Is your church against celebrating Halloween and trick or treat?
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Anonymous
So we agree then, that it is the origin of the name. Great! Kind of a stretch to suggest that is the only connection, don't ya think? While her scholarship is impressive, the rest of her statements are unsupported by citation. They are just statements of her opinion. "He may have been guessing" or "He may have invented" . Which are ironic accusations! As for the symbology, we know the rabbit wasn't biblical. Leviticus 11:6 states that the hare is an unclean animal: “The hare, for even though it chews the cud, it does not have divided hoofs; it is unclean for you” https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/virginity-fertility-or-just-chocolate-the-opaque-history-of-the-easter-bunny/ |
Anonymous
It's actually quite a stretch to suggest that a connection to rabbits existed in pre-Christian times then disappeared entirely from the historical record before reappearing almost a thousand years later. It's technically possible, but there's zero evidence for it. No one claimed the rabbit association was biblical, just that it likely arose in a Christian culture rather than being a surviving pagan element. There's simply no credible modern scholarship based on primary sources that makes this connection. Even your own link makes clear that the connection is entirely supposed: "the Easter Hare is unintelligible to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara." Just a guess. Your link also, I believe confuses who made that statement. Based on this: https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/04/ostara-and-the-hare/ from folklorist Stephen Winick, the quote there isn't from Jacob Grimm but Adolph Holtzmann. Grimm's contribution is to invent the idea of Eostre being a manifestation of a more widespread goddess he called Ostara, but there's no evidence for that outside of his supposition. It's a myth that makes sense to modern ears, but when I say there's no evidence for it, this is what I'm talking about. |
Anonymous
DP. It’s very surprising you claim to be in agreement with pp about the origin of the word “Easter.” She basically debunked the pagan claim that it was derived from a pagan goddess, and she used credible sources. In particular, there’s no positive evidence that pagans ever had a goddess named Eostre, also the venerable Bede of the 8th century wasn’t contemporary or entirely reliable on many points besides this one. You’ve taken a LACK of evidence for this alleged pagan goddess and turned this into “unsupported opinion” about her nonexistence, then somehow you’ve turned this into an assertion that a. she existed, and b. pp agrees with you. Also, you keep ignoring the stronger evidence that “Easter” entered Middle English from the middle German word for dawn, “Eostarum.” Not to mention, the idea that 5-6th century Brits were created the festival, instead of the more obvious 1st and 2nd century peoples of the Middle East and Rome, is a bit insulting. That’s quite a stretch, dontcha think? |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
Do you have any documented, first-hand accounts of these celebrations? |
Anonymous
+1. Now that Bede’s version of Eostre has been subjected to serious question and nobody else has evidence about festivals and rituals around her. But maybe pp does? |
Anonymous
Dude, YOUR POST QUOTES PARKER SAYING THIS: {I}t's important to recognize that even if Easter does take its name from a goddess, that only tells us about the origins of the name- not the origins of the festival. So yes, we agree that is the origin of the name. My position is that if the name is the source it is likely the rest is sourced there also, at least until other evidence proves it isn't. You provide no evidence it wasn't, no evidence of where else those symbols came, and simply "Bede prolly made it up" with no evidence that is true. It's fricking laughable. Howzabout this: stop gish galloping with many words that prove nothing, and show one bit of evidence that the holiday and symbology came from somewhere else. Otherwise I claim victory and I am done with you! |
Anonymous
I'm the PP who originally posted the quotes from Parker's book, but at the evidence that the Easter Bunny and eggs weren't derived from Eostre worship has been clearly laid out. There's no connection between Easter and rabbits or hares until much much later (I haven't found a reliable source on exactly when, but I've seen no claims of connection between Easter and rabbits until the 1600s, roughly a thousand years after Eostre worship (if it ever actually existed) died out. Eggs come earlier (Parker gives the 14th century I believe), but we also are pretty sure they come first from Mesopotamian Christians and then gradually spread. If rabbits were actually carried over from Eostre worship, you'd expect to see them at some point between the 500s and the 1500s, but you don't. As an analogy, on Wednesday it was internet custom for a while to post this one picture of a frog (I have no idea if people still do this). Wednesday is named for Woden, an Anglo-Saxon god. Now, if you in a thousand years, suggested that frogs must have been sacred to Woden, you'd be making the same argument: "it's the source of the name, so it's reasonable to assume that its the source of the rest of it." Except the connection between Wednesday and frogs didn't exist until modern times, so you'd be wrong. It's the same thing for bunnies. There's no evidence of any connection between Eostre and bunnies, there's no connection between Easter and bunnies in the first 1000 years that English people were celebrating Easter, then suddenly bunnies spring up as an Easter thing (likely first in Germany), and then no one connects the Easter Bunny and Eostre for another 200-300 years after that, and that connection clearly a wild guess to connect two things that the author admits he can't explain and is just guessing ("The Easter Hare is unintelligible to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara"). Moreover, you're the one making the assertion, and you're demanding evidence that you're wrong, which isn't how it works. You need to provide evidence, and you haven't. You've got a blank space of a thousand years and you've creatively filled in the holes based on some 19th century guy's guessing. There's a reason why this story is the stuff of pop history and not professional scholars. |
Anonymous
Dude, you’re talking to somebody different from the person who posted what you’re quoting. So, you repost her sentence with the words “even if” Eostre existed—I bolded it for you—and try to turn this subjective expression of uncertainty into an assertion that you and pp agree that Eostre definitely existed. That’s your first unsubstantiated leap of logic. Amazingly, second leap: you take this even further to assert that the (still very unproven) name means there must have been traditions behind it. And an implied third leap: for your claim about a link to the Christian Easter you’d that these traditions must have involved spring or the equinox or something. “Even if” is not proof of existence. Several of us are curious if you have proof that goes beyond “even if.” Or, frankly, whether you’re just trolling with all these bizarre leaps of logic. Trying not to laugh here…. |
Anonymous
* subjunctive not subjective, thanks spell check |
Anonymous
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I’m kind of loving this thread. I’ve learned a lot from pp with the research on Bede and Easter eggs and rabbits.
The pagan with the wild claims about a goddess there’s no record of needs to provide evidence this goddess actually existed AND that she was connected to bunnies and eggs. Or to stop insulting people. It could go either way. |
Anonymous
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Is this the thread where we demand evidence?
OK, great! Been waiting for this one. Where is the evidence for god then? Since evidence is suddenly so important. I'll wait. |
Anonymous
You’re asking for two types of evidence: 1. Was there a religion/faith based around a given god or goddess, and 2. Are the various gods/goddesses in question “real.” There’s no evidence there was ever a pagan faith based around a goddess called Eostra with rituals and other totems like eggs and bunnies. You just have a controversial mention by Bede, who lived a century later and may have invented it, plus some speculation from a German guy in the 1800s. Also credible competing theories like a Germanic origin for the word Easter. Nothing like the extensive scripture and ritual in so many other religions, including Greco-Roman mythology for which there’s lots of evidence. Or Baal, or the various Sumerian gods—we have statues and contemporaneous writings about them, so they really were religions. Not so for Eostra. Whether God or Eostra (if this was an actual faith, and frankly there’s no evidence for that, see previous para) are “real” is obviously a separate question that is best answered with faith. OK great. |
Anonymous
Well thanks for admitting there is no evidence of a god. And for telling me that it is OK to believe in Eostra on the exact same principle of faith. What cannot be believed based on faith? |
Anonymous
For sure. You’re welcome to believe in a Middle Ages goddess despite there being no evidence anybody in the actual Middle Ages believed in her. |