In this article the United Church of God claims that Christian’s appropriated pagan customs and turned them into Christmas, Easter and other traditions. They assert that the word Easter is derived from Ishtar, a pagan goddess, and Easter customs were once pagan rituals for. Examples include dying eggs and so on. However, they did not cite any sources from ancient text that mentioned Ishtars to support this claim. The reason why is because no such evidence exist. There is zero ancient archeological evidence, ancient writings, tablets, and so on found from the mystery religions that worshiped Ishtar, that describe anything close to the word Easter or any customs surrounding Ishtar involving eggs, bunnies, and such.
Thus, any original ancient sources on Isthar are completely void of such details, but few people are aware of this. Whereas the “sources” cited by sects like the United Church of God, or the UCG, are obtained from outdated “Scholarship” from the 17th to 19th century, which has been superseded by better Scholarship debunking such claims. Modern Scholarship has proven time and again that Christian observances can not be legitiimately linked to paganism and in all cases that I am aware of, the Christian observance actually pre-dates any ancient sources showing that paganism actually copied Chrsitians. Not vice versea as previously claimed.
For those, like the United Church of God, who still cite the superceded sources, one has to wonder if they do so out of ignorance or is it an intentional bias intended to mislead many innocent people. In my comment to the United Church of God, I told them that there was no ancient text, no inscriptions, no acrhcological evidence to support their claims. Anyone with integrity would thus research to see if my assertion was true, however they United Church of God did not. Again, the United Church of God did not even all my comment to be published. Which I assume is because they wish to hide anyone who rebukes their teachings as misleading. However I did get a private reply from them via email and as already mentioned got to speak with some correspandant. Although this email reply was very short, it stated that they do use sources which supports their stance on Easter. I was given two examples. I wont quote the email word for word, because I am unsure of privacy laws and if a reply via email can be publically published online. However, I will summarize what was said and give the quotes (as sent to me) from sources that they cited in their defense of their article. One was a quote from Jesse Hurlbut in “The Story of The Christian Church” who wrote:
“for fifty years after St.Paul’s life a curtain hangs over the church, through which we strive vainly to look; and when at last it rises, about 120 A.D. with the writings of the earliest church-fathers, we find a church in many aspects very different from that in the days of St. Peter and St.Paul (pg. 41)”
“the recognition of Easter Sunday, as an anniversary of our Lord’s resurrection was sanctioned and growing, but was not by this time universal” (ibid, page 45).”
This quote is not proof of any appropriation of pagan customs by the early church, specifically not in regards to Easter. The correspondant from the United Church of God was attempting to show me that the early Church left observance of the Sabbath for Sunday observance, and changed what was in place during the Apsotles time. However, since the Lord’s Day was kept around 50 A.D as demonstrated not only in the Bible, but also in ancient Christian text dating to before 120 A.D, we know that this is not sufficent proof of any paganism in the early Church.
The Didache and the Epistle of Barnabus are two early Church text showing that Sunday was kept by Christians in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries. The Didache itself is thought to have come about from the Council at Jerusalem in Acts. Therefore, the writings of the “earliest-church fathers” were already around prior to 120 A.D. Some of which was considered scripture by the early Church. This is in fact corroborated in Hurlbut’s book:
“We find before the end of St.Paul’s ministry, the churches meeting on the first day of the week, and in the Revelation, that day is called “the Lord’s Day”. Hurlbut’s The Story of the Christian Church, page 45
Hurlbut then goes on to describe the observance of Easter Sunday as quoted by the United Church of God second quote they sent to me above, however this is occurring before 100 A.D. Logically, if Sunday was kept weekly around 50 A.D in the Church, then we can safely assume that it as kept yearly at Passover for the anniversary of Jesus’ ressurection as well. Therefore, Easter may not have been “universal” in the first century, but was observed and growing as the above quote from Hurlbut clearly describes. I would say this supports the observance of Easter Sunday rather than showing it is from paganism as claimed in their article. Besides, it is hard to imagine the yearly anniversary of the greatest event in history to go unnoticed without any form of celebration or honor.
The United Church of God correspondent also quoted the 11th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica as another source for their claims:
““The name Easter… is a survival from old Teutonic mythology… it is derived from ‘Eostre,’ or ‘Ostara,’ the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring” (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed.)”
I found that the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is an example of a outdated source that does not prove Christians to have adopted a pagan name (Easter) for Passover. Had the United Church of God chosen to use the most accurate and up to date text, they would have quoted instead from the current online edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica which defends early Christianitiy from copying paganism:
Easter, Latin Pascha, Greek Pascha, principal festival of the Christian church that celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his Crucifixion…….The English word Easter, which parallels the German word Ostern, is of uncertain origin. One view, expounded by the Venerable Bede in the 8th century, was that it derived from Eostre, or Eostrae, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. This view presumes—as does the view associating the origin of Christmas on December 25 with pagan celebrations of the winter equinox—that Christians appropriated pagan names and holidays for their highest festivals. Given the determination with which Christians combated all forms of paganism, this appears a rather dubious presumption. There is now widespread consensus that the word derives from the Christian designation of Easter week as in albis, a Latin phrase that was understood as the plural of alba (“dawn”) and became eostarum in Old High German, the precursor of the modern German and English term. The Latin and Greek pascha (“Passover”) provides the root for Pâcques, the French word for Easter.- Encyclopedia Britannica Easter
Notice that the modern edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica states that Christians combated all forms of paganism. Therefore claiming that they adopted pagan customs is “dubious”. This is a fact attested to in the writings of the Church fathers who wrote against paganism. Notice as well in the quote above that there is now “widespread consensus” that the word Easter is Christian in origin and not pagan.
The United Church of God clearly favors outdated sources over more modern sources to prove their stance. This is an intentional bias intended to disregard evidence that does not support their teachings and stance.
Further complicating the use of the 11th edition is that it was known to be inaccurate in shortly after publication as noted at the time by Willard Huntington who wrote a 200 plus page criticism of the 11th edition stating that it was:
“characterized by misstatement, inexcusable omissions, rabid and patriotic prejudices, personal animosities, blatant errors of fact, scholastic ignorance, gross neglect of non-British culture, an astounding egotism, and an undisguised contempt for American progress.” (emphasis mine)
Sir Kenneth Clarke in 1974 wrote of the 11th edition stating:
“One leaps from one subject to another, fascinated as much by the play of mind and the idiosyncrasies of their authors as by the facts and dates. It must be the last encyclopaedia in the tradition of Diderot which assumes that information can be made memorable only when it is slightly coloured by prejudice.” -Sir Kenneth Clarke, 1974, Another Part of the Wood (emphasis mine)
The United Church of God correspondent did not give me any other sources to prove their stance and teachings on Easter.
I noticed after my contact with the United Church of God that it is not just customs such as eggs or words like Easter that they condemn, but they connect portions of the resurrection story, as held by Christians of the East and West, to Ishtar and Tammuz as well:
Easter evolved from a story based upon an ancient god named Tammuz. The story of Tammuz is at the heart of the pagan world – and at the heart of Easter. It’s a story of a never-ending circle of life without meaning, direction or purpose. You see, Tammuz died every year at the beginning of winter and was “resurrected” in the spring by a goddess named Ishtar. –What Easter Doesn’t Tell You, UCG website (emphasis mine)
This information is not supported in the original text concerning Tammuz or Ishtar as well. For example, in the ancient stories of Tammuz there is no mention of his dying in the winter and resurrection in the spring. Furthermore, to say that “Easter evolved” from a story about Tammuz is to indirectly say that the resurrection of Jesus evolved as well. This borders atheist thought in my opinion and can easily lead innocent people into disbelief in Jesus. As for the original text on Tammuz, it does have a form of a “resurrection” if that is what you wish to call it. However, he was not exactly ressurected from the dead and it states that these events took place in the Summer: as attested to by Scholars who study ancient middle eastern religions:
“On rituals related to Tammuz in his time, he (Ibn Wahshiyya, historian and archeologist of the 10th century) adds that the Sabaeans in Harran and Babylonia still lamented the loss of Tammuz every July, but that the origin of the worship had been lost” .-Wikipedia on the translation of the ancient Nabataean text by Kuthami the Babylonian, Ibn Wahshiyya
Wikipedia adds:
” Al-Nadim in his 10th century work Kitab al-Fehrest drawing from a work on Syriac calendar feast days, describes a Tâ’ûz festival that took place in the middle of the month of Tammuz.” –Wikipedia on Tammuz
“Beginning with the summer solstice came a time of mourning in the Ancient Near East, as in the Aegean: the Babylonians marked the decline in daylight hours and the onset of killing summer heat and drought with a six-day “funeral” for the god.”- princeton.edu on Tammuz
“Innana (later called Ishtar) was the goddess of love, war, and fertility, and her consort was a young god called Tammuz (or Dumuzi), who died in summer and was reborn with the autumn rains.” -Salem Press, Encyclopedia of the Ancient World, Babylonia, 2001 (all above emphasis mine)
The Jewish calendar adoption of the month of Tammuz in the summer further proves that this false deity was honored in the Summer, not the Spring with his reappearance happening a few months later.
Again, Tammuz was not even actually resurrected. He was sentenced to the underworld, like a prison, and released for six months of the year in exchange for Ishtar’s release. However, those seeking to connect these false deities with Jesus’ ressurection, still cite outdated information as stated in the New World Encyclopedia:
Based on the first Mesopotamian texts discovered by archaeologists, it was initially assumed that Ishtar/Inanna’s descent into the underworld occurred after the death of Tammuz/Dumuzid, rather than before it. As such, her goal (like Orpheus) was to rescue her departed love. This version became popularized in M. Jastrow’s “Descent of the Goddess Ishtar into the Lower World” (1915), a tremendously popular account. Though new texts uncovered in 1963 presented a considerably different picture of the tale, the old interpretation still persists in certain circles, especially among those who seek parallels between Middle Eastern deities and the resurrected Christ. -New World Encyclopedia
In other words, any claimed connection between Tammuz, Ishtar and Jesus are found by those who are only seeing what they want to see, not what is really there. Older scholarship and claims of a parraell were based on personal interpretations and assumptions. These have been long debunked by modern scholarship and when faced with the fact that no true evidence exist from the ancient texts.
The Word Easter is Not Connected to Ishtar
The United Church of God, like most Hebrew Roots sects, connects the word Ishtar to the word Easter by sound as well. However, this way of linking words to paganism by sound was recently debunked by Scholar Dr. Candida Moss recently on CNN’s blog on religion:
Among the rash of sensationalist stories we can expect through the season, the annual “Easter was stolen from the pagans” refrain has sprouted again just in time for Holy Week…..Don’t believe the hype…..Perhaps most misinformed theory that rolls around the Internet this time of year is that Easter was originally a celebration of the ancient Near Eastern fertility goddess Ishtar…….This idea is grounded in the shared concept of new life and similar-sounding words Easter/Ishtar. There’s no linguistic connection, however. Ishtar is Akkadian and Easter is likely to be Anglo-Saxon….Just because words in different languages sound the same doesn’t mean they are related. In Swedish, the word “kiss” means urine. –Did Christians really steal Easter, Cnn (emphasis mine)
As Dr.Moss states, this type of connection is hype and based on sensationalism.
Summary
So to sum it all up, the United Church of God’s sources are clearly biased. Their sources are contradictory to what is known today by modern Scholarship and by what has been found in archeology. Their source citation is irresponsible and not true to the actual proof which favors Christianity against their false claims.
The fact is, the Dead Sea Scrolls are online. As are the text from the Nag Hammond Library, the Writings of the Church Fathers, and even Babylonian/Mesopotamian text that mention Ishtar. Everyone has access to read these text for themselves nowdays. Sadly, very few people actually do. Most blindly believe and follow the myths without having a look for themselves to find the truth. As we learned ourselves from studying the Herbew Roots Movement, the United Church of God, various Athiest and Muslim claims against Christianity and such, sometimes you have to dig deep to find the truth, but it is out there. And in the end, Christiantiy always prevails.
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