Sponsor |  usmjam | Apr 5, 2007 12:27pm | We all know that most of the Christian world will say "of course!"
But we also know that the secular world will say easter = bunnies, eggs, chocolates, etc.
What is the history of the "easter" feast? Is the word of Christian origin? Any reservations about this -holiday-, as some have regarding Christmas? |
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|  JRyanStevens | Apr 5, 2007 12:56pm | that's a pretty interesting question. I haven't researched it extensively (I still need to check the actual sources) but there seems to be evidence for both. The best I can tell, two groups of people were celebrating two separate events or holidays, and as the cultures merged, so did the holidays.
the actual way to date Easter shows obvious signs of culture mixture: "the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the vernal equinox."
Also, the link to bunnies, eggs, etc. has mixed supporting evidence. The theologian Bede who was writing around the early 700's (and who came up with the AD/BC dating system) says it is named for the anglo-saxon goddess Eostre. Historians disagree on this, and they also disagree on whether or not Eostre was associated with bunnies and eggs (I guess they disagree about everything). However, april is linked to Eostre through namesake (eosturmonath), but it's a lunar month and therefore can't directly be linked to the vernal equinox (which is why I guess some historians don't accept the spring-time association with the goddess) which is a set date in the julian calendar (march 21).
in any case, this is a fun research project. I'm already learning new info. for instance, I thought easter was merged with bunnies/spring celebration when constantine converted to christianity. there is a partial link, because he finalizes the method of dating easter in the council of nicaea; however, polycarp was arguing about the dating before constantine, so maybe the mixture was already occuring? this is something I'll need to look into more.
wikipedia has a ton of information as does answers.com. |
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Sponsor | | veryterry | Apr 5, 2007 5:40pm | | How exactly do Passover and Easter come together? |
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| | JRyanStevens | Apr 5, 2007 6:03pm | As best as I can tell, christians simply re-interpreted the holidays they were already celebrating and added new significance to them.
this is a passage from a history of christianity textbook I have:
"Two annual festivals--Passover and Pentecost--were appropriated from the Jewish year and invested with specifically Christian significance. The most important of these holy days was Passover (Hebrew Pesach; Greek Pascha), which Christians transposed from the Jewish day for remembering the liberation of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt into an annual recollection of the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. Although Sunday was set apart as a sacred day of the week according to the Roman solar calendar, the Christian day of Pascha, or Easter, was calculated according to the Jewish lunar calendar. In the eastern churches of Asia Minor, Easter was observed on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan, on whichever day of the week it happened to fall. In Rome and elsewhere, however, the sacred significance that Sunday had assumed in the week was combined with the Jewish lunar calendar to place Easter on the first Sunday after the 14th of Nisan. As a result of these different calculations, both claiming apostolic authority, Christians were divided over the correct date for celebrating Easter. This controversy over the dating of Easter continued to divide Christian communities in the Roman Empire."
--Christianity, A Global History (David Chidester), p. 61-2 |
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Sponsor | | TS-guy | Apr 5, 2007 7:15pm | | 4: that's a nice story if one thinks Jesus is a fictional person, but then that's another thread. |
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| | JRyanStevens | Apr 5, 2007 7:22pm | | what does a fictional jesus have to do with it? it's just an explanation of how easter came to be. this explanation would be the same whether or not jesus was fictional. |
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Sponsor | | TS-guy | Apr 5, 2007 7:25pm | | unlike christmas, the date of easter is supposed to be an actual occurance. so any explanation that maintains easter is a confluence of cultural events (like the dec 25 christmas is) would therfore deny that the actual occurance had indeed occured. |
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| | JRyanStevens | Apr 5, 2007 8:24pm | hmm, very interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that. but that still doesn't make total sense to me. an actual event could have occurred that some culture celebrates, and if another culture that celebrates different things at the same time of the year mixed with the first, then why would cultural confluence pose a problem for explaining an actual occurence?
the historical easter-event was supposedly concurrent with the jewish passover, which at least in part explains how a cultural merger could encompass an actual event.
another explanation could be that since the first christians were jewish, they simply reinvented their holidays in light of current, actual events. this would eliminate the confluence of cultures, making it more of a cultural alteration instead of a cultural mixing. |
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Sponsor | | TS-guy | Apr 5, 2007 8:57pm | hadn't the christians split with the Jews by the time the gospels were written? someone here knows the answer.
I always figured that if the Easter date were made up like the Christmas date, than Easter would always be on the first day of spring. but it's not. |
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| | JRyanStevens | Apr 5, 2007 10:28pm | it's weird to talk about the christians "splitting" from the jews. I think it's more like they spread from the jews. obviously most jews didn't convert, but the movement spread from the jews. I'm not sure at what point they no longer considered themselves jewish (if ever); to them, being a christian religiously could have been the same as being a jew culturally (obviously not a universal statement). if I remember right, the most dramatic schism was after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. the gospels were written decades after this.
the reason the date moves is because it's a mixture of calendars. the jewish calendar is lunisolar while our current calendar is purely solar. the western method of dating easter is a compromise between eastern and western cultures. the eastern cultures date it at passover, but the western cultures prefer it to fall on a sunday, so they date it the sunday after passover. in the jewish calendar, months start on the new moon, so passover would occur on a full moon (halfway through the month--the 15th of nisan). I'm not sure where the spring equinox enters into it. I've read most of the wikipedia articles, and my head is spinning. there's a bunch of BS about ecclesiastical tabulated lunar calendars and whatnot.
I had no idea dating easter was such a big deal. people have been arguing over this for millenia. the whole thing seems quite ridiculous. |
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Apologetics → Discussion