Easter Madness: Is your church an abomination?

[n david]

I'm confused. You've promoted Christmas, a christian Halloween, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and other holidays which are borrowed from pagan holidays; yet the one holiday which can be traced back to biblical events you're claiming is pagan and condemn churches for celebrating?

Is this another "devil's advocate" or "I'm posting something I really don't believe" post?

[Amanah]

Originally Posted by n david

I'm confused. You've promoted Christmas, a christian Halloween, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and other holidays which are borrowed from pagan holidays; yet the one holiday which can be traced back to biblical events you're claiming is pagan and condemn churches for celebrating?

Is this another "devil's advocate" or "I'm posting something I really don't believe" post?

or maybe looking for other unbiblical practices of Apostolics to compliment the beard thread?

[n david]

"""The second question is whether the name of the holiday "Easter" comes from the blurring of the Christian celebration with the worship of a purported pagan fertility goddess named "Eostre" in English and Germanic cultures. There are several problems with the passage in Bede. In his book, The Stations of the Sun, Professor Ronald Hutton (a well-known historian of British paganism and occultism) critiques Bede's sketchy knowledge of other pagan festivals, and argues that the same is true for the statement about Eostre: "It falls into a category of interpretations which Bede admitted to be his own, rather than generally agreed or proven fact."

This leads us to the next problem: there is no evidence outside of Bede for the existence of this Anglo-Saxon goddess. There is no equivalent goddess in the Norse Eddas or in ancient Germanic paganism from continental Europe. Hutton suggests, therefore, that "the Anglo-Saxon Estor-monath simply meant 'the month of opening' or 'the month of beginnings,'" and concludes that there is no evidence for a pre-Christian festival in the British Isles in March or April."""

"""It is important to note, however, that in most other European languages, the name for the Christian celebration is derived from the Greek word Pascha, which comes from pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover. Easter is the Christian Passover festival."""

"""But, in fact, in the case of Easter the evidence suggests otherwise: that neither the commemoration of Christ's death and resurrection nor its name are derived from paganism."""

http://www.christianitytoday.com/his...n-holiday.html

[n david]

"""According to various sources, the name Easter has its origin with a goddess of the Anglo-Saxons named Eostre (also Estre, Estara, Eastre, Ostara, and similar spellings in various sources). It is believed that she is the goddess of the dawn and was worshipped in the spring by pagans in Northern Europe and the British Isles. In The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop claimed Eostre is actually a name derived from the Babylonian goddess Astarte. Hislop extended this connection to include goddesses from around the world: Ishtar, Ashtoreth, Venus, and others. In fact, Hislop argued that all of the systems of gods and goddesses find their origin with Nimrod and his wife Semiramis at the Tower of Babel. Thus, every primary god is a figure of Nimrod, and every primary goddess is a figure of Semiramis.

Similar claims are made by Ralph Woodrow in his 1966 book Babylon Mystery Religion, but Woodrow drew heavily on Hislop’s work to support his claims. The thesis of each of these books is to connect the modern practices of the Roman Catholic Church to the idolatrous worship of various gods. While many of the claims in the books are sound, the connection of Eostre to these other goddesses is tenuous at best.

To those who have used Woodrow’s early work, please note that he has changed his position on many of the conclusions in the book. Woodrow has stopped circulating his early work and replaced it with an updated title The Babylon Connection? To demonstrate some of the false conclusions concerning pagan connections proposed by Hislop, Woodrow explains:

By this method, one could take virtually anything and do the same—even the “golden arches” at McDonald’s! The Encyclopedia Americana (article: “Arch") says the use of arches was known in Babylon as early as 2020 B.C. Since Babylon was called “the golden city” (Isa. 14:4), can there be any doubt about the origin of the golden arches? As silly as this is, this is the type of proof that has been offered over and over about pagan origins.1

Hislop’s logic becomes incomprehensible in places, and he made fundamental errors demonstrating his thinking to be false. For instance, he argued on a phonetic basis that Eostre from Saxony must be the same as Astarte, Ishtar, and Ashtoreth. This is a leap to consider their relationships based on the sound of the names alone. We might find many examples of words that sound the same in various languages but share no common root or meaning. Hislop attempted to make other connections, but they are unconvincing and do not take into consideration the time these goddesses were worshipped or the importance of the confusion of languages at Babel. He also neglected to consider the relationship between the English and German words used today."""

"""In the Hebrew, Passover is Pesach. The Greek form is simply a transliteration8 and takes the form Pascha. Virtually all languages refer to Easter as either a transliterated form of pascha or use resurrection in the name. English and German stand apart in their use of Easter (Ostern) to refer to the celebration of the Resurrection."""

https://answersingenesis.org/holiday...-pagan-origin/

[n david]

Easter has become ridiculously commercialized, but it isn't a pagan holiday. The celebration on Easter is one of the most important for the church and Christianity -- we are celebrating the triumph of Christ over death - the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by n david

What is your source here?

Several. These are all names of the associated goddess from various cultures throughout the ages.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by n david

I'm confused. You've promoted Christmas, a christian Halloween, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and other holidays which are borrowed from pagan holidays; yet the one holiday which can be traced back to biblical events you're claiming is pagan and condemn churches for celebrating?

Is this another "devil's advocate" or "I'm posting something I really don't believe" post?

Here's the post I posted in respond to RachelRose. It might explain:

Originally Posted by Aquila

It's nice to know I'm not the only one.

I've always been of the opinion of taking dominion and using the day to glorify God. However, I'm feeling a strange drawing to re-examine that position in light of Scripture. God doesn't seem to like it when we try to honor Him with strange fire, pagan ways, or offer honor to pagan custom and deities that are an abomination to Him.

The thread on the Aztec Death Whistle shook me up. Hearing it brought a reality to the pagan practices of those peoples that I haven't felt. It's almost like the whistle woke me up. lol Who would try to honor God with blowing one of those? Or celebrating their Day of the Dead? And if that makes sense, why honor Easter, the Festival of Eostre?

So, as I look for a church or a fellowship to roll with for a while, I'm considering what I see. I'm seeing a LOT of paganism in not only Trinitarian (pagan) churches... but even in Oneness, Jesus name, Apostolic churches!

I have clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, and here I am... stuck in the middle with Jesus. lol

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Amanah

or maybe looking for other unbiblical practices of Apostolics to compliment the beard thread?

Not exactly, but it could indeed tie in to unbiblical practices among those who profess to preach only Scripture.

[n david]

Originally Posted by Aquila

Several. These are all names of the associated goddess from various cultures throughout the ages.

Could you post one please?

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by n david

Easter has become ridiculously commercialized, but it isn't a pagan holiday. The celebration on Easter is one of the most important for the church and Christianity -- we are celebrating the triumph of Christ over death - the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It's not so much the date of Easter. Easter's date is largely liturgical, on the surface. Here's a source on that:

Fixing the date on which the Resurrection of Jesus was to be observed and celebrated triggered a major controversy in early Christianity in which an Eastern and a Western position can be distinguished. The dispute, known as the Paschal controversies, was not definitively resolved until the 8th century. In Asia Minor, Christians observed the day of the Crucifixion on the same day that Jews celebrated Passover—that is, on the 14th day of the first full moon of spring, 14 Nisan (see Jewish calendar). The Resurrection, then, was observed two days later, on 16 Nisan, regardless of the day of the week. In the West the Resurrection of Jesus was celebrated on the first day of the week, Sunday, when Jesus had risen from the dead. Consequently, Easter was always celebrated on the first Sunday after the 14th day of the month of Nisan. Increasingly, the churches opted for the Sunday celebration, and the Quartodecimans (“14th day” proponents) remained a minority. The Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that Easter should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox (March 21). Easter, therefore, can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Easter-holiday

So, the date of Easter as we know it is as unbiblical as the Trinity, and formally established by the very same minds in 325AD.

Also, I submit to you the thought that it was typically a pagan custom to focus celebrations upon the solstice or the equinox. So, though the date was arrived at liturgically at a reprobate church council, the logic employed was pagan.

Then you have the traditions of Easter such as the Easter eggs and Easter bunnies. Why eggs and bunnies? Well, these are ancient symbols for fertility and new birth among many ancient pagan cultures. Most historians, including Biblical scholars, agree that Easter was originally a pagan festival. However, even among those who maintain that Easter has pagan roots, there is some disagreement over which pagan tradition the festival emerged from.

Seeing the pagan influences on nearly every other holiday American culture honors, I find it hard to believe that Easter is the one exception with its symbols of the hare and the egg.