To fully understand Easter, we must look HISTORICALLY at the observance.
First, from the Catholic website, “New Advent” : “we find that the English term relates to “Estre, a Teutonic godess of the rising light of day and spring….April was called easter-monadh.”
Also, that the term in Old German was “ôstra, ôstrara, ôstrarûn; German, Ostern” (Keep in mind the term Ostrara, which is derived from Astara). The Greek term for Easter, pascha, has nothing in common with the verb paschein, “to suffer,” although by the later symbolic writers it was connected with it (i.e., the Church)”
Note this admission that the Apostolic leaders never knew of Easter: “That the Apostolic Fathers do not mention it and that we first hear of it principally through the controversy of the Quartodecimans** are purely accidental.”
Now, from different sources on the true origin of “Easter”:
- From “An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (1898)” we find “The modern English term “Easter” is the direct continuation of Old English Ēastre, whose role as a goddess is attested solely by Bede in the 8th century. Ēostre is the Northumbrian form, while Ēastre is more common West Saxon term.
- From “The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology” we find that “The name refers to Eostur-monath (Old English “Ēostre month”), a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede, who writes that the month is named after the goddess Ēostre of Anglo-Saxon paganism.”
- the 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed the existence of a cognate form of Ēostre among the pre-Christian beliefs of the continental Germanic peoples, whose name he reconstructed as Ostara.
- Ostara (or Astarte) is a “goddess of the dawn” in Germanic paganism whose Germanic month has given her name to the festival of Easter (Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology: Translated from the Fourth Edition with Notes and Appendix )
- feasts were held in Eostre’s (Ostara) honor among the pagan Anglo-Saxons, but had died out by the time of his (Jacob Grimm) writing, replaced by the Christian “Paschal month”, or Easter.
- Neo-paganism, of which Hitler and the Nazi’s occultly studied, venerate Easter customs such as rabbits and eggs
- The “dawn goddess” is also found in Greek (Eos), Roman (Aurora) and Indian (Ushas).
- According to “Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture”, Hasuas, (or Ushas), was one of the most important goddesses of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European pagan religion and was the personification of dawn as a beautiful young woman, and means “to shine” or “the shining one”, and relates to the Moon Goddess ISIS, herself derived from Semiramis, the consort of NIMROD.
This Ostarâ, like the [Anglo-Saxon] Eástre, or Easter, must in heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries. (Grimm, 1882) Joseph Campbell, a more recent scholar of comparative mythology, equates Ishtar, Inanna, and Aphrodite, and he draws a parallel between the Egyptian goddess Isis who nurses Horus, and the Babylonian goddess Ishtar who nurses the god Tammuz
According to Socrates Church History, “the observance of Easter by the church [was attributed] to the perpetuation of its custom, “just as many other customs have been established,” stating that neither Jesus nor his Apostles enjoined the keeping of this or any other festival.”
All of these “goddesses” can be traced back to Semiramis, the harlot consort of Nimrod, and her establishment of a mystery religion based on her own idolatrous practices (“The Two Babylons”, Hysop)
- In the transcript “Isis and Osiris”, written by Plutarch, a Greek scholar from 46 to 120 AD, we find the details about the goddess (which was just another derivation:)
“”a goddess exceptionally wise and a lover of wisdom, to whom, as her name at least seems to indicate, knowledge and understanding are in the highest degree appropriate…” and that the statue of Athena (Plutarch says “whom they believe to be Isis”) in Sais carried the inscription “I am all that has been, and is, and shall be, and my robe no mortal has yet uncovered.” - The Roman writer Apuleius wrote in “The Golden Ass” (2nd AD) concerning Isis “Though I am worshiped in many aspects, known by countless names … some know me as Juno, some as Bellona … the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning and worship call me by my true name…Queen Isis.”
- Armenian tradition portrays Semiramis, consort of NIMROD, as a goddess, the daughter of the fish-goddess Atargatis, and herself connected with the doves of Ishtar or Astartë.
**According to this site, the Quartodeciman’s were the ones who calculated, not Easter, but Christ’s Crucifixion to the Jewish Passover, and the site then states “Those who continued to keep Easter with the Jews were called Quartodecimans (14 Nisan) and were excluded from the Church.”. So, those who follow the BIBLE’s date of Christ’s death were excluded from the church!
Now, on to the “symbol’s” of Easter:
Easter eggs:
Again, from “New Advent”: “This custom is found not only in the Latin but also in the Oriental Churches. The symbolic meaning of a new creation of mankind by Jesus risen from the dead was probably an invention of later times. The custom may have its origin in paganism, for a great many pagan customs, celebrating the return of spring, gravitated to Easter.”
- Writing in 1883’s “Deutsche Mythologie”, the historian Grimm states “The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in matter of bonfires. Then, through long ages there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called, which the church itself had to tolerate: I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs, and to the Easter tale which preachers told from the pulpit for the people’s amusement, connecting it with Christian reminiscences”
Easter Rabbit:
Again, from “New Advent”: “The Easter Rabbit lays the eggs, for which reason they are hidden in a nest or in the garden. The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility ”
In his late 19th century study of the hare in folk custom and mythology, Charles J. Billson cites numerous incidents of folk custom involving the hare around the period of Easter in Northern Europe. Billson says that “whether there was a goddess named Eostre, or not, and whatever connection the hare may have had with the ritual of Saxon or British worship, there are good grounds for believing that the sacredness of this animal reaches back into an age still more remote, where it is probably a very important part of the great Spring Festival of the prehistoric inhabitants of this island.”
Writing in 1972, John Andrew Boyle stated that “it has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of the dawn, were carried by hares. And she certainly represented spring fecundity, and love and carnal pleasure that leads to fecundity.”
The Easter Fire:
Again, from “New Advent”:
The Easter Fire is lit on the top of mountains (Easter mountain, Osterberg) and must be kindled from new fire, drawn from wood by friction (nodfyr); this is a custom of pagan origin in vogue all over Europe, signifying the victory of spring over winter. The bishops issued severe edicts against the sacrilegious Easter fires (Conc. Germanicum, a. 742, c.v.; Council of Lestines, a. 743, n. 15), but did not succeed in abolishing them everywhere. The Church adopted the observance into the Easter ceremonies, referring it to the fiery column in the desert and to the Resurrection of Christ; the new fire on Holy Saturday is drawn from flint, symbolizing the Resurrection of the Light of the World from the tomb closed by a stone (Missale Rom.). In some places a figure was thrown into the Easter fire, symbolizing winter, but to the Christians on the Rhine, in Tyrol and Bohemia, Judas the traitor (Reinsberg-Düringfeld, Das festliche Jahr, 112 sq.).
So, what we find is that the CHURCH “created” the (c)hristian observance of Easter to incorporate all pagan beliefs (including symbolic human sacrifice) into (c)hristianity, and that this observance was unknown to the Apostles or earliest elders of the church, but was a later “tradition”. Now, as a true Christian, can you see with your eyes, and make your own judgement of to the true source of this anti-Bible, anti-Christian belief?
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