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How pagan festival of Easter was used against the Sabbath

robycop3

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Easter came about when some missionaries sent to the German tribes on his border saw them observe a Spring rite they called "Ostern", complete with egg-laying bunnies & new bonnets for the ladies. The missionaries worked the story of Jesus' resurrection into that rite,and, "VOILA!" Easter was born! It had nothing to do with Ishtar, etc.

But history shows early Christians worshipped on SUNDAY, before the RC was organized.

But both the Roamin' Calf-Licks & Seven-Day-Adlibbers are quasi/pseudo-Christian cults.
 

Sai

Well-Known Member
Feel free to offer an actual refutation and or formulate an objection.


Saying something is "gobbledygook" A refutation

There’s waaay to much to go thru there. But I could tell that there was some kind of Peter worship going on. The Keys yo the Kingdom were used three times. (1) upper room, (2) Phillip’s Samaritans, and (3) Cornelius. No charge for this


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Walpole

Well-Known Member
There’s waaay to much to go thru there. But I could tell that there was some kind of Peter worship going on. The Keys yo the Kingdom were used three times. (1) upper room, (2) Phillip’s Samaritans, and (3) Cornelius. No charge for this


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You might want to actually READ posts before replying to them. Had you done so, you would have seen what I posted were quotations from PROTESTANT scholars affirming Peter is the rock of Matthew 16:18. There is not "some kind of Peter worship", just scholarship pointing out the obvious.
 

Sai

Well-Known Member
You might want to actually READ posts before replying to them. Had you done so, you would have seen what I posted were quotations from PROTESTANT scholars affirming Peter is the rock of Matthew 16:18. There is not "some kind of Peter worship", just scholarship pointing out the obvious.

Yeah probably right. Just waaay too long bro


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Walpole

Well-Known Member
Yeah probably right. Just waaay too long bro


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Next time you might want to actually read posts before interjecting, lest you embarrass yourself again, bro.

Those guys I quoted are on your "team." (They are Protestant scholars.)
 

Dave G

Well-Known Member
Except for the Roman and Alexandrian Christians, most Christians were observing the seventh-day Sabbath at least as late as the middle of the fifth century [A.D. 450].
How do you know this?
Source please.
In fact, no ecclesiastical writer before Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century even suggested that either Christ or His apostles instituted the observance of the first day of the week.
That's because He did not institute it.

He also did not institute Sabbath-keeping among Gentile believers, either.
What He instituted was Hebrews 10:25.
They decided to come together the first day of the week, which was when He rose again.
It was special to them.;)

The seventh day is one that the Lord instituted under the Law of Moses, which only had one purpose...
To drive the sinner to Christ.
Putting them back under the Law is dealt with in the book of Galatians.

As believers in Christ, we are not under the Law, we are under the grace and mercy of God... with Jesus Christ as the Mediator of a better covenant with better promises.
See the Book of Hebrews.
 

Sai

Well-Known Member
How do you know this?
Source please.

That's because He did not institute it.

He also did not institute Sabbath-keeping among Gentile believers, either.
What He instituted was Hebrews 10:25.
They decided to come together the first day of the week, which was when He rose again.
It was special to them.;)

The seventh day is one that the Lord instituted under the Law of Moses, which only had one purpose...
To drive the sinner to Christ.
Putting them back under the Law is dealt with in the book of Galatians.

As believers in Christ, we are not under the Law, we are under the grace and mercy of God... with Jesus Christ as the Mediator of a better covenant with better promises.
See the Book of Hebrews.

No they weren’t keeping sabbath. What happened was Augustine wanted to make religion more gentile this he replaced the Seder with Easter. Messianic jews have no problem with Christmas but due to this history, no Easter for them. You’re free to participate tho


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robycop3

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Hobie, you simply disregard Colossians 2, especially V. 16, as did your guru, Ellen G. White. And for the umpteenth time, there's simply NO SCRIPTURE commanding any GENTILE to observe the Saturday sabbath.
 

Dave G

Well-Known Member
You’re free to participate tho
With Easter?
I don't participate.

The reason being, the Lord said, "It is finished".
I don't commemorate His death over and over again except in the partaking of the bread and wine.
That is the only remembrance that I see Him instituting in the churches.

To me, "holidays" are a throwback to the Old Testament holy days that the Lord instructed Israel to keep under the Law of Moses, and Paul spoke of this in Galatians 4.
Instead of the Law, God's people are under grace and there is no requirement to celebrate holy days any longer.
On the same subject, I do not believe it is wrong to dedicate a day or even certain days to the Lord...

But I am not bound by that.
 
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A Random Poster

New Member
The opening post in this topic is so filled with errors that it would take forever to point them all out. Unfortunately, these errors tend to get repeated on the Internet, so I do wish to correct some of them, particularly those involving Easter.

Easter is a pagan festival that many are not aware of, or have not seen its origin from history. So then if Easter isn't really about Jesus, then what is it about? For the most part, you will find its secular culture celebrating the spring equinox, whilst religious culture celebrates what they consider the resurrection of Christ. However, if you go through history you will find that it is from the pagan celebrations or festivals consisting of the year's chief solar events (solstices and equinoxes) . While names for each festival vary among diverse pagan traditions, the solstice spring festival was allowed to creep in to the church and it made a acceptance of this ancient pagan practices, of what today is known as Easter.
Yes, it is true that other cultures had spring celebrations. The problem is, the Jews had Passover as a spring festival (and Passover is normally closer to the equinox than Easter is). Unless the claim is that Passover is of pagan origin, then Easter being close to the spring equinox means absolutely nothing.

All the things about Easter are pagan. Bunnies are a leftover from the pagan festival of Eostre, a great northern goddess whose symbol was a rabbit or hare.
We have no idea what the symbol of Eostre is, or if she even had symbols to begin with. There is only one source that mentions Eostre at all, which is Bede. Bede, in a discussion of the calendar that was used in England in the past in his work The Reckoning of Time, mentions that the month Eosturmonath (from which the word Easter comes from) was named after a goddess named Eostre. That is the only actual information we have about this goddess, and it says nothing of symbols or anything else. If anyone tries to make claims about what Eostre was goddess of, what her symbols were, or anything other than the fact a month was named after her, they are making things up.

In fact, it is not even clear that Bede's claim of Eosturmonath being named after a goddess named Eostre is accurate, because as noted, there is no indication of this goddess's existence anywhere else. It is thus possible Bede was in error about this, and there never was any such goddess known as Eostre, and the month was named after something else.

But perhaps most importantly of all, the first mention I have found that mentions the Easter Bunny is from the 17th century. That by itself debunks this entire idea that it was a "leftover" of some old pagan festival, as it arrived far too late for that to be plausible.

Exchange of eggs is an ancient custom, celebrated by many cultures. Hot cross buns are very ancient too. In the Old Testament we see the Israelites baking sweet buns for an idol, and religious leaders trying to put a stop to it. The early church clergy also tried to put a stop to sacred cakes being baked at Easter. In the end, in the face of defiant cake-baking pagan women, they gave up and it swept into the church as it fell into apostasy and turned against the true believers which it then persecuted.
The Old Testament doesn't say they made sweet buns; it said they made cakes. You're just inserting your own interpretation into it for no other reason than that it fits your narrative. Furthermore, these were offered to the idol, not simply consumed.

As for the claims of it being a practice that pagans brought in despite church resistance, I notice you do not cite any source for this claim. Surely if this was true, one should be able to cite a primary source, such as a document of the time mentioning it. I expect that, much like the claim of Eostre's symbol being a hare, this is something that is simply made up.

And, much like the Easter Bunny, we run into timeline problems. Hot cross buns, while older than the Easter Bunny, still arrive so late in history that one cannot ascribe them to pagan influence.

In 195 A.D., Victor, bishop of Rome, tried to force all of the eastern church leaders to keep the annual celebration of Christ's resurrection on Sunday. Of course, the bishops of the other churches protested, insisting that if done at all, the Biblical precedent for this was on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan [Ex 10,12,14, Lev 23:5].
There was not "insisting that if done at all" because everyone celebrated Christ's resurrection. There was some divergence in when they performed it, but no one had any dispute about celebrating it.

Furthermore, the protesting was not against the idea of celebrating Easter on Sunday. "The bishops of the other churches" could hardly protest against that given that they were doing that themselves, as the quote you later give from Eusebius demonstrates; it was only the Asian churches that did it on the 14th of Nisan, everywhere else always did it on Sunday. The opposition wasn't that they thought Easter shouldn't be celebrated or that it was wrong to only celebrate it on Sunday, but that they thought it was wrong to excommunicate the Asian churches over it.

The other Christian leaders saw the danger of worship according to the old pagan festivals and tried to stop it in what came to be known as Paschal/Easter controversies. We can find in history as the Quartodeciman controversy.

Eusebius of Caesarea (Church History, V, xxiii) wrote:
"A question of no small importance arose at that time [i.e. the time of Pope Victor I, about A.D. 190]. The dioceses of all Asia, according to an ancient tradition, held that the fourteenth day of the moon [of Nisan], on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should always be observed as the feast of the life-giving pasch (epi tes tou soteriou Pascha heortes), contending that the fast ought to end on that day, whatever day of the week it might happen to be. However it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this point, as they observed the practice, which from Apostolic tradition has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast on no other day than on that of the Resurrection of our Saviour."
It's very odd you hold up this quote as authoritative when it completely debunks your own argument. It writes that "the churches in the rest of the world" (that is, everywhere but Asia) had Easter be only on Sunday. As noted above, this obviously thwarts your claim that those churches had some kind of problem with celebrating Easter then and thought it should be on the fourteenth of Nisan. And it also states that the practice of Easter being on Sunday was "from Apostolic tradition" which of course also throws out your claims that it was some innovation that the Bishop of Rome came up with. You've done a fine job disproving your own argument with this quote you offer up as proof!

I should return to one point, regarding the claim that Easter is somehow pagan due to Eostre being a pagan goddess. This is only implied in the opening post, but as it gets uncritically repeated on the Internet, I might as well mention it. As noted, even if Bede is correct about where the name for Eosturmonath comes from, that would mean Easter is named after a month named after Eostre, which means Easter is about as related to Eostre as the Fourth of July is related to Julius Caesar. And more importantly, before the holiday ever made it to England to be celebrated, it was called Pascha (which comes from Passover) in Latin and Greek, and to this day still is Pascha in Latin and Greek. That Eusebius quote? That was originally in Greek, and he writes "Pascha" because that's the Greek word for the holiday. In fact, almost all languages derive their word for Easter from Passover--the fact English uses Easter is a quirk of the language that comes from the fact this already existing holiday happened to land in the month of Eosturmonath. So this proves nothing at all regarding the origin of the holiday, which, as has been demonstrated, was a long-held celebration by Christians and was not of pagan origin at all.
 

Hobie

Well-Known Member
The opening post in this topic is so filled with errors that it would take forever to point them all out. Unfortunately, these errors tend to get repeated on the Internet, so I do wish to correct some of them, particularly those involving Easter.


Yes, it is true that other cultures had spring celebrations. The problem is, the Jews had Passover as a spring festival (and Passover is normally closer to the equinox than Easter is). Unless the claim is that Passover is of pagan origin, then Easter being close to the spring equinox means absolutely nothing.


We have no idea what the symbol of Eostre is, or if she even had symbols to begin with. There is only one source that mentions Eostre at all, which is Bede. Bede, in a discussion of the calendar that was used in England in the past in his work The Reckoning of Time, mentions that the month Eosturmonath (from which the word Easter comes from) was named after a goddess named Eostre. That is the only actual information we have about this goddess, and it says nothing of symbols or anything else. If anyone tries to make claims about what Eostre was goddess of, what her symbols were, or anything other than the fact a month was named after her, they are making things up.

In fact, it is not even clear that Bede's claim of Eosturmonath being named after a goddess named Eostre is accurate, because as noted, there is no indication of this goddess's existence anywhere else. It is thus possible Bede was in error about this, and there never was any such goddess known as Eostre, and the month was named after something else.

But perhaps most importantly of all, the first mention I have found that mentions the Easter Bunny is from the 17th century. That by itself debunks this entire idea that it was a "leftover" of some old pagan festival, as it arrived far too late for that to be plausible.


The Old Testament doesn't say they made sweet buns; it said they made cakes. You're just inserting your own interpretation into it for no other reason than that it fits your narrative. Furthermore, these were offered to the idol, not simply consumed.

As for the claims of it being a practice that pagans brought in despite church resistance, I notice you do not cite any source for this claim. Surely if this was true, one should be able to cite a primary source, such as a document of the time mentioning it. I expect that, much like the claim of Eostre's symbol being a hare, this is something that is simply made up.

And, much like the Easter Bunny, we run into timeline problems. Hot cross buns, while older than the Easter Bunny, still arrive so late in history that one cannot ascribe them to pagan influence.


There was not "insisting that if done at all" because everyone celebrated Christ's resurrection. There was some divergence in when they performed it, but no one had any dispute about celebrating it.

Furthermore, the protesting was not against the idea of celebrating Easter on Sunday. "The bishops of the other churches" could hardly protest against that given that they were doing that themselves, as the quote you later give from Eusebius demonstrates; it was only the Asian churches that did it on the 14th of Nisan, everywhere else always did it on Sunday. The opposition wasn't that they thought Easter shouldn't be celebrated or that it was wrong to only celebrate it on Sunday, but that they thought it was wrong to excommunicate the Asian churches over it.


It's very odd you hold up this quote as authoritative when it completely debunks your own argument. It writes that "the churches in the rest of the world" (that is, everywhere but Asia) had Easter be only on Sunday. As noted above, this obviously thwarts your claim that those churches had some kind of problem with celebrating Easter then and thought it should be on the fourteenth of Nisan. And it also states that the practice of Easter being on Sunday was "from Apostolic tradition" which of course also throws out your claims that it was some innovation that the Bishop of Rome came up with. You've done a fine job disproving your own argument with this quote you offer up as proof!

I should return to one point, regarding the claim that Easter is somehow pagan due to Eostre being a pagan goddess. This is only implied in the opening post, but as it gets uncritically repeated on the Internet, I might as well mention it. As noted, even if Bede is correct about where the name for Eosturmonath comes from, that would mean Easter is named after a month named after Eostre, which means Easter is about as related to Eostre as the Fourth of July is related to Julius Caesar. And more importantly, before the holiday ever made it to England to be celebrated, it was called Pascha (which comes from Passover) in Latin and Greek, and to this day still is Pascha in Latin and Greek. That Eusebius quote? That was originally in Greek, and he writes "Pascha" because that's the Greek word for the holiday. In fact, almost all languages derive their word for Easter from Passover--the fact English uses Easter is a quirk of the language that comes from the fact this already existing holiday happened to land in the month of Eosturmonath. So this proves nothing at all regarding the origin of the holiday, which, as has been demonstrated, was a long-held celebration by Christians and was not of pagan origin at all.
It was the Pasch, never Easter as that is from another origin, not from scripture, that is clear, and to bring it in and use it to subvert what is from God, I think even you can see that.
 

Walter

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Yeah probably right. Just waaay too long bro


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If you're not going to spend the time to learn another Christian viewpoint, why are you even here? Just to proselytize I think.

I suspect you skim through posts that oppose you beliefs as evidenced by your ignoring direct refutation to your faulty beliefs
 

Sai

Well-Known Member
If you're not going to spend the time to learn another Christian viewpoint, why are you even here? Just to proselytize I think.

I suspect you skim through posts that oppose you beliefs as evidenced by your ignoring direct refutation to your faulty beliefs

Romans 15:1


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Walter

Well-Known Member
Site Supporter
Romans 15:1


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Again, what is you purpose here? You ignore posts that clearly destroy your assertions and post bible verses irrelevant to the question I posed you. You are only here to proselytize
 

Sai

Well-Known Member
Again, what is you purpose here? You ignore posts that clearly destroy your assertions and post bible verses irrelevant to the question I posed you. You are only here to proselytize

Easter is great. Have at it. All I said was that Jewish believers do not celebrate it due to its anti Semitic origins. Christmas has no objections from the Hebrew Christian community. I’m sorry if you’re offended by this. You don’t have to accept it. I do.
 
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