Where did Easter come from?
If Easter isn't found in the Bible, where exactly did it come from?
And just exactly what does the name Easter mean?
It's important to review credible historical sources to understand
the celebration's true history. For example, The Encyclopaedia
Britannica tells us: "At Easter, popular customs reflect many
ancient pagan survivalsin this instance, connected with spring
fertility rites, such as the symbols of the Easter egg and the
Easter hare or rabbit" (15th edition, Macropaedia, Vol. 4, p. 605,
"Church Year" ).
In the ancient world of the Middle East, people were far more
connected to the land and cycles of nature than we are today. They
depended on the land's fertility and crops to survive. Spring, when
fertility returned to the land after the long desolation of winter,
was a much-anticipated and welcomed time for them.
Many peoples celebrated the coming of spring with celebrations and
worship of their gods and goddesses, particularly those associated
with fertility. Among such deities were Baal and Astarte or
Ashtoreth, mentioned and condemned frequently in the Bible, whose
worship typically included ritual sex to promote fertility
throughout the land.
It was only natural to the peoples of the ancient Middle East to
incorporate symbols of fertilitysuch as eggs and rabbits, which
reproduce in great numbersinto those pagan celebrations for their
gods. As The Encyclopaedia Britannica notes above, Easter eggs and
the Easter rabbit are simply a continuation of these ancient spring
fertility rites.
Nineteenth-century Scottish Protestant clergyman Alexander Hislop's
work The Two Babylons is still considered a definitive work on
pagan customs that survive in today's religious practices.
On Easter, he wrote: "What means the term Easter itself? It is not
a Christian name. It bears its Chaldean origin on its very
forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of
Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the
people of Nineveh, was evidently identical with that now in common
use in this country. That name, as found by [early archaeologist
Sir Austen Henry] Layard on the Assyrian monuments, is Ishtar"
(1959, p. 103).
The name Easter, then, comes not from the Bible. Instead its roots
go far back to the ancient pre-Christian Mesopotamian goddess
Ishtar, known in the Bible as Astarte or Ashtoreth.
