Easter...Eostre...Ishtar?

Easter (still called Passover by almost all non-English-speakers) is a paganized "strange fire" version of Passover and, in my opinion, nobody should be celebrating it as such.

However, this post is about the name, and not the date or the method.

I have yet to see any credible evidence that the word "Easter" has any connection to the word "Ishtar". If I recall correctly, a single, short statement by Bede, made long after the described festivals of Eostre had disappeared, is the sum total of evidence for that claim. And he didn't even claim that the Angles had renamed "Passover" to "Easter". He actually wrote that they had named a month after the goddess many centuries before and, since Passover was observed in that month, the name of the month had come to stand for the feast.

Maybe Eostre was the name of a pagan goddess and maybe it wasn't. The weekday names that we inherited from those people are definitely derived from pagan gods, so it seems likely that they followed the same pattern in naming the months. However, we aren't renaming our national holiday after Julius Caesar when we call it "July 4th" instead of "Independence Day," so the use of "Easter" as a label for "Passover" isn't in itself proof that the Angles renamed Passover in honor of a pagan deity or merged the feast of Eostre with the feast of Passover. It's much more likely that they took the entire adulterated Passover package directly from the Roman missionaries who had already hopelessly confused its observance with their own pagan religions.

I'd love to see an ancient manuscript, carving, or...something...dating from 500 that says "The Germanic peoples worship a deity they call Eostre, which is their version of the Greek Aphrodite and the Babylonian Ishtar and they now combine the feast of this goddess with that of Passover." But I don't think such a thing exists. A single statement hundreds of years removed from the event is worthless as evidence. Until such evidence is produced, all we have is speculation.

If you are judging someone based on their use of a pagan-derived month name while you continue to use pagan-derived day names, and if you are judging someone based on speculation without hard evidence...then you probably have bigger problems than they do.

And if your best reply to my skepticism is "Ditch the lies!!1! Stop worshiping Constantine!!!", then I'm just going to ignore you. If you have actual, primary source evidence, I welcome it. If you don't, then...are you claiming to be a prophet with divine knowledge of the past?

Update: Here's the original and only historical source for "Easter" coming from the name of a pagan goddess:

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rithe by the time-honoured name of the old observance.

Bede, The Reckoning of Time, "Chapter 15, The English Months"

Easter in a Few Other Languages

Pazko
Paske
Pasques
Paskha
Pascoa
Pasti
Pasg
Paskah
Pashke
Pasen
Pasqua

The exact languages aren't the point. The point is that only Germanic peoples and their converts use the name "Easter".

The rest of the world is fully aware that Easter is a counterfeit Passover. They didn't even bother changing the name.

The Timing of the Triumphal Entry, Last Supper, Crucifixion, and Resurrection

I set out to answer one simple question: Does the Feast of Firstfruits fall on the day after the weekly Sabbath of Unleavened Bread or on the day following the first High Sabbath of Unleavened Bread. I thought the question could be easily answered by verifying the translation of the two Torah passages that define this feast, but I quickly discovered that the question isn't so simple. The original Hebrew is ambiguous, and prominent rabbis debated the question thousands of years ago. Convinced that the Spring Feasts are prophetic of the events surrounding Yeshua's Crucifixion and Resurrection, I hoped the Gospels would have the answer. Unfortunately, they are also ambiguous.

There are three major events of the Passion Week that need to be placed on the monthly and weekly calendars before a definitive answer can be had.

1. The Triumphal Entry
2. The Crucifixion
3. The Resurrection

The traditional Roman Catholic chronology puts the Triumphal Entry on Sunday, the Crucifixion on Friday, and the Resurrection on the second Sunday. Most Protestants follow the Catholic tradition, however there is a minority opinion that the Crucifixion had to occur on Thursday in order to align with three other factors:

1. Yeshua promised to rise after three days and three nights.
2. The timing of the Feast of Firstfruits.
3. The timing of the presentation of the Passover Lamb.

Triumphal Entry

Many non-Catholic Christians and Messianics say Yeshua's entry into Jerusalem had to happen on 10 Nisan to fulfill the command in Exodus 12:3-6 that the Passover lamb must be presented for inspection on that date. However, the rabbis teach that this command only applied to the first Passover in Egypt and was not to be followed afterwards. It seems to me out of character for God to tie a sacred ritual to a single date in history for two reasons. First, all of the other Moedim are prophetic and are repeated annually. Second, although it might only be my own desire to fit data into patterns, God seems to be a God of patterns. What has happened before, will happen again. What happened to the fathers, will happen to the sons. For this reason, I side with the Christian tradition of placing Yeshua's Triumphal Entry on 10 Nisan. At least in my own mind, that settles the day on the monthly calendar, but what about the day of the week? The Torah only says 10 Nisan, so it will be on a different day each year. With a few minor exceptions Christians place this day on Sunday in the year of Yeshua's Crucifixion without regard to the date, but I found nothing in the Gospels to indicate the day of the week, so this is based purely on tradition and not Scripture.

Matthew and John tend to be more precise in their chronology than Mark and Luke, or at least they are more precise in their wording. John states that "Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany" (John 12:1). All of the Gospels and the Acts use the term "Passover" to refer not to the Passover of Torah (14 Nisan), but to the first day of Unleavened Bread (Nisan 15). According to a strict Greek calculation then, six days before the Passover would be 9 Nisan. If the fuzzy-count theory of Jewish days is used (see Resurrection section below), then this could be 10 Nisan, but certainly no earlier than 9 Nisan.

Paganism and the Doctrine of Balaam

Numbers 22:2-25:9
Micah 5:6-6:8
I Corinthians 1:20-31

Proverbs 26:2  As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.

There seems a discrepancy between the idea that we are created in God’s image to the extent that our words have creative force, that there is power in our prayers, and the opposing idea that a curse has no power unless it is deserved and that a prophet can speak neither blessing nor curse unless God allows it. However, there is truth on both sides if properly understood.

There's an old joke about scientists claiming to be able to create life from nothing. When God challenged the scientists, they took a handful of dirt with which to demonstrate their new technology. "Huh-uh," God said. "Get your own dirt."

We were created in God’s image, but we are not exact copies. The earthly tabernacle was a corruptible copy of the one in Heaven, the feast days are shadows of the reality that is the Messiah, and mankind is an imperfect, much scaled down replica of God. Unlike him, we cannot create something out of nothing by merely speaking. We need something on which to build. We are unable to get our own dirt, so to speak, so we have to make do with what we can find.

When Balaam tried to curse Israel, he failed because, as a prophet, he could only give what prophecies God gave him. His patron, Balak, understood the principle of Proverbs 26:2, that a curse undeserved has no effect, so he took Balaam to first one place and then another, thinking that a different perspective might give Balaam the hook he needed to make the curse stick. But he misunderstood the nature of a real prophet: true prophecy comes from God and no other.

If a prophet speaks truth, then his words are the words of God, and God can no more curse the righteous than could Balaam. Hence Balaam’s statement that “[YHWH] has not seen iniquity in Jacob, neither has He seen perverseness in Israel.” It was not that Israel had no sin at all, but that God had chosen to forgive them like a husband who chooses to overlook his wife’s flaws. From God’s point of view, Israel had no sin to which a curse could be attached.

Finding no fault in Israel, Balaam showed Balak how he might create a fault that God could not overlook by seducing Israel into idolatry. This is the “doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication.” (Revelation 2:14)

Eating “things sacrificed to idols” does not refer simply to eating meat from sacrificial animals, but to actively participating in the sacrifice. Those who teach God’s people that it is acceptable to engage in pagan rituals and abandon God’s law so long as their “hearts are in the right place” are today’s Balaam. They cause God’s people to commit sins that he cannot overlook, opening them to whatever curse the enemy might choose to throw.

Be careful when someone says to you that "God doesn't care if you do this or that if you're doing it in the right spirit." If it is something that God has commanded us not to do, then there is only one spirit in which you could possibly do it, and it isn't a "right" one.

Thou Shalt Not Rationalize Your Paganism

Deuteronomy 12:4 You shall not do so to YHWH your God.

God told Israel to completely destroy the Canaanites’ places and articles of worship, then He told them not to incorporate pagan elements into His religion.

For most of the last two thousand years, the Roman Catholic Church has made such assimilation an integral part of their evangelism, while most of the rest of the Church played along. We justify our disobedience to God by pointing to the numbers of people professing faith or being baptized.

Today, Christianity is so thoroughly infected with pagan imagery and practice that, like fish who can't see the water, we rarely even know it.

God understands how adaptability can be used to make the Church more seeker-friendly, yet He still commanded us not to compromise in this way. Easter eggs, jack-o-lanterns, Christmas trees, etc. All of those things were adopted from pagan religions, yet we keep doing them, thinking that we are pleasing God. “He knows my heart.”

Except that God specifically said, “Don’t do those things and say you are doing them for me.”