Hide the Eggs From Jesus Day...

[Vishvavajra]

Only the KJV would be deceptive enough to treat the original text with such contempt by translating of the word "Passover" as "Easter". How insulting to the God who hates those who mix true worship with false worship. (2 Cor 6:14-18)

In Christ there is no Jew or Pagan (Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:11). Such purist distinctions are un-Christian and only serve to puff up the ego and build high wall between people who should understand that they are the same.

 

[JayJayDee]

Easter (cf. German Ostern) is the English name for Passover as celebrated by Christians. Its name seems to be etymologically related to the word east, suggesting the rising sun, perhaps the coming of spring and general rebirth. In that sense it's entirely appropriate.

As for eggs and rabbits, Easter is a celebration of life and its triumph over death, so symbols of life abound. They take the form of fertile biological life, even though "life" in Christian usage has a more esoteric meaning. There's nothing pagan about it. It's just that some people like to get up on their high horses and accuse everybody else of being decadent etc. while they're the only ones carrying on the "pure" tradition. But there's no evidence of pre-Christian Easter celebrations as such, so unless the very concept of life and fertility are inherently pagan (a stupid premise, if you ask me), there's nothing remotely sketchy about it.

Good grief...what a load of cods! Where did that information come from?.....link please.

Christians do not celebrate Passover...that was for Jews only. It had significance for them only.

The symbolism of the Passover Lamb was not lost on Jesus disciples however, who like Jesus were all Jewish. They celebrated the Passover because it was prescribed in their law like the Sabbath. Christians were not told to keep the Sabbath and they do not celebrate the Jewish Passover.

What Jesus commanded was to memorialise his death....not his resurrection and not his birth. We do not need to introduce pagan trappings to honor Christ....it is insulting to his Father to do so when exclusive worship was always demanded from his worshippers.

When Israel fell to worshipping the golden calf, they called it "a festival to the Lord". Did God accept it as such and ignore the pagan expression of their worship? The fact that he put them to death should be answer enough.

It was also included as part of their law that they were never to take it upon themselves to organize their own festivals after that. Whenever Israel was to hold a festival to their God, it was carefully prescribed in every detail by him. They were not free to add or subtract anything. This kept them from doing what Christendom has done.....incorporate pagan trappings to things God never told them to do in the first place. Easter is not really about the death of Christ...it is supposedly a celebration of his resurrection, yet the dawn service is a direct steal from the pagan sun worship. The hot cross buns go straight back to Babylon. You are obviously unaware of just how pagan the whole thing actually is. It is a far cry from what Jesus commanded as the simple solemn commemoration of his death.

 

[jeager106]

We hide the eggs so Jesus won't inseminate them.

Oh, that was plain nasty!

 

[jeager106]

But why are they hidden?

It's more fun for the kids to hunt for the goodies.
That way the little darlings will never know how they are being deceived by a pagan practice.
I doubt Jesus would have approved.
Many years ago I went to Easter dinner at a friends mansion. They were well off you see. 7K sq. f.t home, 5 baths, 6 bedrooms etc.
They hid plastic eggs with MONEY inside. I don't mean dimes either but $5 dollar bills up to a $50.00!
Hell I wanted to play but they wouldn't let me.

 

[Vishvavajra]

Good grief...what a load of cods! Where did that information come from?.....link please.

Christians do not celebrate Passover...that was for Jews only. It had significance for them only.

The symbolism of the Passover Lamb was not lost on Jesus disciples however, who like Jesus were all Jewish. They celebrated the Passover because it was prescribed in their law like the Sabbath. Christians were not told to keep the Sabbath and they do not celebrate the Jewish Passover.

No, they celebrate the Christian permutation of Passover, which is in English called Easter. It's still tied to Passover on the calendar, and the significance of the Jewish Passover, while reinterpreted, is still front and center. I just went to a Maundy Thursday service, in which Passover came up quite a bit. I imagine it will come up again on Sunday. I'm having a hard time believing that you really didn't understand what I meant there, but maybe I wasn't clear enough.

Easter is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar, and it's one that's pretty much universal to all sects and creeds, along with Christmas, so suggesting that Christians don't celebrate it would be bizarre. So that must not be what you're actually suggesting.

 

[JayJayDee]

No, they celebrate the Christian permutation of Passover, which is in English called Easter.

The word "Easter" is not in the original texts of the Bible...how can it be? It's the name of a pagan goddess of fertility, complete with her fertility emblems...rabbits and eggs. It's there in any Google search. You can't be serious?

The hot cross buns?

The tradition of baking bread marked with a cross is linked to paganism as well as Christianity. The pagan Saxons would bake cross buns at the beginning of spring in honour of the goddess Eostre - most likely being the origin of the name Easter. The cross represented the rebirth of the world after winter and the four quarters of the moon, as well as the four seasons and the wheel of life.

The Christians saw the Crucifixion in the cross bun and, as with many other pre-Christian traditions, replaced their pagan meaning with a Christian one - the resurrection of Christ at Easter.

The sunrise service is a direct take from pagan sun worship and lent has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus death either.

Jesus instituted a new covenant on the night of the Passover. This new covenant replaced the old covenant and in time, came to include Gentiles who were not under obligation to keep Jewish festivals and observances. Christ came to fulfill the law and to replace it with a new law.....the law of love. Now instead of following the written letter of the law, it was the spirit behind the law that now governed the consciences of those who became Christ's disciples. This law was written on hearts and it was spiritual circumcision that they underwent. A "Jew" was no longer one born into the nation but one who was adopted as a son of God and a "brother of Christ" anointed by God's holy spirit. "The Israel of God" were no longer exclusively Jewish. (Gal 6:16)

It's still tied to Passover on the calendar, and the significance of the Jewish Passover, while reinterpreted, is still front and center.

It is fitting that the Lord's supper falls on Passover night according to Nisan 14 on the Jewish calendar. Jesus was symbolised by the Passover Lamb....but Passover was an exclusively Jewish celebration in thanksgiving for the angel of death 'passing over' the homes of those who complied with the instruction to place the blood on their door posts back in Egypt.
We can all see the significance of the Lamb's blood saving those who were obedient.

The Christian arrangement was not given a specific name. It was originally simply called the Lord's supper in which the unleavened bread was used to symbolize Christ's flesh and the wine to stand for his blood and partaken of by those who were parties to the new covenant he instituted.
This commemoration is incumbent on all Christians, whereas the Passover was not incumbent on any but the Jews.

Christendom has a habit of transferring the date of their 4 day festival to the nearest Friday to Monday closest to the full moon of Nisan 14 (Sping equinox)... Whereas the date of the Passover itself was of significance to the Jews. It is also significant with the celebration of the memorial. Since we were never commanded to celebrate anything but the anniversary of the date of Christ's death, we are overstepping God's command to take it upon ourselves to go further. God's people in ancient time were never allowed to go "beyond what is written."

I just went to a Maundy Thursday service, in which Passover came up quite a bit. I imagine it will come up again on Sunday. I'm having a hard time believing that you really didn't understand what I meant there, but maybe I wasn't clear enough.

I am somewhat bemused by these excess things. Why celebrate this Maundy Thursday at all? Is there a command in scripture to do this....or is it just another thing thrown in by men as if the original command was somehow insufficient?

Since the Jewish "day" began at sundown, the day when Jesus celebrated the Lord's supper, was also the day he died.
There was no "Maundy Thursday" to celebrate.

It was going to be a Sabbath the following day, (Saturday) which also began at sundown, and Saturday is the seventh day of the week. This is why they could not prepare Christ's body for burial in the customary way until after the Sabbath was over. They would not have done so in the dark of night, so early the next day was when they found the tomb empty.

Easter is the most important holiday in the Christian calendar, and it's one that's pretty much universal to all sects and creeds, along with Christmas, so suggesting that Christians don't celebrate it would be bizarre.

You have probably been taught all your life that this is so.....I don't believe anything that Christendom teaches is correct. That is because Christendom is the product of the great apostasy that Jesus and his apostles foretold. When you examine what the Bible says and compare it to what the churches teach...you will not see many similarities at all.

So that must not be what you're actually suggesting.

Easter is not a Christian celebration and never was. That is what I am suggesting.

There was nothing to celebrate except the memorial of Christ's death....the rest....."Good Friday", "Easter Sunday" and all the other additions that were adopted from paganism in the early centuries......none of them are commanded in scripture and none of them honor God or his Christ....in fact they insult him.

 

[Vishvavajra]

The word "Easter" is not in the original texts of the Bible...how can it be? It's the name of a pagan goddess of fertility, complete with her fertility emblems...rabbits and eggs. It's there in any Google search. You can't be serious?

As I mentioned, the word "Bible" isn't in the text of any Bible, so clearly that's a pagan addition too, I guess. Your rubric is absurd.

As for its being the name of a goddess, there is exactly one source for that, and it's highly controversial. Nor is there a shred of evidence that rabbits and eggs featured in a specific festival in her honor. That's a case of people leaping to conclusions. Everything that Christians do at Easter can easily be explained as a natural cultural outgrowth of the Christian celebration, without positing links to hypothetical pagan festivals about which we have no direct evidence whatsoever.

The Christian arrangement was not given a specific name. It was originally simply called the Lord's supper in which the unleavened bread was used to symbolize Christ's flesh and the blood to stand for his blood and partaken of by those who were parties to the new covenant he instituted.
This commemoration is incumbent on all Christians, whereas the Passover was not incumbent on any but the Jews.

I can infer that you do not speak any languages other than English. If you spoke a non-Germanic language, you would know that in most of them the name for Easter is a variant of the Hebrew word for Passover, Pesach. For example, in Spanish it is Pascuas. Christians retained the name of the holiday from the very beginning.

Since we were never commanded to celebrate anything but the anniversary of the date of Christ's death, we are overstepping God's command to take it upon ourselves to go further. God's people in ancient time were never allowed to go "beyond what is written."

I am somewhat bemused by these excess things. Why celebrate this Maundy Thursday at all? Is there a command in scripture to do this....or is it just another thing thrown in by men as if the original command was somehow insufficient?

That's absurd, not how culture works, and not how Jesus or the early Christians worked either. The entire point of Jesus's teaching is going beyond what is written, to get to the true spirit of things. What you're on about is a very recent doctrinal contrivance that is specific to your brand of restorationist movement.

Human culture is a dynamic and living thing, not an embalmed corpse that people trot out every year to pour some more formaldehyde on. Maundy Thursday commemorates a specific set of events in the days leading up to Jesus's death, all of which are recounted in the Gospels. And, frankly, normal people don't need scriptural mandates to tell them to celebrate something that they feel is meaningful to them. Nor do they need your permission.

Since the Jewish "day" began at sundown, the day when Jesus celebrated the Lord's supper, was also the day he died.
There was no "Maundy Thursday" to celebrate.

We're not Jews and don't reckon days that way. There's nothing wrong with adapting things to the culture of the time and place in which people live. And if it gives people one more opportunity for remembrance and celebration, it's hard to imagine how that's a terrible thing. People don't have to celebrate any of this. They do so because they choose to, and because they possess the freedom to do so. And because they're carrying on a tradition that goes back a number of centuries (which is more than some people can honestly say). They don't require anyone's permission, least of all yours.

You have probably been taught all your life that this is so.....I don't believe anything that Christendom teaches is correct. That is because Christendom is the product of the great apostasy that Jesus and his apostles foretold. When you examine what the Bible says and compare it to what the churches teach...you will not see many similarities at all.

Don't make assumptions about my background. I was never indoctrinated into any church's particular worldview and still have reservations about the lot of them. I'm not the one here who has been trained to think a particular sect's ideas are the only correct way and that everyone else is deluded. Being a student of the classics with direct access to material from that period, I'm perfectly capable of looking at the evidence myself. For that reason, I don't find the modern revisionism of the various restorationist movements particularly impressive. I don't need any church or similar organization to tell me what was going on 2000 years ago.

Easter is not a Christian celebration and never was. That is what I am suggesting.

Sure, if by "Christian" you mean a fringe group that didn't even begin to form until the late 19th century. Most people aren't going to accept that definition and instead view Christianity as a much older phenomenon. Nearly two millennia old, in fact. If your little group wants to claim that they're the first real Christians in all that time, then I suppose you can do that. Just don't expect anyone to respect that claim, or to pretend that it's not patently absurd.

There was nothing to celebrate except the memorial of Christ's death....the rest....."Good Friday", "Easter Sunday" and all the other additions that were adopted from paganism in the early centuries......none of them are commanded in scripture and none of them honor God or his Christ....in fact they insult him.

There is no pagan Good Friday, no pagan Easter Sunday for you to point to. You're just making things up (or rather, the people who brainwashed you were). And really, if your god is insulted when people celebrate him, then he needs to get a life, as do his followers. This entire assertion of yours was concocted for no other purpose than to help certain people feel superior and puff up their egos by trashing the practices of others as illegitimate. That is unfortunately already the image that a lot of people have of religion, and this is not helping.

I'll remind you again of Paul's assertions, in two different epistles, that there is no longer any Jew or Pagan, for all are one in Christ. Paul spoke directly against this kind of divisive tribalism on multiple occasions, yet people who claim to bear the Christian banner fall into it time and time again, because they get lost in the trees and miss the forest, and their egos get the better of them. If they would stop trying to frame themselves as superior, exceptional, etc., they might actually come to understand the meaning of Christ. If not, then they never will.

 

[gnomon]

The word "Easter" is not in the original texts of the Bible...how can it be? It's the name of a pagan goddess of fertility, complete with her fertility emblems...rabbits and eggs. It's there in any Google search. You can't be serious?

The hot cross buns?

The tradition of baking bread marked with a cross is linked to paganism as well as Christianity. The pagan Saxons would bake cross buns at the beginning of spring in honour of the goddess Eostre - most likely being the origin of the name Easter. The cross represented the rebirth of the world after winter and the four quarters of the moon, as well as the four seasons and the wheel of life.

The Christians saw the Crucifixion in the cross bun and, as with many other pre-Christian traditions, replaced their pagan meaning with a Christian one - the resurrection of Christ at Easter.

The sunrise service is a direct take from pagan sun worship and lent has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus death either.

Jesus instituted a new covenant on the night of the Passover. This new covenant replaced the old covenant and in time, came to include Gentiles who were not under obligation to keep Jewish festivals and observances. Christ came to fulfill the law and to replace it with a new law.....the law of love. Now instead of following the written letter of the law, it was the spirit behind the law that now governed the consciences of those who became Christ's disciples. This law was written on hearts and it was spiritual circumcision that they underwent. A "Jew" was no longer one born into the nation but one who was adopted as a son of God and a "brother of Christ" anointed by God's holy spirit. "The Israel of God" were no longer exclusively Jewish. (Gal 6:16)



It is fitting that the Lord's supper falls on Passover night according to Nisan 14 on the Jewish calendar. Jesus was symbolised by the Passover Lamb....but Passover was an exclusively Jewish celebration in thanksgiving for the angel of death 'passing over' the homes of those who complied with the instruction to place the blood on their door posts back in Egypt.
We can all see the significance of the Lamb's blood saving those who were obedient.

The Christian arrangement was not given a specific name. It was originally simply called the Lord's supper in which the unleavened bread was used to symbolize Christ's flesh and the blood to stand for his blood and partaken of by those who were parties to the new covenant he instituted.
This commemoration is incumbent on all Christians, whereas the Passover was not incumbent on any but the Jews.

Christendom has a habit of transferring the date of their 4 day festival to the nearest Friday to Monday closest to the full moon of Nisan 14 (Sping equinox)... Whereas the date of the Passover itself was of significance to the Jews. It is also significant with the celebration of the memorial. Since we were never commanded to celebrate anything but the anniversary of the date of Christ's death, we are overstepping God's command to take it upon ourselves to go further. God's people in ancient time were never allowed to go "beyond what is written."



I am somewhat bemused by these excess things. Why celebrate this Maundy Thursday at all? Is there a command in scripture to do this....or is it just another thing thrown in by men as if the original command was somehow insufficient?

Since the Jewish "day" began at sundown, the day when Jesus celebrated the Lord's supper, was also the day he died.
There was no "Maundy Thursday" to celebrate.

It was going to be a Sabbath the following day, (Saturday) which also began at sundown, and Saturday is the seventh day of the week. This is why they could not prepare Christ's body for burial in the customary way until after the Sabbath was over. They would not have done so in the dark of night, so early the next day was when they found the tomb empty.



You have probably been taught all your life that this is so.....I don't believe anything that Christendom teaches is correct. That is because Christendom is the product of the great apostasy that Jesus and his apostles foretold. When you examine what the Bible says and compare it to what the churches teach...you will not see many similarities at all.



Easter is not a Christian celebration and never was. That is what I am suggesting.

There was nothing to celebrate except the memorial of Christ's death....the rest....."Good Friday", "Easter Sunday" and all the other additions that were adopted from paganism in the early centuries......none of them are commanded in scripture and none of them honor God or his Christ....in fact they insult him.

You do not understand cultural transition.

We hear this same crap from modern day pagans and Wiccans.

Namely that these traditions were not Christian in origin but were pagan!

Any human being who studies history and culture would understand that those Christians who began celebrating Easter, Christmas and numerous other traditions that had other names were in fact originally pagan. Namely that when non-Christian European tribes adopted Christianity they carried over there own traditions and made them Christian. The most idiotic claim you will hear is that the Roman Catholic Church, when Rome was still around or else under Charlemagne when the Franks created the Holy Roman Empire, supposedly enforced a perverted view of ancient non-Christian traditions.

Sorry, no. That doesn't fit what historians see. Numerous cultures adopted Christianity while maintaining their pre-Christian traditions and combined them. That's why we have Christmas trees. That's why Easter is the way it is. Strict Christian sects attempted to bring an end to these views, especially with the celebration of Christmas, but the majority of Christians maintained older cultural views that they had tied into their conversion. And who the **** are you to argue against them? I want an answer to that. Because the modern argument presented by wishful thinking spiritual believers attempting to portray religion for what it is not is getting rather aggravating. Gain an understanding!

So I find the entirety of your argument to absolutely foolish.

Actually, I find it stupid.

Seriously, after so many centuries of Christians holding Easter as an important celebration for some fool basing their claims on sheer ignorance to claim otherwise.....it's absolutely laughable. Even those of us who are not Christians recognize the sheer futility of you argument.

Try again.

edit: Seriously. Stating that some pagan belief exhibited some concept prior to their conversion to Christianity thus a particular concept wasn't held among the Christians.......you have to better. Much better in forming an argument against the fact that cultures are always in flux and that those pagans adopted through social evolution a concept that they imposed their own views among their newfound Christian beliefs. In other words.....you have not stated anything new or educational.