"Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth [his] hands
to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of
John with the sword. And he killed James the brother of John
with the sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he
proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of
unleavened bread.) And when he had apprehended him, he
put [him] in prison, and delivered [him] to four quaternions of
soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth
to the people." (Acts 12:1-4)
The odds are that your version of the Bible doesn't say what this passage says; Praise God. The more modern versions have found many of the errors in translation that are part of the King James Version and have corrected them. The Blue Letter Bible site has twelve English versions, but the King James Version is the only one of them that has the word Easter in Acts 12:4. So much for "King James Only", but that isn't the subject of this post.
The Greek word from which the King James scholars translated the word Easter is; πάσχα, but we would write it as pascha. It occurs in the New Testament 29 times, and in 28 places, the King James scholars translated it as passover. Acts 12:4 is the only place they translated it as Easter. Why? Me thinks something stinks here.
It was the early 1600s. The King of England was James the First, previously of Scotland. A few monarchs earlier (circa 1534), King Henry had lusted after Anne Boleyn. The Roman Catholic Church, in the person of the pope denied the King's desired divorce from his wife Cathrine, so Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church of Rome and created the Church of England, (aka the Anglican Church, aka the Episcopalian Church), and he appointed himself as the head of the church.
My understanding of the Anglican Church is that it is like the Catholic Church, but with services in English. This was the church that King James inherited. As monarch, he was the head of it, and that is when the King James Version of the Bible was prepared. It served to solidify the separation with the Catholic Church of Rome by giving the English-speaking people a Bible to read that didn't need to be interpreted by anyone who spoke Latin. There would be no more need for contact with the Church of Rome. So much for our history lesson.
What is Easter? Best to first answer that question with what Easter is not. Easter is not Resurrection Morning. Easter has nothing to do with the Resurrection of Our Lord except in the traditions of men. Once again, traditions kept at the expense of Biblical truth.
The timing is off.
The date for Easter is determined and based on the circuit of the Earth around the Sun. It's date is given as the first Sunday following the first full moon that follows the spring equinox. It goes by that date based on Pagan tradition that the goddess Ishtar came to earth that day. That was supposedly when she descended; in the days of Noah's great-grandson, Nimrod.
The date for Resurrection Morning can be determined using the Bible text. The tomb of our Lord, Yeshua HaMashiach, was found empty on a Sunday morning, but it was a particular morning, a morning defined in scripture.
Yeshua of Nazareth, Christ the Lord came out of the tomb at the beginning of the Hebrew day known as 'Firstfruits', and was the first fruit of those who slept (were dead). The Bible doesn't use our name for the first day of the week, Sunday, a name which comes from and means the day in which is worshiped the venerable Sun-god, Sol Invictus Mithras, the head deity of the Roman world in Yeshua's day. Instead, the Bible calls the days by number, beginning with the first day of the week, which today, we call Sunday. The Biblical days are named as follows: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and finally, the seventh day, sabbath.
The day of the observance of Firstfruits can be seen in Leviticus 23 and other places. It is the first day of the Hebrew week which follows the sabbath day that falls out during the week of the feast of Unleavened Bread referred to in Acts 12:1-4 above. Further, the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a seven-day observance that begins the day after Passover. Further, Passover is ALWAYS on the 14th day of the first Hebrew month of Aviv/Abib. (Most Bibles call that month by the name of Nissan, but that too is a name derived from paganism.)
Biblically, the month of Aviv/Abib (I print it both ways because it is spelled both ways in common usage) is named from the developmental state of the wild barley that grows in the spring. The first day of the month of Aviv begins with the sighting of the next new moon, once the barley has been found in the Aviv stage of development. Sequence: They watch the barley that grows wild in Israel. When it gets to the Aviv stage, they start looking for the next new moon because that will be the beginning of the month of Aviv. Aviv is the month that begins the New Hebrew year (Exodus 12:1-2).
How and why did the word 'Easter' get into our Bibles? Why in the world did the Anglican Church scholars who produced the King James Version translate the word pascha as Easter? Was it intentional, or was it an accident? Why did they translate this same word as Passover the other 28 times, but translate it as Easter in Acts 12:4? For the answers to these and other important questions about that translation work, please ask them if you get a chance.
My own suspicion in this regard is that it was intentional. I think that they would have liked to translate it as Easter all 29 times if they could have gotten away with it. It was just too hard to make all of the other places say Easter and still have them fit with the meaning of the verses. Can you even imagine how our scriptures would have read? We would be reading things like this.
That wouldn't have worked, but they got away with it in Acts 12:4 because nobody recognized what the verse was talking about.
Even today, I don't think that most people know what the days of unleavened bread are. Had the Christian world known about the feast of Unleavened Bread, and how it was preceded by the day of Passover, they might of resisted having the word Easter substituted in their Bibles. They didn't have the tools we have today, so maybe they wouldn't have known the difference anyway.
Sad, but even with all we know about our Bibles today, with all of the understanding of languages, with all of the newer versions of the Bible, Christians around the world still observe Easter as the day that Yeshua resurrected from the tomb. And, at the same time, anyone who wants to teach about the feasts is blackballed in the Christian community, and things like the 'Hebrew Roots' movement are called apostate.
Once again, tradition is kept at the expense of Biblical truth. Sometimes, tradition is all there is to go by. Sometimes it gets mixed with history. As long as we recognize it as such, tradition is just fine. But, we should never mix it with Bible truth. Some of the following is tradition, and some is actually recorded historical data. I begin with a picture.
What are we seeing here? This is a tradition being observed by people who are part of the Eastern Orthodox branch of Catholicism. This is their tradition for Easter. They dye eggs, just like, strike that. They die eggs somewhat like other people do, who celebrate Easter. In this tradition, all of the eggs are died red. In the Protestant tradition, the eggs are died a variety of colors.
Multi-colored or Red. Who cares? What's the difference? Surprisingly, there is a difference. We are talking about tradition, and as is often the case, tradition doesn't know its parentage. Tradition just exists. However, in this case there is at least a tradition as to the origin of the red eggs.
Have you ever wondered as to the origin of the traditions you observe? Why do you dye eggs? What is it with that rabbit thing anyway? Well, here is where it all started, at least this is a tradition of where it originated, but it is mixed with some history, and I'm going to tell you about it with my beginning point being spoken of in the pages of, of all places, the Bible. Noah begat Ham, and Ham begat Cush, and Cush begat Nimrod, and:
"Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth." (Genesis 10:8)
It was Nimrod that built the tower of Babel in defiance of the God of his fathers. Nimrod married a prostitute from the docks along the Persian gulf. She was a piece of work, the real brains of the operation, it seems. Nimrod was worshiped as a god while on earth, and after his wife, Semiramis had him ritually murdered, she proclaimed that he had ascended to heaven and would thereafter be the Sun god. Again, the masses worshiped Nimrod as god.
Semiramis continued to have many sexual liaisons, and she became pregnant. No problem for this clever woman. She told the people that while basking nude in the sunshine, the rays from her husband had made her pregnant. When she gave birth, her son Tammuz was proclaimed, get this; The son of god. And the people believed her. At a later point in time, the people of God would also believe her, and worship her ascended heaven (Ezekiel chapter 8), and her son.
Well, all good things must come to an end, and Semiramis died. It was reported that she ascended to heaven to become the queen of heaven. That too was believed, and that too would be embraced by the people of God (Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:17). But, she was too good for heaven, and so, she was sent back to earth, not as Semiramis, but as the story goes, as the goddess Ishtar. She descended from heaven in a giant egg; the egg broke open when it landed in the waters of the Euphrates river, and out she stepped. The goddess proclaimed her divinity by turning a passing bird into an egg-laying rabbit. Got the picture? Here's one for ya.
See the bird? See the egg? This is Ishtar. Her name was originally pronounced; Easter. She is known by different names in different cultures; Eostre, Astarte, Ostera, and Eastre, the Mother Goddess, wife of Baal, Ashtaroth or Ashtoreth, and the Queen of Heaven. She is Aphrodite, Venus and Isis. There are a plethora of great websites about all of this.
Here we have the origin of the rabbit and the egg used in the celebration of Ishtar's birth, Easter, but what about those red eggs? What is the origin of the tradition to dye eggs, especially those red ones? Let's go back to here son, Tammuz. By the way, tradition also says that she married Tammuz. Sick, huh?
He grew to be a man, but was killed in a hunting accident on his 40th birthday. I guess I forgot to mention what day he was born? It was the pagan equivalent of December 25th. He was gored to death by the wild boar he was trying to kill that day.
So, all of the family had left the building. Nimrod, Semiramis, Tammuz; all dead and gone. Now the worship gets going.
Tammuz' birthday is remembered on December 25th throughout TODAY'S world of paganism. Call it Christmas where you live, but the pagans are remembering Tammuz' birthday on that day, as well as the day of his death.
Ishtar's birthday is remembered on the first Sunday morning after the first full moon following the spring equinox, the same day that most Christians are in church calling the day; 'resurrection morning'. In Catholicism, the devout have also been abstaining from some earthly pleasure for the preceding 40 days, and they don't know why. They just call it 'Lent' and go on with life. The pagans have also been abstaining from some earthly pleasure during the 40 days preceding Ishtar's birthday (Easter), but they know why they are doing it; one day for every year of Tammuz' short life.
On the East side of Jerusalem, in a spot where the sun's rays will strike earliest, there is a cave. It is a Tammuz cave. In the days of Manasseh, the blood veins of first-born children were opened and the little boys were cast into the arms of Molech (another name for these pagan deities), where they were burned alive. Eggs were dipped in the blood as part of the worship service. Then the priest of Molech would have sex with all the properly aged virgins of Israel so that they would produce sons for the next year's sacrifice. Later that day, they would eat roast pork in commemoration of the death of the boar pig that had killed Tammuz.
Here's your dyed Easter eggs. Here's even you ham sandwich. The eggs dipped in blood were not multi-colored; they were only red; dyed in the blood of the baby boys that had been sacrificed to Molech. Here's your Easter observance origin. Our eggs aren't red. They don't remind us.
I'm sickened. I'll not only have nothing to do with the pagan tradition, but I won't have anything to do with their days either.
Tradition insinuated its way into the Roman Catholic Church, and the reformers failed to get rid of it; probably because they didn't realize what it was. But we do. And yet, traditions will be kept at the expense of Biblical truth.
This year, 2010, the Jewish calendars have already proclaimed that Passover will be on March 29th, a Monday. That will put resurrection morning on April 4th, and this year, that happens to be Easter. April 4th will be the first Sunday after the full moon of March 29th, and the spring equinox this year will be on March 20th, nine days before that.
to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of
John with the sword. And he killed James the brother of John
with the sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he
proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of
unleavened bread.) And when he had apprehended him, he
put [him] in prison, and delivered [him] to four quaternions of
soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth
to the people." (Acts 12:1-4)
The odds are that your version of the Bible doesn't say what this passage says; Praise God. The more modern versions have found many of the errors in translation that are part of the King James Version and have corrected them. The Blue Letter Bible site has twelve English versions, but the King James Version is the only one of them that has the word Easter in Acts 12:4. So much for "King James Only", but that isn't the subject of this post.
The Greek word from which the King James scholars translated the word Easter is; πάσχα, but we would write it as pascha. It occurs in the New Testament 29 times, and in 28 places, the King James scholars translated it as passover. Acts 12:4 is the only place they translated it as Easter. Why? Me thinks something stinks here.
It was the early 1600s. The King of England was James the First, previously of Scotland. A few monarchs earlier (circa 1534), King Henry had lusted after Anne Boleyn. The Roman Catholic Church, in the person of the pope denied the King's desired divorce from his wife Cathrine, so Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church of Rome and created the Church of England, (aka the Anglican Church, aka the Episcopalian Church), and he appointed himself as the head of the church.
My understanding of the Anglican Church is that it is like the Catholic Church, but with services in English. This was the church that King James inherited. As monarch, he was the head of it, and that is when the King James Version of the Bible was prepared. It served to solidify the separation with the Catholic Church of Rome by giving the English-speaking people a Bible to read that didn't need to be interpreted by anyone who spoke Latin. There would be no more need for contact with the Church of Rome. So much for our history lesson.
What is Easter? Best to first answer that question with what Easter is not. Easter is not Resurrection Morning. Easter has nothing to do with the Resurrection of Our Lord except in the traditions of men. Once again, traditions kept at the expense of Biblical truth.
The timing is off.
The date for Easter is determined and based on the circuit of the Earth around the Sun. It's date is given as the first Sunday following the first full moon that follows the spring equinox. It goes by that date based on Pagan tradition that the goddess Ishtar came to earth that day. That was supposedly when she descended; in the days of Noah's great-grandson, Nimrod.
The date for Resurrection Morning can be determined using the Bible text. The tomb of our Lord, Yeshua HaMashiach, was found empty on a Sunday morning, but it was a particular morning, a morning defined in scripture.
"But now is Christ risen from the dead, [and] become the
firstfruits of them that slept." (1st Corinthians 15:20)
firstfruits of them that slept." (1st Corinthians 15:20)
Yeshua of Nazareth, Christ the Lord came out of the tomb at the beginning of the Hebrew day known as 'Firstfruits', and was the first fruit of those who slept (were dead). The Bible doesn't use our name for the first day of the week, Sunday, a name which comes from and means the day in which is worshiped the venerable Sun-god, Sol Invictus Mithras, the head deity of the Roman world in Yeshua's day. Instead, the Bible calls the days by number, beginning with the first day of the week, which today, we call Sunday. The Biblical days are named as follows: first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and finally, the seventh day, sabbath.
The day of the observance of Firstfruits can be seen in Leviticus 23 and other places. It is the first day of the Hebrew week which follows the sabbath day that falls out during the week of the feast of Unleavened Bread referred to in Acts 12:1-4 above. Further, the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a seven-day observance that begins the day after Passover. Further, Passover is ALWAYS on the 14th day of the first Hebrew month of Aviv/Abib. (Most Bibles call that month by the name of Nissan, but that too is a name derived from paganism.)
Biblically, the month of Aviv/Abib (I print it both ways because it is spelled both ways in common usage) is named from the developmental state of the wild barley that grows in the spring. The first day of the month of Aviv begins with the sighting of the next new moon, once the barley has been found in the Aviv stage of development. Sequence: They watch the barley that grows wild in Israel. When it gets to the Aviv stage, they start looking for the next new moon because that will be the beginning of the month of Aviv. Aviv is the month that begins the New Hebrew year (Exodus 12:1-2).
How and why did the word 'Easter' get into our Bibles? Why in the world did the Anglican Church scholars who produced the King James Version translate the word pascha as Easter? Was it intentional, or was it an accident? Why did they translate this same word as Passover the other 28 times, but translate it as Easter in Acts 12:4? For the answers to these and other important questions about that translation work, please ask them if you get a chance.
My own suspicion in this regard is that it was intentional. I think that they would have liked to translate it as Easter all 29 times if they could have gotten away with it. It was just too hard to make all of the other places say Easter and still have them fit with the meaning of the verses. Can you even imagine how our scriptures would have read? We would be reading things like this.
Ye know that after two days is the feast of Easter, and the Son of man
is betrayed to be crucified.
Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came
to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee
to eat the Easter?
And Easter, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.
Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye
are unleavened. For even Christ our Easter is sacrificed for us:
is betrayed to be crucified.
Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the disciples came
to Jesus, saying unto him, Where wilt thou that we prepare for thee
to eat the Easter?
And Easter, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.
Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye
are unleavened. For even Christ our Easter is sacrificed for us:
That wouldn't have worked, but they got away with it in Acts 12:4 because nobody recognized what the verse was talking about.
"Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth [his] hands
to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of
John with the sword. And he killed James the brother of John
with the sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he
proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of
unleavened bread.) And when he had apprehended him, he
put [him] in prison, and delivered [him] to four quaternions of
soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth
to the people." (Acts 12:1-4)
to vex certain of the church. And he killed James the brother of
John with the sword. And he killed James the brother of John
with the sword. And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he
proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of
unleavened bread.) And when he had apprehended him, he
put [him] in prison, and delivered [him] to four quaternions of
soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth
to the people." (Acts 12:1-4)
Even today, I don't think that most people know what the days of unleavened bread are. Had the Christian world known about the feast of Unleavened Bread, and how it was preceded by the day of Passover, they might of resisted having the word Easter substituted in their Bibles. They didn't have the tools we have today, so maybe they wouldn't have known the difference anyway.
Sad, but even with all we know about our Bibles today, with all of the understanding of languages, with all of the newer versions of the Bible, Christians around the world still observe Easter as the day that Yeshua resurrected from the tomb. And, at the same time, anyone who wants to teach about the feasts is blackballed in the Christian community, and things like the 'Hebrew Roots' movement are called apostate.
Once again, tradition is kept at the expense of Biblical truth. Sometimes, tradition is all there is to go by. Sometimes it gets mixed with history. As long as we recognize it as such, tradition is just fine. But, we should never mix it with Bible truth. Some of the following is tradition, and some is actually recorded historical data. I begin with a picture.
What are we seeing here? This is a tradition being observed by people who are part of the Eastern Orthodox branch of Catholicism. This is their tradition for Easter. They dye eggs, just like, strike that. They die eggs somewhat like other people do, who celebrate Easter. In this tradition, all of the eggs are died red. In the Protestant tradition, the eggs are died a variety of colors.Multi-colored or Red. Who cares? What's the difference? Surprisingly, there is a difference. We are talking about tradition, and as is often the case, tradition doesn't know its parentage. Tradition just exists. However, in this case there is at least a tradition as to the origin of the red eggs.
Have you ever wondered as to the origin of the traditions you observe? Why do you dye eggs? What is it with that rabbit thing anyway? Well, here is where it all started, at least this is a tradition of where it originated, but it is mixed with some history, and I'm going to tell you about it with my beginning point being spoken of in the pages of, of all places, the Bible. Noah begat Ham, and Ham begat Cush, and Cush begat Nimrod, and:
"Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth." (Genesis 10:8)
It was Nimrod that built the tower of Babel in defiance of the God of his fathers. Nimrod married a prostitute from the docks along the Persian gulf. She was a piece of work, the real brains of the operation, it seems. Nimrod was worshiped as a god while on earth, and after his wife, Semiramis had him ritually murdered, she proclaimed that he had ascended to heaven and would thereafter be the Sun god. Again, the masses worshiped Nimrod as god.
Semiramis continued to have many sexual liaisons, and she became pregnant. No problem for this clever woman. She told the people that while basking nude in the sunshine, the rays from her husband had made her pregnant. When she gave birth, her son Tammuz was proclaimed, get this; The son of god. And the people believed her. At a later point in time, the people of God would also believe her, and worship her ascended heaven (Ezekiel chapter 8), and her son.
Well, all good things must come to an end, and Semiramis died. It was reported that she ascended to heaven to become the queen of heaven. That too was believed, and that too would be embraced by the people of God (Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:17). But, she was too good for heaven, and so, she was sent back to earth, not as Semiramis, but as the story goes, as the goddess Ishtar. She descended from heaven in a giant egg; the egg broke open when it landed in the waters of the Euphrates river, and out she stepped. The goddess proclaimed her divinity by turning a passing bird into an egg-laying rabbit. Got the picture? Here's one for ya.
See the bird? See the egg? This is Ishtar. Her name was originally pronounced; Easter. She is known by different names in different cultures; Eostre, Astarte, Ostera, and Eastre, the Mother Goddess, wife of Baal, Ashtaroth or Ashtoreth, and the Queen of Heaven. She is Aphrodite, Venus and Isis. There are a plethora of great websites about all of this.Here we have the origin of the rabbit and the egg used in the celebration of Ishtar's birth, Easter, but what about those red eggs? What is the origin of the tradition to dye eggs, especially those red ones? Let's go back to here son, Tammuz. By the way, tradition also says that she married Tammuz. Sick, huh?
He grew to be a man, but was killed in a hunting accident on his 40th birthday. I guess I forgot to mention what day he was born? It was the pagan equivalent of December 25th. He was gored to death by the wild boar he was trying to kill that day.
So, all of the family had left the building. Nimrod, Semiramis, Tammuz; all dead and gone. Now the worship gets going.
Tammuz' birthday is remembered on December 25th throughout TODAY'S world of paganism. Call it Christmas where you live, but the pagans are remembering Tammuz' birthday on that day, as well as the day of his death.
Ishtar's birthday is remembered on the first Sunday morning after the first full moon following the spring equinox, the same day that most Christians are in church calling the day; 'resurrection morning'. In Catholicism, the devout have also been abstaining from some earthly pleasure for the preceding 40 days, and they don't know why. They just call it 'Lent' and go on with life. The pagans have also been abstaining from some earthly pleasure during the 40 days preceding Ishtar's birthday (Easter), but they know why they are doing it; one day for every year of Tammuz' short life.
On the East side of Jerusalem, in a spot where the sun's rays will strike earliest, there is a cave. It is a Tammuz cave. In the days of Manasseh, the blood veins of first-born children were opened and the little boys were cast into the arms of Molech (another name for these pagan deities), where they were burned alive. Eggs were dipped in the blood as part of the worship service. Then the priest of Molech would have sex with all the properly aged virgins of Israel so that they would produce sons for the next year's sacrifice. Later that day, they would eat roast pork in commemoration of the death of the boar pig that had killed Tammuz.
Here's your dyed Easter eggs. Here's even you ham sandwich. The eggs dipped in blood were not multi-colored; they were only red; dyed in the blood of the baby boys that had been sacrificed to Molech. Here's your Easter observance origin. Our eggs aren't red. They don't remind us.
I'm sickened. I'll not only have nothing to do with the pagan tradition, but I won't have anything to do with their days either.
Tradition insinuated its way into the Roman Catholic Church, and the reformers failed to get rid of it; probably because they didn't realize what it was. But we do. And yet, traditions will be kept at the expense of Biblical truth.
This year, 2010, the Jewish calendars have already proclaimed that Passover will be on March 29th, a Monday. That will put resurrection morning on April 4th, and this year, that happens to be Easter. April 4th will be the first Sunday after the full moon of March 29th, and the spring equinox this year will be on March 20th, nine days before that.
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