h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Of course, the date of Christs death is of minimal importance to Easter. Think about it, the name. Easter? What does that have to do with Jesus?

But you can see what it has to do with Eastarte, the Roman God of fertility, who was depicted as a bunny (the easter bunny, you might say) and was worshipped at the same time as modern Easter to celebrate the coming of spring, and was worshipped using images such as eggs to represent new life.

Don't you think it's rather laughable that people would think it is blasphemous to celebrate his death on the wrong day, but not to do it via a pagan festival.

Easter is celebrated over much of the world by a billion Christians to remember the death of Christ. It is only in English that the name is connected with the Eastarte. Sure, a few new-age hippies like to think that the pagan festival is still around, and our American cousins came up with the ridiculous "Easter bunny", but in general, Easter is a Christian festival.

I totally agree with you there, both christmas & easter are pagan festivals & have nothing whatsoever to do with the beliefs of true and genuine christians. How can anything pagan bear any relation to anything which is truely christian?
That is why Im VERY skeptical over the born agains & evangelical "christians" because they claim to be true "christians" and yet they celebrate BOTH these pagan festivals
it just goes to show how hypocritical these so called "true" believers are.
No one kmows the actual date of Christs birth anyway they only know the estemated year which is about 4 B.C. Again reguarding Christs death
Christ was a Jew and so went by the Jewish calendar and the actual date of his death was Nisan 14th because the Jewish calendar is governed by the moon and NOT by the sun making it a lunar calendar it moves from year to year. How can the so called Christians of this world have it on a fixed day every year? They ALWAYS celebrate his death on a Friday again proving it to be pagan because like all other aniversaries the actual day changes from year to year. None of these so called christian beliefs will you find any backing & or support in the Bible if they were genuine then surely you would find references in the Bible to back up their claims.

Thumper2002, Christians celebrate Christ's resurrection each year on a different date, because they use the phases of the moon to calculate it. The festival is called Pasch in most languages. In English it is called Easter, but it has really nothing to do with the Pagan festival of Eastarte which was celebrated, so we're told, in England in the 8th century AD.

>>How can the so called Christians of this world have it on a fixed day every year?

They don't. They use a different date every year. Everybody, including you, knows this.

>>They ALWAYS celebrate his death on a Friday again proving it to be pagan because like all other aniversaries the actual day changes from year to year.

They celebrate it on a Friday because that's the day it happened in the Bible.

>>None of these so called christian beliefs will you find any backing & or support in the Bible if they were genuine then surely you would find references in the Bible to back up their claims.

Christ's death and resurrection is clearly described in the Bible.

If anyone's interested, Nisan 14 begins, this year, after sundown on April 16th. So that's when we Christians will be celebrating the Last Supper, as Jesus said - "Keep doing this in remembrance of me."

Yes I know they do as I said in my last post the DATE is always the same every year BUT that date is on a different day every year so my question is:-
HOW can "Christians" world wide celebrate Christs death on EXACTLY the same DAY every year?

IT'S ALWAYS ON A FRIDAY!

Does for example New Years Day fall on exactly the same day every year?
The answer of course is no so how can the anniversary of Christs death fall on the same day every year?
The answer of course is that it can't. I think that perhaps that you may have miss-read my post.

What you said was "They ALWAYS celebrate his death on a Friday again proving it to be pagan because like all other aniversaries the actual day changes from year to year."

This doesn't prove anything of the sort. Christians celebrate Christ's death on a Friday because he died on a Friday. That just shows that it is more important that it is a Friday than exactly which date it happened. It doesn't prove Christians are Pagans. Since Christians believe that Christ's Death and Resurrection are the most important things that ever happened and the central core of their belief, there is no way that celebrating Christ's death can make them pagans. It is what makes them Christians.

Easter celebrates Christ's *resurrection*, not his death...

That was always MY understanding.

But to have a ressurrection there needed first to be a death.
Scripture records that he died the day before the sabbath ( Ref Mark 15:42) The church has always interpreted that day as referring to Saturday, making the Crucifixion on a Friday. Perhaps that might narrow down what year he died in.

I believe they know what year he died in, because Pontius Pilate was only in Judaea for a short while. But I don't know the details. What they don't know is when Jesus was born, as nothing in the Bible gives any indication, other than that Herod the Great was king, which puts it in or before 4 BC.

best estimates are he was born either 6BC or 5BC
my reading indicates Christ was in Egypt when Herod died.
So I find it unlikely that he was born in 4BC

there are many complications in understanding the dating of easter.
at the date of christ's crucifixion time and season were measured by the phases of the sun and moon, (although fixed calendars were being developed) and the new day began at sunset, because these points in 'time' before clocks, could be easily established.
in the jewish calendar passover, the festival being celebrated at the time of christ's execution, was calculated by celestial phasing, hence it varied from year to year.
as the crucifixion is associated with the feast of the passover, it too was remembered at the same time, therefore it too varied within the parameters of the celestial phasing.
as has been previously recognised, the actual time of death was the day before the sabbath (which was a saturday, and not as christianised societies recognise it).
the crucifixion had been hurriedly arranged to avoid it conflicting with the feast celebration, and as sunset on the friday was rapidly approaching, steps were taken to accelerate death by breaking the legs of the other two victims, christ was shown to have already died before sunset by the issue of water with blood from the sword wound to his chest/abdomen
as has already been pointed out, easter celebrates christ's resurrection, not his death, with the festival on the monday (the third day after his friday death), while good friday's remenbrance anticipates the celebration.
the association of this celebration with the pagan festival is coincidental,
early christian missionaries to pagan societies linked their festivals with those of the pagans so as to more rapidly dissassociate the pagans from their practices, and as the passover/resurrection celebrations were spring festivals, it was linked to the anglo saxon spring festival to the goddess eostre, leading to the the uk/us festival being called easter and not the more worldwide practice of naming it after christ's passion

The celebration of Easter is on Sunday, not Monday. He rose on the third day because the 1st day was the day he died (the Friday). That was the traditional way of counting, which included both the start and finish day.

Because Jesus was supposed to have risen on the Sunday, the Christians changed the holy day of the week from Saturday, the traditional holy day, to Sunday.

A good point and I bow to the correction, it may undermine my previous understanding but not main point of the conversation

Couldn't we just refer to his birth and death certificates?

Come on, mankind! The great minds of today agree that Jesus lived, but he was NOT born on christmas day, and was executed on a 'set' date, not one which alters year on year, using arcane calculations based on moon phases, in turn based on the Anglo-Saxon pagan festival of Eostre!

No doubt, Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not the son of god, simply because there is no god! Deal with it!

It is a set date, in the Jewish calendar.

Really? Now this is interesting! I mean REALLY interesting!

After all, Jesus was not a christian, he was a Jew; he was born a Jew, raised as a Jew, lived as a Jew, and died as a Jew.

I find this 'Easter' thing very contrived and giving very clear references to paganism. To be fair, I will lay my cards on the table, I am atheist... god was created in the image of man, not the other way around... but I acknowledge the existence of Jesus and that he must have been not only a great teacher, but an enormous threat to the status quo, so he had to be disposed of, and quickly... probably too quickly! Given the chance to live out his life, christianity would probably not be with us today, and most of us would be Jews, Muslims or Pagans.

Given the history of 'christianity', maybe the world would be a far better place without it? There is no doubt that the catholic church has visited more torture, death and suffering upon its believers than any other religious sect, and still does, with its denial of simple contraception techniques (also HIV spreading techniques).

In 1640s Britain, the pope was seen as the anti-christ and papists were seen as devil-worshippers! To my mind, the pope still is, and catholics still are! How can one man be seen to represent the word of god? Stupidity at its utmost degree!

Anyway, rant over! Have some Easter chocolate!

How can you be an atheist and at the same time brand the catholics as devil-worshippers?