resurrection

This is a repost from 2010.  You might also enjoy my podcast The Resurrection Show.

I have always found it interesting that the timing Christian holiday of Easter is based on the lunar cycle and the Spring Equinox.  The holiday that the Christian world celebrates as Easter retains much of its pagan roots as a fertility festival and a time of balance as the days and nights (in the northern hemispheres) are of equal length. Even the name “Easter” is taken from the Saxon fertility goddess Ostara or Eostre, who is related to Astarte in ancient Babylon and Ashtoreth in ancient Israel.  And the Easter bunny is, of course, an old pagan symbol of fertility.

The resurrection story of Jesus is virtually identical to the tale of the resurrection of the Phrygian god Attis who preceded him:  According to Gerald Berry’s Religions of the World: The Record of Man’s Religious Faiths Primitive rites, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Christianity and others, written in 1965, “About 200 B.C. mystery cults began to appear in Rome just as they had earlier in Greece. Most notable was the Cybele cult centered on Vatican hill …Associated with the Cybele cult was that of her lover, Attis (the older Tammuz, Osiris, Dionysus, or Orpheus under a new name). He was a god of ever-reviving vegetation. Born of a virgin, he died and was reborn annually. The festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday and culminated after three days in a day of rejoicing over the resurrection.”

Another interesting aspect to the timing of Easter is its combination of the solar and lunar calendar, taking place as it does on the first Sunday following the 14th day of the lunar month following the […]

reprinted from 2006.  Artwork by Paulina Stuckey-Cassidy

Many people will celebrate Easter Sunday as the day that Christ rose from his grave and achieved godhood. In ancient mythology, the archetype of the dying and rising god actually began thousands of years before Jesus with the stories of Osiris and Tammuz, Adonis and Attis — all legends of gods that suffered an untimely end but were reborn into physical existence in order to spread their religion. Festivals celebrating the death of the god in winter when the crops were dying and the resurrection in spring were common.

Long before the birth of Jesus, Dionysus was resurrected and ascended to heaven after being torn apart by the Titans, an event celebrated in mystery cults in early Rome. Belief in Dionysus was thought to give one eternal life, and followers were initiated by bathing.

Several hundred years before Jesus, stories about the Anatolian god Attis claimed that he was born to a Virgin and was considered both the Father and the divine son. The Festival of Joy was celebrated every year in Rome: the first day commemorated his death, and on the third day the worshippers celebrated his rising from the dead.

Mithras was a Persian god who had faded into prehistory until being imported into Rome around 70 BC according to Plutarch. Mithras was born on December 25 of a virgin mother. He was born into a mortal body in order to redeem humanity and was known as Savior.

According to the 8th century Christian monk and historian Bede, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). Eostre was a Teutonic goddess of fertility, who was often portrayed in Anglo-Saxon myth with a white hare standing in attendance. The hare, or rabbit, […]