Cultish: Is Easter Pagan? w/ Michael Jones

Apologia Studios

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Hey, what's up everyone? We are super excited to announce that we will be making our first appearance on the road in Simpsonville, Kentucky, July 28th and 29th at the called to freedom conference.

00:10

If you are disentangling your faith after experience in a hyper fundamentalistic or a legalistic church group, this event is for you.

00:19

There will be panel discussions, table discussions, inspiring testimonies, all from Christians who have rebuilt their faith.

00:25

And even a game night guys. It's a weekend of rebuilding theology, rebuilding community and rebuilding faith through God's word.

00:33

So definitely check that out. Also, Jerry and I, we're going to be speaking there and we're also super excited to meet you in person.

00:40

You can register for the conference today at Berean holiness .com forward slash conference that's

00:46

B E R E a and holiness .com forward slash conference. Also until May 31st, you can use the promo code cultish in all caps at checkout for $50 off the purchase price.

00:57

We hope to see you there now back to the episode. All right.

01:03

Welcome back. Ladies and gentlemen, the cultish entering the kingdom of the cults. My name is Jeremiah Roberts.

01:08

One of the co -hosts here is always, I'm joined by my trusty virtual super sleuth and co -host up in Utah.

01:16

Uh, Andrew is good to always have you back, uh, join co -host with me virtually. Yeah, thank you, man.

01:22

I'm excited to be here to talk about. Eggs, bunnies and things like that. Yes, we are going to be delving into the secret of ancient mysteries of the ancient world, talking about what is pagan, what isn't.

01:35

If you are anywhere, uh, around an internet browser and around any time, whether it's a route to come up on Easter, whether it's a

01:43

Halloween or Christmas, you ended up getting, uh, usually in your YouTube feed, in the

01:49

YouTube feed, tech talk, Instagram, all sorts of influence asking whether or not mother's day is pagan as Valentine's day pagan is

01:56

Easter pagan. And what we want to do is we want to maybe have a holistic episode. We're going to focus on this episode specifically, uh, on Easter.

02:04

Also on some aspects of how we should think about history. Uh, with that being said, I want to introduce our guests, which

02:09

I'm very excited to talk to. We have Michael Jones, uh, from the YouTube and challenge, inspiring philosophy.

02:15

First of all, man, it's appreciate it's really cool that you're, I didn't know you're in Arizona. So thanks for coming out here, being in studio and yeah, man.

02:21

Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Appreciate it. Awesome. Just tell everyone just a little bit about in case I didn't know about you. You have a

02:27

YouTube channel. Tell them about it. Yeah. So my YouTube channel is inspiring philosophy.

02:33

I create various, uh, documentaries, uh, animations, uh, defending

02:38

Christianity, uh, going into a lot of, uh, old Testament scholarship, new Testament scholarship, arguments for God's existence, currently doing some stuff on eschatology and, uh,

02:47

I'm planning a series on the reliability of the gospels over the summer. So I do a lot of stuff like that. Yeah. And you've been, you've been doing this for quite a while.

02:54

You, we talked a little before the podcast, when did you start doing this? 2011. So for over 10 years. Okay. And it was interesting because when

03:00

I started doing our, some of our preliminary research last year on, uh, talking about the origins of Halloween, your videos came up a lot and it seemed like you were a, an oasis in a desert of a lot of really crazy claims out there.

03:14

Um, what was the first time, like what inspired you initially, pun intended, since you're inspiring philosophy, what inspired you to kind of make those content videos about, uh, like Halloween, Christmas?

03:24

I mean, it was a while ago when you made this, what was the catalyst for that? Well, the catalyst was I was dealing with legalists, uh, people in the

03:32

Torah observant movement, Jehovah witnesses as well, very fundamentalist leaning type people, very legalist.

03:38

And they were claiming things like you can't celebrate Christmas because Christmas is originally a pagan holiday.

03:44

Right. And if you do that, you're actually going to worship the devil. Accidentally, you're going to be partaking in pagan practices, which

03:50

God hates. And I heard that and I was like, this is some of the stupidest crap

03:56

I've ever heard. Because someone told me, when you put a present under the pine tree, you're bowing down to that tree.

04:03

And I'm like, this is ridiculous. This is not how Christianity works. You're not going to accidentally worship a pagan deity just by decorating an egg or putting a tree, a present under a tree.

04:15

This is absurd. So I was like, at the time I was like, OK, sure, everyone knows these come from pagan roots.

04:21

But let me let me explain to you how sin works and why it's not a big deal. But then

04:26

I started looking into it more and I realized, wow, none of these holidays actually have pagan roots.

04:31

These are all modern myths. None of them go back to paganism. And, you know, it started to like slowly fall.

04:37

Like I realized the date of December 25th was not pagan. Then I realized Easter wasn't pagan. Then I realized

04:43

Christmas traditions weren't pagan. Even Yule logs didn't go back to paganism or mistletoe.

04:48

Then I realized the same with Halloween and then Valentine. And eventually, just the more I looked into the primary sources, I realized there's no evidence any of this goes back to paganism.

04:56

So what is everyone even scared of? Yeah, I've definitely seen that really evolving. You mentioned the

05:02

Torbzor and specifically Hebrew roots. A lot of them, they have the presupposition that or at least the claim that the only thing we are to really truly celebrate or participate in are the feasts.

05:13

There's specific and anything else outside of that specific example is pagan. You can't worship

05:18

God. In fact, like I said, you're opening yourselves up to the devil. Then you see that kind of like re -imagine, re -syncretize, depending if you're more like charismatic leaning where the devil sometimes in certain sects of hyper charismania, where the devil's kind of in everything.

05:31

Andrew, give me some of your initial thoughts, because you did some research. You checked out Michael Jones' YouTube channel, really great content there.

05:38

What were just, what are some of the thoughts you have on this whole conversation and what's the question maybe you kind of have for Michael as we kind of jump into this conversation?

05:47

Yeah, absolutely. So just to echo what Michael was saying, that the more you look into it and he used the term primary sources, you find that a lot of these claims are myths with no primary sources and the primary sources that we do have don't tell the same story.

06:02

So Michael, I'm wondering if you can tell us what's important about a primary source and go from there a little bit.

06:08

So a primary source would be something that'd be closer to the culture or the events that took place.

06:14

So we would say, for example, that a Plutarch, ancient writer Plutarch, would be a primary source on beliefs, culture of that time period that he was writing in, which was at the beginning of the second century.

06:28

We would say Saint Bede can also be a primary source because he's writing about early beliefs in his reckoning of time of what some of the

06:37

Germanic tribes beliefs, what some of their months were called. So he's attesting to where this stuff came from.

06:43

A secondary source would be like a scholar today, writing someone like Ronald Hutton or Thomas Schmidt, writing about the things that the primary sources talk about.

06:55

And so go ahead. Did you have any? No, I said that's yeah, that's that's perfect, man. I like that because we do need to understand, well, where is this information coming from and what are the quotes that are being used from actual primary sources in terms of these festivals that were being celebrated anciently?

07:12

So, yeah, go for it, Jerry. Yeah. So what we're going to do is we're going to focus specifically in on Easter. So maybe we could talk about usually as Christians, we adhere to ever since I was a kid.

07:21

I mean, I grew up kind of in a Christian household and where it was really you celebrate Christ has risen, the resurrection.

07:27

You know, I've lost count of how many times even as a kid, you remember he has risen, he has risen, he doing like the sunrise services like a six o 'clock in the morning in some cases.

07:36

But maybe we can use that as a catalyst to talk about. This is how the resurrection is an example of how as Christians we should view history and view primary sources.

07:46

Because you look at the secular argumentation against the resurrection, it's usually they start to go into a lot of pseudo history when you start arguing against the resurrection.

07:55

But it seems that Christians, while they would adhere to a lot of accurate way, you should view history when it comes to the resurrection that starts to dissipate and fall away when you make this argumentation.

08:05

So it's like they're trying to argue, at least in my opinion, for the resurrection using the way you should use history and primary sources.

08:12

But it deviates when you try and make these other claims. You differentiate between the two.

08:17

Like one, how do we view, how should we view history? How do we interpret it through the nature of the resurrection? And then how would we, where does it start to fall apart when it, when it comes to these ideas of like, for example,

08:28

Easter being pagan, which we're going to jump into? Well, let's start with the Easter thing and then we'll talk about the rest. Sure. Well, actually now let's talk about the resurrection first.

08:34

So when, when we make a case for the resurrection, we use sources that are closest to this. We're going to use

08:39

Paul's writings, earliest Christian writings. We're going to use the gospels as well, earliest accounts on the life of Jesus.

08:45

We can even use some, some sources like Josephus as well, who talk about how Jesus, his followers reported that he had come back to life.

08:54

So you can use that kind of stuff. When people try to make this case that Easter is pagan, they're not doing that.

09:00

They're not going to early sources. They're saying, well, I were, I found on the blog or the history channel reported that everything goes back to this pagan spring goddess.

09:09

And my reply is always like, okay, well, where does it say this? And they say, well, it's in this article I found on the history channels website.

09:15

Yeah. But the history channels website doesn't list any sources. Where are they getting their information from? Does it, did

09:21

St. Bede mentioned this? Is it mentioned in some of the earlier works like the Snorri Sturluson mentioned some sort of Norse practice related to this?

09:28

Uh, how about Thightmar, the chronicler? Does he mention any of this stuff? Right. Where are you getting this stuff from? And so this is the difference is when people argue like Christians, like we argue for the resurrection, we're going to the earliest sources and we're going to make our case from that.

09:40

A lot of these people arguing that Easter is pagan. They're not doing that. They're just finding some blog or some meme or some tick tock video they found.

09:47

And they're using that as their basis of what they're deciding is true. Hey, everyone. Sorry to interrupt your programming, but this episode of the podcast is brought to you by stags consulting dot com.

09:59

Are you a small business owner or entrepreneur? If you are, you know, the different hassles and headaches that come with trying to keep up to date with your accounting, bookkeeping, all that sort of stuff.

10:10

Uh, Kyle and Sherry, they specialize in helping to deal with that, to take away the stress, the headaches, the uncertainty, to make sure you are fully compliant.

10:19

And they have a lot of other services available. If you want to check them out, go to stags consulting .com forward slash cultist.

10:26

They're going to, they would give you a free consultation for listener only and go ahead and check them out again.

10:33

Stags consulting .com forward slash cultist. Definitely check them out back to the episode. And so a lot of people, when they are making these claims and it's, it's only recently you started really, you had your own

10:46

Instagram and tech talk where you're, you're doing a lot more response incoming. People's definitely checking your channel. I love just the way you kind of go about it.

10:53

A lot of your humor comes across and we, I think we would share a lot of the sentiments. I probably would do stuff similar if I do like when

10:59

I start doing some of those. But, um, when usually people are making these claims, when the statement says, do your own research, what immediately comes to mind when you hear them say that they've not done their research and they want you to do it for them.

11:15

Because a lot of these people, uh, I'll get told that I got told by a Muslim, my most popular tick tock video.

11:21

I responded to a Muslim. He just said in the video, Google it, it'll come up and it will prove I'm right kind of mentality.

11:28

And I was like, okay, anytime someone tells you to Google it, you know, they haven't done research because there's a lot of bad information on Google.

11:35

You could Google Easter is pagan. You're going to get a hundred thousand blogs saying it's pagan. None of them are properly sourced.

11:42

So when people say, do your own research, uh, I would say, yeah, I have because you haven't.

11:47

And it's pretty clear. So if you've actually did your own research, give me your sources and they never can. Right. And so when, when it comes to the, where do people actually, where does this come from?

11:58

The idea that Easter is pagan, because while a lot of these examples, uh, I mean people, and this isn't just Easter, people claim to be having a special insight about the ancient world.

12:08

For example, one of the things we'll delve into later is Jesus, a copy of the pagan gods is just a copy of a Cyrus. While they claim that this is from the ancient world.

12:16

A lot of these ideas are relatively new, like around a hundred years old. Talk about that if you could.

12:22

Well, I mean, in the 1800s, there was a lot of folklorists, a lot of historians trying to figure out more of the past.

12:28

I mean, archeology was just getting up and going. People were really interested in the past. I mean, we don't remember, realize this, but we didn't really decipher

12:35

Egyptian hieroglyphics until the 1800s. And so at the same time, there was a lot of pseudo history coming out, uh, while actual

12:43

Egyptologists and archeologists were doing their research. And so it, a lot of, you know, snake oil salesmen were able to capitalize on that and push out a lot of false information.

12:52

And so that happened. And so in the same time, people were trying to look at Easter and they're going, well, you know, rabbits, eggs, these, these aren't in the

12:59

Bible. Where does this stuff come from? And why do we call it Easter? Easter is not in the Bible either. You know, where does this stuff come from?

13:06

So in some, in some regards, they started looking at some folklore and they came up they would find what common stories were being told by, uh, you know, the poor class in that time of Britain, for example, or in Ireland.

13:20

And so some of these folklore traditions were written down. The problem is there was no evidence that any of these traditions went back to any ancient paganism, let alone past the 1800s.

13:30

I mean, a lot of these traditions, uh, you know, look at something like elf on the shelf. That's a pretty new custom that came out pretty recently.

13:36

I didn't do that as a kid, very new. So people come up with all sorts of new traditions on their own throughout the ages.

13:41

Well, I had no idea that was even a thing until they're like the means, like, you've heard of elf on a shelf. Have you heard of it?

13:47

But then it's like, you know, the idea it's something, something rhymes with something. Yeah. You know, the meme temple

13:53

I'm talking about, like, oh, that was a thing. I didn't know that. Yeah. Same, same for me. But same with a lot of these folklore traditions about the origins of Easter.

14:02

It seems that a lot of it came about just from people speculating in the 1800s. None of it actually goes back to any historians or any actual primary sources.

14:12

And there's a scholar named Ronald Hutton. Now, Ronald Hutton is not a Christian. He would classify himself more as like an agnostic

14:18

Druid pagan type person. And he was tasked with looking into this stuff to try to find any remnants of paganism in modern

14:26

Christian society that they could latch onto and use. And his conclusion was, it's very little, very little if any.

14:34

And so he basically had in his book Stations of the Sun to write that a lot of this stuff just comes from European folk traditions and Christian customs.

14:43

Let me ask you this, Andrew, I'll let you jump in here in a second with all of this. Like, why does this matter? I mean, usually you kind of like,

14:50

I can just let this slide, you know, people are just going to be there. But it hasn't mattered to you. Like, you've done whole videos of it.

14:55

You started doing on Instagram, really, you know, doing all this response incoming. If anyone's watched your

15:00

YouTube channel, you know, I know it's your I know it's a video of yours. Can you scroll through your Instagram feed?

15:06

Now it says response incoming. I stop what I do. I want to hear what you have to say. Thank you. Right. But honestly, man, like, why does this matter?

15:13

I mean, can we just agree to disagree? Or what's why is this so important to you? This is important, and this should be important to Christians for a simple reason.

15:21

Remember what Jesus did when he dealt with the Pharisees? He was so mad at them for putting their own traditions on top of the scriptures.

15:28

And they eventually superseded the scriptures in their eyes. They were more important. And that, he said, was destroying their faith in God.

15:35

It was ruining them. It was corrupting them from the inside out. What are a lot of these modern legalists doing?

15:40

These these anti holiday people like Jim Staley, for example, they have superseded the word of God. And they're saying, you know, if you really want to be holy, if you really want to follow

15:49

Jesus, you got to you can't be keeping these things where you paint eggs because that God hates it when you paint eggs around Easter or when you hang a stocking.

15:57

God is so mad about that. That's not how the gospel works. Read First Corinthians 8. Just because a pagan may have used something for evil in the past, like meat, that doesn't mean it's going to be unholy or wrong for us.

16:09

Jesus gave us a spirit of victory, a spirit of triumph, not a spirit of fear to be afraid of all these random hidden pagan meaning things around the world.

16:18

He gave us a spirit of victory. And you can't accidentally worship the devil just because a pagan may have in the past worship a tree.

16:26

That doesn't mean you're worshiping a tree if you put one in your in your house in December. Pagans may have used eggs and fertility rituals in the past.

16:34

So what? Eggs were created by God for us to eat and enjoy. We can do what we want with them.

16:40

And even though there's no evidence Easter eggs go back to paganism, even if they did, there's nothing in the intention of a

16:47

Christian using an Easter egg that would mean they're somehow accidentally honoring a pagan deity because you can't accidentally honor a pagan deity.

16:54

So the reason why this is important is because I see legalists trying to sneak into the church, much like what

16:59

Paul was talking about in the Galatians. These these people coming in and trying to say, you know, let's just add to the word of God a little bit, change things.

17:05

And it's going to slowly destroy the church from within. It'll slowly lead to more legalism.

17:11

We'll forget the gospel. People will be afraid of the devil under every rock. And that's not what Christ gave us.

17:16

And we need to remember that. Andrew, what's what's in mind? What questions do you have for Michael? Don't we've talked about so far?

17:22

Yeah. So how should we respond to the people that are constantly perpetrating these myths right from Christians and also the secular world at large?

17:31

It seems like they have a what is it like they have a grip on the information that is being spread through Instagram, TikTok, things of that nature, where these lies are just constantly being told.

17:42

What should we do with regards to that? Take a page out of the atheist playbook that I see a lot.

17:49

Put the burden of proof on them. OK, you've made the claim that Easter is pagan. What's your evidence?

17:55

Oh, and don't give me some blog you found. I want your primary sources. I want you to go back to the ancient world.

18:00

Show me where it is in Saint Bede that shows that Easter is pagan. Show me where it is in, you know, for example, early

18:06

Christian sources like, you know, on solstices and equinoxes to give one from the first millennium.

18:13

Show me where it is. You put the burden on them. Don't let them think that it's your job to debunk all this stuff.

18:19

I do the same with like people claiming that like Jesus is a copy of like Horace. Right. Or Jesus is a copy of a myth or something.

18:27

OK, you've made these claims. Now back them up. Yeah. No, that definitely makes sense, man. I think at least for me that I kind of got passionate about this topic and I started re -exploring your channel, even though I'd gone a couple of years ago,

18:39

I came across like I said, you've been around for a while. But it was really last year when I saw a lot of people sharing that Anton LaVey quote, that fake

18:47

Anton LaVey quote, which basically states that he says in this thing like this is the one night of the year where children get to worship the devil.

18:54

One, that's not even consistent with with Anton LaVey's worldview and how he viewed Satan. But that quote doesn't exist.

19:00

There's no primary source for it. And it's all Christian fundamentalists quoting each other on each other's blogs.

19:07

I even offered a one hundred dollar cash up reward for anyone who could give me the source. Oh, I'll go even higher. I'll do a thousand because it doesn't exist.

19:15

Yeah, right. Exactly. But when you when I pointed it out from it, I was and again, I wasn't really trying to say whether you should or shouldn't celebrate it.

19:22

I mean, maybe somebody could have convictions even, you know, maybe not to celebrate what I wouldn't have it. But I'm like, you shouldn't use fake history or fake source and then stand behind it.

19:32

I was really troubled by the amount of people who still stood either stood behind it and got upset when

19:37

I said this quote is fake. Or also when you started pushing on, well, actually, history doesn't matter. Well, history just mattered to you a second ago when you created the quote, this fake source.

19:47

Now, all of a sudden, you find out the source is fake. History doesn't matter. And that's I think as Christians, one, that's not how we should think about history.

19:53

But also we have a responsibility to tell the truth, not bear false witness and make sure if it's any group, whether even if it's the church of Satan, like we need to accurately represent them.

20:05

Well, this is what I mean for a lot of these legalists. It's not that history matters. It's that their narrative matters because they have an agenda.

20:11

They want to get you afraid of the devil, even though we shouldn't be afraid of them because Jesus already defeated them.

20:17

They want to get you afraid of the devil. They want to get you afraid of these holidays because then they can control us and they can make us do certain things like follow their legalist agenda, look to them for guidance and, you know,

20:30

I mean, join their churches. And, you know, it's they use fear to try to get people to join them.

20:37

Right. And quite frankly, the old saying, misery loves company. And a lot of them, I mean, that's unfortunately that's where they're at.

20:45

Right. Well, yeah. And I think there's also in a matter of almost I hate to say it. I mean, some people it's not the case with every single person, but a lot of times there is sort of this have and have nots.

20:54

Like I'm better than you. I hate to say it's almost kind of like that meme of you've seen the like the aristocrats like looking down a lot of times.

21:01

This is how they'll view people who don't like who do celebrate this holiday. Why don't? So I'm better than you.

21:06

Exactly. It's very much a holier than thou mentality. Right. You know, if you really want to please God, I mean, yeah, it's great that you believe

21:12

Jesus rose from the dead. But if you really want to please him, you should be avoiding these evil pagan holidays because God is so angry when you put presents under a tree or you dress up as an

21:22

Avenger and get candy. You know, it's like, really, is your God so insecure? He's worried about that kind of stuff.

21:30

Yeah. I mean, like who do they worship? Really? Right. And just curious, maybe you can zoom out just for fun a little bit.

21:35

I mean, you've done this for a while and you definitely how you definitely are a bit of a history nerd. Like, what's your favorite?

21:41

Do you like a favorite like era of like history is like American history, like world history. Do you have like a topical point or just biblical history?

21:48

I mean, what are what are some areas that you've enjoyed studying and researching? It's hard to say. I mean, I'm I'm a

21:53

World War Two buff. I like studying World War Two history, especially especially the Pacific War, because that's kind of undervalued.

22:00

I like a lot of different areas of history. I like ancient, ancient, ancient

22:06

Near Eastern history. I like first century studying a lot of the stuff around Christianity and that kind of stuff.

22:12

I like medieval history, a lot tracking the Christianity, each sort of move throughout the Middle Ages. I mean,

22:18

I just am a history buff. I don't know if I have one area I like to study. I like to move around a lot to different subjects. But yeah, and but throughout this,

22:25

I mean, one, I think you have when you how do we determine history? It's like through primary sources. I just started.

22:31

I just started. I just bought this giant thick biography. I was like, I just have this this this it's to start studying like Civil War stuff.

22:39

And, you know, you go to like I just bought this giant, giant like biography of Ulysses S. Grant.

22:45

And so I just started going through his book. And it's so heavily. It's so fascinating to like a small

22:50

Amnesia history. There's so many intricacies. But what they do, though, is they go to primary sources. They go to the letters that Ulysses S.

22:58

Grant like would write to generals during the Civil War so you could actually see that, you know, in the same way where you go to like I've been to Gettysburg and you go there and you're like, it's so weird being there.

23:08

It's like you have all these giant monuments to like the different regiments. And it's like, hey, this is what happened.

23:13

Like, so when I went to Gettysburg on this like high school trip forever ago, we actually watched the movie

23:20

Gettysburg, which was filmed on site prior to going on location. And you talk about historical accuracy of like, wow, you could really tangibly feel it.

23:28

So I think just, yeah, just in general, it's I think when you look at history one, you want a primary source that you want to be accurate.

23:33

But also, I think as Christians, you give me your thoughts like there is like a linear timeline. This is God working through history and a lot of times in pagan nations.

23:43

And usually the emphasis is like, this is how God is working with his people, not, oh, this is pagan.

23:48

This is the pagan. Look at Daniel. It's like, no, this is God working in that. You know what I mean? Like, what do you think about that? Well, I mean, just read the

23:54

Old Testament. Do you realize how many things God use that were originally pagan? I mean, like, look at like the temple at Bethel in the book of Joshua.

24:03

Okay. That was not built by Joshua. The book of Joshua doesn't mention it. It just is sort of there.

24:09

I'm sorry, the temple at Shechem up to El, to God El. I mean, we know that it was there while it was built based on the archeology that it was built before Israel moved in at the end of the

24:20

Bronze Age. It goes back to believe the 1600s BC. So, they just took it over and reclaimed it and used it as a temple for God.

24:28

The Ark of the Covenant was based on Egyptian ritual furniture of the time period. The book of Proverbs takes sometimes word for word,

24:38

Proverbs we get from an earlier Egyptian work called the Instruction of Ammonimope. Act 17, Paul quotes a pagan philosopher, a rottist, it was a stoic pantheist and says, you know, he's actually talking about the

24:49

God of Israel now. Why? Because we've reclaimed it. We've now made it ours. Now, when a rottist wrote that, he was talking about his stoic pantheist

24:55

God Zeus that he believed in. He wasn't thinking of the God of Israel, but Paul takes the words and says, now that's about the

25:01

God of Israel. And then we see early Christians doing this. They turned the Pantheon in Rome into a church. They rededicated the obelisk that Caligula moved there and they put a cross on top.

25:11

So, now it's a finger pointing up to the heavens. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing any of that. We see it in the

25:16

Bible and then we see it in early Christian history. What is everyone scared of? Hey, what's up, everyone? We love that you are enjoying our content on a weekly basis, but this program cannot continue and wouldn't be possible without your support.

25:29

So, if you want to go to thecultistshow .com, there is a donate tab. You can either support us one time or you can become a monthly partner with us.

25:38

That will allow us to continue this program, allow us to continue to be salt and light to the kingdom of the cults.

25:43

So, please go to thecultistshow .com forward slash donate and you can support us one time or monthly.

25:49

Also, make sure you check out our merchandise store. Go to shopcultist .com. You can see all of our great designs.

25:56

A lot of you have gotten merchandise from us already. So, again, go to shopcultist .com and check out all the awesome merch.

26:04

Back to the show. No, man, I love, even like the very early Christian history, I love it.

26:09

Have you ever heard of a docuseries? It came out eons ago called the Trial and Testimony of the Early Church. I have not seen it.

26:16

You have not seen it? It's really good because it just, what I found fascinating, it just describes like first century church and just going through the different emperors in Rome.

26:24

And what I find just so fascinating, just talking about history in general and just like Christian history, the early Christian history is that you have people from every single like tribal background you could think about.

26:33

You have people who are Roman. You have people who are like Nordic, who are like more like Viking oriented.

26:40

You had people who just from every single sect and branch who have been just killing each other for centuries. And all of a sudden they all gathered together in these like houses just to worship this person named

26:53

Jesus who died, who, who was crucified, rose again. And it was just, it was such like everyone just was unified from all these like unique backgrounds and cultures.

27:02

And what I think is just interesting is that, you know, it's just, yeah, it's just, it's just fascinating to see like the early first century.

27:09

But let me ask you this, when it comes to like Easter, what's the earliest record that we have?

27:15

Because I want to get into the pseudo history in a second, but I want to talk about the original because, because that's what everyone likes to claim.

27:21

But where did this all start? What's the first record that we have of where the celebration of Jesus or Christian celebrating the resurrection, the way that the

27:30

Easter is and, and where do they, yeah, where, what's, how did it all start? Well, I mean, obviously we have, obviously we have resurrection and stuff like that, but yeah.

27:37

Well, I mean, we have evidence of Easter celebrations going back in the form of Easter sermons and to the second century, for example.

27:45

So, I mean, you know, we hit, we know that Christians in the second century were celebrating the Easter celebration resurrection Sunday at the time they were sort of following the

27:53

Passover. So there's never been like one place where Easter, the way we celebrate Easter today came about.

27:59

It's a slow change over time. So early Christians were celebrating Easter, obviously, because they wanted to celebrate the resurrection.

28:06

So then in the 300s, you have Constantine and the council of Nicaea come along. Now there's a lot of myths about the council of Nicaea, but one thing they did discuss is the date of Easter.

28:15

And they decided to stop following the Jewish calendar and they just sort of designated it should fall after the spring equinox, but they didn't really designate when.

28:24

Then you get about later on in the 700s, I believe St. Beat comes along and he publishes a work called the reckoning of time.

28:30

And that's when you finally get the formal calculating of Easter, that it's going to be on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

28:38

So then we've been sort of following that since then, especially in the West. And his book was very popular. It's spread out through the

28:44

West. He was able to, he showed people how to calculate the date of Easter. Was it always called Easter or what's the true etymology of that?

28:50

When did Christians start calling it that? Because like in the, you look at, you know, first century when Paul's talking about, he just saying first Corinthians 15, talking about how

28:58

Christ died for his sins, was buried in third day, according to the scriptures and then rose again. Like you don't really see

29:04

Easter mentioned in the Bible. Like when, what do you know about the origins of that true etymology? Yeah. So no one in the ancient world called it

29:11

Easter because English wasn't invented yet. And so you have a lot of conspiracy theorists and people who've not done their homework.

29:17

Assume Easter comes from some sort of goddess like Ishtar or Ostra. Well, it sounds like it, it must be from that.

29:23

Well, you have to wrestle with the fact that the majority of the Christian world outside of English, Germanic languages call the holiday, the

29:31

Pascha or derivation of that. Why? Because Christ died during Passover week. So the

29:36

Christians call it the Pascha celebration. So romantic languages, so like, you know, Latin based languages, pretty much in Russian, pretty much any language other than like German or English, they're calling it

29:48

Pascha or a derivation of that. So problem right there that you're going to claim that Easter goes back to some sort of pagan goddess when most people call it the

29:57

Pascha, which we know comes from the Passover. So why do we call it Easter? Well, the reason is, is because St.

30:04

Bede sort of talks about it in the reckoning of time. I actually have the quote. I can pull it up directly from St. Bede here.

30:09

So in the reckoning of time, section 15, he says this, he says, Ostra has a name, which is now translated as Paschal month, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named

30:22

Ostra and whose honors feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate the Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of her new right by the time honored name of the old observance.

30:33

So Bede tells us that the Paschal celebration in his region of Britain was celebrated during what they would call the months of Ostra monoth.

30:43

And so they just started calling it the Ostra monoth celebration, sort of like how we call it the 4th of July, even though it's

30:49

Independence Day as well. It doesn't mean it's a holiday honoring Julius Caesar. Likewise, Easter just sort of took the

30:56

English name of the month it fell on. And that's why we call it Easter today in the rest of the world calls it

31:02

Paschal. Yeah. So you could say, yeah, it comes. The name comes from a month named after a goddess, but that is an indirect connection.

31:12

And it has nothing to do with the actual Paschal celebration. There's no evidence that the Paschal or Easter was a taking over of some sort of pagan holiday.

31:22

Right. Andrew, what's in your mind? What questions do you have for Michael as we delve into this conversation? Dude, we're very insightful, man.

31:28

I'm loving this so far. Yeah, I love it. Also, let me just ask you a question there, too. So this

31:33

I can never know. I never know how to pronounce it. The E -O -S -T -R -E. How do you pronounce that again?

31:39

I've heard it different ways. Ostara. Ostra is what I've heard as well. So Ostra. So there's also no evidence through this primary source that we have in Bede that talks about exactly how this was celebrated.

31:52

Right. Like there's not bunnies, there's not eggs or anything like that. No, no, none of that. This is the only reference we have to her in history is in this.

32:00

Now, some historians have even doubted she existed. But lately, like Philip Shaw, for example, made some interesting arguments that she probably was a real goddess worshipped in that region.

32:10

And so that's what the name of the month. I mean, Bede mentions other months, like November was called Blood Month. September was called

32:17

Holy Month because of holy rites in that time. So if you really want to overtake a pagan holiday, they should have put something in September because that was

32:24

Holy Month, according to the ancient pre -Christian pagans. Right. So there's nothing in about Ostara that connects her to bat, bunny rabbits or eggs.

32:33

All of that came out centuries later from Easter practices, European customs. So eggs, for example.

32:39

So isn't it interesting that Easter happens right after Lent and in the Middle Ages, no one could eat animal products during the

32:47

Lent fast. So no meat, no dairy, no eggs. Eggs can keep well, though, if you hard boil them.

32:53

So when Lent was ending, they'd gather up the eggs and they'd hard boil them. And then they started painting them. The first reference we have to them painting eggs is about 1290 when

33:02

King Edward I of England. So he said he wanted 450 eggs painted gold for the royal house.

33:11

So, yeah, that's where eggs came about. They came from Lent. Totally Christian in origin has nothing to do with paganism. We've no evidence that eggs go back to being a symbol of Ostara or anything like that.

33:21

Yeah. Let me ask you this, too, because we're going to kind of go into the specifics of the claims. We've got a couple of TikTok videos we're going to jump into in a second.

33:29

Is that you think about like Gnosticism. This is something that the Christians have fought from the first century.

33:36

So usually if there's something that Christians have an adamantly against, you should be able to find sources of them speaking out against it.

33:43

So you look at, you know, the works of Athanasius, you have ideas like modalism, people speaking out against the

33:49

Trinity and the whole record of like Athanasius Contramundum, like Christians fighting against distortions of the

33:55

Trinity. Like that's on record. That's a matter of church history. You look at Gnosticism, you're denying that Jesus is

34:00

God come in the flesh. That's another issue. Like there's an extenuated public record of.

34:07

So if this is if these holidays are definitively pagan, we'll delve into also

34:12

Christmas, Halloween, there should be, in my opinion, an extensive record of Christians throughout the century fighting back.

34:20

If indeed, if the if all these things are owned by the pagans, Christians should there should be extensive record of them pushing back again.

34:28

Do we find those that evidence of Christians pushing back against like Easter, Christmas, Halloween?

34:34

And if not, if so, but if not, like, why is that? Not until much later after these holidays have been established.

34:41

So like recent years, take Christmas, for example, when Christmas was set on December 25th, based on the calculations of early

34:49

Christians had nothing to do with paganism. We can talk about that later. But in the East, after this big

34:54

Orthodox Catholic split, a lot of Eastern writers would have started accusing the Catholic church of placing it on December 25th because of a pagan holiday.

35:04

So it became part of their like propaganda to attack the Catholic church kind of thing. Like they said, oh, you just picked that because of paganism.

35:10

But there's no history to support that. So you see this, these things come about centuries after it happened as sort of like some sort of anti -Catholic agenda from like Protestants or Orthodox Christians.

35:23

That's where a lot of the anti -Easter stuff comes from. It came from a Scottish minister named Alexander Hislop writing in the 19th century, wrote a book called

35:31

The Two Babylons and said that, you know, really Easter and all these holidays are Catholic. And it's really a secret cult worshiping the god

35:38

Nimrod and his wife Semiramis. The problem is that's absolute crap. He made all this up.

35:44

There is no evidence that Babylonians worshiped anyone called Nimrod. He's only mentioned in the Bible, not in Mesopotamian texts.

35:51

So he just made up a bunch of stuff, but he was quite popular and his works caught on and people still cite his nonsense as if it was accurate.

35:59

Yeah. And I feel like too, and Andrew, you think about what comes to mind, Andrew, and you can give me your thoughts is it reminds me so much in this whole story is the, of Joseph Smith and the book of Abraham.

36:08

Like he found all this, this Egyptian funerary text. And he, I think there was a short amount of time in the, in like Joseph Smith time, because there's a lot of birds of a feather flock together where they could kind of get away with this because the

36:21

Rosetta Stone hadn't been invented, hadn't been created yet. They could truly decipher the primary sources.

36:28

And so it wasn't until later after Joseph Smith's death, when they actually recovered this text and they were able to find that it was not the book of Abraham.

36:34

It was something completely different. So you have this era where it's people like, what was the guy you mentioned? Alexander Hislop.

36:41

Yeah. Just some of the stuff that you show me, you've talked about it reminded me just so much of the book of Abraham stories.

36:47

So it just reminds me so much. Andrew, what are your, what comes to mind? Cause you've studied a lot about the book of Abraham. What similarities do you see there?

36:53

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the 19th century is just a hotbed for all that activity, right? We've got Charles Taze Russell and you know, they're not, they celebrate, don't celebrate any holidays, don't even celebrate your birthday.

37:02

It just seems like the impetus for people like Mike was talking about earlier, especially quote unquote religious people is they can use these things to type of ignorance to control people.

37:13

But I'm wondering, Mike, what do you think is the impetus for atheists or even pagans to cite this type of information, especially when they think that they're being factually sound when they cite this information?

37:22

What is the motive behind it when they're citing pseudo history? Well, I mean, you can't psychoanalyze anyone, but from what

37:28

I've seen, pagans tend to want to try to find something in Chris, in modern Christian traditions that might go back to paganism.

37:35

So you'll see pagan saying that we put up a yule tree cause that's what it originally was before you

37:41

Christian stole it. Right. And it's utter nonsense. We have no evidence of yule trees that were anything like Christmas trees.

37:46

But I think for a lot of pagans, they're trying to just find something they can latch onto to hold to their pagan traditions for atheists.

37:53

I mean, it's a lot of them. I mean, to be fair, I have a lot of atheists I know online that debunked this stuff.

38:00

People like, for example, Joseph AP Wilson or Tim O 'Neill have debunked a lot of these holiday myths.

38:07

And I appreciate that. But then I think a lot of the other atheists, their motive is it's sort of like just sort of to attack

38:13

Christianity. Haha, look how stupid you guys are. You think you're actually worshiping Jesus and you're actually worshiping these pagan gods.

38:20

You know, it's also sort of to push a colonial narrative that Christian Christianity just breeds colonialism where we steal everything and make it our own.

38:27

And I mean, it's just utter nonsense when you start to look into it. Yeah. So social media, and I think we would probably agree in many ways.

38:36

It's a gift like you have. You have now a whole ministry that your YouTube channel and your

38:42

Instagram channel really kind of be able to get your message out there. A lot of the content, you know, I really appreciate and enjoy.

38:48

And the same here. Like we're having a conversation here. It's going to be viewed by who knows how many thousands of people. And it's just one time conversation.

38:54

We listen to lots and lots of time. So that's a real blessing. But also the curse side of it.

38:59

It's that you look at what we're going to you're dealing with. And when you do a lot of time on your Instagram channel, you know, the response incoming, right?

39:08

You're seeing now what you were dealing a while back, you know, in the earlier YouTube years, think about how much social media has evolved.

39:15

Now you're seeing all these source, this be all this being regurgitated on tech talk and everyone's starting, you know, stating this stuff.

39:24

What do you think about that's problematic now? What are some of the challenges now? Like now with everything now being recycled, repurposed in the tech talk world of sorts with the stuff that you do that you deal with?

39:35

I mean, it's all over tech talk. I mean, because anybody can just start a tech talk channel and start spouting nonsense now. And unfortunately, a lot of the younger people, younger people are just more gullible.

39:45

Just from, you know, from psychology, the younger you are, the more likely you're going to fall for something.

39:50

And so there's a lot of young people on tech talk spouting this nonsense. Not a lot of people, they're challenging it.

39:56

So, I mean, I got on to try to help with that and to try to correct some of this stuff because they're just recycling a lot of these old dead arguments that have been debunked time and time again on YouTube or on other platforms or that would be laughed at it out of academia.

40:10

Yeah. But because they're on tech talk, it's like a safe space for, you know, conspiracy theories. Gotcha. Well, safe space no more.

40:16

We are going to jump into that space and just dig into this real time. So we are good friend

40:22

Brandy. She went through and did a bunch of sifting through us. I didn't really want to have a bunch of Chinese spyware on my phone.

40:28

So I figured, you know, I would rather not have to deal with that. But we have a couple of videos that we're just picked up here.

40:35

So let's just go ahead and pick a random one. The first one I pick up is one called

40:41

Atheist Johnny Depp. So I believe it's a young lady and she wants to do her impression of a

40:46

Johnny Depp atheist talking to Christians. And she is utilizing argumentation on Easter being pagan.

40:52

So here we go. I'll give a second for this to load.

40:59

So you want me to be a Christian then? Yeah. But in order to do that, I need to give up all my favorite holidays.

41:05

Yes. Now I can do my no celebration of Easter's next. That's favorite Easter. You know, goddess of the dawn, the celebration of light, life, fertility, all of that.

41:16

And parties are pretty epic if you catch my drift. Drift? Wow, you're really boring.

41:23

Have you not heard of the legend of the goddess of Easter turning a bird into a rabbit and they lay multicolored eggs?

41:30

No. Yeah, the kids really get a kick out of that one. When's Easter? Oh, first Sunday after the full moon of the vernal equinox.

41:38

What a coincidence. That is the very same day that Jesus rose from the grave. You're joking.

41:45

No, no. Jesus totally died and resurrected in the spring.

41:51

But on the day of Easter, more or less. What are the odds? So does that mean if I become

41:58

Christian, I can still have all my favorite holidays? Yep. Sweet.

42:06

Nailed it. All right. So what do we got there? Do we have an irrefutable argument? We just need to pack up and go home?

42:11

We had a good run? Or do we have the response to this? What do we do with atheist

42:17

Johnny Depp? Well, for example, that story about Ostara or Ostra turning an egg into a rabbit or something or something like that.

42:27

Those stories come, again, from folklorists of the late 19th century. None of that goes back to any historical sources.

42:33

We have no evidence that they had some sort of celebration for Ostra on this day as a being like the first Sunday after the first full moon of the spring equinox.

42:45

No, no. Again, that comes from Christian calculations, like Saint Bede, for example, and others that did this stuff.

42:51

This is Christian calculations, what they thought the Paschal celebration should be. It had nothing to do with this kind of stuff.

42:58

We don't even know how Ostra was worshipped. There's nothing that associates her with eggs or rabbits or any of that kind of stuff.

43:06

Again, all made up in the 1900s. All right. So, I mean, the irony of it all is this is this is actually pagans taking a

43:14

Christian holiday, that of Easter, and they're repackaging it to be a pagan one. They claim we are the people who came in and stole the holiday and returned to the

43:22

Christian. They're coming and taking these Christian holidays and trying to turn them into pagan celebrations. It's ironic.

43:28

It's almost it's almost it's like, well, they're projecting in a sense. Absolutely.

43:34

They're they're doing they're projecting, you know, what they're doing to us. Right. Andrew, what are you going to say? Yeah, it's it's funny because, like Mike was saying that this this person has no primary sources for the bird turning into a bunny and a star, things of that nature.

43:48

But Christians actually do have primary sources on the resurrection when it occurred through the gospels. Right. These are eyewitness accounts.

43:54

So, like you said, it's very ironic that the claims are being made when Christians actually have firm history that we stand on for why we believe

44:02

Jesus died when he died on Passover weekend. So it's just I don't know, it's just it's a it's something that takes a little bit more than a minute or two minutes to think about.

44:11

And this generation only wants a minute to think about something and they just kind of accept it and regurgitate it. It's kind of what we're taught in our modern day school system regardless.

44:19

So I don't know. It's one of those things. Yeah. And also, once you become familiar with the argumentation, you start to see even how people sort of blend stuff together.

44:28

I mean, I don't know if I at least I caught you can tell me your thoughts. I sound like I was kind of hearing a little bit of that kind of zeitgeist.

44:35

She's taken the Easter's pagan argumentation, but also combining it where, oh, well, actually they just copied this for me.

44:42

They copied the resurrection from Easter. It sounds like she's doing that. So we'll jump into some of that stuff. It's like I stuff in just a little bit.

44:49

All right. So here's another one. This is Ostra history. Let's go ahead and jump into this one.

44:55

See what we find here. Let's talk history. Happy Easter, everybody. Or should I say

45:00

Ostara? What are the origins of this pagan holiday? Ostara is the goddess of spring.

45:07

Colors are very important. Now Ostara, when she was sent to Earth, this goddess was a bit confused as to why she was there.

45:13

After some time, she realized the Earth was a bit cold and dark. Then she realized the Earth had beauty within it.

45:19

It was just waiting to be woken up. And that was why she was sent there to wake the

45:24

Earth up. Hence why spring is so beautiful. Easter is the day that people celebrate the waking up of Earth from its wintry sleep.

45:33

Now, why the heck are there eggs involved? Well, the eggs represent rebirth and fertility, but there is a different story for that one.

45:39

There is some speculation on this one. But it is said that Ostara changed a bird into a hare, a bunny rabbit, on the day of Easter.

45:46

And to celebrate the festivities, the bunny started laying colorful eggs all over the place.

45:53

Kind of like decorations. Hope you learned a bit. Well, I learned quite a bit.

45:58

What did you learn in that video? I learned absolutely nothing from Pagan Jeff Durbin. Yes. So the problem with Pagan Jeff Durbin there is that all of that stuff, again, comes from folklore traditions in the late 1800s.

46:16

It comes from this idea about Ostara birthing this rabbit or doing these sort of tricks, these magic tricks.

46:27

They come from a journal called American Notes and Inquiries. They were just sort of answering stories, trying to answer questions.

46:35

They didn't cite any sources when they put this stuff out. But people, even today, believe them as if they were telling the truth.

46:42

The actual origin of the Easter bunny is very innocent in origin. It actually, in Europe, especially in Germanic regions, after winter would end, you'd start to see a lot more animals in the spring.

46:54

Animals are coming out for mating season. So we have references to Easter foxes, Easter ravens, even

47:00

Easter butterflies, because this is when they started seeing these animals. In Germany, hares, for example, come out and you could see them boxing and fighting over mates in the fields.

47:10

So Easter hares started to be associated with the season. And so we don't even start seeing references to Easter hares until the late 1500s.

47:18

And again, it was just associated with the Easter celebration by proximity and time.

47:23

Now, when you bring that to America, bunnies are cuter. We have more bunnies here than hares. So it just became the

47:29

Easter bunny. So the Easter bunny is really an American tradition that was sort of modified from a German custom in the 1500s.

47:37

And again, it just has to do with animals showing up in the springtime and then being associated with that.

47:42

It's like the fact that, you know, what do you see a lot in November? Well, turkeys. So turkey became associated with Thanksgiving and it became the annual

47:50

Thanksgiving meal. But I mean, there's no evidence that turkey was actually eaten at the first Thanksgiving with the pilgrims and then in the

47:56

American Indians. So I mean, like, that's kind of how things worked. Sorry for interrupting your currently scheduled programming.

48:02

But did you know you can go to ApologiaStudios .com and become an all access member? With all access membership, you get exclusive content from all of Apologia Studios productions, not to mention

48:13

Koltish is an Apologia Studios production. So you'll get access to Koltish, The Aftermath, where Jerry and I talk together after our most recent series discussing what we thought.

48:23

It's really cool. We have a lot of fun doing it. And, you know, we can't do this without the studio.

48:28

It keeps the lights on and we can't also do this without you. So please go to ApologiaStudios .com

48:34

and become an all access member. Now back to the programming. Right. Exactly. And I think one thing

48:39

I found interesting, Andrew, just give me a thought before we jump into the next video, is that when the only when he talked about when he made one of his knowledge claims, the primary source he pointed to, and I don't know if you can see it from our end, was he's pointing to a title of a

48:53

YouTube video. I'm not I'm not I don't have I'm not a historian, but typically

48:59

I don't like if you're making a claim, like I read the biography of Ulysses S.

49:05

Grant, I don't recall that person pointing to titles to YouTube videos about what his conversations were like with his generals and the decision making that he had back and forth.

49:19

Right. That's not how you do it. No. And, you know, I always tell people, don't cite my videos, cite the sources

49:26

I use in my videos. Right. I mean, because, you know, I don't like this. This is what you got to do. Go to the primary sources.

49:32

Just like point out the fact the only reference we have in history to Ostra is Saint Beat. And he mentions nothing about bunnies.

49:39

He mentions no specific dates. He just says in April they had some feast to honor her. We don't know when.

49:44

We don't know what they did. Had nothing to do with eggs or bunnies, though. Yeah. Andrew, what thoughts do you have for each of our next video?

49:52

So some of these people, I'm not I'm assuming here, but I would assume that they're the same type of people who make claims that the

49:57

Bible was transmitted or translated, let's say, like telephonically, like the game of telephone. But we know through history that that's not true.

50:05

We have a manuscript tradition. We can check all of these manuscripts. It's like 13000 or so in terms of our own

50:12

American translation to the Greek. And so what? But it seems like what they're actually doing with history is they're playing a telephone game of history without actually really trying to look at the sources, doing the very same things that they would claim that we do with the transmission of the biblical text.

50:26

So I don't know. It's just it's just kind of ironic to me. Oh, absolutely. You have one TikTok star will say the YouTube video, which cited a blog, which cited the history channel.

50:34

And that's where they're getting their stuff from. All right. So next we have a TikToker electric karma, electric karma.

50:40

I think it is the TikToker. And the title is The Real Origins of Easter.

50:46

So let's let's go ahead and see if she can take us a task.

50:52

Let me go ahead and hit the play button and see what happens here. Happy another holiday that Christian stole from pagans.

50:58

Let's talk about the actual origins of Easter. Easter actually began as a traditional pagan festival that celebrated the spring in the hemisphere.

51:07

But the Christians stole that and claimed it as theirs. There you go. 14 seconds.

51:14

Mic drop. It's like it's the ironic thing is they just assume

51:19

Christians are so bland and dumb. They just can't come up with their own traditions. They got to steal everything.

51:26

That's just not how it works. I mean, most of the customs we have for our holidays today come from European folk traditions,

51:33

American folk traditions or Christian customs. Why can't Christians come up with their own holidays?

51:39

Why do they got to steal everything? What's your evidence? And again, no evidence that Easter was a spring festival in the northern hemisphere until Christians moved in and started celebrating

51:48

Easter to honor the resurrection. Then it became an actual spring festival. I know this is interesting.

51:54

Here we have another one. This one is talking about how Easter is really colonialization, because that's what we liked.

52:00

That's what Christian is all about. Just going around, pillaging and plundering, taking everything for our own. We're just like the

52:06

Vikings. We're just going up. You know, I'm just thinking we're a bunch of just Ragnar Lothbrok, just going up and burning everything down, taking everything.

52:14

So here we go. Colonizers stole Easter. Let's see what happens here. With Easter being celebrated tomorrow,

52:22

I figured it was about time that I do my annual Easter is not Christian talk. During Christmas time,

52:28

I did my Christmas is not Christian talk. And so, of course, this kind of has to follow. So supposedly

52:34

Easter is supposed to be the day that Jesus was resurrected. And this is what we celebrate as like, you know, yesterday was

52:40

Good Friday, that kind of thing, right? However, would you like to know why it doesn't stay the same day every single year that we celebrate

52:48

Easter? Would it make sense that we would celebrate the day that Jesus was resurrected on the day

52:55

Jesus was resurrected? And that that date wouldn't necessarily change because he was resurrected on a single day, right?

53:03

When actually Easter is celebrated on the day on the Sunday of the first full moon after the spring equinox.

53:10

So the spring equinox was on March 20th. And so after the first full moon, which is today, tomorrow is

53:18

Sunday. That would make it Easter. Shockingly enough, this comes from a pagan tradition, which relatively translates to Easter month.

53:27

So things like the Easter bunny and Easter eggs, those all come from pagan practices. For example, like rabbits are supposed to symbolize like a new fertility, you know, like the whole spring situation.

53:38

So it kind of represents the goddess that is kind of in charge of that. Eggs, of course, explanatory.

53:45

Of course, this isn't based on opinion or anything. There was a whole thing with the with the colonization that, you know, the

53:52

Christians came to colonize pagan holidays. It was easier for them to transition when they were trying to take over and make

54:00

Christianity the worldwide religion. Similarly, Christmas, of course, is celebrated on Saturnalia, which, you know,

54:08

Jesus wasn't even born on Christmas Day. He was born in like the spring or the summer. So they've chosen to celebrate his birthday on coincidentally the same day as a pagan holiday.

54:20

So you see how things kind of match up there. The same thing with Easter, because to me, it doesn't exactly make sense that if someone was resurrected on a certain day, we wouldn't celebrate it on that day.

54:32

Why would the day change every single year? It's a practice for pagans because it's a moon thing.

54:38

It's an equinox thing. It's a whole like fertility ritual, all that kind of stuff. But anyway, the more you know, my annual

54:45

PSA. Blessed be and spread the good news. There we go.

54:51

All right. So that's her PSA. What should be our, yeah, what should be our, what's our

54:58

PSA in response to that? Well, she needs to do some more history because the

55:04

Jews had a calendar that had holidays that changed every year. You'd think if they wanted to celebrate the actual

55:10

Passover, why does the Passover change every year? Why don't they just celebrate on the day they actually left Egypt?

55:16

Well, because again, they had a lunar solar calendar, and that's the way these things moved. Easter, Jesus was crucified and died during Passover week.

55:23

So they started following originally the Jewish calendar, and then the Christians sort of modified it after that.

55:29

But they kept following the same kind of lunar indicators to celebrate the holiday. So, you know, just because someone follows a lunar calendar doesn't mean it's pagan.

55:38

That is a non sequitur at best. And so this whole day that they were colonizing,

55:43

I mean, that's just utter nonsense as well. We have no evidence of Christians actually wanting to colonize holidays.

55:49

Again, all the holidays we have today, the major holidays were not colonized. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Easter, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Valentine's Day.

55:58

None of these were colonized. This is all just made up nonsense. And in fact, scholars like Robert Woodbury have pointed out that Christian missionary activity actually correlates with anti -colonial activity.

56:09

Colonial reforms was brought about by missionaries in certain regions fighting against European colonialization. So Woodbury has pointed out that actually when you have more

56:18

Christian ideas, more Christian evangelism and missionary activity, you get actually a move away from colonialism, a move more closer to democracy, towards education, these kinds of things.

56:29

So again, this idea that Christianity is going to lead to colonialism is just utter nonsense. And, you know, there's no reason to think any of that stuff goes back to paganism.

56:38

No, definitely. Andrew, what are your thoughts as far as that video goes? What questions do you have for Michael right now? Yeah, it seems like she had a great question for Christians, but didn't go to the right people to ask these questions.

56:49

Instead, went to the internet to ask certain questions and came up with conclusions that were just not correct.

56:56

You know, that's kind of just what I'm thinking there. I don't know.

57:01

It's just, it's sad when you listen to those things because it can sound rather convincing when you're using phrases like lunar or equinox.

57:08

Like now people are thinking about those things like through a new age lens, which is the society in which we live.

57:13

So, I mean, I think you did an excellent job, Mike, just breaking it down about the lunar calendar that the Jews had in terms of the

57:19

Passover and calculating and how it changes every single year because that's just the way their calendar worked.

57:24

So yeah, I don't have any more questions in that one. You can go to another video. I mean, yeah, it's all about, we don't need to celebrate on the exact day.

57:32

It's about remembering the importance of the activities. We don't know the day Jesus was born, but December 25th is church tradition, so we just keep it.

57:38

Doesn't hurt anyone. Right. Yeah. Well, also this, how would you, for our audience, some people aren't even familiar with this word, but etymology, what's the proper definition of that word?

57:50

So etymology is a study of words and where they come from and how they're used and anything surrounding that,

57:56

I believe. And what would you say, and what's a proper way to view etymology? Depends on what subject we're talking about or how we're using it.

58:04

When it comes to history, cause we're talking specifically like history, primary sources. And so a lot of times people will try and look at the origins of words, but they use like they view that a lot of times people will use, they'll view the ancient world through this lens of like how something is pronounced in English, but this is the ancient world before English was ever invented.

58:25

Oh yeah. They'll, they'll assume that the words in English somehow carry some sort of hidden pagan meaning, like assuming

58:30

Easter goes back to the goddess Ishtar. Well, they sound similar enough, but I mean like that's ridiculous.

58:37

That's like assuming that anytime I talk about a goose, I'm talking about the Spanish word gusto.

58:43

Like, I mean, they're not the same thing. Sometimes people just make the same noises from their mouth for different words.

58:48

Like I could say, I'm going to give you a gift. Would you be happy to hear that? No, you wouldn't. Because I just said, I'm going to give you poison because in German, the word gift means poison.

58:57

Right. Does that mean that every time I say the word gift, I'm actually saying I'm giving you poison? No, that's what these anti -holiday people are basically saying when they make these type of arguments.

59:04

Right. Or even sometimes what they'll try and do is like, if you want to adapt the idea, we'll unpack this in a second because we're going to talk about Ishtar because that's the argument that people make that Easter is pagan because the words sound somewhat the same.

59:16

But when you add, when you adopt a type of etymology where you're trying to base hidden, in my opinion, hidden esoteric meaning on the pronunciation of words, you can prove anything that you want to, because you can make anything sound like anything you want to.

59:29

Like I could, I can argue that Sanskrit is a form of mind control, because if I want to give my own esoteric etymology,

59:38

I could say, oh, same script, sane, insane script. It's like, and so there's people on the internet who literally will do that.

59:47

And so that's where it's like, I don't think like you have, you can't have it with true.

59:53

When truth begins with you, like you can make anything mean anything. And that's not how we understand anything about history.

01:00:00

So that being said, let's jump into, this is a nice TikTok video talking about the dark history of Easter that no one wants you to know about.

01:00:10

No one's known up until now, until we have found the dark intricacies of this TikTok video, which will be anywhere from 15 to 60 seconds.

01:00:19

So a shout out to Brandy. Thank you for putting this video compilation together. And here we go.

01:00:25

Can we talk about the dark history of Easter? You got to make sure you check outside. Sorry to say that Easter has nothing to do with Jesus.

01:00:33

Many aspects of traditional Christianity, holidays, practices, doctrines, the bunnies, the eggs, springtime came not from Christ or the

01:00:43

Bible, but came from pagan religion. Easter Sunday is a Babylonian pagan holiday, which idolizes the fertility goddess

01:00:50

Ishtar. Worshiping Ishtar was intended to ask for her blessing of fertility on the crops and everything else.

01:00:56

On the first Sunday after the full moon, they would celebrate by baking cakes, getting drunk and committing other heinous crimes.

01:01:03

Women were required to celebrate the conception by laying down at the temple of Ishtar and having relations with anybody who walks in.

01:01:09

There is a very, very dark history on why they color eggs. Babies were sacrificed and the blood of the infants were dipped in the eggs for Ishtar.

01:01:16

Want to know the reason there's a bunny rabbit? Rabbits can bear several litters of young each year, meaning they have high fertility.

01:01:22

Decorating eggs seems harmless until you consider the origins of it. None of this had to do with Christianity.

01:01:28

The bunnies and the eggs are not as simple as they seem. And this holiday is not holy. Y 'all be safe.

01:01:33

Y 'all be safe. Yes. From painting eggs. I know. I know. Well, she does bring up a couple of points.

01:01:40

Let's talk about that because she does talk about, you know, Ishtar. It sounds somewhat similar, but what's the true origins?

01:01:47

Was there an actual celebration called Ishtar? Is it actually connected to Easter? I mean, how do we how do we actually address that holistically?

01:01:56

Yeah, we have no evidence of this. Right. Again, it's just it's just made up. Again, this comes she's it's funny because I did a response to her on TikTok one time where she was arguing that her skin is really green and I had to debunk that of all things.

01:02:08

Oh, yeah, I got like a million views. But like, yeah, it was a really, really crazy video. But yeah, she's getting a lot of this stuff from Alexander Hislop.

01:02:17

Actually, this is the kind of claims you see in his book, The Two Babylons, that the whole decorating of the eggs is about sacrificing babies.

01:02:24

And it all goes back to Ishtar. He made up all that stuff. And yet it still gets passed around as if it's true.

01:02:30

None of it's true. Again, the decorating of Easter eggs came from Lent, came from Lent.

01:02:35

It's Catholic, basically. It did not go back to some sort of ancient Babylonian custom.

01:02:42

There's no connection of Easter to Ishtar. If it was, you'd explain why the Christians took the celebration of Ishtar, started calling it the

01:02:50

Pascha. And then only centuries later in Germanic and English regions, they started calling it by its original name, which weird like train of evidence there.

01:03:00

I mean, but yeah, again, utter nonsense. Nothing about this idea of being a pagan fertility ritual.

01:03:07

Ishtar symbols were like the lion and the star. We have no depictions of Ishtar with bunny rabbits, hairs, eggs, any of that kind of stuff.

01:03:18

Sure, in some cultures around the world, eggs were probably used in some sort of fertility ritual because they're eggs, but nothing associated with Ishtar.

01:03:26

And again, just because a pagan used something for evil in the past, that doesn't mean it's wrong for Christians to use.

01:03:32

I mean, again, pagans used to sacrifice animals to their deities. They used to build temples. Okay.

01:03:37

Well, God commanded the Jews to sacrifice animals and build a temple. That doesn't mean those things are evil, just because a pagan did something similar somewhere on earth.

01:03:46

Yeah. No, it definitely makes sense. Let me ask this, because we kind of just addressed some of these things, is that some people would even ask too, because I mean,

01:03:55

I grew up where it was just celebrating the resurrection of Jesus has risen. Christ has risen. He's risen indeed.

01:04:00

And I said, oh, well, my other friends were doing like hunting for Easter eggs, like on that day. So I just said, oh, this is my friends who don't go to church.

01:04:07

That's what they do. So even there's a lot of Christians, I think, who still struggle with the fact. Well, what do I do?

01:04:12

Is that, is that a distraction? No, is this like, I don't want to want our focus kids to focus in on Jesus rising from the dead and somehow the hunting for eggs, it will be detrimental to that.

01:04:24

Not, not even adopting that the Easter is pagan arguments. And honestly, I think some of them are just asking honest questions, whether they do that or not.

01:04:31

He ever thought through that or what's your response to people who just bring that into question? Well, I think we do need to realize the focus needs to be on Jesus and his resurrection.

01:04:39

That needs to be the main focus. But that doesn't mean we get rid of everything else. So, I mean, go, go to the gospel of John at the wedding of Cana.

01:04:47

You know, Jesus turned water into wine so people could have a good time. He didn't say, no, no, no, no more wine because I have to give a sermon because it's all about me.

01:04:54

Jesus is not a God who hates fun, who hates people, hates kids having games that they play annually as part of the celebration.

01:05:03

I mean, sure, I think Jesus wants us to remember his resurrection and that needs to be the central focus. But there's nothing wrong with having an

01:05:10

Easter egg hunt as well, especially if it's for kids and it's for enjoyment. Let's keep things in focus here.

01:05:16

It's not going to soup as long as it doesn't become the main focus of Easter. There's nothing wrong with it. Awesome.

01:05:22

Andrew, what's on your mind? What do you think about this? What questions do you have? Yeah, it's kind of what Mike was talking about earlier. They're like, we can't legislate convictions of conscience.

01:05:29

If someone has a conviction that they don't want to use eggs, you know, during a Easter, then so be it.

01:05:35

But you can't go tell your brother, this is sinful for you to have your children go and grab and find hidden eggs.

01:05:43

You know, it's just not, it's not right. Especially if the reason why you think, or you have a conviction is based off of pseudo history.

01:05:51

You know, like we gotta be very careful when we're trying to legislate our convictions to others, technically, we shouldn't do it unless it's the

01:05:59

Bible literally calls something sin. And then it's no longer really a conviction. It's more of a, it's a black and white, you know, like that's, that's just the reality of it.

01:06:07

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, yeah. We see this a lot with Torah observant Christians. They have felt convicted not to celebrate

01:06:14

Easter or Christmas and then find whatever Romans 14. But then they come out and they go, and you shouldn't either.

01:06:20

So you can be super special, holy like me. Cause that's what Jesus really wants. And it's terrifying what they're trying to do.

01:06:26

Not only that, I mean, that's actually the majority of the pushback just, just for us asking the question was not just, you shouldn't celebrate it, but the only thing you should celebrate are, are the feast.

01:06:37

Like this is not, you know, if someone wants to look back and maybe re like reenact one of these and maybe have an appreciation of like where we came from,

01:06:48

I guess that's okay as maybe that's your thing, but to have an idea that this is now the way you're supposed to do it.

01:06:55

And now you have a bunch of have and have nots who, who doesn't, who doesn't, I think that's problematic. Um, like, what do you think?

01:07:01

Like, what would you say? Because I mean, their primary argument is that the only holidays are permitted are the feast.

01:07:07

Therefore every other holiday is a manmade holiday and they make exceptions where there's Christmas. You also, you also see the similar argumentation with Jehovah's witnesses and why they don't celebrate even 4th of July and they don't celebrate

01:07:18

Christmas either. Um, like as Christians, do we, what gives us a license to create holidays?

01:07:24

Cause some people will say we, we can't do anything aside from the feast. Like how, how do you, what have you thought through with a type of pushback that you've gotten from your videos?

01:07:33

I mean, I don't understand where they're coming from. I mean, what is their view of Christian ethics that we can only do things the

01:07:39

Bible allows. I mean, this is, this is terrifying. Paul says for the law is summed up. You shall love thy neighbor as thyself.

01:07:46

Okay. It lays down principles for us to follow. Obviously doing something like torture would go against that.

01:07:52

Don't do that. Playing video games. Well, for most people, they're going to be fine as long as they don't become addictive or, you know, they're pushing really gory, horrible things are fine.

01:08:03

So like what is wrong about having a custom that you hide Easter eggs once a year for a kid? How is that sinful?

01:08:09

And we have a precedence in the Bible for creating holidays to honor thing. The book of Esther celebrates the holiday of Purim.

01:08:16

Okay. God never commanded the Jews to keep that holiday. They came up with it on their own to commemorate a great event.

01:08:22

Why can't we follow that same principle? The same guidance there. Hanukkah as well. We know that from the new

01:08:27

Testament, Jesus kept the feast of lights Hanukkah. Okay. Again, another manmade holidays. I mean, it's evil.

01:08:33

No. So where is this? God say, I never want you to celebrate holidays other than the ones

01:08:38

I've given you nowhere. Okay. Where does God say it'd be sinful to decorate a pine tree once a year as part of honoring the incarnation?

01:08:47

Never. Okay. Again, what kind of God are they worshiping? Are they worshiping Christ? The spirit who is a victorious

01:08:53

God who has freed us from Satan and freed us from all of these constraints that were holding us back?

01:09:00

Or do they worship this insecure legalistic deity that's like, Oh, well, you can't only can do certain things and don't decorate trees and don't hide eggs because that offends me.

01:09:09

Why don't don't ask questions. It just does for some weird reason. Right? No, it's yeah, we're definitely going to.

01:09:15

So what we're doing here is we're just kind of giving a general overview of that and just tell everyone real quickly what's tell me where they can find more about your stuff because you have a bunch of videos that addresses this.

01:09:24

Yeah. I got a bunch of videos on these holidays. Easter, Valentine's Day, Christmas, Halloween, Mother's Day, even have a video on Thanksgiving and why it's not a racist holiday.

01:09:33

All on my YouTube channel, inspiring philosophy. I have shorts I do on TikTok, Instagram as well.

01:09:39

So same name on that. Yeah. A lot of those are responses. So I make them kind of comical.

01:09:45

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's even now because of just the implosion of just the

01:09:51

TikTok, I mean, which talk we did this series last year, March Montego confronting, which talk? I mean, it's just a plethora.

01:09:57

I mean, you just did a response video to somebody talking about what was that? What was the video? It was it was it was drag is holy.

01:10:05

Drag is holy. Yeah. Yeah. So this guy used the text when

01:10:11

Jesus says, I wanted to gather you as a hen under my wings. And somehow use that to justify drag.

01:10:19

It was out there. I would suspect he just used that to justify being a furry more than drag.

01:10:26

I mean. Yeah. Yeah. So it just goes to show like there's just it's just a plethora of nonsense.

01:10:33

So I think it's very refreshing to see stuff like yours, stuff like Red Pen Logic. We're starting to do our own response videos.

01:10:39

And I just there needs to be like good, good pushback to so much of this nonsense that's being pushed.

01:10:44

So that's something I really appreciate your channel. All right. So that being said, we're going to go and wrap up part one of this conversation.

01:10:50

We kind of got a general overview of this. We're going to do a second part where it's going to be kind of like a greatest hits compilation, just like a time life, greatest hits, debunking student history, everything from, you know,

01:11:01

Joe Rogan saying the Bible was put together by Constantine. We're going to maybe talk a little more about Halloween, whether it's connected to Samhain.

01:11:09

We'll have a little fun with that. Talk about the Christmas. We're just going to find the greatest hits compilation and see what we can come up with.

01:11:16

So that being said, I appreciate all for listening in. And we'll talk to you all next time on Cultist, where we enter into the kingdom of the cults and the fringe in the pseudo history.