I’m once again feeling wearied by all the nonsense (pagan and fundamentalist Christian in equal doses) about how the date of Easter was the result of some sort of deliberate paganizing conspiracy. Personally, I don’t like the modern trappings of Easter. A lot of the secular symbolism (rabbits, eggs) does derive from (isolated, not universal) pagan symbols, adapted (clumsily) as they were to “Christianize” populations. That sort of thing was a blunder that has now ruined a holy day.
But setting that aside, arguing a pagan conspiracy for the date is nonsense. Sorry folks, but ANY calendar / time-keeping in the ancient world had to be done using either lunar or solar cycles. Those are the celestial bodies Genesis talks about times and seasons. Paganism didn’t appropriate the objects in our solar system.
The reasons for the date calculation are partly cultural, astronomical, and mathematical. The issue was also tied to the Gentile-Jewish tension within the church of antiquity. Why? Because Gentiles and Jews had different calendrical methods (solar vs. lunar). Christianity was not restricted to Judah or to the Jews (surprise), and so the Mediterranean Roman empire in which Christianity found itself didn’t bother to ask the Jewish Sanhedrin if it could keep its calendar. In other words, there were a whole lot more Gentiles than Jews in the early church — it’s about demographics and sheer numbers. No conspiracy needed.
If you’re interested in this issue, here’s an excellent article about it. Here’s an excellent, detailed scholarly book on it. If you have access to journal databases, I especially recommend Henry Chadwick’s article: “The calendar: Sanctification of time,” Irish Theological Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2001): 99-107.
Hey Mike, always thought that was the case, yet the word Easter has strong pagan history, Germanic, Persian, Greek and Roma
Hey again Mike, I was doing a bit of research, and remembered back to something I had read in Herodotus Histories. The story of Helen of Troy, I strongly suspect this is a massive influence on the Easter egg symbolism. Would you agree?
I don’t have Herodotus memorized, so you’d have to be more specific.
Well you have explained why this happened but it still leaves us with eggs and bunny rabbits, what are you going to do about that my friend.
The Church adapted such customs for “evangelism” (read: “Christianizing”) certain populations. Not all populations had the same customs. Church tradition is an amalgamation of these sorts of things. There was no guiding conspiratorial agenda. It’s pragmatic.
(This is another reason I really don’t care for church tradition – the logic of things like this is understandable, but flawed).
Thanks that was insightful i never looked at it in the pragmatic sense, the knee jerk reaction is to see the pagan god connection and immediately condemn those who adopted these customs. Just goes to show sincerity is a virtue overrated in theology. What kind of pragmatic methods do we use today that will be condemned in the future ? and rightly so imo. At least we can be charitable and see the motivation now, instead of assigning the whole mass of people to pagan worship who were trying to evangelize by poor methods.
I try not to assign to malevolence what can be well explained by incompetence. Doesn’t always work, but it’s more charitable. At least that’s worth a try!
That is the kind of statement that snaps me out of the hand-wringing I fall into when deluged with “Don’t enjoy this holiday because the pagans also enjoyed it” posts and emails. I know “thank you” comes right after “me too” during in a blogger’s Two Minutes Hate, but thank you again for a great post.
you’re welcome!
Hey Mike. The Herodotus thing, just made me look up Herodotus and the two red eggs, I was foggy on the idea as I have not read Herodotus for a few years now.
The, Helen of Troy story, is about how, god/humans were born out of an egg (egg obviously being a fertility symbol in many pagan religions). The ancient Chinese Myths have also eggs as fertility symbols (3500 bc)round about.
As to the other commentators comments about rabbits, The Ancients were not stupid they realized that rabbits mated at an alarming rate and therefore, were also a symbol of fertility.
sure; pre-scientific “explanations” or origins were often analogies drawn from nature and human eye observation.
Sorry to be so late to the game, and I will try and read up on the article / book referenced in your article, but my current inclination is that regardless if it is actually pagan or not, scripturally (with the exception of the KJV) Easter is even on shakier grounds than the Sunday replacement of the Sabbath.
As you stated “The reasons for the date calculation are partly cultural, astronomical, and mathematical”
It does not appear that the above cultural reference includes what I assume to be a major turning point to the establishment of Christian many practices / customs of today, if not the main contributing factor for the change which is simply “anti-Semitism” and as you also note “Christianity was not restricted to Judah or to the Jews (surprise),”
This separation would have been very difficult to ascertain in the early believing community and the Easter change was yet another of many calculated attempts by “The Church” to separate itself from the “detestable Jewish crowd” as instructed by Constantine in his letter following the council of Nicaea (1).
While I am nowhere near to being a scholar, politician, or mathematician I can look at the purported numbers from the Council of Nicaea and see what I would assume are some obvious red flags.
Of the 1800 invitations sent to the bishops “in the Roman empire” to attend the expenses paid trip to join in the council there were likely less than 300 attendees. The result of this gathering for the ” first uniform Christian doctrine” was a near unanimous agreement by all attendees (except 2 that did not sign and were banished). (2)
So one would have to conclude that (a) the smart ones stayed home, and (b) the council was a formality to the agenda that was already firmly established. It is not too difficult to see the resulting persecution from both the council and enforcement by Constantine which included all to familiar brutalities to what would have been both Sabbath/Passover keeping Jews and Christians. (3)
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_the_Great_and_Judaism
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
(3) https://books.google.com/books?id=WYIGAQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=cover+up:+how+the+church+silenced+Jesus's+true+heirs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwifuaX7iuzWAhXFPCYKHcKuAkUQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=cover%20up%3A%20how%20the%20church%20silenced%20Jesus's%20true%20heirs&f=false