Wallener

Yes, I am vaguely familiar with the Pesach tradition.

One the many descriptions for the man is "Peschal Lamb". In Latin the holiday is called "Pascha resurrectionis", in Greek it is "pascha anastasimon", in French "Pasque", Scottish "Pask", Dutch "Paschen", etc etc etc. The events have clearly diverged in meaning and celebratory specifics and meanings, but I fail to see how one can argue they aren't historically linked when Easter is defined as being the first Sunday after Pesach.

That is modern practise. Easter Saturday is a Holy Saturday, and like the other days in easter was for a long time a holy day of obligation.

Dharma

Actually Easter is determined to be the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox. And Good Friday, Saturday and Sunday are considered holy, so is Ash Wednesday...did I miss a day?

Again Christianity shows that it is more influenced by Roman/middle eastern paganism, Man as the sacrificial lamb. Drinking and eating the blood and body of Christ, Christ's death, resurrection... Basically Christians figured out they were in fact worshipping the Sun and that Christ-- Christos, a Greek word, was in fact a sun cult.

you are correct that such a winter/spring tradition is a part of most ancient traditions and thus the term "Pesach" was used interchangeably in non-Germanic traditions to try to separate it from other non-Judaic spring festivals, which again proves that Judaism is as pagan as any other tradition.

We have to remember that the Romans were trying to integrate Jews into the Roman empire and were failing to do so and at this time many different kinds of cults emerged, which Jews themselves fell to. Christianity was simply another solar cult but was perhaps dominated by Jews in the beginning but truly understood by the later Christians recognizing this to be another sun cult that they were familiar with.

Dharma

Actually supposedly etymologically Abraham to mean "father of multitudes" is not supported by Hebrew.

Ab is traditionally thought to mean "father" which would leave "raham" meaningless. Is there any support for the meaning of Raham to mean "multitudes" in Hebrew?

Toto

Hebrew for Christians says "Abraham comes from av and hamon, the nations."

Chabad says:

Wallener

Pesach is determined on the lunar calendar. We are saying exactly the same thing.

Dharma

again, that seems like a made up derivation. What happens to the "ra"?

Then people should pronounce it "Ab-hamon"...I would think God would be quite precise at this point. Av means father, ram means "exalted", no letter is left out. So raham must mean nations or multitudes...and hamon doesn't fit.

One derivation comes from the Arabic "ruham" which means many water drops, however, we would think that this would be corrected in the Quran, but the Quran continues with Ibrahim not Ibrahum.

Dharma

yes, actually most of the ancient spring festivals, in Asia in particular, I'm not too sure about the European ones since I am not too sure about their derivations or calendars, were determined by the soli-lunar calendar.

Binyamin

I think the term is a fair one, since all three religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam claim descent from Abraham. You can argue whether that claim is "historical" or merely rhetorical, but that doesn't change the fact that on an emic level, Christians believe themselves to partake in Abrahamic descent.

On a more etic level, it seems to me that the three religions can be categorized together on the basis of certain shared concepts, viz.: the view of history as the medium through which God's will is revealed, a belief in human agents (prophets), the belief in a future resurrection in which ethical grievances will be addressed, the reliance on a closed cannon of scripture. While other religions partake in some of these aspects, I think these three share in all of them.

Is it a perfect term, perhaps not. But there are no perfectly descriptive terms when it comes to discussing religions. Even the word "religion" is far from perfect.

spin

You were pointed to Gen 17:5. Did you read it with its wordplay on HMWN. This is a matter of Hebrew philology related to Hebrew folk-etymology. The writer of the passage firmly connects HMWN to Abraham. If you want to argue, argue with him. If you have a copy of BDB you'll find that they suggest that we are working with )BR (from )BYR, "mighty") and HM from HMWN giving the chief (mighty one) of many [nations]. This is their attempt to make sense of Gen 17:5. What does Dharma offer in its stead?

I think it's just folk-etymology on the writer's part.


spin

chapka

Yes. All three major Abrahamic religions have as part of their sacred writings some version of the Tanakh. To this the Jews add Mishnah and Talmud, the Muslims add the Qu'ran, and the Christians add the New Testament, the Deuterocanonicals, the Book of Mormon, etc. But the same stories of the Hebrew tribal god are fundamental to all three, and get explicit shout-outs in the Qu'ran and the New Testament. And Abraham is central to that shared tradition.