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Comments on "Easter Lore"
By Philip D. Ropp
April 15, 2006
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Dave
Hoxie wrote:
Phil,
Your comments, please, on the following article on "Easter Lore" from
"Urban Legends?"
Thanks,
Hox
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Hox,
I find it curious "Easter Lore" sites five
sources in its bibliography
and all are works on "superstition." One would think that the
obvious
source that herein goes untapped would be the local Catholic priest or
Protestant clergyman, most of whom have between three and seven years
of higher education dealing with the development of Christianity
and
its various and sundry traditions and accouterments. For that
matter,
there is no shortage of written material produced by the mainstream
churches and various Christian cults and organizations that could have
been consulted and sited. If scholarship, rather than writing
something cute, were the objective, then it is obvious that the surface
of the resources available on this topic has hardly been
scratched. As
such, it is understandable that there are some glaring and obvious
misconceptions that need to be addressed. You, sir, have sent
this to
me knowing that it would "get me going" on a tangent that you will find
amusing. Hopefully, you'll find it informative and useful as
well: I shall try not to disappoint on any count.
It actually is
mere coincidence that the celebration of Easter falls at
the time of the spring equinox festivals. Easter is reckoned by
the
lunar (Jewish) calendar to coincide with Passover. The Roman
Catholic
calculation of the lunar machinations sometimes conflicts with those of
the Jews, but overall Passover and Easter usually coincide. This
was
the subject of much debate in the early Christian centuries, but
because the sacrifice of Christ was so much understood in terms of
the Passover, it was decided to keep the two events inextricably
linked. The church to this day refers to the Easter Miracle as
the
"Paschal (Hebrew for Passover) Mystery."
The Passover is, of course, the high Jewish
Holy Day commemorating the
deliverance of the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt.
The
final plague that Yahweh visits upon the Egyptians is that of the
destruction of all the first born sons. He instructs Moses to
tell the
people of Israel to sacrifice a yearling lamb without blemish and place
the blood of the lamb upon their lintels and door posts so that the
angel of God will "passover" their houses and smite only the sons of
the Egyptians. The lamb is to be roasted and served with unleavened
bread and bitter herbs as a feast in preparation for the flight from
Egypt into the wilderness. This is the Feast of the Passover, and it is
this meal that Jesus shares with his disciples on Holy Thursday.
The theme of the sacrificial lamb is the
theological hinge pin of the
Old Testament. Abraham is summoned to Mt. Moriah by Yahweh for
the
purpose of sacrificing his son, Isaac. At the last moment, an
angel
appears and tells Abraham to substitute a ram that is conveniently
ensnared in some nearby brambles in place of Isaac. The ram is
sacrificed instead, much to Abraham's relief (not to mention that of
Isaac). The cult of ancient Israel surrounds this theme of the
sacrificial lamb of God that is put to death in place of a human
sacrifice (the pagan way -- more on this later). The lamb becomes a propitiation
for human sins, meaning that it stands in place of the human and bears
those human sins upon itself, which at the same time cleanses the
sinner. This is accomplished ceremonially when the priest immolates the
lamb and places some of its blood on the altar while throwing blood on
those being cleansed of their sins. This is where the expression
"washed in the blood of the lamb" originates.
The Old Testament prophets foretell the advent
of a future "suffering
servant:" A man of God sent pure from sin and who would become
the
final propitiation from sin for all time. By the time of Jesus, this
concept had long been bastardized to mean a militaristic messiah that
would take the throne as the true King of Israel out the royal line of
David. Jesus could claim this lineage through both Mary and
Joseph.
Interestingly and often overlooked, John the Baptist was also
legitimate heir to the High Priesthood of Aaron through both his
mother,
Elizabeth and his father, Zecharias. The High Priest in Israel presided
over both the annual sacrifice as outlined above and the coronation of
the king. The two are ceremonially similar. When John baptizes
Jesus,
the crowds interpret this to mean that he has been anointed king of
Israel. They begin to address him as "Son of David." Instead, he
has
been anointed as the sacrificial "lamb" and begins to refer to himself
as the "Son of Man," the son offered up for sacrifice (like Isaac) for
the sins of all mankind (like the lamb).
The final journey to Jerusalem
begins. The tension that builds throughout the rest of the gospel
account is that between the crowds that wish to acclaim Jesus as king
and the disciples, to whom he teaches the true meaning of the sacrifice
that is to take place. This culminates with the triumphant entry
into
Jerusalem and acclamation as king on Palm Sunday followed by the
institution of the Eucharist and the explanation of the meaning of his
death on Holy Thursday. When this dilemma of interpretation is
put to
Caiaphas, the ruling high priest in the Temple that year, Jesus has put
him in the unenviable position of either proclaiming him king of Israel
or putting him to death as the propitiation for sin. That
Caiaphas
understood the full ramifications of his actions is abundantly clear
when he speaks the most chilling words in scripture in John 18:14: "It
is better for one man to die for the people." He knew full well
what
he was doing and did so knowing that he had no choice but to comply
with the Word of God as spoken through the prophets down through the
ages. By the broadest interpretation, a man could be put to death under
Jewish law by strangulation, but the law was explicit that no blood
could be shed. There was no choice but to turn him over to the
Romans. Ironically enough, they were the only ones that could
shed the
blood of the sacrifice. And so the Jews coerced Pilate into doing
so
and the rest is, as they say, history.
It seems fair to assert that the resurrection
event took everyone by
surprise, even the disciples to whom it had been repeatedly foretold by
Jesus himself. Not only had Jesus taken away the sins of the
world for
all time, but he had also risen from the dead. He had destroyed
our
sin, thereby restoring to each individual human the potential for
eternal life that we had been robbed of by original sin. And,
being
God Incarnate, he was able to throw off the shackles of death himself
and in so doing stand as witness to his own truth for all eternity.
Amen and Amen. And so Christianity has a happy ending and the
purpose
of our earthly existence is merely to get to it. We're shown the
last
page of the story and so we already know that we win. That is
Christianity in a nutshell. Or more appropriate for our
discussion
today, an eggshell.
This brings us to the Church Age. For
the first 300 years, being
Christian was a matter of survival within a Roman civilization whose
attitude varied from ostracization to extermination depending the whim
of the emperor in power. Out of necessity, Christians huddled
within
the cities and metropolitan areas of the empire in an effort to gain
strength from their numbers and maintain a certain anonymity that was
impossible living more visibly in the open country. As the result of
this, the population of this open country was the last in the empire to
be converted.
When Constantine is converted and comes to
power in 312, Christianity
comes into power as the official Roman state religion. There are,
of
course, both pros and cons to this, and Catholic scholars debate them
most ardently down to this very day. However, the main upshot for
our
purposes here is to establish the fact that in the fourth century the
church faced the issue of the widespread conversion of the
pagans. The
word itself comes from the Latin paganini, which means
"country people." With the historical perspective that of the
church in
charge of culture (and soon to become dominant politically as well), it
should be easy to see that this attitude that prevails that somehow the
church became "paganized" by adopting the customs of the heathen
is
patently ridiculous. When Israel was in a similar situation at
the
time of the conquest, the solution was to exterminate the pagans (the
Canaanites as it were). The church takes the attitude of
conversion
rather than extermination and so assumes this arduous task amidst a
largely ignorant and illiterate society by "Christianizing" pagan
symbols of fertility such as Easter Eggs and Christmas Trees. So,
yes,
an egg can be used as a symbol of resurrection, and a tree as a symbol
of the cross, and in the end we are teaching the Christian story as
outlined above and we have done good and no harm. The idea that
this
is all somehow terrible and shows the underlying decadence of the
Catholic Church is primarily taught by fundamentalist and evangelical
Protestants that wouldn't know the true teaching of the Catholic Church
if it bit them in the ass (as well it might!). The other group
that
teaches an underlying paganism embedded in Christianity is the Wiccans,
who are witches, so you can consider the source in ascertaining the
value of their claims. Those that celebrate paganism as an
alternative
to Christianity would do well to consider that Druids were ritually
executing people well into near modern times and that all those well
preserved corpses found in the bogs of Denmark were the result of a
paganism that lingered into the middle ages and beyond in this part of
the world.
The word "Easter" is not European in origin,
by the way. It comes out
of the Near East. The etomology ties to Isis, Ishtar,
Astarte, etc.
This religion was very widespread in ancient times and was common to
Europe and obviously the names stated in the article are from those
listed here, but the source is nomadic and displaced people from the
Near East (Scythians for example) that brought it into Europe in far
ancient times. The point of paganism was appeasement of the gods
through human sacrifice, and it is, at its core, the antithesis of
everything that the Judeao-Christian tradition stands for and believes
in. It is a nasty business and it is not about bunnies and eggs
and
flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la. It is, essentially,
Satanism
with a garland of flowers around its neck. And so the reference to
"Easter" as a Christian holiday is because of the link to human
sacrafice and the event that would ultimately show the evil of the
pagan ways and supercede such wicked practice by the grace of God. The
article didn't point that out, so I thought I'd explain it.
And so folk lore is folk lore and while all of
this cute stuff might be
accurately labeled "Christian" superstiton, it should be noted that the
church does not condone or teach this crap and recognizes full well
that it is the product of ignorance. The egg may be the symbol of
fertility but it is no substitute for the cross, which is the symbol of
Christ's sacrifice on our behalf and of life eternal only through him.
Well, that's my say on the matter. So,
how was your Easter? Did you
eat lots of eggs and peeps and jelly beans?
Ropp
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