Faith Versus Evidence: Is Easter True ?

This week millions of Christians all over the world will be commemorating the death and subsequent resurrection of Jesus Christ, in a holiday season known as Easter. In Europe, Africa and Asia for example, commercial activities and several other significant sectors of the economy will be shut down to enable citizens to travel to their hometowns to join with family members, and to reflect on and relive these events which are indeed the founding pillars of the Christian religion itself. Easter therefore, arguably, represents the most important and defining events of the Christian faith. In Ghana for example Easter is one of those times when families mobilize resources to treat themselves to rich nutritious food like chicken, which otherwise is beyond their means to be eaten on a regular basis. However some issues concerning this important celebration remain unclear and unaddressed as of the present time. The purpose of this essay is to review some of these questions and see how they stack up against the prevailing known evidence. As always, readers are encouraged to add their comments so we may all learn more and be even better informed.

Naturally the first place to look for the evidence of Easter would be the Bible itself as the Easter events are the most important narrative of the Christian faith. But sadly the word Easter is nowhere be to be found in the Bible. Not even once is it mentioned, let alone are adherents asked to celebrate it every year. So how is this? How come Easter does not appear in any of the 66 books of the Bible? Even after Jesus ascended back to heaven, the early Christians from Acts to Revelations would have been expected to have some celebration of this event even if it was not explicitly called Easter, but no such thing occurred. Why? Then what is Easter and what does it mean? Where did the word Easter come from? And the current celebrations we know, such as Good Friday, Easter Monday, Easter eggs, and the Easter bunny. Where did they come from?

The ancient Babylonians celebrated an annual feast in the third week of March to celebrate the equinox and to officially declare the end of winter and the time from which every year the daylight hours become longer than the darkness hours. They associated this triumph of light over darkness, as well as the fact that more daylight and warmer temperatures meant rejuvenation of life or resurrection after a long cold and winter during which time food was scarce and hard to come by. Due to the blossoming of new flowers and plants regaining their green foliage as well animals coming out from hibernation many beginning their mating season, the ancient Babylonians associated this event with the rebirth and fertility. The Babylonian goddess of fertility was called Ishtar. This is the origin of the word Easter. At some later data the ancient Romans who also had a similar festival of their own, conquered the entire region and some of these customs were incorporated into the ancient Roman religion. As we all know the Romans later conquered the whole Europe and swaths of Asia. Among their vassal states were ancient tribes that became the ancestors of the Germans. The Germanic tribes had a similar festival of their own where they honored a fertility goddess named Eostur. This goddess was symbolized by a rabbit. The rabbit was always portrayed as standing beside a brood of eggs ready to hatch and continue the cycle of life all afresh. The month in which the goddess Eostur was honored was called Eostur-monath and is equivalent to April in our current modern calendar invented by Julius Caesar. This is the origin of the so called Easter bunny and Easter eggs. It is interesting to note that it was German immigrants to Pennsylvania in the 18th century who introduced this tradition in what became the United States of America. The Germanic traditions also became merged into the Roman religion. It was the emperor Constantine who converted the Roman empire from pagan religion to Christianity in the year 313 AD. This new policy of Rome meant that previous pagan festivals were switched from honoring some deity to honoring something significant in the Christian religion. The fertility and rebirth celebrations were changed to celebrate the rebirth of the savior Jesus Christ. The name Easter was maintained but there was no consensus on when exactly the festival should be celebrated so each church or bishop decided for itself an appropriate date in the month of April. We must note though that the early Jewish founders of Christianity did not participate in any such celebration as they saw it as the Roman government using religion and politics to usurp their religion. In AD 325 the Council of Nicaea was convened on the behest of Emperor Constantine. The purpose was to standardize the Christian religion and to decide once and for all what books would be used as holy books and other rules and regulations for the churches for the future of this new religion. It was decided at this meeting that all Christians in the empire would celebrate Easter on the same day, and that the procedure for calculating which day to use for celebration was also decided and codified. For example before this meeting, Easter did not always fall on a Sunday. So the first Easter as we could recognize today was celebrated on 327 AD, a good 327 years after Jesus. So Easter is from pagan origins and the date of the celebration was chosen by ancient Roman church fathers who voted for it by a simple majority. There is no biblical basis for this holiday.

But let us just assume the Easter holidays are actually sanctioned by Yahweh. We shall next look at the narrative of events in the Bible and see if it adds up.

The events concerning Jesus life including his death were prophesied many centuries earlier. For example in Micah 5:1-2 it said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Jeremiah 23:5 states that the messiah would be a direct descendant of King David. Jesus himself foretold his own death. Luke 18:33 “and after they have scourged Him, they will kill Him; and the third day He will rise again."” John 2: 18 Jesus answered and said to them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." Mathew 12:40 “for just as JONAH WAS THREE DAYS AND THREE NIGHTS IN THE BELLY OF THE SEA MONSTER, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”:

So this is where the problem arises. Jesus says just like Jonah in the fish’s stomach he will be dead for three days and three nights and then rise up. So if he died on the so called Good Friday then doing the simple maths he would have risen on Monday morning. Unless he died on Thursday. But we know that is not the case because the Last Supper was taken on the night before the Jewish festival of Passover which fell on Friday that year. Also Mathew 28: 1 – 2 states that he a rose on the first day of the week. Since the Hebrews at the time were under colonization by the Romans, and the fact that the New Testament was written in Greek, in the Greco-Roman culture the first day of the week would have been Sunday. So the numbers do not add up. There is one day missing in this story. So where was God or Jesus to correct this problem? When a journalist posed this question to a senior bishop at the Vatican recently he was told it is a mystery and there is no available answer, so we should simply accept it on faith alone. Very funny! So the omniscient/potent being cannot get his dates right or clarify a simply anomaly? Last week a British Biblical scholar Professor Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University announced that after six years of researching Jewish customs, Roman government records, the Bible itself and other non-biblical Jewish religious documents, that the Last Supper must have happened on Wednesday, and the crucifixion on Thursday. Professor Humphreys concluded that Jesus' arrest, interrogation and separate trials did not all take place on one night only. He claims the exact date for the Last Supper was April 1, 33AD. As a result we should be able to make Easter a fixed date on the calendar like Christmas and not the current rotating days that were established by the Romans. So for almost 2,000 years now Christians have ignorantly been celebrating on the wrong day. Why did God not correct this mistake and leave it up to “atheists” to point it out 2,000 plus years later?

There are many other anomalies to the story, for example who first saw the resurrected Jesus? Did the all the disciples see him at once or did some see him first? Did Jesus stay on earth before ascending to heaven, or did he resurrect and then immediately go to heaven? It is claimed that when Jesus died he went to Sheol, or the underworld, or hell if you will. So does such a place exist? Where is it? Depending on which of the gospels one reads, different answers emerge. There are many contradictions, confusion and ambiguity on these issues and those mentioned here just touch the surface. Viewers are encouraged to read for themselves.

At this point let us look at the substantive issue behind the whole Easter story. We have a God who is actually three entities, a trinity (if we are to go by church tradition as there is no evidence of trinity in the Bible) who sends one entity down to earth to die for the sins of humans whom he created perfectly. So this entity sacrifices himself, or if it makes more sense, the Father sends his son to die for the sins of others, and if the humans accept this sacrifice they will live with this father and his son for eternity in heaven. So first of all where is the sense of justice of this God? You kill one person for the offenses of others? So can we arrest Laurent Gbagbo or Gaddaffi’s son and charge them for the crimes committed by their fathers or their fathers’ security forces? Then we are told God needs a blood sacrifice. Why? Why does a God need blood? Is he a vampire? Why does he need blood, after all what is blood? It is 70% water containing some blood cells that contain hemoglobin so oxygen can be absorbed when the blood passes through the lungs. There are also some enzymes, antibodies and other chemicals in their performing certain functions for the body. Why does a god need any of that to do certain things such as forgiving humans for say having sex before marriage, or stealing? How does the blood solve any of these problems? Is this really a God or is it a human, an ancient one living in the desert that thinks that blood has some special spiritual role to play? But assuming the Jesus sacrifice is all OK, but why? All for what? Why could this omnipotent God not simply eliminate the devil and end sin? How come he cannot do that and has to present this convoluted story about accepting a blood sacrifice of his son and humans having to believe in it and accept the sacrifice in order to be on the right side of the law on judgment day? Is God able to eliminate evil or not? Is the Devil more powerful than him? Then why not simply squash him like a mosquito? Or is this mosquito too quick to move that God cannot catch up with him? Then how is God described as omnipotent?

So we can now wrap up by answering some pertinent questions. Is Easter biblical? No. Easter as we know today was the day of pagan fertility festivals in Europe. The word Easter does not appear in any biblical text. The commemoration of the events of Jesus death were not celebrated by early Christians, we know this because from Acts to Revelations there is no mention of such a celebration by the founders of the religion. It turns out Easter as we celebrate it today was invented by the Romans who simply put Jesus as a window dressing over their pre-existing pagan fertility rituals, but kept the same name and same symbols. Is the idea behind Easter necessary? No. We know that it is not acceptable to punish one person for the sins of others, in fact it is criminal in every country in the world today. Also blood sacrifice is obsolete because blood has no way of affecting sin. Blood is simply a mixture of certain naturally occurring materials that support body functions. All mammals have just about the exact same composition of blood and works the same way, so what makes human blood any different? Nothing. Is the Jesus death and resurrection story true at all? It is possible but unlikely and certainly not supported by the historical records. This is an individual who could walk on water, heal the sick, feed 5, 000 people with five fishes, turn water to wine, raise the dead, and resurrect himself. In fact this person would be the most famous person in the ancient world and historical records would be abundant on this person and some of his deeds. For example some of the famous people in the world during our generation include maybe Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth, Barack Obama, Mohammed Ali, and many others. Imagine 500 years from now someone interested in writing about these figures finds that only 3 or 4 documents exist on say Obama and that these documents were written over 300 years after he died. And even with that only two paragraphs contained direct information about this individual. Would anyone on this forum conclude this was an important world famous figure? No. Definitely not. That is the exact case with Jesus. There are no credible substantive writings outside of the Bible to back up the claims made about him or that such a figure ever existed or walked the earth at all. And the few documents we have were from pagan Roman church fathers that only did so because their Emperor Constantine told them to do so else they would not have bothered.

In conclusion Easter is one of a long line of fairy tales told to gullible believers but has no evidence to back it up. From all indications it never happened, and even if it did, the accounts in the supposedly perfect word of God are contradictory, inconsistent and don’t add up to their own claims. There was no Jesus, no Easter, and no resurrection. In fact there is no evidence of God, or any gods anywhere.

kwaku ba, April, 2011