THE PAGAN WORSHIP OF EASTER
Reading from Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 1948, Volume 4, page 140, we find that
Easter is the Greatest Festival of the Christian Church, which commemorates
the resurrection of Jesus Christ which festival was named after the ancient
Anglo Saxon Goddess of Spring!
EASTER. The greatest festival of the Christian church commemorates the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a movable feast, that is, it is not always held on
the same date. The church council of Nicea (a.d. 325) decided that Easter should be
celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox
(March 21). Easter can come as early as March 22 or as late as April 25.
The name Easter comes from the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring,
Eostre or Ostara, in whose honor an annual spring festival was held. Some of
our Easter customs have come from this and other pre-Christian spring
festivals. Others come from the Passover feast of the Jews, observed in memory of
their deliverance from Egypt (see Passover). The word ''paschal,'' meaning
''pertaining to Easter,'' like the French word for Easter, Pâques, comes through the
Latin from the Hebrew name of the Passover.
Unger's Bible Dictionary, by Merrill F. Unger, 1957, page 283, goes on to
corroborate this fact, saying:
Easter (Gr. pascha, from Heb. pesah), the Passover, and so translated in
every passage excepting ''intending after Easter to bring him forth to the
people'' (Acts 12:4). In the earlier English versions Easter had been
frequently used as the translation of pascha. At the last revision Passover was
substituted in all passages but this. See Passover.
The word Easter is of Saxon origin, Eastra, the goddess of spring, in whose honor
sacrifices were offered about Passover time each year. By the 8th century
Anglo-Saxons had adopted the name to designate the celebration of Christ's
resurrection.
It is a fully documented historical fact that the day which was chosen by the
Christian Church to celebrate this resurrection, was a day which had been
celebrated by pagans from antiquity! Yes, the only difference between these
two celebrations, is the fact that its name was changed to veneer it with
Christian Respectability!
It is simply no secret that EASTER originated with the WORSHIP OF A PAGAN GODDESS!
This fact is presented almost every time one researches the word Easter.
Compton's Encyclopedia, 1956, Volume 4, says this about Easter:
''Many Easter customs come from the Old World...colored eggs and rabbits have
come from pagan antiquity as symbols of new life...our name 'Easter' comes from
'Eostre', an ancient Anglo Saxon goddess, originally of the dawn. In pagan
times an annual spring festival was held in her honor. Some Easter customs have
come from this and other pre-christian spring festivals.''
Reading about this Pre-Christian spring festival from Funk & Wagnall's Standard Reference Encyclopedia, 1962, Volume 8, page 2940, we learn:
Although Easter is a Christian festival, it embodies traditions of an ancient time
antedating the rise of Christianity. The origin of its name is lost in the dim
past; some scholars believe it probably is derived from Eastre, Anglo-Saxon name
of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated Eastre
monath, corresponding to April. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the
vernal equinox, and traditions associated with the festival survive in the
familiar Easter bunny, symbol of the fertile rabbit, and in the equally familiar
colored Easter eggs originally painted with gay hues to represent the sunlight
of spring.
Such festivals, and the myths and legends which explain their origin, abounded in
ancient religions. The Greek myth of the return of the earth-goddess Demeter from the
underworld to the light of day, symbolizing the resurrection of life in the spring
after the long hibernation of winter, had its counterpart, among many others, in the
Latin legend of Ceres and Persephone. The Phrygians believed that their all-powerful
deity went to sleep at the time of the winter solstice, and they performed ceremonies
at the spring equinox to awaken him with music and dancing. The universality of such
festivals and myths among ancient peoples has led some scholars to interpret the
resurrection of Christ as a mystical and exalted variant of fertility myths.
The Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Symbols, Part 1, page 487 tells us
more about this Spring Festival:
''It incorporates some of the ancient Spring Equinox ceremonies of sun worship
in which there were phallic rites and spring fires, and in which the deity or offering to
the deity was eaten...The festival is symbolized by an ascension Lily...a chick breaking
its shell, the colors white and green, the egg, spring flowers, and the Rabbit. The
name is related to Astarte, Ashtoreth, Eostre and Ishtar, goddess who visited
and rose from the underworld. Easter yields 'Enduring Eos'... 'Enduring Dawn'.''
Part of this spring festival centered around Phallic Rites. Collier's Encyclopedia, 1980, Volume 9, page 622, tells us of the Babylonian Ishtar Festival Phallic Rites:
The Ishtar Festivals were symbolical of Ishtar as the goddess of love or generation.
As the daughter of Sin, the moon god, she was the Mother Goddess who presided
over child birth; and women, in her honor, sacrificed their virginity on the feast day or
became temple prostitutes, their earnings being a source of revenue for the temple
priests and servants.
We learn about these Temple Prostitutes from The Interpreter's Dictionary of The Bible,
Volume 3, pages 933-934:
a. The roll of the sacred prostitute in the fertility cult. The prostitute who was an
official of the cult in ancient Palestine and nearby lands of biblical times exercised an
important function. This religion was predicated upon the belief that the processes of
nature were controlled by the relations between gods and goddesses. Projecting
their understanding of their own sexual activities, the worshipers of these
deities, through the use of imitative magic, engaged in sexual intercourse with
devotees of the shrine, in the belief that this would encourage the gods and
goddesses to do likewise. Only by sexual relations among the deities could
man's desire for increase in herds and fields, as well as in his own family, be
realized. In Palestine the gods Baal and Asherah were especially prominent (see
BAAL; ASHERAH; FERTILITY CULTS). These competed with Yahweh the God
of Israel and, in some cases, may have produced hybrid Yahweh-Baal cults. Attached
to the shrines of these cults were priests as well as prostitutes, both male and female.
Their chief service was sexual in nature, the offering of their bodies for ritual
purposes.
Sexual relations for ritual purposes was the ceremony for the Fertility Cults. The Interpreter's Dictionary, Volume 2, page 265 says:
FERTILITY CULTS. The oldest common feature of the religions of the
ancient Near East was the worship of a great mother-goddess, the
personification of fertility. Associated with her, usually as a consort, was a
young god who died and came to life again, like the vegetation which quickly
withers but blooms again. The manner of the young god's demise was variously
conceived in the myths: he was slain by another god, by wild animals, by reapers, by
self-emasculation, by burning, by drowning. In some variations of the theme, he simply
absconded. His absence produced infertility of the earth, of man, and of beast.
His consort mourned and searched for him. His return brought renewed
fertility and rejoicing.
In Mesopotamia the divine couple appear as Ishtar and Tammuz, in Egypt as Isis
and Osiris. Later in Asia Minor, the Magna Mater is Cybele and her young lover
is Attis. In Syria in the second millennium b.c., as seen in the Ugaritic myths, the
dying and rising god is Baal-Hadad, who is slain by Mot (Death) and mourned and
avenged by his sister/consort, the violent virgin Anath. In the Ugaritic myths there is
some confusion in the roles of the goddesses. The great mother-goddess Asherah,
the wife of the senescent chief god El, seems on the way to becoming the consort
of the rising young god Baal, with whom we find her associated in the O.T.
Ashtarte also appears in the Ugaritic myths, but she has a minor and undistinguished
role.
The O.T. furnishes abundant evidence as to the character of the religion of the land
into which the Israelites came. Fertility rites were practiced at the numerous shrines
which dotted the land, as well as at the major sanctuaries. The Israelites absorbed the
Canaanite ways and learned to identify their god with Baal, whose rains brought
fertility to the land. A characteristic feature of the fertility cult was sacral sexual
intercourse by priests and priestesses and other specially consecrated
persons, sacred prostitutes of both sexes, intended to emulate and stimulate
the deities who bestowed fertility.
The agricultural cult stressed the sacrifice or common meal in which the gods,
priests, and people partook. Wine was consumed in great quantity in thanksgiving
to Baal for the fertility of the vineyards. The wine also helped induce ecstatic frenzy,
which was climaxed by self-laceration, and sometimes even by self-emasculation.
Child-sacrifice was also a feature of the rites. It was not simply a cult of wine,
women, and song, but a matter of life and death in which the dearest things of life,
and life itself, were offered to ensure the
ongoing of life.
Reading on page 103 of The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop, 1959, we find that Easter and Ishtar are the same:
Then look at Easter. What means the term Easter itself? It bears its Chaldean origin
on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than ''Astarte'', one of the titles of
Beltis, ''The Queen of Heaven'' whose name, as ''pronounced'' by the people of
Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common use in this country.
That 'name', as found by Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is ''Ishtar''.
The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop tells us of the doctrines of Semiramis:
''She (Semiramis) taught that he (Nimrod the Babe) was a god-child; that he was
Nimrod, their leader reborn; that she and her child were divine. This story was
widely known in ancient Babylon and developed into a well established
worship. The Worship of The Mother and Child!
Numerous monuments of Babylon show the Goddess Mother Semiramis with her
child Tammuz in her arms.''
ISHTAR (pronounced EASTER) of Assyria was worshiped in Pagan Antiquity during her spring
festival! Collier's Encyclopedia, 1980, Volume 15, page 748, gives us this information:
Ishtar, goddess of love and war, the most important goddess of the
Sumero-Akkadian pantheon. Her name in Sumerian is Inanna (lady of heaven). She
was sister of the sun god Shamash and daughter of the moon god Sin. Ishtar was
equated with the planet Venus. Her symbol was a star inscribed in a circle. As
goddess of war, she was often represented sitting upon a lion. As goddess of
physical love, she was patron of the temple prostitutes. She was also considered
the merciful mother who intercedes with the gods on behalf of her worshipers.
Throughout Mesopotamian history she was worshiped under various names in many
cities; one of the chief centers of her cult was Uruk.
Astarte of Phoenicia was the offshoot of Ishtar of Assyria. To the Hebrews,
this abomination was known as Ashtoreth / Ashtoroth.
From Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 3, page 13, we read:
ASHTAROTH [Æ(terath] the plural of the Hebrew 'Ashto-reth, the
Phoenician-Canaanite goddess Astarte, deity of fertility, reproduction, and war.
The use of the plural form probably indicates a general designation for the collective
female deities of the Canaanites, just as the plural Baalim refer to the male deities.
Watson's Biblical and Archaeological Dictionary, 1833, tells us more about this
mother goddess, Ashtaroth:
ASHTAROTH, or ASTARTE, a goddess of the Zidonians. The word Ashtaroth
properly signifies flocks of sheep, or goats; and sometimes the grove, or woods,
because she was goddess of woods, and groves were her temples. In groves
consecrated to her, such lasciviousness was committed as rendered her worship
infamous. She was also called the queen of heaven; and sometimes her worship
is said to be that of ''the host of heaven.'' She was certainly represented in the
same manner as Isis, with cow's horns on her head, to denote the increase and
decrease of the moon. Cicero calls her the fourth Venus of the Syrians. She is
almost always joined with Baal, and is called a god, the scriptures having no particular
word to express a goddess.
It is believed that the moon was adored in this idol. Her temples generally
accompanied those of the sun; and while bloody sacrifices or human victims were
offered to Baal, bread, liquors, and perfumes were presented to Astarte. For her,
tables were prepared upon the flat terrace-roofs of houses, near gates, in porches,
and at crossways, on the first day of every month; and this was called by the Greeks,
Hecate's supper. Solomon, seduced by his foreign wives, introduced the worship of
Ashtaroth into Israel; but Jezebel, daughter of the king of Tyre, and wife to Ahab,
principally established her worship. She caused altars to be erected to this idol in
every part of Israel; and at one time four hundred priests attended the worship of
Ashtaroth, I Kings xviii. 7.
The Interpreter's Dictionary, Volume 3, page 975, tells us of Ishtar's role as The
Queen of Heaven:
Ishtar, the goddess of love and fertility, who was identified with the Venus Star
and is actually entitled ''Mistress of Heaven'' in the Amarna tablets. The difficulty is
that the Venus Star was regarded in Palestine as a male deity (see DAY STAR),
though the cult of the goddess Ishtar may have been introduced from Mesopotamia
under Manasseh. It is possible that Astarte, or ASHTORETH, the Canaanite
fertility-goddess, whose cult was well established in Palestine, had preserved more
traces of her astral character as the female counterpart of Athtar than the evidence of
the O.T. or the Ras Shamra texts indicates. The title ''Queen of Heaven'' is applied in
an Egyptian inscription from the Nineteenth Dynasty at Beth-shan to ''Antit,'' the
Canaanite fertility-goddess Anat, who is termed ''Queen of Heaven and Mistress
of the Gods.'' This is the most active goddess in the Ras Shamra Texts, but in
Palestine her functions seem to have been taken over largely by Ashtoreth.
We find this information about Ashtoreth from The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1979, Volume 1, pages 319-320:
ASHTORETH ash'te-reth [Heb. 'astoret. pl. 'astarôt; Gk. Astarte]. A goddess
of Canaan and Phoenicia whose name and cult were derived from Babylonia,
where Ishtar represented the evening and morning stars and was accordingly
androgynous in origin. Under Semitic influence, however, she became solely female,
although retaining a trace of her original character by standing on equal footing with
the male divinities. From Babylonia the worship of the goddess was carried to the
Semites of the West, and in most instances the feminine suffix was attached to her
name; where this was not the case the deity was regarded as a male. On the Moabite
Stone, for example, 'Ashtar is identified with Chemosh, and in the inscriptions of
southern Arabia 'Athtar is a god. On the other hand, in the name Atargatis (2 Macc.
12:26), 'Atar, without the feminine suffix, is identified with the goddess 'Athah or
'Athi (Gk. Gatis). The cult of the Greek Aphrodite in Cyprus was borrowed
from that of Ashtoreth; that the Greek name also is a modification of Ashtoreth is
doubtful. It is maintained, however, that the vowels of Heb. 'astoret were borrowed
from boset (''shame'') in order to indicate the abhorrence the Hebrew scribes felt
toward paganism and idolatry.
In Babylonia and Assyria Ishtar was the goddess of love and war. An old
Babylonian legend relates how the descent of Ishtar into Hades in search of her
dead husband Tammuz was followed by the cessation of marriage and birth in
both earth and heaven; and the temples of the goddess at Nineveh and Arbela,
around which the two cities afterward grew, were dedicated to her as the goddess of
war. As such she appeared to one of Ashurbanipal's seers and encouraged the
Assyrian king to march against Elam. The other goddesses of Babylonia, who were
little more than reflections of a god, tended to merge into Ishtar, who thus became a
type of the female divinity, a personification of the productive principle in nature,
and more especially the mother and creatress of mankind.
In Babylonia Ishtar was identified with Venus. Like Venus, Ishtar was the goddess
of erotic love and fertility. Her chief seat of worship was Uruk (Erech), where
prostitution was practiced in her name and she was served with immoral rites
by bands of men and women. In Assyria, where the warlike side of the goddess
was predominant, no such rites seem to have been practiced, and instead
prophetesses to whom she delivered oracles were attached to her temples.
From various Egyptian sources it appears that Astarte or Ashtoreth was highly
regarded in the Late Bronze Age.
Reading on pages 412-413 of Unger's Bible Dictionary, we find this information about
Ashtoreth-Astarte:
Ash'toreth (ash'to-reth), Astarte, a Canaanite goddess. In south Arabic the name is
found as 'Athtar (apparently from 'athara, to be fertile, to irrigate), a god identified
with the planet Venus. The name is cognate with Babylonian Ishtar, the goddess of
sensual love, maternity and fertility. Licentious worship was conducted in honor of her.
As Asherah and Anat of Ras Shamra she was the patroness of war as well as sex and
is sometimes identified with these goddesses. The Amarna Letters present Ashtoreth
as Ashtartu. In the Ras Shamra Tablets are found both the masculine form 'Athtar and
the feminine 'Athtart. Ashtoreth worship was early entrenched at Sidon (I Kings 11:5,
33; II Kings 23:13). Her polluting cult even presented a danger to early Israel (Judg.
2:13; 10:6). Solomon succumbed to her voluptuous worship (I Kings 11:5; II Kings
23:13). The peculiar vocalization Ashtoreth instead of the more primitive Ashtaroth is
evidently a deliberate alteration by the Hebrews to express their abhorrence for her
cult by giving her the vowels of their word for ''shame'' (bosheth). M. F. U.
The Interpreter's Dictionary, Volume 1, page 252 says:
The antipathy toward the Asherah on the part of the Hebrew leaders was due to the
fact that the goddess and the cult object of the same name were associated with
the fertility religion of a foreign people and as such involved a mythology and
a cultus which were obnoxious to the champions of Yahweh.
Unger's Bible Dictionary, page 412, gives us this information about Asherah:
Asherah (a-she'ra), plural, Asherim, a pagan goddess, who is found in the Ras
Shamra epic religious texts discovered at Ugarit in North Syria (1929-1937), as
Asherat, ''Lady of the Sea'' and consort of El. She was the chief goddess of Tyre in
the 15th century b.c. with the appellation Qudshu, ''holiness.'' In the Old Testament
Asherah appears as a goddess by the side of Baal, whose consort she evidently came
to be, at least among the Canaanites of the South. However, most Biblical references
to the name point clearly to some cult object of wood, which might be worshiped or
cut down and burned, and which was certainly the goddess' image (I Kings 15:13;
II Kings 21:7). Her prophets are mentioned (I Kings l8:19) and the vessels
used in her service referred to (II Kings 23:4).
Her cult object, whatever it was, was utterly detestable to faithful worshipers
of Yahweh (I Kings 15:13) and was set up on the high places beside the ''altars
of incense'' (hammanim) and the stone pillars (masseboth). Indeed, the stone pillars
seem to have represented the male god Baal (cf. Judg. 6:28), while the cult object of Ashera, probably a tree or pole, constituted a symbol of this goddess (See W. L. Reed's The Asherah in the Old Testament, Texas Christian University Press). But Asherah was
only one manifestation of a chief goddess of Western Asia, regarded now as the
wife, now as the sister of the principal Canaanite god El. Other names of this
deity were Ashtoreth (Astarte) and Anath. Frequently represented as a nude woman
bestride a lion with a lily in one hand and a serpent in the other, and styled
Qudshu ''the Holiness,'' that is, ''the Holy One'' in a perverted moral sense, she was
a divine courtesan. In the same sense the male prostitutes consecrated to the cult of
the Qudshu and prostituting themselves to her honor were styled qedishim,
''sodomites'' (Deut. 23:18; 1 Kings 14:24; 15:12; 22:46). Characteristically
Canaanite the lily symbolizes grace and sex appeal and the serpent fecundity
(W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, Baltimore, John Hopkins
Press, 1942, pages 68-94). At Byblos (Biblical Gebal) on the Mediterranean, north
of Sidon, a center dedicated to this goddess has been excavated. She and her
colleagues specialized in sex and war and her shrines were temples of legalized vice.
Her degraded cult offered a perpetual danger of pollution to Israel and must have
sunk to sordid depths as lust and murder were glamorized in Canaanite religion.
On page 413 of Unger's Bible Dictionary, we have found that Astarte is the Greek
name for the Hebrew Ashtoreth. From Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 3, page 97,
we find that Astarte-Ashtaroth is merely the Semitic Ishtar, which we have already learned
is pronounced Easter:
ASTARTE [aesta'rti], the Phoenician goddess of fertility and erotic love. The Greek
name, ''Astarte'' was derived from Semitic, ''Ishtar,'' ''Ashtoreth.''
Astarte was regarded in Classical antiquity as a moon goddess, perhaps in confusion with some other Semitic deity. In accordance with the literary traditions of the
Greco-Romans, Astarte was identified with Selene and Artemis, and more often with
Aphrodite. Among the Canaanites, Astarte, like her peer Anath, performed a major
function as goddess of fertility.
Egyptian iconography, however, portrayed Astarte in her role as a warlike goddess
massacring mankind, young and old. She is represented on plaques (dated
1700-1100 b.c.) as naked, in striking contrast to the modestly garbed Egyptian
goddesses. Edward J. Jurji
In Ephesus from primitive times, this MOTHER GODDESS had been called DIANA,
who was worshiped as the Goddess of Virginity and Motherhood. She was said to
represent the generative powers of nature, and so was pictured with many breasts.
A tower shaped crown, symbolizing the Tower of Babylon, adorned her head:
Reading from Bible Manners And Customs, by James M. Freeman, 1972, page 451,
we learn these facts about the Mother of all things:
''The circle round her head denotes the nimbus (sin circle) of her glory, the griffins
inside of which express its brilliancy. In her breasts are the twelve signs of the zodiac,
of which those seen in front are the ram, bull, twins, crab, and lion; they are divided by
the hours. Her necklace is composed of acorns, the primeval food of man. Lions are
on her arms to denote her power, and her hands are stretched out to show that she is
ready to receive all who come to her. Her body is covered with various breasts
and monsters, as sirens, sphinxes, and griffins, to show that she is the source of
nature, the mother of all things. Her head, hands, and feet are of bronze while the
rest of the statue is of alabaster to denote the ever-varying light and shade of the
moon's figure... Like Rhea, she was crowned with turrets, to denote her
dominion over terrestrial objects.''
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