Speakeasy forum: I need some help here . . .

My Dad listens to a minister that say's Easter is based on pagan rituals and is only mentioned once in the bible and is misspelled . Should have been spelled Ishtar. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar . there's the info ...Digger

The only observance I know of that's commanded in the Bible record, for Christians, copies the old Jewish one, with an important substitution.

by Pastor Arnold Murray on Easter

It's from the Anglo-Saxon dawn/fertility goddess Eostre or sometimes spelled Ostara. Dawn is the sun in the eastern sky. I believe I heard we also get the word "estrus" from the same origins. Of course that refers to female fertility cycles. To me, that makes more sense than Ishtar or anything Babylonian.

It's not been unusual for pagan traditions to mingle with Christian ones. Many were celebrations of a sort that developed over time and couldn't have been truly influenced by who or whatever they worshiped. As people converted to Christian thinking, the object of their worship changed but many old customs just shifted to adapt to that object. Some don't like that and some think it's just peachy.

You'll find evidence that it was geographically based. You've learned about the eastern and western gothics...the Germanic tribes. Our own English language is heavily influenced by Latin and the Germanic languages. Babylonian...not so much. Our legal structure is, however, heavily influenced by it.

two very opposite reasons.

One was to help make new "converts" (often forcibly converted) more comfortable with the new religion Christianity.

The opposite was many converts used the incorporation of their familar rites into Christian ritual because secretly they still owed alligence to the old gods.

"And when he had apprehended [Peter], he cast him into prison, delivering him to four files of soldiers, to be kept, intending, after the pasch, to bring him forth to the people." An old word for "Passover", which is the underlying Greek and the correct thought. It's the KJV that says "Easter".
No longer for Christians, though. "Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new paste, as you are unleavened. For Christ our pasch [passover] is sacrificed." Ibid. As Paul explains elsewhere, in two chapters of Hebrews e.g., Christians are to memorialize Jesus' death as the ultimate victim. It's the eventual route to forgiveness of sins and the opportunity to learn not to commit any more.

Too much cruelty.

said a rather confused Japanese department store had a [fake] crucified Santa hanging overhead. 'Hey! If you can't do blasphemy right, don't do it at all!'