i wrote this essay hoping that these rumors and misinformation about easter can finally be definitively put to rest here... that probably won't happen...but i can always dream...
MYTHS AND REALITIES ABOUT EASTER
About the Timing of the Crucifixion
MYTH: Jesus died on a Wednesday, not on Good Friday.
REALITY: Jesus died on a Friday. The day was the Day of Preparation, the day before the Sabbath, according to Mark 15:42 and John 19:14,31,42. It has been claimed that this was the day of preparation for a special "high Sabbath" associated with the Passover festival and not the weekly Saturday Sabbath. However Jesus died on the 15th of Nisan according to the Hebrew calendar, since he had just held the Passover seder the night before, the night of the 14th of Nisan. The two special Passover Sabbaths took place on the first day or the 15th of Nisan, and the seventh day or the 21st of Nisan, according to Exodus 12:16, Leviticus 23:7-8, Numbers 28:17,25 and Deuteronomy 16:8. There was no special Sabbath associated with the Passover feast on the 16th of Nisan, the day after Jesus died. If the 15th of Nisan was a day of preparation for a Sabbath, it could have only been for the weekly Saturday Sabbath which happened to fall on the 16th of Nisan that year.
The real source of this myth is a misunderstanding of what was meant by the "three days and three nights" that Jesus spent in the tomb. In ancient Hebrew idiom, "three days and three nights" did not mean seventy-two hours. In fact seventy-two hours was the upper limit for what could constitute "three days and three nights." A "day and night" simply referred to the twenty-four hour timeframe when something took place, regardless of whether the entire twenty-four hour period was taken up by the action. If Jesus died on Friday, around the ninth hour or 3:00 PM as in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, and was buried before evening that day as in Matthew 27:57, Mark 15:42, and Luke 23:54, then the remaining few hours of Friday would have been counted as the first "day and night." The second "day and night" was Saturday, and when Jesus rose before dawn on Sunday morning he was already about twelve hours into the third "day and night." Friday, Saturday, and Sunday would have been counted as "three days and nights." If Jesus had died on a Wednesday, ancient Jews would have actually counted that as five days in the tomb!
MYTH: Jesus died at the same time as the Passover lambs were being slaughtered.
REALITY: This is an unbiblical tradition that is popular among some Christians, probably because it just seems so appropriate. In reality Jesus died around the ninth hour or 3:00 PM the day after the Passover seder, when the lambs would have been slaughtered at twilight as commanded in Exodus 12:6 and Deuteronomy 16:6. Although this tradition would seem fitting, it is biblically impossible.
About the Name of Easter
MYTH: Easter is named after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.
REALITY: Easter and Ishtar only sound alike. There is no etymological relationship between the two. Easter is named for the Germanic month when it takes place, Eosturmonath or "dawn month." Ishtar on the other hand was an Akkadian name meaning "she who waters, " referring to her original role as a sky goddess of rain that produced fertile harvests. Easter and Ishtar have about as much in common as "paraklete" and "parakeet."
MYTH: Easter is named after the Germanic goddess Eostre.
REALITY: It is not certain that a Germanic goddess named Eostre even existed. The only historical reference to this goddess is in Bede's "De Temporum Ratione," where he relates that Eosturmonath was named for a goddess called Eostre. Bede himself admitted that Eostre worship was extinct by his time and that he had personally never witnessed it, getting his information from hearsay instead, so the accuracy of his account is doubtful. In fact the widespread scholarly consensus today is that the name Eosturmonath actually comes from the Old Germanic word "eostarum," meaning "dawn," so that Eosturmonath is the "dawn month."
NOTE: Most cultures that celebrate Jesus' resurrection on this day do not even call it Easter. It is usually referred to as "Pascha" or some variation on that name, which is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew term "Pesach," referring to the Passover.
About Easter Customs
MYTH: The egg was a symbol of Ishtar, so Easter eggs have pagan origins.
REALITY: The egg was not a Babylonian symbol of Ishtar at all. Ishtar was represented by lions (for example on the Ishtar Gate in Babylon) and by eight-pointed stars representing the planet Venus. In reality the association of eggs with Easter comes from the fact that eggs were not eaten during the Lenten fast. Eggs were part of the celebration of Easter because they were naturally in surplus when the fast ended and it was permitted to eat them again. In this way Easter was like a reverse Shrove Tuesday. Over time the egg was given another meaning as a symbol of new life given by Jesus' resurrection.
MYTH: The rabbit was a symbol of Ishtar/Tammuz, so the Easter bunny has pagan origins.
REALITY: It is mistakenly assumed that because rabbits breed quickly they must be symbols of Ishtar, a fertility goddess. In fact neither Ishtar nor Tammuz were symbolized by rabbits in Babylonian culture. I have already mentioned the real symbols of Ishtar, and Tammuz was represented by sheep, fish, and birds with broken wings. The association between rabbits and eggs in springtime actually did not appear until the 1600s in the Protestant regions of Europe, starting with a case of mistaken identity. Plover birds commonly take over the nests of hares, and the discovery of plover eggs in hares' nests led to the tradition of a hare leaving behind eggs around Easter time.
MYTH: Eggs were dyed red in the blood of babies sacrificed to Ishtar, so painting Easter eggs has particularly wicked pagan origins.
REALITY: I have already shown that the egg was not a symbol of Ishtar. Furthermore as a fertility goddess Ishtar was worshipped through rites involving sexual intercourse, not human sacrifice. This is actually a very recent rumor, first appearing in 2001 in "The Mystery of Iniquity," a short book written by false teacher and self-proclaimed Messianic Jewish rabbi Michael Rood (on what can be called the "dark side" of the Hebrew Roots movement). Rood provides no citation for this claim and it is apparent that he just made it up. This misinformation found its way onto the Internet around 2005, and had begun to spread slowly by 2007, with the propagation of the rumor picking up dramatically in the past two or three years. The notion that Ishtar worship involved ritual human sacrifice seems to derive from a 1960s horror movie called "Blood Feast," where a psychopath sacrifices his victims to Ishtar, whom the filmmakers had clearly confused with the bloodthirsty Egyptian goddess Sekhmet.
In reality it is likely that the practice of dying Easter eggs red was a reference to the blood of Jesus. Several Christian traditions suggest miraculous origins for the red-colored eggs, but none of these are particularly credible.
About Nimrod and "Semiramis," often Mentioned in Debates about Easter's Origins
MYTH: Nimrod had a wife named Semiramis and a son named Tammuz, and all pagan practices originate from this family.
REALITY: There is no mention of Nimrod in any historical records outside of the Bible. Anything beyond what Scripture says about Nimrod is fiction or wild speculation.
Around 400 BC a Persian writer named Ctesias of Cnidus described a Babylonian king named Ninus and his wife Semiramis and their exploits about 1,800 years before his own time. (Ninus himself was a mythical king who is not mentioned in any of the exhaustive Mesopotamian king lists.) Ctesias' legend of Ninus was repeated and embellished by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st Century BC. Later a forger writing in the name of Pope Clement of Rome mistakenly identified the nonexistent king Ninus with the Biblical Nimrod and further embellished the tale with the claim that he had taught the Persians to worship fire. These notions were then collected and very greatly embellished by Alexander Hislop in his extremely inaccurate book "The Two Babylons." Hislop also claimed that Nimrod and Semiramis had a son named Tammuz. That claim is a total fabrication, since the son of Ninus and Semiramis was said to have been called Ninyas, not Tammuz, and since the mythological Tammuz was probably based on a semi-legendary king named Dumuzid, who had completely different origins from what Hislop claimed. Practically all of the rumors in circulation about Nimrod, Semiramis, Tammuz, and their supposed role in the origin of paganism can be traced back to Hislop's false speculations and imaginings.
The real "Semiramis" was the queen Shammuramat, wife of king Shamshi-Adad V of Assyria. She lived in the 9th Century BC, about 1,500 years too late to have had anything to do with Nimrod or the origins of paganism.
HAPPY EASTER!
