gstafleu

I've done some more digging around re the date of passover. This article on calendars explains, I think, the difficulty. The Hebrew calendar is a "lunisolar calendar, [it] has a sequence of months based on the lunar phase cycle; but every few years a whole month is intercalated to bring the calendar back in phase with the tropical year." Furthermore "As it exists today, the Hebrew calendar is a lunisolar calendar that is based on calculation rather than observation."

So the correspondence between astronomical events, like the vernal equinox, and the calendar is iffy. Nevertheless an attempt is made to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons, via the intercalar months. As a result, the best we can probably say about passover is that it falls in the spring.

That does establish a link with the vernal equinox, but a weak one. Given that so many cultures do have a festivity on the vernal equinox, I still suspect that passover is the Jewish variety, but I cannot nail it down to the day. In addition, passover is linked with the lamb, and lambs are traditionally born in early spring. The passover lamb is slain/sacrificed on passover. In turn, Jesus is linked to the passover lamb, and he is also slain/sacrificed.

So we do have links between the crucifixion and the vernal equinox: the date is in the spring and the lamb is a spring animal. Did the ancient Hebrews see passover as a rite of spring? I don't know, but somehow I doubt it. It seems that the Hebrew calendar is not linked strongly enough to the seasons to make that likely. Rather, what we see here may be the remnants of a precursor mythology: the concept of spring as an important event, and its general date, remain, but the direct meaning of the festivities is no longer clearly linked to spring.

Edit: I almost forgot, what does all this say about the crucifixion as an historical event? Well, we do seem to have a firm mythological basis for the crucifixion: the passover lamb. We also have a less firm one: celebration of spring. The two together seem sufficient to me to see the crucifixion as a mythological rather than a historical event. Could there have been a real crucifixion at that time on which this latest mythological turn was based? Certainly, but it is not necessary to assume that in order to explain the crucifixion.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

The OED gives the following etymology:
So the OED goes to Old Teutonic and Sanskrit (if I understand correctly) to arrive at the dawn goddess.

Gerard Stafleu

Denis Giron

Greetings Gerard

Indeed, such things as evergreen trees, dating via the vernal equinox, and even the very word "Easter" are all add ons, none of which are mentioned in the Bible itself (which is why I noted that many Protestants, who attempt to take a sola scriptura approach, would find the connections humorous).

Even before the dawn of Christianity, passover had tremendous meaning, including ideas about sacrifice, blood and salvation. Therefore, a popular conclusion is that because Jesus was executed near the passover, the Christians who still clung to belief in him being the Messiah interpreted the event in light of those passover stories (e.g. just as those Jews who had the blood of the lamb on their home were saved by God and/or spared from death, so too those who are now washed in the blood of the lamb shall be saved or granted eternal life, et cetera, hence the reason Paul called Jesus "our passover lamb" in 1 Cor 5:7).

See Leviticus 23:5 (or Numbers 9:5, 28:16, and especially 33:3) for starters. The passover begins on the fourteenth day of the first month of the Hebrew calendar (the first month being called Nissan, though in the Bible it is called the month of the Abib). It represents when the Jews sprinkled the blood of a lamb on their homes while in Egypt. The next day (i.e. the 15th of that month), the Jews began to leave Egypt. Hence, the passover feast is always celebrated on the 15th day of the first month of the Hebrew calendar. If you'd like to see a Hebrew calendar, see the following site:

http://www.jewfaq.org/calendar.htm

Denis Giron

Ah, we seem to have been typing at roughly the same times...

Actually, that would provide us with the obvious basis for the post-Easter interpretation of the crucifixion. As I said previously, the text seems to paint a picture where Jesus is killed near the passover, and his followers, desperate for an explanation, interpret his death in light of the stories being read in Temple at that time (e.g. the story of salvation coming unto Israel with the blood of a lamb playing a role, and thus them trying to employ such stories to salvage the fact that the man they claimed was the redeemer of Israel just got killed by the very people the Messiah was supposed to liberate Israel from).

gstafleu

Hi Denis,

Yes, I agree, some guy called Jesus was crucified at passover, his followers interpreted that as a lamb-analogue... it could have happened that way. But is it necessary to posit a real crucified person in order to explain the crucifixion story as we know it? My point is that it is at least equally possible that the Jesus story is pure mythology. We have messianic expectations, we have the passover lamb tradition, we know there were some other rising and dying gods in the vicinity (Isis and Osiris e.g.). That could have been enough to give rise to the new mythology of Jesus.

Another interesting question is: does it really matter if there was a real crucifixion? Even if the mythology was tacked onto a historic unfortunate, the mythology still had to be gathered and formed from somewhere. What exactly, except for a retroactive CNN video tape, could let us distinguish between the two scenarios: pure myth or tacked-on myth? Is there reason to assume the resultant myth would be different in case A or case B?

I suspect that the answer is that we cannot distinguish between the two. Being a bit of a minimalist I then go for the pure myth version. But even if it turned out somehow that the myth was tacked onto someone real, that wouldn't change all that much for me. I would still want to know where the myth elements came from, if there were any completely original new-formed elements, and how they were shaped into the story as we have it.

To put it differently, the important bit here is the mythology, not the history.

Gerard Stafleu

Bobinius

What a load of crap. Please explain to us fools how can we prove that there is
"no evidence" for the existence of something? Please explain how do you prove that there is no evidence for me being an alien, for example

If the (2) premise has some evidence for it, the conclusion is inductive. It is more probable than the "God exists" hypothesis.

Really? Could it be the case that there is no evidence to support a hypothesis, or a conjecture? Did this ever cross your mind? Can you imagine that the fact that you can obtain (in principle) evidence against a hypothesis, does not imply that there is some evidence for that hypothesis? You can very well obtain evidence for ~X, without there being evidence for X.

Secondly, when there should be evidence for God, and there isn't any, this is a very strong argument against God, it is deductively valid, via Modus Tollens.

Thirdly, have you ever heard of the unfalsifiability of the existence of beings like God? An unfalsifiable God, which is what the theistic minds develop continuously, cannot be defeated by any evidence: it is unfalsifiable, and compatible with any evidence or observation. It's a well known tactic in the theistic and supernatural apologetics.

Without any evidence for it, we have no reason or justification in adopting this belief. And it makes it highly improbable.

No shit. Please provide evidence for no evidence. You cannot observe "no evidence" or indicate it. It's absent by definition. As long as no one brings any evidence, the situation stays like that: no evidence. That's the whole justification for the hypothesis.

No evidence for X is exactly what is required to believe that there is no evidence.

It's wrong to believe on "insufficient" evidence. Please bring observational evidence that the evidence is "insufficient".Or that there is no evidence for that belief we should refrain believing.

You got it all mixed up: the negative does not concern the evidence itself. You cannot bring direct evidence for a negative. Only for the alternative, incompatible hypothesis.The truth of that alternative hypothesis is what logically makes the belief under investigation false. 'No evidence' cannot be observed, by definition.

So you read the proponents and decide. What evidence do you bring in order to prove that "there is no evidence" for Tell? No evidence is the default state of affairs for any conjecture. All conjectures, when just affirmed, are not affirmed with the evidence. All you can do is analyze some proposed evidence for that conjecture and conclude that this is no evidence for it. You can repeat the process for the other proposals and so on. But you do not bring evidence for "no evidence". For all we know, there is no evidence that you are guilty of the 9/11 crashings. Would you like to prove first that there is no evidence for that? Is that first required in order for us to believe that? Within your ethics of belief.

Roger Pearse

It infers her role from the philology of the name, which since my own name means "spear of fame" means that I am a famous warrior in 2007... or perhaps the argument is flawed. But note the lack of reference to the "festival on the vernal equinox". I doubt that this is anything but hearsay.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

gstafleu

I never doubted that .
It might be in that one would expect that the name of a goddess would keep its meaning better than the name of an ordinary mortal.
A problem here might be that when tracing the mythology of a non-literate culture, the difference between hearsay and inference is less clear cut then when one has documentary evidence. Now in your Bede quote, he does link Eosturmonath to "Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month." And as to the link with the vernal equinox: "Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance." Note the "time-honoured name of the old observance," so clearly something was going on around that time.

Bede might of course have gathered his information from a stack of old oak logs in his backyard, onto which logs was inscribed Ye Olde Teutonicke Vademecum in Tolkien-like runes. But probably not. So yes, hearsay. But I suspect that in cases like this--trying to figure out old mythologies of non-literate cultures--all one has to go on is the current oral tradition, and hence one has to go with it. If he had had the Vademecum it might have mentioned the reason for the festivity. As it stands, we can only infer it.

Gerard Stafleu

hatsoff

Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is equivocation. We have a mythical *parallel*, not an explanation.

Roger Pearse

No, I had forgotten actually that Bede said that. <grovel>

All the best,

Roger Pearse