the easy way and let people keep do the pagan things that were done long before Jesus lived. Instead of getting rid of pagan traditions and making new ones that reflect the true meaning of the day.

 

[lostwanderingsoul]

When Reverend Jimmy Swaggart was arrested for paying a prostitute in Lancaster, California, he used a red herring to divert attention from his misdeeds. Batman, he said, was evil. So, his followers went forth to ban Batman. Batman is fictional. Batman is a good person who fights criminals. But, because he dresses like a bat (to scare criminals), Reverend Jimmy Swaggart wanted to turn the wrath of his congregation on the cartoon character.

With the world falling apart, and much of that destruction was at the hands of the Religious Right's hand picked candidates, we are supposed to divert our attention, once more, to fearing a fluffy bunny.

1. Nuclear bombs might fall out of the sky from Russia, but a fuzzy cute bunny is all that we have to worry about.

2. Factories have been outsourced to take advantage of cheap foreign labor and cheap foreign materials (so the junk falls apart), and we don't even make enough emergency supplies in case we have a biowar (according to Fiona Hill).

3. Are we supposed to go to war with China and ask China to make more weapons for us so we can fight them? Are we supposed to use mach 5 missiles carrying 20 kiloton nukes made in the early 1960's to fight the brand new mach 10, 15 megaton nukes of Russian and China? Ill prepared for war and rattling sabers at world powers.

4. Covid grips the world, crushing the economy, causing inflation (inflation begets more inflation...it is a vicious circle and never-ending). Did those biolab trucks of the W. Bush administration help with the covid disaster? We didn't even have enough masks for our health workers.

5. Homeless people drop dead in the streets and many have contracted (and spread) covid.

But a cute, fluffy bunny, that brings candy eggs to children, and brings joy to their hearts is the main concern of the world.....what are we thinking?

Satan certainly does not want people thinking about Jesus so on a holiday that is supposed to be about Jesus he gets people thinking about those candy eggs and cute bunnies. And the church does nothing about it. Seems like the church is more interested in Satan's ideas than God's ideas.

 

[Augustus]

Well what do other cultures that we know are 'pagan' or 'animist,' or less biblically influenced, think about eggs, in terms of symbolism or spiritual significance. And if there is something to that, how would that be non-applicable to the pre-christian europeans? And then, wouldn't it sort of bleed over into the christian theological landscape, like you probably get when they want to compare the phoenix to jesus, for example

Sounds like you are starting with your conclusion and trying to mould a narrative to reach what you have decided you want to believe.

You don't think people with limited food but a surplus of eggs might eat eggs after abstaining for a month just because they have a lot of eggs rather than it being some crypto-pagan symbolism about a phoenix?

 

[Rival]

Sounds like you are starting with your conclusion and trying to mould a narrative to reach what you have decided you want to believe.

You don't think people with limited food but a surplus of eggs might eat eggs after abstaining for a month just because they have a lot of eggs rather than it being some crypto-pagan symbolism about a phoenix?

Constantine invented eggs at the council of Nicaea. So they're obviously Pagan.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Sounds like you are starting with your conclusion and trying to mould a narrative to reach what you have decided you want to believe.

You don't think people with limited food but a surplus of eggs might eat eggs after abstaining for a month just because they have a lot of eggs rather than it being some crypto-pagan symbolism about a phoenix?

Constantine invented eggs at the council of Nicaea. So they're obviously Pagan.

I think maybe we should put hold off on the 'pagan' label for a second here, and switch to a category which is more like 'pre-christian symbolism.' Christianity is a newer religion, right? Yes, so it makes sense that that that religion, or system, would be more filter-like, as we can surely all agree (I hope?) that is it is newer, and so thus would be positioned downstream of an awful lot of symbolic content, and general content.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

From very simple math equations we get highly complex images (fractals).

Indeed, that is strange isn't it

 

[SalixIncendium]

Yes, Easter is pagan.

No, it's not.

 

[Riders]

When Reverend Jimmy Swaggart was arrested for paying a prostitute in Lancaster, California, he used a red herring to divert attention from his misdeeds. Batman, he said, was evil. So, his followers went forth to ban Batman. Batman is fictional. Batman is a good person who fights criminals. But, because he dresses like a bat (to scare criminals), Reverend Jimmy Swaggart wanted to turn the wrath of his congregation on the cartoon character.

With the world falling apart, and much of that destruction was at the hands of the Religious Right's hand picked candidates, we are supposed to divert our attention, once more, to fearing a fluffy bunny.

1. Nuclear bombs might fall out of the sky from Russia, but a fuzzy cute bunny is all that we have to worry about.

2. Factories have been outsourced to take advantage of cheap foreign labor and cheap foreign materials (so the junk falls apart), and we don't even make enough emergency supplies in case we have a biowar (according to Fiona Hill).

3. Are we supposed to go to war with China and ask China to make more weapons for us so we can fight them? Are we supposed to use mach 5 missiles carrying 20 kiloton nukes made in the early 1960's to fight the brand new mach 10, 15 megaton nukes of Russian and China? Ill prepared for war and rattling sabers at world powers.

4. Covid grips the world, crushing the economy, causing inflation (inflation begets more inflation...it is a vicious circle and never-ending). Did those biolab trucks of the W. Bush administration help with the covid disaster? We didn't even have enough masks for our health workers.

5. Homeless people drop dead in the streets and many have contracted (and spread) covid.

But a cute, fluffy bunny, that brings candy eggs to children, and brings joy to their hearts is the main concern of the world.....what are we thinking?

I don't believe anything is wrong with any of that. I love Easter. I bring up the Pagan origins of Easter to get an interesting conversation started with Christians on the origins of the holidays.

 

[PruePhillip]

According to the gospels, they celebrated Pesach, which is the Jewish predecessor to Christian Easter.

Jesus observed the Passover. But this wasn't the Jewish Passover as he stated that he himself
was the lamb to be slain. The taking of the bread and wine was to symbolize this. 'Do this in
remembrance of me.' And that's what the Christian church did every Sunday (not the Sabbath)
in celebration of his rising from the grave.
So the Apostolic church respected the Passover, respected the temple even - but they played
no part in Christian service.

 

[PruePhillip]

Interesting. Do you see Easter as mostly harmless? Do you think followers of Christ should avoid celebrating it?

Anything added or deleted to Judaean Christian worship is not just dangerous, it's forbidden.
The Apostles respected the temple, respected the Passover - but it formed no part in their
service. In fact both the temple and the Passover were taken away by Rome, and that's
symbolic in itself.
The Apostles warned of 'observing days and months' in wayward churches, and reminding
them that 'God does not dwell in temples made with hand.' Of course all this was swifting
forgotten by new groups, and soon people who lived as the Apostles lived were murdered
as heretics. This didn't change anything though.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

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

Oh, I know you love it. Lol.

 

[Augustus]

I think maybe we should put hold off on the 'pagan' label for a second here, and switch to a category which is more like 'pre-christian symbolism.' Christianity is a newer religion, right? Yes, so it makes sense that that that religion, or system, would be more filter-like, as we can surely all agree (I hope?) that is it is newer, and so thus would be positioned downstream of an awful lot of symbolic content, and general content.

The problem with this line of argument is that almost everything can be said to have some form of pre-Christian symbolism, or any holy day was close to some other festival in some other culture so everything can be said to be "stolen from the pagans".

People then take the entire history of the world, identify something with "Pagan" symbolism and say "the Christians copied that!".

So you get these ludicrous arguments that Middle Eastern Christians were copying the festival of a Northern European goddess, or that Northern European Christians were copying some Middle Eastern goddess simply because some words sound vaguely similar. Or that Germans in the early modern period start doing something with an obvious connection to their everyday environment, and people claim it actually is the continuation of a "Pagan" tradition from 1000 years earlier, that has no evidence of ever existing, but was definitely stolen as a marketing ploy

The is a giant grab bag of "Pagan" history, much of it not even real, but made up in the past 200 years for people to appropriate simply to reach pre-ordained conclusions.

All kinds on "pagans" came up with all kinds of symbolism relating to their everyday environments. They didn't all simply "plagiarise" each other, they just did what humans do: make meaning from their experiences.

Many of these argument seem to rely on the idea that Christians were incapable of creativity like other people, they could only steal and appropriate with devious intentions. They are usually not an attempt to actually try to look at what may have happened but to paint Christianity as purely derivative because of prejudice.

Undoubtedly some aspects of Christianity were influenced by pre-Christian belief systems. No one ever seems to talk about the areas like middle/neoplatonism though, just some crude myths about Easter being Eostre or Christmas being Saturnalia despite both being obviously false.

I understand you are not making the same crude arguments, but what you say is still relying on the idea A came before B, therefore B is derivative of A.

People can create their own symbolism from their own environment though. A child can link eggs with birth or 'mad march hares' with spring without some deep complex theology behind it. People with lots of eggs can create symbolism about eggs simply because they have lots of eggs rather than because it is a hidden ancient mystical tradition.

Unless there is good reason to believe that B really is derivative of A, then it's just confirmation bias to assume that it is because it matches what we want to see as true.

 

[Kooky]

The problem with this line of argument is that almost everything can be said to have some form of pre-Christian symbolism, or any holy day was close to some other festival in some other culture so everything can be said to be "stolen from the pagans".

Well, yes. That's how syncretism works, ultimately.

That doesn't make Christianity a worse religion, despite what Christians themselves seem to believe.
The phrase "stolen" itself is of course highly problematic in that context.
There's no deliberate appropriation or theft going on here.

 

[England my lionheart]

The name is literally that of a pagan goddess.

You nailed it,Eostre an Anglo Saxon goddess described by the venerable Bede as the goddess of spring in the 8th century.