As Easter approached I began to see a number of Ishtar equals Easter
memes roll across my Facebook feed, as friends or acquaintances of mine with
pagan leanings decided to spill the hidden truth on the origins of Easter.
Indeed, it turns out that a Facebook page from The Richard Dawkins Foundation
for Reason and Science (Official) has had over 68,000 shares of its Ishtar
equals Easter meme and over 45,000 likes.
If you go to the Easter origins page,
you will see the meme and the basic claim: Easter is derived from the
Anglo-Saxon “Eostre” which is related to the Baylonian “Ishtar,” the Hebrew
“Ashtaroth” and the Greek “Astarte.” All of these names denote various
fertility goddesses. Nothing more is said beyond that, but I suspect that the
implication is that the Christian celebration of Easter is also simply the
transformed worship of a fertility goddess and so Easter is at root a
celebration of fertility, as seen in bunnies and eggs, though we think it is
about the rising from the dead of Jesus Christ. The
Richard Dawkins meme is a lot more explicit about this supposed connection,
arguing that "Easter (which is how you pronounce Ishtar) is all about
celebrating fertility and sex."
We need to get to the bottom of this. What is the truth
about the name “Easter”? What is its origin? What does it mean? How does it
relate to the origin of the Church’s celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from
the dead? Why did English speakers name the festival Easter? Is Easter just a
pagan goddess festival?
1) What is the truth
about the name “Easter”?
The truth about the word “Easter” is somewhat muddled. Over
at First
Things blog, Philip Jenkins has recently argued a position that had held
sway for centuries:
Astonishingly in retrospect, English
took the name Easter from a pagan goddess. We know this from the work of Bede,
who around 725 wrote his De Temporum Ratione. He records that
“Eostre-Month” was named after a goddess named Eostre, in whose
honor feasts were celebrated (quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et
cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit).
Bede’s claim has been challenged by recent scholarship,
basically because his mention of “Eostre” is the only occurrence from antiquity
or the middle ages. Still, many scholarly sources maintain Bede’s reference as
the most plausible explanation, including "Easter and its Cycle,” 10-13 in
the New Catholic Encyclopedia (E.
Johnson, T. Krosnicki, eds.; 2nd ed. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale
Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 Apr. 2013) and A. R. C. Leaney, "Easter”
in The Oxford Companion to the Bible (Bruce M. Metzger, Michael D.
Coogan, Oxford Biblical Studies Online. 02-Apr-2013). Jenkins believes
it to be the most likely and best explanation because Bede would still have
knowledge of pagan traditions and there would be no good reason to create such
a goddess. The other possibility, though, is that he just got it wrong.
A few years ago at
First Things, David T. Koyzis noted that
twentieth-century scholarship has
called into question Bede’s interpretation. There is still no general agreement
on the origin of the word, but it has been suggested that it may come, not from
the name of a goddess, but from eostarun, the Old High German word for
the dawn itself. (Our word east obviously has similar origins.) In fact
there are some remarkable similarities between the words for resurrection,
Easter and dawn in several Indo-European languages. The common
meaning underlying these words is a rising of some sort.
This explanation has not gained widespread acceptance, even
among those who reject Bede’s understanding of origins, and John F. Baldovin writes
that “the English name Easter, like the German Ostern, probably
derives from Eostur, the Norse word for the spring season, and not from Eostre,
the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess” (“Easter”
in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2579; Lindsay
Jones, ed.. Vol. 4. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005).
On the other hand, Manfred Lurker in "Ostara" (The
Routledge Dictionary of Gods and Goddesses, Devils and Demons.Routledge,2004. Routledge
Religion Online. Taylor & Francis.02 April 2013) brings a couple, or
perhaps all, of these theories together, writing that Easter is
a Germanic goddess who has given her
name to the Easter festival. She is identical with the Anglo-Saxon goddess
Eostra mentioned by the Venerable Bede. In name and function the goddess
parallels the Greek Eos and the Roman Aurora. She is the personification of the
rising sun, associated by the Germanic peoples not with a time of day (dawn)
but with a season — spring.
In this case, the explanation brings together a combination
of the goddess, the rising sun and Spring season theories.
There seem to be four possibilities for the origin of the
word Easter:
i) Anglo-Saxon goddess;
ii) The dawn, or rising of the sun;
iii) Spring season;
iv) A combination of two or three of these previous theories.
Lurker might have hit on something here, as goddesses and
gods in the ancient world tended to personify elements of nature and aspects of
human beings. It is possible that dawn and Spring were aspects of this goddess.
This makes me even more trust in the Venerable Bede, that Eostre was an
Anglo-Saxon, Germanic goddess, both because he was closer to the source and
because I do think that the inculturation of Christianity often made strong connections among the newly
converted to beloved traditions and ways of life.
2) How does it relate
to the origin of the Church’s celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead?
Does this mean that Christian celebration of Easter is
pagan? The basic answer is "no,” with some clarifications and additions.
First, it is important to remember that “Easter” and “Öster” are found only in
English and German and were necessarily late terms to describe the festival
because the celebration of Jesus' resurrection came much earlier than the conversion of the Germanic and
English speaking peoples.
Second, in the Gospels Jesus understood his own death in
the context of the Passover, whether it took place on the day of Passover (the
Synoptic Gospels: Matthew
26:2f and parr.) or the day before Passover (the Gospel of John: John 13; 18.28, 39;
19.23–37). Paul himself interprets Jesus as the Passover lamb for the
Christians in Corinth, saying, “Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a
new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been
sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast,
the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). The festival of Jesus’ passion and resurrection
was understood early on, both by the Gospels and by Paul, as a
new Passover.
Third, as a result, most language groups refer to “Easter”
with some form of a word related to Passover in Hebrew. John F. Baldovin (“Easter,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2579) writes,
In Romance languages the name for
Easter is taken from the Greek Pascha, which in turn is derived from the
Hebrew Pesaḥ (Passover). Thus Easter is the Christian equivalent of the
Jewish Passover, a spring feast of both harvest and deliverance from bondage.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia (2nd ed. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 2003) states in “Easter and its Cycle”
that
Another
ancient name that has become more common with the renewal of Biblical studies
and the liturgy is Pasch, from the Greek transliteration πάσχα of the Aramaic
word for the Hebrew pesach, passover. In the first three centuries Pasch
referred to the annual celebration of Christ's Passion and Death; from the end
of the 4th century it designated also the EASTER VIGIL; from the 5th century it
was reserved more for Easter itself.
That is, the earliest language used to describe and
understand Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection was taken from the Jewish
festival of Passover and the Hebrew language. This was translated into Greek by the time of the New Testament and forms of Pascha spread to most languages other than
English and German.
Fourth, Easter was the earliest of all Christian festivals
and the date of its celebration caused major problems for the early Church, all
of which centered on whether the feast should be celebrated on the Passover or
on the Sunday. Leaney ("Easter” in The
Oxford Companion to the Bible)
states clearly that
Easter is therefore the Christian
Passover, celebrated for some time on the night of fourteenth of the Jewish
month Nisan (Passover night) on whatever day of the week that date fell. This
custom continued long in Asia Minor (as in Celtic Britain), with those
maintaining it being called Quartodecimans (“fourteeners”), but in Rome Easter
was observed on a Sunday from a date that is difficult to determine but earlier
than 154 CE, when Polycarp of Smyrna, a Quartodeciman, on a visit discussed the
different observances with Anicetus, head of the Roman church.
Baldovin says that “gradually, however, it was observed
everywhere on Sunday, the day of Christ's resurrection. The Council of Nicaea
(325) prescribed that Easter should always be celebrated on the first Sunday
after the first full moon following the spring equinox” (Easter,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2579).
3) Why did English
speakers name the festival Easter?
It is clear that the origins of Easter are with the Jewish
festival of Passover from the beginning, so why did Anglo-Saxon and Germanic Christians
use the name Easter? I have hinted at it above by using the word “inculturation.”
I think whether one accepts Bede’s attribution of Eostre as a Spring goddess,
one must acknowledge that the name, whatever its origin, speaks to something
that these peoples felt comfortable with in their own traditions even after
conversion to Christianity. As Allen J.
Frantzen says in "Easter" (Anglo-Saxon Keywords. Blackwell
Publishing, 2012. Blackwell Reference Online. 02 April 2013), “the pagan
origins of the word Easter were not controversial in the Anglo-Saxon period” and
“the word itself connects Anglo-Saxon Christianity to the period before the
conversion.” A newly converted people maintained the language and images that made sense of their new religion for them and helped
them connect to Jesus' resurrection. There was a cultural generosity among these Christians and a religious confidence that did not begrudge welcoming some of the old culture amid the new religion.
Even more, as it is stated in "Easter and its Cycle"
in the New Catholic Encyclopedia (2nd
ed. Vol. 5. Detroit: Gale, 2003), “the Old Testament Passover feast joined
these themes {of salvation and deliverance} with those of a primitive spring
harvest feast in which the first fruits of grain and flock were offered to the
Lord.” So, if the early Christians joined the Christian Passover festival to a pagan
Spring festival it was, in some ways, an addition that brought the festival
back to its early roots.
4) Is Easter just a
pagan goddess festival?
As to whether the goddess Eostre is the same goddess in a
different name as Ishtar or Ashtaroth or Astarte it is important to keep in
mind that we still only have the one citation from Bede which refers to her. Is
this enough to make a linguistic connection with the other goddesses? There is
certainly a connection among all the near eastern goddesses, as a quick
examination will show. Gregory D. Alles and Robert S. Ellwood connect the
Canaanite mother of the gods Athirat, also known as Astarte, with the Mesopotamian
Ishtar and the biblical Ashtoreth ("Canaanite religion." World
Religions Online. Infobase Learning. Web. 2 Apr. 2013). These goddesses
were, among other things, goddesses of fertility. This goddess does make
appearances in the Old Testament, such as in 1 Kings 11:5 and 2 Kings 23:13,
and though she had some influence upon the Israelites, she was
ultimately rejected by the worship of the one God.
There is no way to know, with the scant evidence, whether
the Anglo-Saxon goddess is tied to the ancient worship of the near eastern
goddesses. Manfred Lurker, cited above, has connected her rather to the Greek Eos
and the Roman Aurora. More than that, there is no connection that can be made,
beyond being a Spring festival, with Passover and ancient goddess worship. It
is Passover which influenced the Christian understanding of what took place in
Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, not goddess worship. It was the
Christian experience of Jesus’ raised from the dead which directed them to
re-imagine Passover in this new language. They had enough confidence to borrow language from indigenous cultures in order to explain the story of Jesus’ resurrection, the story of Easter.
John W. Martens
I invite you to follow me on Twitter @Biblejunkies
This entry is cross-posted at America Magazine The Good Word
You might also want to see Rev. Bosco Peters piece The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Misinformation and Confusion?
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