Easter origins

[Lord's Servant]

Where did the celebration of Easter came about ? Because I've heard conflicting accounts that some people claim its pagan which is purely laughable and I see no creditable evidence for it. Others says it has apostolic origin dating back to St. Paul and Peter while others date the celebration to a bishop of Rome called Soter I believe so and other people claim Easter dates back to the council of Nicaea. So where does Easter come from?

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Where did the celebration of Easter came about ? Because I've heard conflicting accounts that some people claim its pagan which is purely laughable and I see no creditable evidence for it. Others says it has apostolic origin dating back to St. Paul and Peter while others date the celebration to a bishop of Rome called Soter I believe so and other people claim Easter dates back to the council of Nicaea. So where does Easter come from?

I don't know about "easter" but I know where Pascha came from

 

[All4Christ]

Pascha is the fulfillment of the Passover, where Christ provided us a way to pass over death to eternal life. In the second century, you'll find the controversy of the Quartodecimians (sp?). Some Christians celebrated Pascha at the same time as the Jewish celebration of Passover. (I think it was something like Nissan 14? I'm sure @Yeshua HaDerekh could tell you the details!) Others celebrated it on the Lord's Day after Passover, the day of resurrection. St. Irenaeus talks about this controversy. In the Council of Nicea, they addressed this inconsistency of dating and determined an official date for the Christian Pascha, the celebrate of our Lord's death and resurrection - the fulfilled Passover (which is the literal interpretation of Pascha). The Western Church used the word Easter. I'm not sure why it was chosen, as I haven't studied that part much, but it was long after the feast's origins.

 

[FireDragon76]

I think its safe to say it started in the east and spread westward, as many traditions did.

"Easter" is a Germanic term of uncertain origin, though it probably has something to do with either the direction of the east or the goddess of the east. It's etymology in most other languages (including the Scandinavian ones) is from Pascua, the Latin word for Pascha/Pesach or Passover.

Common English or Germanic religious holidays having informal origins for their name is not unique to Easter. Christmas is also a vulgar, informal term for the Nativity.

 

[archer75]

Ishtar ---> Astarte ---> Easter
It's basically a fertility goddess.

Even if the word "Easter" or a word ancestral to it was once, in the distant past, associated with a fertility goddess, that would have nothing to do with the celebration of Easter / Pascha, which appears, as @All4Christ has said, to be a good bit older than the English language even in its oldest attested forms.

Further, most languages don't even use a word like "Easter" to denote Easter / Pascha.

Edit: It always helps to be careful with etymologies. 1) Available ones are often flat-out wrong and 2) even if well-justified, interpretation is still very tricky.

 

[Yeshua HaDerekh]

Passover was kept on the 14th by St. John and Polycarp in the East but the Resurrection celebrated on that Sunday (Yom HaBikkurim...Yeshua was the first fruits of those among the dead). He fulfilled Passover through His Death and Yom HaBikkurim through His Resurrection. 50 days later, Shavuot was fulfilled through Pentecost.

 

[Lord's Servant]

Sorry I meant pascha not Easter

 

[All4Christ]

It is important to remember that we are discussing the feast of our Lord's death and resurrection, which is unrelated to the English language (or any Germanic language for that matter). Let's make sure to discuss the origin of the feast itself, not where the name "Easter" came from.

 

[Lord's Servant]

I don't know about "easter" but I know where Pascha came from

Yes I meant pascha sorry

 

[All4Christ]

A related bit of information regarding the name of the feast across the world:

Hebrew: Passover ‏‏‫‫פסח‬‬ (Pesach)
French: Pâques from the Latin Pascha or Hebrew Pesach(passage)
Portuguese: Páscoa from the Latin Pascha or Hebrew Pesach (passage)
Spanish: Pascua from the Latin Pascha or Hebrew Pesach(passage)
Italian: Pasqua from the Latin Pascha or Hebrew Pesach(passage)

Examples of other languages whose name for Easter share the Hebrew etymology include, the Basque Pazko, Catalan Pasqua, Azerbaijan Pasxa, Hatian Pak, Danish and Norwegian Påske, Swedish Påsk, Gailic Pasg, Dutch Pasen, Indonesian and Malay Paskah, Icelandic Páskar, Turkish Paskalya and Romanian Pasti.
Easter and Passover: different holidays with a shared etymology

The Germanic language group has a unique etymology with the term.

 

[All4Christ]

All this said, I am going now to Presanctified Liturgy I love Lent!

 

[FireDragon76]

Yeah, it's important not to confuse etymology with the meaning of a word in its normal usage.

 

[Lord's Servant]

Okay What is the origin of annual celebration of pascha? Because I know the celebration of Sunday is apostolic and I know the origins of the word pascha and Easter but I'm interested in learning what is the origin of the festival is

 

[Lord's Servant]

A related bit of information regarding the name of the feast across the world:



The Germanic language group has a unique etymology with the term.

Thank you for the information

 

[seashale76]

Ishtar ---> Astarte ---> Easter
It's basically a fertility goddess.

The OP inquired about "Easter".

"The name “Easter” has its roots in ancient polytheistic religions (paganism). On this, all scholars agree. This name is never used in the original Scriptures, nor is it ever associated biblically with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For these reasons, we prefer to use the term “Resurrection Sunday” rather than “Easter” when referring to the annual Christian remembrance of Christ’s resurrection."
What is the origin of Easter? Where did “Easter” get its name? Where did the concept of an Easter egg and bunny originate? • ChristianAnswers.Net

Yeah- but no. I'm sorry you've fallen prey to those that simply make stuff up and peddle it as etymology and history, when it is neither. What you're now peddling for them is made up fables and lies.

 

[Cappadocious]

Easter does not come from Ishtar.

 

[All4Christ]

Okay What is the origin of annual celebration of pascha? Because I know the celebration of Sunday is apostolic and I know the origins of the word pascha and Easter but I'm interested in learning what is the origin of the festival is

The origin of the word Pascha is also the origin of the feast day. Here's is a sermon from ~165-195AD from St. Melitos, "On the Pasch": St. Melito's Sermon On the Pasch | Lenten Season. This shows the deep connection between the Christian festival and the Jewish Passover (Pesach).

Eusebius wrote this in the 2nd century:

"Synods and conferences of bishops were convened, and drew up a decree of the Church, in the form of letters addressed to Christians everywhere, that never on any day other than the Lord's Day should the mystery of the Lord's resurrection from the dead be celebrated, and on that day alone we should observe the end of the Paschal fast. "
-Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, 5.23

Note that the mystery of the Lord's resurrection was celebrated annually, and that there was a Paschal fast. Sunday already was established to be the Lord's Day all the way back in the NT. In the second century, the synods determined that everyone should celebrate the Paschal festival on the Lord's Day (Sunday).

From what I understand, the Christians who celebrated on Nissan 14 were more focused on Christ being the the Paschal lamb, while the others who celebrated on the Lord's Day were more focused on the resurrection. I think some who celebrated Pascha on Nissan 14 also celebrated the resurrection on Sunday. I could be wrong on that though.

The Origins of Pascha: An Orthodox Christian Reflects | Oblation: Liturgy and Life

 

[ViaCrucis]

<staff edit>

The problem of course is that the Easter -> Astarte/Ishtar thing is a false etymology with precisely zero evidence to support it. It's a claim that's been around for well over a century, but a repeated false claim is still a false claim.

The reality is that we actually do know the etymology of Easter. In the Venerable Bede's work On the Reckoning of Time he explains the names of the Anglo-Saxon months, one of these is Eosturmonath, which corresponds to the Latin month of April. According to Bede the name of the month comes from an old Anglo-Saxon goddess that used to be worshiped named Eostre, however in his own time it had taken on the name "Paschal month" on account that this is when the Christian Paschal Feast was celebrated; the Anglo-Saxons having long already converted to Christianity in Britain.

So what do we know of this Anglo-Saxon goddess? Nothing. Literally nothing. Bede is our one and only source that the Anglo-Saxons had such a goddess, no other record exists, nothing in the written record, nothing in the archeological record, there aren't any cultic sites or relics or any evidence of any kind anywhere on the planet outside of Bede's account; and this is literally the only thing he has to say about this particular goddess, her name.

It's entirely possible that Bede was in fact entirely mistaken, and that the Anglo-Saxons never had a goddess by the name of Eostre and that he was simply misinformed on the subject.

There is no connection between Eostre and Astarte or Ishtar other than that if you tilt your head at an angle and try really hard they can sort of, kind of sound almost vaguely similar or like they could be related. However Eostre was an obscure and otherwise entirely unknown Anglo-Saxon goddess worshiped in Britain at some point before Christianization and after the Anglo-Saxon conquests; Astarte and Ishtar are names for Semitic goddess worshiped in the Levant. This is like trying to say that Krishna and Christ are the same; it's a nonsense proposition.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[All4Christ]

This link is helpful: Touchstone Archives: Passover to Easter

 

[hedrick]

It seems to me that folks objecting to the name Easter should be using "first day," "second day," etc, and not Sunday, Monday, etc. At a certain point words just become words. How they got there doesn't matter.