Not having been taught in any Christian tradition, I have just recently noticed the parallel between spring - with all the new growth, the emergence of plants that seemed dead, the blossoming of all of nature,etc. - and the story of resurrection, i.e. Easter. It can’t be a coincidence that these two phenomena happen at the same time of year. Did the people who wrote the new testament create this overlap? What’s the straight dope on how this came to be?
Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s because the New Testament says that Jesus was executed during the Jewish Passover observance.
Which has its roots in the Spring Equinox celebrations.
The official position of Christians would be “it’s that time of year because that’s the time of year that Jesus’s passion happened”. Now, of course non-Christians don’t believe large parts of the story of Jesus, but it’s probably at least true that he existed and that he ended up getting executed by the Romans, and there had to have been some time of year when that happened.
Of course, a lot of the imagery and symbolism we associate with Easter, like bunnies and eggs, are because of the springtime association. And if one wanted to get really religious about it, one might say that God planned the whole thing so that it would take place in the spring, in the time of rebirth.
Sure but knowing that he probably existed and was executed for sedition and also knowing that it was a time of unrest in the area, it wouldn’t be a stretch to have had the arrest during the Passover season when the theme of freedom from bondage was in the air.
Also keep in mind that, in the Middle East, “springtime” (or other seasons) isn’t nearly as significant as it is in temperate climates. That’s why, for instance, the Muslims are able to get away with a calendar that shifts relative to the solar year.
Sure but the Passover Holiday existed at the time as did the Roman Spring Equinox Holiday (Hilaria).
Yep.
Maybe.
And for some reason we use the name “Easter” which comes from Ēostre, and all we know of that is one line from the Venerable Bede- from Wikipedia-
Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.
And that is ALL we know. No other mention in any ancient text.
In other words- no mention of eggs or bunnies or anything we now use for Easter Imagery.
Passover isn’t a function of Spring. It is from the Exodus plagues in Egypt. The Israelites put blood on their doorframes so the angles would pass over them and not kill the first born.
Thanks for the goysplaining. Now go back and read my entire post.
What if non-Israelites put blood on their doorframes? To not notice such transparent deception, the angles would have to be pretty obtuse.
It was a singular angle so, equilateral.
It is always the first full moon after the vernal equinox, so yes it is a function of Spring, although the event it commemorates wasn’t necessarily.
Except that never actually happened, right?
The Egyptians kept pretty good records (for agricultural reasons) and they don’t record any of this.
Religious syncretism (Christian in this case), the practice of folding other traditions into a religion. Combining the religious holiday for Jesus coming back to life and existing Spring celebrations about life returning would be pretty much inevitable given the meshing symbolism. Consider Easter eggs, for example; an ancient symbol of new life and thus spring, but also:
The egg is an ancient symbol of new life and rebirth.[190] In Christianity it became associated with Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection.[191] The custom of the Easter egg originated in the early Christian community of Mesopotamia, who stained eggs red in memory of the blood of Christ, shed at his crucifixion.[192][193] As such, for Christians, the Easter egg is a symbol of the empty tomb.[23][24] The oldest tradition is to use dyed chicken eggs.
Interesting where the custom of egg painting came from.
At any rate, arguments over the proper date of Easter go back to the 2nd century AD.
Not really. The records we have found are mostly Pharaohs lying or exaggerating or bragging about the great things they did with inscriptions on tombs and temples. We do have the The Amarna Letters, and a few papyri of things like moving stones for the Pyramid, etc. But hardly complete or unbiased.
Mind you- if there was an “Exodus” it was massively exaggerated .
However, this is all besides the point- the Idea behind Passover was certainly from the Jewish accounts of their history and religion.
The idea behind the divinity of the Pharoah is based upon their ancestor being Osiris, or was it Ptah? That likely didnt happen either. There are about a dozen early Pharaohs that possibly didnt exist (Scorpion for example). Does that mean the dynasties of Egypt didnt exist?
And at the Synod of Whitby, that debate had far reaching consequences.
There are three times that all Jews are supposed to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and Passover is one (Sukkot and Shavuot are the others). At these times of year, and especially in ancient times, Jerusalem would be crowded, and ripe for sedition.
That is not to say I necessarily believe there was ever a single person named Jesus who did even half the things recorded in the gospels. At most, I think he is a composite of a lot of itinerant preachers, and a few of them may have been rabble-rousers. I’m also pretty sure there were lots of arrests for sedition around the pilgrimage festivals. Possibly some of the arrested ended up crucified. Some of them were simply never seen again, and legends grew.
But considering that I have heard a number of hymns sung and sermons preached comparing the resurrection to plants regrowing or blossoming in the spring, the church certainly takes full advantage of anything it can.
I’ve also seen nativity scenes that were snowy.
One explanation I heard about Exodus was that the change of regime in Egypt after a war/invasion was such that the Egyptians became concerned about the number of ethnic foreigners accumulated in their midst doing the menial labour and started strongly discouraging them from remaining there. (Fortunately, not something that happens today). No slavery, no physical mass expulsion, the plagues allegedly could have coincided with the consequences of the eruption of Thera and resulting hardships an added economic impetus to force them out.
Without doubt, expanding Christianity adopted the typical pagan rituals are made them their own, the same is said for the winter solstice and Christmas. The locals loved their parties, and the missionary newcomers found it convenient to let the parties continue with a different slant, adopting symbols like spring renewal and yule trees as part of the celebrations. The situation with Easter may have been lucky(?) coincidence, but there’s no actual indication what date was the birth of Christ.
Honest question - how strong is the independent historical evidence that the execution of this individual actually occurred then, rather than having been added to the story after the fact as a detail to strengthen the rebirth symbolism supporting the movement as it grew around the individual after his execution?
My cynic’s view is that any sources written more than a few decades after the event are suspect as tainted by stories that just were too good and fitting to not get added to the telling as the movement grew.
It makes for a much more potent movement origin story than having occurred on Sukkot for example.
The only thing we have to go on in consistency. All the gospels agree on this, with no evidence that they were later edited when the much larger church was trying to clean up discrepancies in dogma. Supposedly Jesus arrived in Jerusalem to adoring crowds in time for passover celebrations. (Not my field of expertise, but wasn’t attendance at the Temple during the Passover celebration part of Jewish faith at the time?)
Large and rowdy crowds for a wandering preacher, especially for someone espousing Jewish religion over Roman law and order, and in opposition to the Temple heirarchy, was enough to make the authorities take note. Large crowd could easily get out of control. Then he went and started a riot and trashed the temple market. Since the High Priest had no authority to execute someone, they concocted the story of treason and took him to Pilate. Then he was crucified, and supposedly his death was accelerated to avoid leaving him to a lingering death (as most crucifixions were) on an important Sabbath.
The whole story hangs together better than, for example, the nativity - where there’s no evidence of a star to follow, that Herod ordered a massacre, or that there was a census in Palestine; there was one in Syria about eight years before but no requirement to “go to your city of birth to register”. that was apparently a later fiction designed to place Jesus’ birth in the City of David to ensure his legitimacy as a “king of the Jews” and saviour of his people.
Josephus does mention Jesus in passing, although there’s the belief that the passage was embellished to add the reference to his divinity.