In this eye-opening video, we delve deep into the scriptures to uncover the truth about Easter, a holiday celebrated by millions around the world. Many of us participate in Easter traditions without fully understanding their biblical origins. Join us as we embark on a journey to uncover the real meaning behind Easter.
From the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the symbolism of eggs and bunnies, we explore the historical and religious significance of Easter traditions. Through careful analysis of scripture and historical context, we separate fact from fiction, revealing surprising insights that challenge popular misconceptions.
Discover the true biblical narrative surrounding Easter and how it differs from modern-day practices. Prepare to be enlightened as we unravel centuries-old mysteries and shed light on the thick tapestry of Easter. Whether you’re a seasoned theologian or simply curious about the origins of Easter, this video offers valuable insights that will deepen your understanding of this famous Christian holiday.
Don’t miss out on this enlightening exploration of Easter’s biblical roots. Watch now and uncover the truth behind one of Christianity’s most cherished celebrations. Join us as we learn the God Honest Truth about Easter.
Transcript
Have you ever wanted to know more about Easter? Where it came from, the history behind it, various elements of Easter, what the Bible says? Well look no further than this teaching right here because we’re going to get into all about Easter and you’ll know Easter on a much deeper level at the end of this.
This teaching is going to be about the holiday of Easter. Think about what you know of Easter, how maybe you celebrate it in the past, how you celebrate it today, what you know about it.
And then keep that in mind as we go throughout this teaching because we’re going to delve into the scriptures, we’re going to delve into history, where it came from, all that good stuff. And hopefully you’ll know a whole bunch more about this holiday of Easter than you knew before you started this video. Now before we get started, I just want to let everyone know that if you go down below in the description, whether you’re on a video platform or an audio podcasting platform, in the description there’s going to be a link to the article post on our website or this Drash.
There you can find the on-demand video. You can find the Drash slides that you see here on your screen and go through those at your own pace. You’ll also find the notes that we took for this subject. There’s over 33 pages of notes just on the subject of Easter. And you’ll also find the transcript after the video gets uploaded as well. So go check that out either by going to GodHonestTruth.com yourself or more conveniently going down below in the description panel and clicking on the link for this article post.
So let’s take this like you are coming to this subject having no knowledge whatsoever and you’re asking yourself, well, what is Easter? Maybe you’ve never heard of it before, you don’t really know that much about it, so what is Easter? Let’s define that and explain it real quick, at least as far as most people understand it, the mainstream way of understanding what Easter is. Now from a secular perspective or a secular-defining statement, the Encyclopedia Americana describes Easter as being the Christian spring festival commemorating the resurrection, of course the resurrection of our Messiah as is stated in Scripture.
The Encyclopedia Britannica describes Easter as the annual festival observed throughout Christendom in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now if you want to take a more religious definition, explanation of it, you can look no further than the Catholic definition from the Catholic Encyclopedia. And they state, commemorating the slaying of the true Lamb of God and the resurrection of Christ, the cornerstone upon which faith is built, it is also the oldest feast of the Christian church as old as Christianity, the connecting link between the Old and New Testaments.
You can also look at Protestant definitions from somewhere like Christianity.com which states, Easter is one of the central holidays or holy days of Christianity. It honors the resurrection of Jesus three days after his death by crucifixion. Another Christian website, crosswalk.com, defines Easter as, Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the tomb on the third day after his crucifixion. So there is a general overview and definition of what Easter is in case you might not have known.
But there’s so much more that goes into this holiday of Easter. There are various elements that go into Easter as well. And here’s a list of just a few, actually. You have things like lambs, new outfits, Easter eggs, Easter bunnies, palm branches, chocolate candy, jelly beans, lilies, dogwood trees, hot cross buns, Paschal candles, and some churches and denominations do Easter candles or Paschal candles. And also the particular date of the year on which they calculate Easter to be.
We’ll get into that more here in just a minute when we get into the history of it. But these are some of the various elements that go along with the holiday of Easter or at least as we know it commonly. We won’t be able to get into all of these elements tonight for the sake of time, but we will get into a few. Now according to the mainstream understanding of Easter, the lambs are supposed to represent the Lamb of Yahweh, our Messiah, Yeshua himself.
And we can see this picture coming from scripture. For example, in John chapter 1 verse 29. On the next day, Yohanan saw Yeshua coming toward him and said, See the Lamb of Elohim who takes away the sin of the world. We even see this illustration going back into the Old Testament with the Feast of Passover. In Exodus chapter 12 verse 3. Speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, On the tenth day of this new moon, each one of them is to take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.
So we see this kind of coinciding with Passover, but Easter is supposed to be specifically about the Lamb of Yahweh, Yeshua himself. We also see another example of this illustration of Yeshua being the Lamb in Revelation 12 11. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their witness, and they did not love their lives to the death. And these are just a few of the verses. You can find many, many more, and there are many, many more in the notes that we took on GodHonestTruth.com.
Now there’s also the element of Easter eggs. According to YourDictionary.com, the eggshell symbolizes the tomb in which Jesus’ body was placed. Opening the egg represents his rising from the dead. From Crosswalk.com, a Christian website, they state, The connections I had to life and decided eggs could be a part of their celebration of Christ’s resurrection. Eggs were dyed red for joy and in memory of Christ’s blood. Of course, speaking about Christians, or certain Christians at certain points in time, when they adopted the use of the egg, they found that it had life and decided it could be a part, or I’m sorry, symbolizing the joy that they had in the memory of Christ’s blood.
Then we go on to Easter bunnies, or Easter rabbits, or Easter hares, depending on which part of the world you’re from. And according to Crosswalk.com again, the hare, or rabbit’s burrow, helped the animal’s adoption as part of Easter celebrations. Believers saw the rabbit coming out of its underground home as a symbol of Jesus coming out of the tomb. Then we’ve got palm branches in some areas of the world. They use these palm branches as an element of the celebration of Easter.
According to Christian.net, special palm branches carried on Palm Sunday are a symbol of the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. According to BibleStudyTools.com, when we use palm branches in our services, we can remember how Jesus conquered death for us to have a chance of salvation through him. And finally, the last one we’re going to explore for tonight’s DROSH is the element of the date of Easter that varies from year to year. But according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Sunday to be kept as Easter Day must necessarily occur after the vernal equinox.
And according to the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. So these are just a few of the various elements that go into the celebration of Easter as we celebrate it nowadays. And when I say we in this context, meaning the world as a whole, not any specific denomination or group or person. Yeah, these are just some of the elements that go into our celebration of Easter every year.
But how much do we really know about each of these elements? We went over a few of them and how they are perceived to be used as symbols in modern day observances. But how much do we really know about the history, where they came from, stuff like that? We’ll be getting into that later on. But as always, we need to base our doctrine and our faith and what we believe on the scriptures. So if we’re going to celebrate Easter and hold to Easter, we need to do it according to scripture, just like everything else.
So what does the Bible, what does scripture have to say about Easter? Well, we look in Acts chapter 12, verse 4, and it states here, And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison and delivered to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him, intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. Now the word used here for Easter is Strong’s G3957. Here is the Greek for you to look at if you are a nerd like that.
But we find this same Greek word, not just in the New Testament, we also find it back in the Tanakh or the Old Testament as well, if we look in the Septuagint. Exodus chapter 12, verse 27, we find this in the Septuagint, and if we cross-reference that with the Masoretic text, we find that the Hebrew word here is Strong’s H6453. So what is this Hebrew word that’s used here if you want to know the Hebrew behind it? Well this Strong’s H6453 is the Hebrew word Pesach, and this means Passover, and it always means Passover according to various lexicons and dictionaries, such as Strong’s dictionary, or Strong’s Accordance, it defines it as the, I’m sorry, used only technically of the Jewish Passover, Brown, Driver, Briggs, Sacrifice of the Passover, the Animal Victim of the Passover, or the Festival of the Passover.
Just saying this is a Hebrew lexicon defines it as a sparing immunity from penalty and calamity, hence, a sacrifice offered on account of the people, a Passover, prepare the sacrifice of the Passover, kill the Paschal Lamb, day of the Passover, 14th day of the month, Nisan, etc., etc. Jastrow’s Dictionary of the Targums, again, same thing, it means Passover Festival, Passover Sacrifice, Passover Meal, Klein’s Dictionary, same thing, Passover Festival, Passover Sacrifice, etc., etc. So, this word Pesach means Passover.
And remember, we cross-referenced that with the Greek word earlier. We look back in Exodus chapter 12, 27, that Greek word is Strong’s G3957, and most translations render this in the English correctly as Pesach or Passover. So, what does Strong’s G3957 actually mean? We read that in the King James earlier where they translated it as Easter. But is it really saying Easter there? According to Strong’s definition and concordance for 3957, the word is Pascha in Greek. Pascha.
Sound familiar? Well, it should, because the Greek word Pascha actually means Passover. And this is according, again, to Strong’s concordance to Thayer’s Greek lexicon, meaning the Paschal Sacrifice, meaning Passover, Paschal Lamb, Paschal Supper, Paschal Festival. Same thing with the Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament, meaning Passover, Passover Lamb, Lamb that Passes Over. From the Abbott-Smith manual Greek lexicon of the New Testament, Festival of Passover, Paschal Supper, Paschal Lamb, etc., etc. So this Greek word Pascha means Passover, not Easter.
In fact, when we look in various translations other than the King James, we see they all translate it correctly as Pesach or Passover, not Easter. That is a mistranslation in the King James. It should not be Easter. It should be Passover. And it’s weird because everywhere else that this word Pascha occurs in the King James version, they correctly translate it as Passover. It’s only here in Acts 12.4 where they translate it as Easter. In Matthew 26.2, they translate Pascha as Passover.
Same thing with John 18.39, 1 Corinthians 5.7, etc., etc. So this Greek word Pascha actually means Passover. And as you read throughout the B’rit Hadashah or New Testament, you see that the apostles and those who were with Yeshua and continued on after his death, burial, and resurrection, they continued to observe Pascha or Passover. So if they continued practicing Passover and celebrating Passover instead of Easter, how did the rest of the early church, what did they think about Passover? Did they celebrate Easter? Was it something new that came in after that? So some quotes on this subject about the early church and Passover or Easter.
So far, what we can see here from just one source, we’re going to go through a lot more, yes. But here we get the idea that the early church, those in the 1st century, 2nd century, they were still celebrating the Passover, they called it Pascha, and they celebrated it on the 14th of Nisan. That’s going to be important to remember for later on. But they added new elements to the Passover, such as the sacrifice of Yeshua and then celebrating the resurrection a few days after that.
From the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, since Christ’s passion and resurrection occurred at the time of the Jewish Passover, the first Jewish Christians probably transformed their Passover observance into a celebration of the central events of their new faith. In the early centuries, the annual observance was called the Pascha, the Greek word for Passover, and focused on Christ as the Paschal Lamb. So here we have more evidence that the early Christians continued celebrating Passover, but just also in remembrance of Yeshua’s sacrifice.
According to Irenaeus, when the blessed Polycarp was visiting in Rome in the time of Bishop Anicetus, they were at once well-inclined toward each other. They were not willing that any quarrel should arise between them upon this matter. Anicetus could not persuade Polycarp to forego the observance of his Pascha customs. For these things had been always observed by John the disciple of our Lord and by other apostles with whom Polycarp had been conversant. Nor on the other hand could Polycarp succeed in persuading Anicetus to keep Pascha in his way.
For Anicetusmaintained that he was bound to adhere to the usage of the presbyters who preceded him. And in this state of affairs, they held fellowship with each other. Now take just a moment, you need to go back and re-read this quotation from Irenaeus. But this is sort of eye-opening to show the progression throughout history, what comes down to us today as Easter. So at this point, when Polycarp, who was a disciple of John, when Polycarp went to Anicetus, there was this disagreement about how Pascha, or Passover at that time, should be celebrated.
What Polycarp was advocating for was the way he had learned it from the Apostle John. What Anasitis was advocating for was the traditions that had been handed down to him from those who came before him. But he was appealing to traditions and not to apostolic authority like Polycarp was. From the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary, by about 8300, most churches divided the original observance devoting Good Friday to the Crucifixion and Easter Sunday to the Resurrection. Now what day of the week Messiah was actually crucified on, that’s a discussion for a whole ‘nother day.
But we do know it was on Passover, and that’s the important thing to remember as we go throughout and examine each of these elements and the history of Easter. So we know that the very beginning, the very early church, continued to observe Passover. But as time went on, there was two different ways that were emerging. Probably more than that, but we can at least say there were two. And you can already see that by the middle of the 2nd century.
Here you can see in 8300 that it was pretty well established in a lot of churches, at least according to the Holman Illustrated Dictionary, that most people devoted Good Friday to the Crucifixion and then Easter Sunday to the Resurrection, which is pretty much what we have nowadays. Early on, there was also some dispute amongst scholars and researchers as to what the earliest Christians were actually celebrating. If they were actually celebrating the Crucifixion or if they were actually celebrating the Resurrection.
We could not find something definitive either way, but we do know that over the course of time, that what we know of as Easter today came to celebrate the Resurrection, not the Crucifixion. So further research needs to be done into that. That can be very enlightening. But what if we want to dive deeper into these subjects? We’ve learned what Scripture has to say about Easter, which we found out doesn’t mention Easter at all, just Passover. So we’ve also learned about what the early Christians thought about this particular time of year, that they also kept Passover, but then two different ways kind of developed.
Particularly on the dating for the celebration of the Resurrection. But what if we wanted to get into further examination on these various elements? We saw from the first part of the video how these different elements were described by main modern sources and what these modern sources thought these elements symbolized, such as lambs and eggs and rabbits and how the date was calculated, things like that. So it kind of brings to mind or begs the question, where did the day that we celebrate now or the Resurrection actually come from? Where did the day for Easter come from? Where did the day for Easter come from? Where did the name Easter come from? You’ll find out some enlightening stuff about that in just a moment.
What about Easter bunnies or Easter rabbits, Easter hares, whatever you want to call them? What about Easter eggs? Where did these various elements come from? Let’s explore that and let’s start with the dating for Easter. Now if we wanted to just throw everything that we know about Easter out the window and start afresh, how would we determine the date for Easter if we wanted to just redo the whole thing today? My suggestion would be to go to Scripture itself to determine when this celebration of Easter should occur.
And celebration being, if you want to do it on the, celebrate the crucifixion, then you can do it on one day. If you want to celebrate the resurrection, you do it on, of course, three days after that. But if we look in John chapter 19, verses 14 and 16, we see, And it was the preparation day of the Pesach week, and about the sixth hour, and Pilate said to the Yehudim, See your sovereign. At that time, then, Pilate delivered him to them to be impaled, and they took Yeshua and led him away.
First Corinthians chapter 15, verse 4, And that he was buried, and that he was raised the third day according to the Scriptures. Mark chapter 16, verses 1 through 2. And when the Sabbath was passed, Miriam from Magdala, and Miriam the mother of Jacob, and Shalomah bought spices to go and anoint him. And very early on day one of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. Okay. So, if we take this information and other information from Scripture, which tells us a lot of the same things, that he was crucified on Pesach, that he was in the tomb for three days and three nights, and that he arose on the first day of the week, what can we determine about that? Well, we can see that Pesach occurs on varying days depending on which year you are celebrating Passover on.
One year it’ll be one day of the week, next year it’ll be the next day of the week. So, we look at the calendar, the Hebrew calendar, find out when Pesach is, and that’s when we would celebrate the crucifixion. If we wanted to celebrate the resurrection, as Easter is supposed to be about, we would count three days and three nights after that, and that would be the day to celebrate the resurrection. But that’s not how Easter, the Easter date, is determined.
We look at the dates. This year is an exemplary date for this very subject. This year, Easter is celebrated on March 31st, Passover, Pesach, is celebrated on April 22nd. Pretty much a full month apart. So, if we’re celebrating the scriptural Messiah, the scriptural resurrection, the scriptural crucifixion, why are there such variances in dates? How did we get this far gone? How did we get this far apart in the celebration of Passover and the celebration of Easter? And this is not the only year that it’s happened.
If you look on your screen here, the same thing happened in 1986, 1989, 1994, 1997, 2005, 2008, and 2016, as well as this year, and it will happen again in the future. So, how did we get to all this? Well, let’s take some further examination into how exactly Easter, or the date for Easter, is calculated. According to Catholic.com, Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. If the first full moon occurs on the equinox, Easter is the following Sunday.
Thus, Easter can fall anywhere between March 22nd and April 25th. So, are they calculating Easter based on scripture? No. They’re basing it on the vernal equinox. That’s how they base the date for Easter. When you look all throughout scripture, think to yourself and what you know about scripture. How many days, how many events are calculated by using the equinox or the solstice? Zero. It’s not a biblical concept. Pagans, in their worship of their many gods, have these equinoxes and these solstices, and they put their holy days, or their high days, based on these equinoxes and these solstices.
But it’s not something you find in scripture. However, Catholicism did end up calculating the date of Easter based on the vernal equinox, the springtime equinox, and we’ll find out why that is coming up in just a moment. According to the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, in ancient minor, this question was not raised. The Jews strictly insisted that their festival should take place at the time of full moon, but beyond this, they attempted no accurate calculation. It was probably in Egypt that the vernal equinox and the next full moon were first taken into consideration as fixed points in the calculation of Easter.
And by first in Egypt, they’re meaning Alexandria. And a lot of things in the early centuries came out of Alexandria that were not good. Alexandria was a hotbed of Gnosticism and Platonism. And unfortunately, there was a lot of stuff you see back in those early days that were influenced that came out of Gnosticism and Platonism. Could this possibly be another insertion from that area and that culture into Christianity? Make your own decision. But we do know from evidence and facts that Easter, the celebration of the resurrection of our Messiah, is not based on scripture, is not based on Yahweh’s calendar.
Instead, it’s based on the equinox. As we saw earlier, this thing kind of progressed throughout time, where the earliest Christians were still celebrating Passover on the 14th, as scripture tells us to do. But then a second way come up, and there was a dispute, and at the Council of Nicaea, they finally set down what Easter is, how to celebrate it. They called it Pascha still at that time, even in 325. But they set down according, well, for the church, the church, as it was, how Easter, the date for Easter is to be determined, all that good stuff.
In their decrees, the Council ruled, the Council of Nicaea, that Easter must be celebrated by all throughout the world on the same Sunday, that this Sunday must follow the 14th day of the Paschal moon. This is not the Passover moon. They’re still referring to the vernal equinox moon. That the moon was to be accounted the Paschal moon, whose 14th day followed the spring equinox, and that some provision should be made, probably at the Church of Alexandria, as best skilled in astronomical calculations, for determining the proper date of Easter and communicating it to the rest of the world.
So this starts the dating for the calculation of Pascha, or what we now know as Easter, what’s come down to us as Easter anyways. Here in the Council of Nicaea in 325, and this is also really the beginning of the Catholic Church. So take that as you will, have your own opinion about that whole history, which is another subject. But we can see here, the Council of Nicaea finally decided to set this whole dispute about the date, to set it to rest.
And they decided it would be based on the vernal equinox. And before this, there was a controversy that was brewing over the date, when it should be, things like that. It was the Quartodeciman controversy, and you can look that up. And the Quartodecimans still held that they should celebrate Pascha on the 14th of Nisan. They were, because of the Council of Nicaea, finally set in stone that it’s going to be based on the vernal equinox and not the 14th of Nisan, that the Quartodecimans were determined and adjudicated as heretics.
And this Quartodeciman adherence lasted up until about the 5th century, but we don’t really have many of those left nowadays. But anyways, Council of Nicaea attempted to finalize the date for Pascha, or what’s come down to us now, as Easter, and we still use that same basis for the calculation of Easter nowadays. So why did they go with this different date than what we find in Scripture? We can get a really good clue out of that Council of Nicaea and what Constantine wrote in one of his letters to others.
We see here from the Catholic Encyclopedia that Constantine himself, writing to the churches after the Council of Nicaea, wrote, At this meeting the question concerning the most holy day of Easter was discussed, and it was resolved by the united judgment of all present that this feast ought to be kept by all and an eve placed on one and the same day. And first of all it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with the enormous sin, for we have received from our Savior a different way.
And I myself have undertaken that this decision should meet with the approval of your Sadducees in the hope that your wisdoms will gladly admit that practice which is observed at once in the city of Rome and in Africa, throughout Italy and in Egypt, with entire unity of judgment. Alexandria and seemingly throughout the rest of the Roman Empire, the Christians calculated the time of Easter for themselves, paying no attention to the Jews. So what is one of the biggest reasons that they discarded the 14th of Nisan is because of the Jews.
It’s because of at least a hint of anti-Semitism at this time, but unfortunately it stuck around even down to today. And because of this, the date of Easter is not biblically based, rather it’s based on the equinox, a pagan calendar, a pagan calculation. So that’s the date. What about the Easter name or the name Easter? When I first started studying this subject, a lot of things really opened my eyes to what’s going on here, and I was really educated, and one of the things that I came to understand that kind of blew my mind is that usually, nowadays, it’s only the English-speaking world that goes by the name Easter for this holiday.
In fact, just about every other culture in the world calls it some form of Pascha, coming from the Greek Pascha. You find the Hebrew word Pesach, you find the Greek word Pascha, in Latin, it’s also Pascha. In Portuguese, Romanian, Italian, Catalan, Spanish, even in Old English, it’s a variant form of Pascha. Only in English do you find the name Easter. In Polish, they call it Wielkanoc, if I’m saying that correctly. Anyways, that means great night, so take that as you will, but only the English-speaking peoples refer to this holiday as Easter.
So hopefully that was enlightening to you. We all know where Pascha comes from now. But where does the name Easter come from? Well, according to the Encyclopedia Americana, the term in Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon languages is derived from Ostara, the divinity of spring of the ancient Norsemen, who was welcomed in a festival of celebration on her annual return. In the Greek and Latin, and in the languages derived from them, the spring festival is called Pascha, Pasch, Paschua, Paschua, Pasch, etc., from the Chaldean word Pascha, the equivalent of the Hebrew Pesach.
To the Norsemen, the festival of the divinity of spring, which they called Ostara, or Easter, when it’s Easter, was especially the season of new birth. So this name Easter actually comes from a pagan goddess, the goddess of fertility, according to the Norsemen. According to YourDictionary.com, the word Easter comes from the pagan festival of Eostre, which paid tribute to the spring goddess Eostre. In fact, the month of April used to be called Eostremonath, Easter month, in the Old English calendar.
Early Christianity adopted the name of this festival, which had become synonymous with springtime and rebirth for its own Easter holiday. So they adopted the name of a pagan goddess for what’s supposed to be a biblical celebration of the resurrection of Yeshua. Just let that simmer for a moment. But yeah, we saw in Acts 12.4 in the King James, they translated that as Easter. Now if you go back and look in the first English translation, which was the Wycliffe, Wycliffe uses Ask to translate this in Acts 12.4.
But then you find in the Tyndale, both the Wycliffe and the Tyndale predate the King James translation, by the way. But it was in the Tyndale that Easter is also used, another mistranslation by Tyndale, and then a mistranslation by the King James into the word Easter. Now of course, the King James is pretty much just the Tyndale, it’s about 75-80% Tyndale. But most all modern translations nowadays understand what Pasch actually means. It doesn’t mean Easter, it means Passover.
But now we can see that the name Easter didn’t take hold until later on, but we know at least by the time of King James in 1611, that they’d already adopted Easter, the name Easter, for this holiday. So that’s where the name Easter comes from. So what about the Easter bunny or Easter rabbit or Easter hare, is that ever how you want to say it? Well according to yourdictionary.com, one theory for the origin of the Easter bunny comes from the pagan festival of Eostre.
As the goddess was traditionally represented by a rabbit, another symbol of fertility due to how quickly they reproduce, in 18th century German folklore, the rabbit, Oster-hase or Easter hare, laid eggs for children to discover on Easter morning. The tradition followed German immigrants to America where the Easter bunny became a mainstay of American Easter mornings, religious and non-religious alike. So again, the Easter bunny is another adoption from paganism. We have these elements nowadays of the Easter celebration, such as the date, the name, the Easter bunny, Easter eggs, and Easter is supposed to be about the resurrection of Yeshua, but how many people actually stop and think to themselves, where did these symbols and these customs come from? Do we go back in our Bible and look? Because when we do, we don’t find Easter bunnies in the Bible.
We don’t find Easter eggs in the Bible. These all had to come much later on from somewhere else, not the Bible. So start asking yourself, where did these things come from? We already saw where the date came from. We saw where the name Easter comes from. Now we’re starting to see where the Easter bunny comes from. Easter bunny comes from the spring pagan goddess named Eostre, whose name also lends itself to the name Easter. But according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Easter rabbit lays the eggs for which reason they are hidden in a nest or in the garden.
The rabbit is a pagan symbol and has always been an emblem of fertility. And it’s been a pagan emblem of fertility even before these elements were brought into the celebration of Easter. According to crosswalk.com, a Christian website, Dating as far back as the Anglo-Saxon period, the idea of the Easter bunny evolved from a pagan deity to a rabbit that leaves treats for all the good boys and girls. The Easter bunny origin, however, can likely be traced back to the pre-Christian, otherwise known as pagan, the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon era, where pagans would worship a deity that took the form of a rabbit, Eostre.
Known as the goddess of springtime or dawn, Easter, or sometimes seen as Eostre or Easter, is associated with rabbits, pastels, and springtime celebrations. Similar to Christmas and Halloween, Christians attempted to blend elements of pagan religion with Christian tradition in order to make the message of Christianity more palpable to those of other religions. Strictly speaking, the Easter bunny doesn’t directly have much to do with Jesus. Nowhere in the Bible do we see a rabbit of any sort appear in the Easter narrative and we don’t really see any rabbit imagery in general in the Bible.
That’s from the Christian website crosswalk.com. So even they have enough honesty to admit that these things came from paganism, that they are pagan and they were brought into the Christian celebrations of these holidays in order to get new converts. This syncretism happened over and over and over again throughout the millennia, particularly due thanks to the church, better known as Catholicism, who reigned over Christianity for many, many, many hundreds of years, all the way from 325 up until 1500s when Martin Luther started the Protestant movement.
So yeah, these things were brought in because they wanted new converts, they wanted to make things easier, and it’s muddied the waters as to what we do nowadays and what we believe and how we celebrate, and it’s really sad. We’ll get into the scriptural take on doing these sorts of things in just a moment. We know that the date doesn’t come from scripture. We know the name doesn’t come from scripture. We know the Easter bunny or rabbits in general, the symbolism of rabbits doesn’t come from scripture.
So what about Easter eggs? Maybe finally something will come from scripture that we know is an element of our Easter celebration nowadays. So according to crosswalk.com again, concerning Easter eggs, cultures throughout history have viewed fertility and bringing of life through eggs. Many statues of fertility goddesses, such as statues of Ishtar from Babylon, are often covered in eggs. So in a religious context, eggs are a pagan symbol of fertility, of new life, of sometimes rebirth even, and it dates even as far back as Babylonia to the goddess Ishtar.
Now let’s take a side tangent real quick and discuss something else that’s kind of important. As people moved from area to area, as the world started filling up, people would start interacting with each other as they went to new areas, these pagans would adopt new gods and goddesses, and a lot of times the old gods and the new gods would kind of blend together and become an altogether new god than the original two. This thing kind of happened with the goddess Ishtar.
We know her from scripture actually. She’s known in scripture as Astarte or Asherah. You can actually find that name in scripture itself. It’s known to the Babylonians as Ishtar, it’s known by the Greeks and the Romans by other names, but it comes down to the Nordic peoples as Eostre from which we get the name Ishtar. So if you trace back the lineage, the name Ishtar can go all the way back to what the Bible calls Asherah or Astarte, and there’s nothing good in scripture about Astarte.
But anyways, moving on to Britannica.com from the Encyclopedia Britannica, and it states, The egg was a widely used pre-modern and pre-Christian symbol of fertility and restoration. European pagans, a term used to refer to people who practice a variety of non-Christian traditions, viewed eggs as a symbol of the regeneration that comes with springtime. Early Christians borrowed this image and applied it, not to the regeneration of the earth, but rather to Jesus Christ. So they took these pagan symbols and they took Jesus and they wrapped Jesus in these pagan symbols, such as the egg, the rabbit, the date, the name, things like that.
And then according to the Stanford Reference Encyclopedia, The Eostre Festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, and traditions associated with the festival survive in the familiar Easter bunny, symbol of the fertile rabbit, and in the equally familiar colored Easter eggs originally painted with gay hues to represent the sunlight of spring. And once again from the Easter book by Francis X. Weiser, The origin of the Easter egg is based on the fertility lore of the Indo-European races.
To our pre-Christian ancestors, it was a most startling event to see a new and live creature emerge from a seemingly dead object. The egg to them became a symbol of spring. Long ago in Persia, people used to present each other with eggs at the spring equinox, which for them also marked the beginning of a new year. And the guy who wrote this book who’s stating these things, Francis X. Weiser, I don’t know exactly how to pronounce his last name, but anyways, he is a Jesuit priest.
He is a Catholic and he is saying these things, admitting to where these things like the Easter rabbit and the Easter egg comes from. And then we see even as far back as about the turn of the 2nd century into the 3rd century, Hippolytus of Rome stating this, But different eggs they, meaning magicians or other pagans, display after this manner, perforating the top at both ends and extracting the white, and having again dipped it, throw in some minium and some writing ink.
Close, however, the openings with refined scrappings of the egg, smearing them with egg juice. So, at this point in time, Christianity really hadn’t adopted the Easter egg, but you can see that eggs were in use by pagans, colored, decorated eggs, were in use by the pagans, by the magicians, even way back then around 200 CE. But you don’t find the symbolism or the use of eggs in a religious context in scripture. And now we know where the symbolism came from when we think about Easter.
So, with all this being said, we don’t have time to go into every single symbol or element of Easter. Now, a lot of people use lambs as a symbol or an element of Easter. Lambs, like we said, do come from scripture, but lambs are also integral and a central part of Pesach, so it’s not specific to just Easter. Also, you find that with other things, too, that we didn’t go over tonight, that these elements are probably like the top elements in the Easter celebration, the top symbols in the Easter celebration.
So, for the sake of time, these are the main ones we went over. And we found that the date for the Easter celebration, the Easter name, the Easter bunny, the Easter eggs, all of this comes from paganism. But is that a bad thing? Is it okay to use various pagan things in our worship of the Almighty and his son who was crucified for us? Is it actually okay to use that? Well, according to, again, crosswalk.com, according to them, it actually is okay to use pagan things.
They quote, Knowing that rabbits don’t signify Jesus, however, doesn’t prevent us from being able to find ways to observe Christian truths within symbols that are not Christian. In the same way with holidays that have pagan origins or traditions, such as Christmas, Halloween, and Easter, Christians have found ways to make the gospel understandable to cultures through using their symbols and traditions. Because the Easter bunny is likely crafted after the pagan goddess of springtime and eggs have a historical tie with the symbol of new life, we can easily transfer those symbols to the idea of the new life that comes through Christ.
We know that God can use anything to bring others to him, and this includes originally pagan symbols, such as the Easter bunny. Very eye-opening, very shocking statement by a Christian website. But a lot of people within mainstream churchianity believe exactly like this. They state, well, that’s what it used to mean, but it’s not what it means now. We have Christianized it. We have baptized it. Even though it has pagan origins, it’s okay now. It’s not what’s in my heart.
It’s not what it means to me. Okay, that sounds all good. It sounds all nice and fluffy and comfortable, but what does scripture state about doing things like this, about taking pagan things and worshipping God in pagan ways? As an example story from scripture itself, let’s look at Exodus chapter 32, verses 1 through 20. And when the people saw that Moshe was so long and coming down from the mountain, the people gathered together to Aaron and said to him, Arise, make us mighty ones who go before us.
For this Moshe, the man who brought us up out of the land of Mitzrayim, we do not know what has become of him. And Aaron said to them, take off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, your sons and your daughters, and bring them to me. And all the people took off the golden earrings, which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he took this from their hand and he formed it with an engraving tool and made a molded calf.
And they said, this is your mighty one, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Mitzrayim. And Aaron saw and built a slaughter place before it. And Aaron called and said, Tomorrow is a festival to Yahweh. And they rose early on the next day and offered ascending offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. And Yahweh said to Moshe, Go, get down, for your people whom you brought out of the land of Mitzrayim have corrupted themselves.
They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf and have bowed themselves to it and slaughtered to it, and said, This is your mighty one, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Mitzrayim. And Yahweh said to Moshe, I have seen this people, and see, it is a stiff-necked people. And now let me alone, that my wrath might burn against them, and I consume them, and I make of you a great nation.
But Moshe pleaded with Yahweh his Elohim, and said, Yahweh, why does your wrath burn against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Mitzrayim with great power and with a strong hand? Why should the Mitzrites speak and say, For evil he brought them out to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from the heat of your wrath and relent from this evil to your people.
Remember Abraham, shak, and Yisrael, your servants, to whom you swore by yourself, and said to them, I increase your seed like the stars of the heavens, and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And Yahweh relented from the evil which he said he would do to his people. And Moshe turned and went down from the mountain, and in his hand were the two tablets of the witness, tablets written on both their sides, written on the one and on the other.
And the tablets were the work of Elohim, and the writing was the writing of Elohim engraved on the tablets. And Yahushua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, and he said to Moshe, A noise of battle in the camp. But he said, It is not the sound of those who shout of might, nor is it the sound of those who cry out in weakness, but the sound of singing that I hear. And it came to be, as soon as he came near the camp, that he saw the calf and the dancing.
And Moshe’s displeasure burned, and he threw the tablets out of his hands, and broke them at the foot of the mountain. And he took the calf which they had made, and burned it in the fire, and ground it into powder, and scattered it on the face of the water, and made the children of Yisrael drink it. So, they’re there at Mount Sinai, and they’re waiting for Moshe to come back down from the mountain where he went up to get the tablets.
He was gone for so long, they think something happened to him, and they reverted to their old ways. They made this pagan symbol, this golden calf, in order to worship Yahweh. They even said, after they made this calf, that tomorrow is a festival to Yahweh, referring to the golden image that they had made, this pagan symbol they had made. So, what happened when they tried to worship Yahweh in the way of the pagans, using pagan symbols? It did not work out good for them.
And that’s just a small part of the story we just read. Yahweh does not want us to worship him in the ways of the pagans. He wants us to worship him in the way that he has commanded, and he has laid it out in his scriptures. He has commanded us to celebrate the Feast of Pesach, the Festival of Shavuot, of Yom Teruah, of Yom Kippurim, of Sukkot, the Seventh-day Shabbat, etc., etc. He has laid it out, and he tells us, time and time again, do not do after the ways of the nations, after the ways of the pagans, after the ways of the Gentiles.
Do not do like them when you worship me. Deuteronomy, chapter 12, verses 29 through 31. When Yahweh your God cuts off before you the nations which you are going to dispossess, and you dispossess them and inhabit their land, beware lest you be ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed before you, and lest you inquire after their gods, saying, How do these nations serve their gods that I also may do likewise? You shall not do thus toward Yahweh your God.
For every abominable act which Yahweh hates, they have done for their gods. For they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. Do not do after the ways of the pagans. Again, chapter, I’m sorry, Jeremiah, chapter 10, verse 2. Thus said Yahweh, do not learn the way of the nations, and do not be awed by the signs of the heavens, for the nations are awed by them. Do not learn the ways of the pagans.
Do not learn the ways of the heathen. Do not learn the ways of the gentiles. Do not learn the ways of the goyim. Do not learn the ways of people who do not know Yahweh and who are not following Yahweh in his ways. Do not do that. Only do what Yahweh has commanded you in your worship of Yahweh. Again, Ezekiel chapter 11, verse 12. And you shall know that I am Yahweh, for you have not walked in my laws nor executed my right rulings, but have done according to the rulings of the nations which are all around you.
Micah chapter 4, verse 5. For all the peoples walk, each one in the name of his mighty one, but we walk in the name of Yahweh our Elohim forever and ever. Over and over again in the Tanakh, we see do not worship Yahweh in the way that the pagans do. Do not follow after the ways of the gentiles. Do not go and worship Yahweh in the way that the heathens do. And these are just a few passages.
There’s many more. Once again, go check out our notes for more information. Just click on the link down below. But this warning against following after other peoples continues on into the Brit Hadashah because it’s all a continuation of the same worship that we are commanded to do. First Corinthians chapter 12, verse 2. You know that you were nations. You were gentiles. You were pagans. You were heathens. Led away to the dumb idols even as you might be led.
You were nations. You were gentiles. You were pagans. But you are no more. Now, you are the people of Yahweh after coming to Yeshua, being saved by his blood. You’re no longer a pagan. You’re no longer a gentile. Therefore, you should not be following after those old gentile ways. After those old pagan ways. Instead, you should be following after the ways of Yahweh. Going on into Ephesians chapter 2, verse 11. Therefore, remember that you once nations, once gentiles, once pagans, once heathens in the flesh who are called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands.
Again, he’s stating that you were at one time nations. You at one time were gentiles. You at one time were pagans. You at one time were heathens, but you’re not that anymore. Now, you’re a child of Yahweh. You’re saved by his blood, the blood of Yeshua. Therefore, do the ways of Yahweh, not the ways of these pagans, not the ways of these gentiles. Do Yahweh’s ways. Do Yahweh’s commands. Worship him in the way that he commands.
Not these pagan ways. Startling revelation we get from scripture as well is that these pagan gods are actually demons. Deuteronomy chapter 32, verses 16 to 17. They made him jealous with strange gods, with abominations they provoked him to anger. They sacrificed to demons who were not God, to gods whom they have not known. Knew who came lately, whom your fathers did not dread. And then we see in the Brit Hadashah, it’s actually prophesied that people would go after these demons.
Go after these pagan gods. They would go after these pagan ways. First Timothy 4.1. But the spirit distinctly says that in latter times, some shall fall away from the belief, paying attention to misleading spirits and teachings of demons. So what would be the teachings of demons? Their ways of doing things. We know these demons are the pagan gods that we just read about. And the ways that these pagans worship their gods. We should not be doing these pagan ways, these demonic ways when we worship the one true almighty Yahweh.
Unfortunately, you can see that with a lot of things in churchianity nowadays. But people don’t want to hear it. They want to hear things that would make it sound good and make them feel good. It’s all about emotion, not truth. This is also something that was prophesied. Second Timothy chapter 4, verse 3. For there shall be a time when they shall not bear sound teaching, but according to their own desires, they shall heap up for themselves teachers tickling their ears.
They go to these teachers who tell them what they want to hear, not the truth. Because the truth doesn’t make them feel very good. They want to do their own thing. They don’t want to do the ways of Yahweh. And it’s all due to a lot of things in people’s lives. Whether it be pride or tradition or the fear of rejection. There’s a lot of factors that go into that. But they just don’t want to hear it and they rationalize it sometimes.
Like we just saw that from crosswalk.com and many other people have this same sentiment. They’ll say that, oh yeah, that was pagan. It came from paganism, but it’s okay because we have baptized it. We have Christianized it. We have put a Christian or a Jesus sticker on it. So it’s not what it means anymore, even though it came from paganism. It’s not what it means to me. Okay, it doesn’t matter what it means to you. It matters what it means to him.
And in his scriptures, he tells us what it means to him. He says, don’t do those pagan ways. Because we saw from the story of the golden calf that doing these pagan things in the worship of Yahweh infuriates him. We should be thinking about what it means to him because we are worshiping him. We’re not worshiping us, so it doesn’t matter what it means to us. It matters what it means to him. And once again, Yahweh says, do not do these pagan things.
Do not even learn their ways. Don’t do it. So, in summary, in modern times, Easter is promoted as this holiday that is Christian and that is Bible-based. However, we saw that what we have nowadays, Easter is not anything like that. We saw that various elements of Easter are stated as being biblically representative, such as things such as the date for Easter, the Easter egg, the Easter bunny, etc., etc. We know these things are not Christian. They are not biblical.
They come from pagan sources, things that we should not be doing according to Yahweh. We know that the calculations for the day of Easter are not based on scripture. We know that the earliest Christians did not celebrate Easter. They celebrated Passover, the Pascha. And eventually a new thing got introduced, a new date for that. It was still called Christian. They still passed it off as biblically based, as a celebration of the resurrection. That came down to us as Easter now.
But now we know the truth. They diverted from what they had originally been taught. And now we have what we know of as Easter. The name Easter comes from the name of a pagan goddess, Eostre, who is also known in other cultures as Ishtar, Astarte, Asherah, things like that. The Easter bunny comes from a symbol of a pagan goddess. Easter egg comes from the worship of a pagan goddess. And scripture tells us not to follow after the ways of the pagans, not to follow after the ways of the heathen, not to follow after the ways of the Gentiles.
We should follow after the ways of Yahweh. And that’s just the God on his truth. I’d like to leave you with this passage here, which I think is extremely relevant to these kinds of subjects. Joshua chapter 24, verses 14 and 15. So now, fear Yahweh and serve him in integrity and truth, and put away the gods which your father served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve Yahweh. If it is evil in your sight to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your father served, which were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.
But as for me and my house, we will serve Yahweh. Amen and amen. We will put away pagan symbols, pagan holidays like Easter, and we will serve Yahweh.
