Happy Easter, Which is Not Named After Ishtar, Okay?
Department of Awful Facebook Memes
My unfavorite new Facebook meme is this bit of sillyness which has apparently been spotted everywhere from the feeds of my college friends to (allegedly) that of Richard Dawkins' Foundation for Reason and Science:



I immediately knew that this was a bit of nonsense for the simple reason that Easter is an English word. The Greeks and Romans called it Pascha, which is why Easter is Pasqua in Italian, Pascua in Spanish, and Paques in French. How exactly did the name of a Canaanite fertility goddess skip all the way to England from the Middle East without stopping in Rome or Byzantium?

Belle Jar has more:



Ishtar was the goddess of love, war and sex. These days she is particularly associated with sacred prostitution* (also known as temple prostitution), which, in the religions of the Ancient Near East, took on the form of every woman having to, at some point in her life, go to the temple of Ishtar and have sex with the first stranger who offered her money. Once a woman entered the temple of Ishtar for the purpose of sacred prostitution, she was not allowed to leave until she’d done the deed. I can’t imagine that sacred prostitution sex was ever very good sex, but hey, what do I know? Probably some people were pretty into it – I mean, if you can imagine it, someone’s made porn about it, right?

Anyway, the point I am trying to make here is that, yes, Ishtar was associated with fertility and sex. However, her symbols were the lion, the gate and the eight-pointed star; I can’t find any evidence of eggs or rabbits symbolically belonging to her. And Easter has nothing to do with her.

Most scholars believe that Easter gets its name from Eostre or Ostara, a Germanic pagan goddess. English and German are two of the very few languages that use some variation of the word Easter (or, in German, Ostern) as a name for this holiday. Most other European languages use one form or another of the Latin name for Easter, Pascha, which is derived from the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover.

. . . But at its roots Easter (which is pronounced Ishtar) was all about celebrating fertility and sex.

Look. Here’s the thing. Our Western Easter traditions incorporate a lot of elements from a bunch of different religious backgrounds. You can’t really say that it’s just about resurrection, or just about spring, or just about fertility and sex. You can’t pick one thread out of a tapestry and say, “Hey, now this particular strand is what this tapestry’s really about.” It doesn’t work that way; very few things in life do.

The fact is that the Ancient Romans were smart when it came to conquering. In their pagan days, they would absorb gods and goddesses from every religion they encountered into their own pantheon; when the Roman Empire became Christian, the Roman Catholic Church continued to do the same thing, in a manner of speaking.

And do you know why that worked so well? Because adaptability is a really, really good trait to have in terms of survival of the fittest (something I wish the present-day Catholic Church would remember). Scratch the surface of just about any Christian holiday, and you’ll find pagan elements, if not a downright pagan theme, underneath.

Know what else? Most Christians know this. Or, at least, most of the Christians that I’m friends with (which is, admittedly, a fairly small sampling). They know that Jesus wasn’t really born on December 25th, and they know that there were never any actual snakes in Ireland, and they know that rabbits and eggs are fertility symbols. But they don’t care, because they realize that religions evolve and change and that that’s actually a good thing, not a bad thing. The fact that many Christian saints are just re-imagined pagan gods and goddesses doesn’t alter their faith one iota; because faith isn’t about reason or sense, it’s about belief.

Look, go ahead and debate religion. Go ahead and tell Christians why what they believe is wrong. That’s totally fine and, in fact, I encourage it. A little debate and critical thinking are good for everyone. But do it intelligently. Get to know the Bible, so you actually know what you’re disagreeing with when you form an argument. Brush up on your theology so that you can explain why it’s so wrong. And have some compassion, for Christ’s sake – be polite and respectful when you enter into a debate, even when the person you’re debating with loses their cool. You want to prove that you’re better, more enlightened than Christians? Great, do it by remaining rational and level-headed in the face of someone who’s willing to stoop to personal attacks. To behave otherwise is to be just as bad as the people you’re debating.
The general rule of infographics and similar fare is that the more deliciously it skewers people you don't respect very much, the more likely it is to be a fake. Always good to consider before you click that "share" button.

Zion of Christ in dogma? Please elaborate, not sure what is being referenced there. Why would he have to be gay or gotten married? He already has a wife, the church. And he didn't need a mortal wife eg., a flesh and blood woman, for he wasn't here to reproduce. He was here to finalize one covenant, and give us another in place.

I can only talk about the theology since I don't actually have an opinion on this.

The hebrew messianic figure with which jesus is loosely associated is really derived as an extrapolation of old hebrew, pheonican, aramaic and early-greek scriptural representations of much earlier oral traditions within which the religion was once practised, well more of a system of government but that's basically the formative role of religion (to govern a peoples).

Essentially, at its core, the hebrew messianic figure of which xtians liken the jesus deity (or aspect thereof), is an ideogram of a conceptual statement written YHWH. This figure, YHWH is associated with elohim (literally 'to life'), which in good translation means 'god of strength' pentacostally. The hebrew term "YHWH elohim" is incorrectly translated in xtian bibles as "the LORD God".

It doesn't mean that at all. Never did.

YHWH is a person, it means literally 'military leader'. The degree of clear, demonstrable and obvious Platoic influence in the NT books which simply does not exist in earlier hebrew religion elicits the modern theological hypothesis that greek scholars of classically educated romans were attempting to utilize what was at the time an intriguing asiatic pagan mythology towards political agenda: to redirect an aristocratic focus in the roman world of conservative imperialism, towards a more fruitful endeavour of democratic reform. After all, it was the main difference between the romans and the greeks, and the romans had taken to educating their best and brightest in greece.

It's a bit like if Greenpeace got their hands on Wicca and started rewriting it as being all about saving the whales. So new generations intruigued or attracted to wicca would actually be supporting Greenpeace. Point being, white lie, good cause. But lie. It is definitely an out and out lie, lie and lie, no question. Simple research of primary source documentation with independent translation clears that up instantly.

Anyhoo, as controversial as the observation leads, the current theological understanding academically is that hebrew religion was originally pantheistic and not monotheistic at all, and Elohim is probably the closest word you're ever going to find to describe "god" concept, although it doesn't really mean that, and it's a feminine term, which would really annoy xtian pentacostals to the very core. YHWH is jesus sure, if you put him in a suit of shining armour and place him at the head of a huge army of israelites slaughtering their foes, as it is what the ideogram means.

In other words, the most original, primary source documentation of hebrew scriptures are not written in a phonetic language, and they don't translate very well into phonetic languages. And that, combined with subesequent political agendas involved, is the clear reason for obvious and in some cases entirely intentional mistranslations of a jewish governing system to become a xtian fairy tale.

Couple of simple examples: old-hebrew term for a foreign lord or knight, in xtian bibles mistranslated as giant or angel-born. The old-hebrew term for angel is actually mistranslated in xtian bibles about 50% of the time as devil, a word and concept which didn't actually exist prior to the 12th century by the way (it's a middle english word, no such thing in hebrew times). And the catholic term 'demon' is actually a mistranslation of a greek term that was used by rabbi in the 1st century to describe divine messengers.
There is no such thing as 'heaven' in any stretch of the imagination in the entirety of old-hebrew religion, and 'hell' which is actually a nordic term of the 7th century, loosely mistranslates the hebrew term 'sheol' which in fact means 'don't wind up destitute in a city whatever you do, your life will be very very bad', and it doesn't nor has it ever meant anything remotely otherworldly.
These fundamental xtian ideals are utter fictions. They just don't exist in the religion it claims to come from, at all, not in any way. Where they are found historically, is in the european rural pagan mythology of greco-roman times, not even slightly hebrew in origin.

It's all really nothing new. Same thing happened with egyptian revival. Their pagan religions were all but utterly wiped out by the end of the 1st century and experienced a few revivals over the next two millennia. But they were re-imagined innaccurately, and for example the pyramids went from bold examples of nationalist industrial potency in the face of any potential enemy, to 'doorways to the otherworld' which is utter rot. They were never that infantile, you'd could never accomplish such an undertaking if you were, and all empirical evidence infers the standing aforementioned hypothesis exclusively. Not magical vessels designed to perform magic, but intimidating monuments designed to intimidate. Clearly.
Compare a modern neo-egyptian pagan to a historical one and you'll find the old one laughing histerically at the new. That's how misinterpretation and ill-conception goes, it's the difference between the artist and their obsessed fans.