Easter Questions

[thir]

I hope you Christians (and others) out there have not lost heart at this point - there is one more thing I would very much like to ask:

I have wondered for many years why Christmas is a much bigger Christian celebration than Easter?

I would have thought that Easter - with the resurrection - would be the crown of the events, the big victory over death! Also the cross was taken as a symbol for Christianity (by whom?) so again you'd think that Easter would be the really most important celebration, and a cause for great joy.

So, can anyone tell me why it isn't? Maybe it was, originally?

If there are any Christians who would like to talk about this, but who have lost the taste for it in the thread, please do write a PM (personal message.). I'd really like to know.

[Thorne]

What I mean here is that fear is part of our defense system, and we need it.

Of course we need it. But to be afraid of imaginary things is a waste of energy. Save your fear for the things that can REALLY hurt you.

[Thorne]

What I have a real problem with is the way in which science so often seems to be the victim of fads of one kind and another. Decades back, there were all these findings that this or that from the bible was now proven, or partly proven, or explained - by both Christian and non-Christian archelogists. This decade the fad seems to be that it is all just smoke and mirrors. I am extremely sceptical about these all-or-nothing waves.

First of all, one of the things that science does is to correct itself. You generate a hypothesis that explains the data, then find evidence to support your hypothesis. Very often that evidence will DISprove your hypothesis, so you have to change or discard it. That's how science works.

Second, you have to remember that, until very recently, the Bible was considered to be an archeological tool, and many scientists tried to prove its accuracy by digging through the Middle East. And there were indeed things in the Bible that were historically real. There are other things in the Bible that are obviously fictitious. And there are things in the Bible that are fictional stories based upon real events. Just like the movie Titanic was based upon an actual event, but the character Jack Dawson and the story around him is totally fictional.

Hold on to your hat Thorne - I believe in the bible! What I mean is, I do not believe that things written down there were taken completely out of the thin air. The archeologists now want us to believe that nothing happened, Moses did not excist, the jews were never in Egypt, nobody emigrated, it is all just a methaphor or allergory about freedom. I note that when archeologists are at loose ends, the word allegory thends to pop up a lot, because they know darn well that things are written down for a reason and they feel they have to come up with some sort of explanation.

Not wearing a hat! Oh no!

I never said nothing happened. Something probably DID happen. There may have been a group of people, the ancestors of the Hebrews, who emigrated from Egypt after a series of natural catastrophes. There may have been a person which the character of Moses is based on. But there is no evidence that the Moses of the Bible, like Jack on the Titanic, ever existed. And the story behind Moses, born of slaves, placed into the river, found by a princess, was a fairly common religious story that long preceded the Biblical account. Just like many of the stories of Jesus (virgin birth, son of a god, murder of innocent children, etc.) were told in heroic stories of other cultures before the rise of the Hebrews.

Now, I believe that when something is written down, it is because something happened. It may be embellished, exaggerated, given a specific meaning, get garbled over the years, be partiallly inspired by myth (themselves distant account of who knows what) but they did not just get pulled out of thin air.

Not true! Writers make things up out of thin air all of the time! Look at Mormonism, or Scientology. Both fabricated from nothing by their founders. Song writers make things up all of the time, having nothing to do with reality, just to entertain the crowds. Don't you think that bards and singers in ancient times were trying to entertain their listeners? Of course, it can be far more entertaining if there's just a hint of truth in there, if your listeners can recognize a place or a person. That doesn't make the story true, just more believable.

The latest is that no traces can be found of people wandering about in the dessert for 40 years - well, maybe that would be extremely difficult with tribes that had few things that would survive, and in a big dessert too. Maybe be they did not take 40 years to cross - why should they have? They say millions cannot survive in these areas with sheep and what not - well, maybe it wasn't millions - maybe it was thousands.

One thing that archeologists know is that people, ALL people, create garbage. Broken pottery, burned hides, shattered bones. And feces, of course. Even thousands of people create a lot of shit, every day. And they didn't just wander through the Sinai. The Bible claims they stayed in some areas for years. There would have to have been a LOT of garbage. Yet none can be found! Now you can say that maybe there were only hundreds, or dozens, small camps that would vanish in time, but such a small group of people would be unlikely to have enough warriors to conquer Canaan as the Bible says they did. The Bible says there were millions, but even many thousands would have left something behind.

Some say thousands of jews were taken to Egypt as POWs in wars - there are always wars going on in these areas. Some say thousands more emigrated from Canaan to Egypt because there was a famine and Egypt was fertile. Maybe thousands left centuries later because of whatever natural disasters or plagues wreacked havoc in the country, and maybe Moses lead number of them out by way of a new, mono theistic religion and various promises of a better place.

Virtually all of these suppositions are based on the Bible. There are no records in Egypt that correspond to these events. Sure, some Jews were taken as slaves. Probably mostly women and children, who would eventually have integrated into the Egyptian population. As someone above noted, there's some evidence that a tribe of mercenaries called the Habiru may have left Egypt at about the time of the Biblical Exodus, and this could be the foundation for the stories. But the point is, the stories in the Bible did not happen as they were written!

[IAN 2411]

I read a story not long ago about the parting of the Red Sea, and apparently it has taken place on many occasions throughout history. Near one of the shores, if the moon is in the correct position and there are strong winds coming from a certain direction. The water pushes with the force of the wind in one direction leaving a large lake one side and the sea on the other. It leaves a shallow causeway to walk over.

If you remember the story that we were all told it states; the winds came and the sea parted. It is only our imagination and the exaggeration of the writer that allows us to believe it was parted in the middle. The story of Moses parting the sea could be true, but it could have been someone else running away from slavery with a few others. I would find it hard to believe that the pharaohs would allow so many just to walk off.

Be well IAN 2411

[denuseri]

Hebrew: or if you will: עברים or עברייםʿor Iḇrîm, ʿIḇriyyîm or ʿIvrim, ʿIvriyyim or ʕibrim, ʕibriyim is an ethnonym used in the Jewish Bible to describe the Jews.

It is only one word of many used by the Jewish people and others for them throughout the ages.

It isn't until the establishment of their monarchy that they actually wrote anything down themselves. Until then only oral records were kept. Hence the earliest written account of what came later to be referred too as the Bible wasn't until the times of David and Solomon.

Before then they were often considered Habiru (which is a lawless type of bandit or nomadic invader) especially by the Philistines who wrote too both the Hittites and the Egyptians asking for help against them at various times.

Where the ancient Egyptians referred to them as Habiru themselves on occassion (at least during times of strife with them as in the case of the "Exodus" ) it was more common to refer to them more directly as Shasu (a type of nomadic herder); more specifically Sashu of Yhw. Which btw is a well documented hieroglyphic rendering that corresponds very precisely to the well documented Hebrew tetragrammaton for YHWH.

Often times people get confused when studying Jewish history when it comes to sorting through the myths presented in the Bible and the archeological evidence.

It is very helpful however to understand that even though the Bible may sound to layman as if the Jews were all one contiguous group of people who traveled around together in a single ethnic and cultural gathering that they were in actuality often separated (sometimes for decades even centuries) into smaller groupings as were all such nomadic peoples of those times.

Biblical history reaserchers have shown bia a cross disiplinary approach that the Bible shows cultural bias of two distinctive groups...IE the old testament is a blending of two seperate and distinctive cultures oral histories into one set of "books".

How can both groups be Jews then you may ask?

At the time of the Exodus story there were in fact two settled and distinct groups of Hebrews who were out there with markedly different customs. Though both originally in so far as we know could have came from one commonly accepted point of origin many centuries before this epoch (The city of Ur): One group split from the other to settle in Egypt during a time of drought...and the other stayed in the vicinity of Canaan and were later driven into the hill country by the arrival of the Philistines.

Then years later they decided to start writing things down.

[Thorne]

Then years later they decided to start writing things down.

Which means that everything that came before was little more than a monstrous game of Telephone. And it was more like centuries later, not just years.

Nice post, denuseri. Pretty much agrees that what's written in the Bible cannot necessarily be taken literally. Even in the US, right now, despite all of the written and archeological evidence, groups in power are trying to rewrite history to suit their political and/or religious agendas. How much easier would that have been when all of your history was oral, and saying anything against the rulers was a death wish?

[Bellasub]

If there are any Christians who would like to talk about this, but who have lost the taste for it in the thread, please do write a PM (personal message.). I'd really like to know.

I really came on to this to mention that Christ was not created, but saw that got covered...then read Thorne's posts... skipped to the end to see how things ended. Largely, Christmas is a "bigger" celebration for 3 reasons.

1) It marks the end of the liturgical calendar, a New Year's of sorts. The church year is sort of like a mini-replay of the life of Christ every year.

2) Everyone agrees on the date of Christmas celebration. Easter is based on the lunar calendar and the Eastern Orthodox Christians, Coptic Christians, and Western Christians are often a little bit different on the date of Easter.

3) Mostly though, the secular world grasped heavily onto Christmas traditions and celebrations. Not that Christ's birth isn't a huge deal, it certainly is. At my church though, we spend basically the entire week at church. (short services monday, tuesday, wednesday, Maundy Thursday Mass + Footwashing, Good Friday is a...long service, then on Saturday we have Easter vigil which is about 3 hours and a wonderful amazing incredible service of anticipation and fulfillment. Then sunday morning is Easter worship service He is Risen indeed!)