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SUNDAY REVELATIONS: What is the Paschal Lamb?

I had always assumed that the Christian equation of Jesus with the  Paschal Lamb came from the relationship of Peach (Passover) to Easter. The Wikipedia supported my idea: Paschal Lamb can refer to:

  • Korban Pesach, in Judaism
  • Lamb of God, in Christianity
  • Sacrificial lamb
  • Pascha (Greek: Πάσχα), also called Easter, is the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord. Pascha is a transliteration of the Greek word, which is itself a transliteration of the Hebrew pesach, both words meaning Passover. (A minority of English-speaking Orthodox prefer the English word ‘Pasch.’)

Turns out we the origins are very confused and Easter has no historic relationship to Passover/   The flick above (probably from an Adventist)  talks about the derivation of Easter from Germanic holidays, “paganism.”    The argument rests some on the worship of  Ishtar .. and the claim that Ishtar’s name became Easter.

Bob Chapman  on Facewbook corrected me:
In the very early years of its history the Eastern Orthodox Church adopted the custom of using the Paschal sermon of St. John Chrysostom at the Paschal Vigil service held during the Saturday night before Easter morning. Chrysostom first proclaimed this sermon as instructions to catechumens, new Christians.
Neither Reasonable Nor Scientific“There is, however, a connection which may be drawn between the pre-Christian celebrations and the feast of the Resurrection of Christ. Just as Christ’s incarnation is the ultimate fulfilment of the best hopes of all “natural” religion, so can Pascha be understood as being the ultimate springtime of mankind. The pre-Christian celebrations of the renewal of creation in the Spring find their completion in the Resurrection, the passage from death to life of the incarnate Son of God, and with him all creation.”
To make even more confusion The English and German names, “Easter” and “Ostern”, obvioysly do not sound much like Pesach..One explanation is that both “Easter” and “Pascha” are derived either from Eostremonat, an old Germanic month name, or Eostre, an Asatru fertility goddess whom the 8th century.  According to this site, Asatru was honored with a fertility festival during Eostremonat. It has been suggested that many of modern Easter’s symbols, such as colored eggs and the Easter Bunny, are cultural remnants of Eostre’s springtime fertility festival, even though giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, the Romans, and the Jews, and that Eostre merged with the Christian Pesach celebrations after the Germanic heathens were Christianized (see Easter as a Germanic Heathen festival below.). This theory would, of course, require that the Germanics somehow managed to dominate all of Christianity, even including Christianity in India.

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