New Evangelizers Post: Easter Was Not A Pagan Holiday

                                           

 

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

For years, opponents of the faith like spread conspiracy theories about our most beloved Christian Holy Days. More commonly we find these ideas spread about Christmas. But social media has recently been circulating that Easter is actually a pagan holiday.

The argument goes that the word “Easter” is taken from the goddess Ishtar who used eggs and bunnies in her worship services. The idea is that Christians simply appropriated all of the pagan imagery for their own.

Like any good conspiracy theory, the most important thing is that it sounds true rather than actually being true.

There are a number of problems with this theory right off the bat. The biggest one is that “Easter” is what the Holy Day is called in English. Modern English as we know it really didn’t take shape until 16 centuries after the Resurrection. And even if it is derrived from a Middle-English word, this wouldn’t happen until the Dark Ages at the earliest. Even the secular Britannica online admits that the idea that the word “Easter” is of pagan origin is “a rather dubious presumption.”

In most of the world, the word used for “Easter” is taken from the Hebrew word “Pesach,” which means “Passover.” Holy Week changes from year to year because it follows the Jewish Passover each year. It is one of the reason why we call the death and resurrection of Christ the Paschal (I.e. Passover) Mystery.

The point is that the conspiracy only works if you ignore all the other languages of the world. In other words, you could only fall for this if you believe that Easter is called “Easter” all over the world, which it is not.

You can read the whole article here.