The historical truth about Easter

Easter is arguably the most important observance in modern Christianity. Every year, millions of professing Christians around the world participate in this celebration called Easter, supposedly in honor of Christ’s Resurrection. Since the majority of Christians celebrate Easter, then let’s turn to the biblical scriptures authorizing it…..Oh, I’m sorry….. nowhere in the Bible do we find anything remotely resembling an Easter celebration. There’s no mention of rabbits, Easter egg hunts, baskets of candy or sunrise services.

Although most professing Christians believe Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, its roots can be traced to ancient civilizations of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece and Rome that existed long before Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection. The ancient civilizations embraced pagan religious rites that greatly resemble the holiday we call Easter.

The word Easter appears only once in the King James Version of the Bible (and not at all in most others). In the one place it does appear, the King James translators mistranslated the Greek word for Passover as “Easter.” Notice it in Acts 12:4 KJ: “And when he [King Herod Agrippa I] had apprehended him [Apostle Peter], he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers [16 soldiers] to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.”
The Greek word translated Easter here is pascha, properly translated everywhere else in the Bible as Passover. The word pascha has only one meaning; it always means Passover. The word “pascha” was translated Passover in 28 other places in the KJV Bible. Instead of endorsing the pagan festival of Easter, this verse only proves that the Church was still observing the Jewish Passover ten years after the death of Christ!

Referring to this mistranslation, Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible says that “perhaps there never was a more unhappy, not to say absurd, translation than that in our text…..nor is there the slightest evidence that any such festival was observed at the time when the book of Acts was written.” Modern translations correctly translate this word “Passover.” However, some scholars believe the mistranslation of Acts 12:4 was an inconsistent anomaly by the translators to indicate the pagan festival of the fertility goddess Ishtar (pronounced Easter), celebrated by the evil King Herod, not the Christians.

The vast majority of theologians and secular historians agree that Easter and its traditions are deeply rooted in pagan religions. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, in its entry under “Easter,” states: “The term ‘Easter’ ….. is another form of Astarte, one of the titles of the Chaldean goddess, the queen of heaven. The festival of Pasch or Passover held by Christians in post-apostolic times was a continuation of the Jewish feast … The pagan festival of ‘Easter’ was introduced into the apostate Western religion, as part of the attempt to adapt pagan festivals to Christianity.”

Easter began long before the time of Christ. Easter was the celebration of a great mother goddess referred to as ‘the queen of heaven’ that was worshipped under various names in different countries over the centuries. She was known as Ishtar (Easter) in Assyria and Babylon and has strong similarities to the Egyptian Isis. In Rome, Syria and Lebanon Ishtar was renamed Astarte. She was also worshipped as Ashtoreth or Asherah, the wife of Baal, by the Canaanites, Philistines, and apostate Hebrews [1 Kings 11:5; 1 Samuel 31:10]. Ishtar was the Greek Aphrodite and the Roman Venus. All these goddesses were interchangeable, and personified fertility and rebirth.

Ashtoreth/Ishtar is mentioned in Scripture by the title of ‘queen of heaven’ in Jeremiah 7:18 and Jeremiah 44:17-19 & 25. Jeremiah continually condemned unfaithful Israelites who worshipped Astoreth, “the queen of heaven’ contrary to God’s laws. Ashtoreth worship involved immoral sexual orgies, perversion, and temple prostitution, and two of her fertility symbols were the rabbit and the egg. So “Easter” is found in the Bible, — as part of the pagan religion God condemned and punished Israel for!

Early Christians had nothing to do with Easter, instead they kept the Lord’s Supper as part of Passover and gave it a clearer meaning with the elements of bread and wine instituted by Jesus.

In the mid- 2nd century anti-Semitism began to take a firm hold on Gentile Christians and the churches in the cities of the empire sought to get rid of all Jewish influence within Christianity. As tensions increased, they began to reject Jewish beliefs whether they were biblically-based or not and joined forces with the Romans to separate themselves from the Jewish Passover.

But this did not happen immediately. It happened in 325 A.D. and was adopted on the basis of anti-Semitism and raw ecclesiastical power. The technically converted Gentile Christians were opposed to observing Passover on the same day as the Jewish Passover. The Roman Emperor Constantine and Christian Gentiles at large bitterly hated the Jews as a result of their constant struggle to be free of Roman control.

Therefore in 325 A.D., Constantine and the council [318 bishops] of Nicaea [Nii-key-ah; located in modern day Turkey;] exercised their political authority and unanimously decided that the Sabbath, which up until this time was observed by Christians and Jews on the 7th day [Friday sunset to Saturday sunset], was to be kept on Sundays throughout the Roman empire. The council changed the date of Passover from Nisan 14th at the time of the full moon [Between March 22nd to April 25th] to the Sunday following it in celebration of Jesus’ resurrection, in an effort to sever ties with the Jewish Passover still being observed by both Jew and Gentile Christians.

Constantine and the Council ordered the increasingly paganized churches to celebrate the resurrection of Christ on a Sunday to correspond with the pagan festival honoring the goddess of spring and fertility [Astarte pronounced Easter] in order to sever ties with the Jewish Sabbath. As a result, paganism and Christianity embraced and became a very different Church from that of the Book of Acts believers.
[After Constantine’s supposed conversion to Christianity and only 1 year after the Council of Nicaea, he drowned his wife and had his son murdered. He had his sister’s son flogged to death and his brother-in law strangled. He got baptized on his death bed.]

Easter is celebrated on the Sunday following Passover. If the Sunday following Passover falls later than April 25th, which is rare, Easter is celebrated the month before Passover rather than the Sunday following Passover. Rather than the day of Passover being a remembrance and celebration of God’s deliverance through His son, Christ Jesus, the focus became the celebration of His resurrection, contrary to the Biblical command of remembering His death.

Apostle Paul had commanded Christians to ‘provoke the Jews to jealousy’ with righteous living. Unfortunately, the Gentile Christians kept only half of that commandment; they provoked the Jews. Most Gentile Christians embraced the Sunday Sabbath which was the pagan day of worship of the Sun-god. They were not required to give up their pagan customs to honor the resurrection of Christ, and happily incorporated the eating of pork rather than lamb as a direct insult and mockery of the sacrificial lamb the Jews ate on Passover. The root of these changes were a deliberate exclusion and repudiation of anything Jewish. The very word ‘Passover’ had become increasingly distasteful and eventually the term Easter was adopted by the paganized church.

Many thousands of Christian Jews and Gentiles continued to observe God’s seventh-day Sabbath and the Passover on Nisan 14th commemorating Christ’s death instead of Easter Sunday in defiance of the Council of Nicaea. For centuries, they were systematically persecuted, accused of not being true believers and excommunicated from the church. The state approved churches of the Roman empire celebrated the counterfeit Easter holiday substituted for the Passover that Jesus, the apostles and the early Church observed.
Eventually, as the false pagan church grew in political influence, the death penalty was imposed on those who refused to comply, and seventh-day Sabbath keeping Christians were hunted down, tortured for sport and used as entertainment in the Coliseum.

Modern Easter Holiday

Our Modern Christianized pagan holiday of Easter has come to us through the Anglo-Saxon fertility rites of the goddess of spring time and fertility. The Anglo-Saxons [Germanic tribes who migrated to Great Britain in the 5th century] called her Eostre [Eee-stra], Scandinavians [Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland] called her Ostra [Oos-stra], and those who lived in the region that is now Germany knew her as Eastre [pronounced Easter]. Pagans typically used many different names for the same god or goddess.

The pagan goddess Eostre was closely linked with hare, which was a symbol of rebirth and resurrection. The hare eventually evolved over time to became a white rabbit or small field rabbit. The Anglo-Saxons make offerings of colored eggs to Eostre, and were symbols of fertility and new life. They were used at festival time in her honor and were placed at grave sites, probably as a charm of rebirth.

According to the British historian Bede [Bead], [an English monk, translator and scholar 673-735 BC] the Christianized pagan holiday of Easter is actually named after the Germanic fertility goddess named Eostre, who was worshipped in Northern Europe and the British Isles. She represented the sunrise, spring-time, the rebirth of life and fertility. Eventually the early name of E-a-s-t-r-e was changed to its modern spelling of Easter.

When the second century missionaries encountered these tribes, in order to add immense numbers to their membership rolls, they allowed their unregenerated converts to keep their pagan practices and celebrate their pagan festival of Eastre that happened to occur around the same time of year as the Resurrection of Christ, so the two celebrations blended into one.
Their pagan customs were simply relabeled ‘Christian’ and given a different symbolic meaning. Whereas the rabbit has never been given a specific Christian interpretation, the Christians related the broken shell of the egg as a symbol of the opening of Jesus’ tomb during his resurrection. They dyed the eggs red to mimic the blood of Christ shed on the cross.

When German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania Dutch country in the 1700’s, they brought the idea of an egg-laying Hare to America. America’s founders was aware that Easter, as well as Christmas, was a pagan festival, and for the first 200 years in the United States, only a few states, mostly in the Catholic strongholds of the South, celebrated it. Only after the Civil War did Easter begin to be accepted and it first became an American tradition in the 1870s.
The Pilgrims who settled in America were strict Puritans associated both Easter and Christian with paganism and idolatry, denounced and banned both holidays as Catholic tradition with no Scriptural justification to validate them. When either holiday fell on a Sunday, their solution was to preach a sermon that had no direct connection to the celebrations. Later, Presbyterians followed suit.

Easter Bunny, Eggs, Sunrise Services, Easter Parade and Lent

Rabbit & Eggs: Since ancient times, eggs and rabbits have been a pagan symbol of fertility, while spring has been a symbol of rebirth. The rabbit was a powerful pre-Christian fertility symbol because of their reputation to reproduce rapidly and in the pagan world were symbolic of lust, sexual prowess and reproduction.

The notion that the Earth itself was hatched from an egg was once widespread and appears in the creation myths of numerous cultures. In ancient Egypt and Persia decorated eggs were presented as gifts to friends to bring them fertility during the coming year. Both Egyptians and Greeks had also been known to place eggs at gravesides. Colored eggs and the Easter egg hunt were assimilated into Christian practices in the latter half of the 2nd century.

Easter egg hunt: The Bible makes no mention of a long-eared, short-tailed creature who delivers decorated eggs to well-behaved children on Easter Sunday; Nevertheless, by the 1680’s the Germans had converted the pagan hare into an egg-laying rabbit who deposited his brightly decorated eggs into nests that the children made. The male pregnancy and egg-laying aspects are either side effects of trying to lump the rabbit and egg symbols together, or rabbits were just more awesome back then!

In the 1800’s in Germany at Easter time the Germans introduced the Easter egg hunt. The first chocolate Easter egg was introduced in 1873 in England, and not too unlike Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny eventually expanded his deliveries to include chocolate, candy and gifts that became common place throughout Europe and America.

Sunrise services: On the unbiblical day of Easter Sunday, when professed Christians gather in the chilly dawn to sing hymns while facing east towards the rising sun, they are clearly not consciously worshipping the sun, yet their actions are barely indistinguishable from a pagan, regardless of the modern clothes they might be wearing and the modern automobiles they drove to the event.

Sunrise services originated from the pagan day of worship of the Sun-god. A very common practice in the Canaanite religion was performed on the first Sunday of the equinox [when the earth’s equator passes the center of the sun]. Pagan worshippers would face east to await the rising of the sun, which was the chief symbol of the sun god, Ba’al, who was Asherah’s consort.

In Ezekiel 8:14 & 16-18, God took Ezekiel in vision to the temple in Jerusalem where he saw the women weeping for Tammuz, a fertility god who brought life to the earth. God called this ‘detestable or an abomination’ in His sight, and the very next abomination He showed Ezekiel were apostate Israelites with their faces toward the east who were worshipping the rising sun. These sunrise services took place in the spring to worship the risen sun-god, Baal, Tammuz or Nimrod.

Tammuz was the husband of Ishtar [Astarte/Ashtoreth/Easter], and when he was killed by a wild boar at the age of 40, Ishtar designated a 40-day time of fasting and weeping. It was believed that the tears of Ishtar brought Tammuz back from the dead. On the first Sunday after the full moon a festival was celebrated and Ishtar decreed that because Tammuz had been killed by a wild pig, pork had to be sacrificed and eaten on that day. This is still the traditional Easter dinner even today….and now you know the rest of the story!

Lent: Search the scriptures diligently, from Old Testament to New, and you will find no mention of Jews or Christians observing an annual period of 40 days of fasting preceding the festival of the Passover, yet today a majority of the Christian world observes a 40-day period excluding Sundays called Lent, which precedes and ends on Easter Sunday. [Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Eastern Orthodox]

The word Lent is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning Spring, also the same word for “March” the month in which the majority of Lent falls. Since Easter always falls on a Sunday, Lent always begins on the 7th Wednesday before Easter, called Ash Wednesday, when observers are marked with ashes as a symbol of death and sorrow for sin.

Lent was a six-week progressive fast, in which people gave up first meat, then a different food item each week, until the week before Easter they were eating only bread and water. It is more common these days for believers to keep a portion of Lent from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, and surrender a particular vice such as favourite foods or smoking.

The justification for the practice of Lent is traditionally based on Jesus’ 40-day wilderness fast before His temptation by Satan. The problem with this explanation is it has nothing to actually do with Easter and is not in Scripture. However, a large majority of Scholars believe that the practice of ‘weeping for Tammuz’ is the actual origin of Lent. [Ezekiel 8:14] The 40 days of Lent symbolizing one day for each year of Tammuz’ life. Only following the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. did the length of Lent become fixed at forty days.

Easter Parade: Most people are familiar with the custom of having new clothes for Easter, but few know where the tradition sprang from. Easter is preceded by Lent, and at one time the same set of clothing was worn throughout the period of Lent, then discarded for a new outfit on Easter Sunday. It was an old Anglican belief that bad luck came from wearing old clothes on Easter.

What Will You Do?

What makes us think God approves of our modern Easter celebration honoring the goddess Easter any more than He did Israel when they worshipped Astoreth/the Queen of heaven? These are all the same festivals, separated only by time and culture.

The average Christian tries to make excuses like “Okay, I know Easter comes from paganism—but I’m not pagan! It might have been that a long time ago, but now we celebrate it in honor of Jesus!” The typical response goes like this: “Well, I don’t see it that way.”
That person who claims that the Bible is their final authority in all matters of faith and practice is making their personal opinion about Easter, more important than the Word of God. They really think opinions are the final authority. Matthew 7:18 says “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.”
Mark 7:13 NLT says, “And so you cancel the word of God in order to hand down your own tradition.” What better way can we think of to share the pagan meaning of our handed-down traditions than participating in the decorating of Easter eggs and Easter egg hunts?

Professed Christians everywhere rebel against the Word of God so they can keep their traditions. If a preacher stood up one morning in his pulpit and encouraged us to pray on prayer mats facing Mecca in honor of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we would be outraged because most of us know that to be an Islamic practice, but where we would reject the practices of the pagan religion of Islam, we have no problem accepting the pagan practices of Easter and Christmas.

Jesus said in Mark 7:9: “Full well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your own tradition” God has always commanded that people worship Him exactly as He has instructed! So did Christ.

This article was written by Lynette Hughes and I share her writing because she put together this article in a way that is easily understandable.