Subject: Easter, Ishtar or Passover?
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 00:14:07 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>

>From         Dennis Andress
To:             heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject:    Easter, Ishtar or Passover?


by Al Perez, 1991


	Easter or Ishtar?

The word Easter appears once in the King James version of the Bible.
Herod has put Peter in prison,  "intending after Easter to bring him
forth to the people" (Acts 12:4). Yet in the original Greek text the
word is not Easter, but Pesach, that is Passover. So why was the name
changed? Please read on, and remember Exodus 34:14;  For you shall
worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous
God.

"Asherah" the Greek form of this word from the Septuagint is "Astarte",
who is the Babylonian goddess of the sea, sea being symbolic of people,
and consort of the god El. She was the mother of several gods, including
Baal, the Babylonian god of the sun. These deities were soon adopted by
the Canaanites when they named these female deities the Ashereh or
Asherim. These deities were made of wood carved from a type of evergreen
tree, or often they were set up in Canaanite homes as full trees cut
down from a forest. The Asherim normally were highly acknowledged during
two specific occasions. First and foremost, they were the fertility gods
of the spring equinox, when the days and nights were approximately the
same in length, signifying the beginning of living things growing for
the summer season. A very common practice in the Canaanite religion was
performed on the first Sunday of the equinox. The families would face
east to await the rising of the sun, which was the chief symbol of the
sun god, Baal. Later on during the day, the children of the Canaanite
parents would often go and hunt for eggs, which were symbolic of sex,
fertility and new life. It was believed that these eggs came from
rabbits, which in the pagan world were symbolic of lust, sexual prowess
and reproduction. The Canaanites, however, were not the only ones who
worshipped rabbits as deities. The Egyptians and the Persians (Babylon)
also held rabbits in high esteem because they believed that rabbits
first came from the divine Phoenix birds, who once ruled the ancient
skies until they were attacked by other gods in a power struggle. When
they were struck down, they reincarnated into rabbits, but kept the
ability to produce eggs like the ancient birds to show their origins.
Other stories concerning the egg rose later in the Middle Ages by the
Anglo-Saxons, where they believed the origin of the Universe had the
earth being hatched out of an enormous egg. Decorating eggs came about
to honor their pagan gods and were often presented as gifts to other
families to bring them fertility and sexual success during the coming
year.

And secondly, they were highly worshipped and celebrated during the
winter solstice. As according to Jer. 10:1-5; Is. 40:19-20; 41:7 and
44:9-20, the pagans would go out into the forest and do one of two
things. Either they chopped down a tree and carved a female deity out of
it, or they would simply bring the tree into the house and decorate it
with gold and silver ornaments symbolizing the sun and the moon while
nailing a stand on the bottom so it would not totter or tip over.

Out of this practice came many other variations of these pagan
festivals until the Roman Catholic Church adopted the Asherah worship
and named it EASTER around 155 A.D. According to the CATHOLIC
ENCYCLOPEDIA, Easter was named after a pagan goddess of the Anglo-Saxons
named Eostre, the goddess of the dawn.  A great controversy arose
between the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church in 325 A.D. on
whether to celebrate Easter on Sundays or on whatever day the Jewish
Passover fell upon. Unfortunately, the Greeks lost a lot of followers
and the Catholics contended that keeping Easter on Sundays would
stimulate the practices of both the Christian world and the pagan
worshippers.  Note that the word CATHOLIC means "universal" or "one
world" in thought, concept and practice. Hence, since the original
practice of Asherah worship we now have in our time the celebration of
Easter, a counterfeit holiday to the true Christian festival of the
Passover which was instituted in the Bible and completed in the New
Testament when Christ died on the cross as our Passover Lamb.


...For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 
(I Cor 5:7)

Dennis L. Andress

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