Easter, Passover, Ishtar and Myths

Religious calendars are interesting things. In Jerusalem we have just celebrated Passover and Easter together. Passover fell on Good Friday and our community gathered at 1pm to remember the Crucifixion and then headed to the Dead Sea to celebrate Passover and the redemption from Egypt. It does beg the question, however, how does death and resurrection, Passover, deliverance and redemption go hand in hand with bunnies and eggs? Well obviously they don’t. There is no connection between Passover and rabbits and there is also no connection between Easter and pagan ritual. Notwithstanding, Easter does have a strong connection to Passover.

Myths Abound

Myths about Easter abound all over the internet and I am bombarded constantly by many well meaning believing Christians challenging me on the nature of Easter, Holy Week and its supposed pagan roots. Common claims against any celebration of Easter stem from the misconception that Easter is named after a pagan fertility goddess.

Going Deeper

Archetypes

The common archetypes are Ishtar of the Babylonian pantheon or of the Germanic goddess of Spring called Eostre. This is simply not true, but has become ‘the truth’ essentially through repetition. We keep saying it and hearing it so it must be true without anyone challenging and verifying the source. 

Ishtar is indeed a fertility goddess of the Babylonian and Assyrian pantheon. Note that Babylon is in the East in the lands of Iraq and Iran today. The Christian community that resides in the East is the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox community has been there since the first century,  descendants of the first believers in Jesus. In the Orthodox Church the word used for Easter is not Easter, it’s Pascha. Pascha is the Aramaic of the Hebrew word Pesach (Passover). So the Christians who live in the land where the pagan goddess Ishtar comes from don’t actually call the festival after her at all, they refer to the festival by its Jewish roots, the Pascha or the Passover. 

Meanwhile, over in the West the first recorded written account of the spring goddess Eostre hales from the 8th Century. She has nothing to do with rabbits and/or chocolate eggs, which didn’t start getting sold by Cadbury's until the 19th Century. However, people in the Christian world were writing about Pascha/Easter long before then.

In the Second Century, Melito of Sardis, a Jewish believer and Bishop of the community in Sardis, wrote a defence of Pascha in which he argued for the date of Pascha/Easter to be the 14th of Nisan. That is, he was arguing that Pascha should be celebrated at Passover and not the Sunday following Passover. Nisan, by the way, is the Jewish month in which Passover falls and it really is named after a Babylonian god. Interestingly, the majority of the current Jewish calendar is named after Babylonian gods and the Rabbis don’t seem to mind at all. Perhaps we should learn something from the Rabbis on this one. 

Pascha / Passover 

Let’s be absolutely clear: Easter is only called Easter in two languages, English and German.

Most other languages call the season of Easter after Pascha or Passover. For example, in French you say Påques, in Dutch its Pasen, in Indonesian its Paskah, etc. Even in Latin, the traditional language of the Catholic Church, Easter is called Pascha. That’s right, the Catholic Church actually does not call Easter - Easter. It’s called Pascha and therefore obviously not named after a pagan god of any sort. Rather, like most languages it is named after the original Hebrew and Aramaic. 

Easter comes from the old German root word for East or Spring. Austria is called in German Østerreich, the East land or Spring land. The festival season of Passover became known as Eastertide, and the word Easter enters our language. Easter is an eight day holiday from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday. Why eight days? This tradition we inherit from the Jewish People who have eight day festivals like Succot, Hanukkah and Feast of Unleavened Bread.

The tradition of celebrating the life of the Messiah and His passion for eight days was given to us by the early Jewish Believers in Jesus and it had nothing to do with a pagan god. The Orthodox Churches mark their calendars to ensure that Resurrection Sunday does not fall before Passover.

The Good News

Without Passover, Easter makes absolutely no sense.

Without the death of the Messiah you cannot have a resurrection, and without a resurrection you cannot have the Gospel. The Gospel can be stated in one sentence - Messiah rose from the dead. And that is indeed very Good News.

“It hardly matters how the body of Jesus came to be missing because in the last analysis what convinced the people that he had risen from the dead was not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And so it has been ever since."

Frederick Buechner

 

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Discuss

So then, the Scolars whom GOD lead to translate HIS Word into English in the 1611 AKJV, got it wrong when they chose the word Easter in Acts 12:4,the ONLY place the word easter is found in All of Holy Scripture?
Also, it says in Acts 12:4 that Herod intended AFTER Easter to kill Brother Peter ! So the problem with the teaching that Easter is the Passover, is the TIMING, for According to God's Word, the Passover is a ONE (1) day observance (24 hrs) and it's over and done with, THEN, the observance of the DAYS (plural) of unleavened bread, which according to Acts 12:3, was already in progress? So, since according to God's Word, as seen in Exodus 12 the order and TIMIMG of the LORD'S Passover and feast of unleavened bread is given! The Passover is observed FIRST, then the 7 days of unleavened bread is observed AFTER the Passover? That being the TRUTH, how then can anyone teach that in Acts 12:4 that Easter is Passover, when they were already in observance of the 7 days of Unleavened Bread ?
Answer: Easter in Acts 12:4 can NOT be the LORD'S Passover, the order and timing don't add up ?

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