Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

historyextra.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 154 posts

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#51

Post by johannes1234321 »

xg15 wrote: post #40
danwills wrote: post #14

I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.

I find it fascinating that a lot of traditional holidays seem to have acquired multiple, sometimes conflicting narratives over the ages. Christmas is the most obvious one (what does a bearded dude on the north pole have to do with the birth of Jesus? For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus, but its also a kind of spirit of its own who brings presents, and for some reason usually depicted as a girl?)…

> For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus

Well, that is a good example to see how those things develop. Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind.

(And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style)

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#52

Post by airstrike »

citrin_ru wrote: post #13
arrowsmith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why is Good Friday called Good Friday? … What is Good Friday? … Why is Good Friday called Good Friday? … How is Good Friday marked around the world? … When is Good Friday in 2025?" This is SEO slop.

SEO slop existed long before LLMs but now it is also in the training sets which may affect their output.

It's lossy turtles all the way down

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#53

Post by gwbas1c »

ckxmaz wrote: post #44
danwills wrote: post #14

I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.

It holds for other christian holidays as well, like xmas. This is a tactic of zero sum conquering ideologies: - you take the symbolism of the oppressed and make it evil in your ideology, ie. the pentagram as a symbol of health and women turned into a christian satanic symbol - you take the oppressed culture's holidays and make them your own, easing the usurping, I know secularists and people of other religions who ce…

> I know secularists and people of other religions who celebrate xmas "just because"

At this point I consider "Christmas" a global secular holiday.

I put the people who whine about the religious aspect of Christmas into two boxes: Either they're playing power / politics games, or they're like the people who think that Betamax / CCS / ect were better.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#55

Post by fortran77 »

LtWorf wrote: post #28
danwills wrote: post #14

I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.

You realise that jewish people have had easter for a certain number of years before christ?

Ummm, Jews don't have Easter. Right now we are in the Chol Hamoed part of Passover/Pesach, with the Chag resuming and sundown tonight and continuing for 2 days.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#56

Post by swat535 »

danwills wrote: post #14

I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.

I've spent a fair amount of time studying ancient Sumerian culture and religion as a hobby, and the often repeated claim that "Easter comes from Ishtar" just doesn't hold up to even minimal scrutiny. It's one of those internet factoids that sounds plausible on the surface but completely falls apart under actual historical or linguistic analysis.

There's no serious academic support for a connection between the Christian holiday of Easter and the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna/Ishtar. The religious practices, beliefs, and festivals associated with Inanna bear no resemblance superficial or otherwise to Easter. They differ entirely in form, function, and meaning.

The only myth from that tradition that bears a remote resemblance is Inanna’s descent into the underworld: she's stripped of her powers, confronts her sister Ereshkigal, is executed, and later resurrected. It’s a compelling narrative, and yes, there's a resurrection motif but it serves a totally different purpose. It was a cosmological myth, tied to the movement of Venus in the night sky, not a theological cornerstone or community wide festival.

Inanna's rituals were centered on themes like war, sexuality, and divine kingship. Easter, by contrast, is about death and rebirth in a very different theological context. The comparison isn’t apples to oranges, it’s apples to machine learning models.

Also worth noting that the whole "Easter sounds like Ishtar" thing is shaky at best. The similarity is phonetically weak, especially when you consider historical pronunciations. Plus, "Ishtar" isn't even the most common or original name for the goddess Inanna (Sumerian) and Astarte (Phoenician/Canaanite) were more widespread depending on the period and region.

The connection between Easter and Ishtar is a modern myth. It s based more on a coincidence in English phonetics than on anything rooted in actual history or comparative religion.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#57

Post by Amezarak »

knome wrote: post #23
petesergeant wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They deliberately put it Who did? When?

The Catholic Church. The fourth century. https://www.history.com/articles/history-of-christmas >In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). >Although some evidence suggests that Jesus' birth may have occurred in the sprin…

This is a common theory but it's almost certainly wrong.

https://www.bartehrman.com/why-is-christmas-on-december-25th...

> However, upon closer examination, this theory encounters several historical and contextual challenges. One of the key issues is the lack of any contemporary evidence from the early Christian period directly linking the choice of December 25th for Christmas to pagan festivals.

> But several decades earlier (c. 203 C.E.), a bishop from Rome, Hippolytus, wrote: “For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years.” (Comm. on Dan. 23.3.) [...]

> Tertullian, for example, calculated that Jesus was killed on March 25th. If Jesus had also been conceived on March 25th and you count exactly nine months later from that date, you then have Jesus’ birth on December 25th. I think this is the way early Christians came to believe that Jesus’ birth happened on December 25th.

> Moreover, unlike the previous and still most popular theory, this one is mentioned in the early sources!

> A treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which comes from the 4th century states: “Therefore, our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in March, which is the day of the passion of the Lord and his conception. For on that day, he was conceived on the same he suffered.”

Note that regardless, December 25th was regarded as the date by at least some Christians long before the fourth century. As for the mention of shepherds in the article, we have independent attestations of shepherding in winter in the area, so the question of "why would they be there in winter" is "because that's normal".

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#58

Post by xg15 »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #51
xg15 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating that a lot of traditional holidays seem to have acquired multiple, sometimes conflicting narratives over the ages. Christmas is the most obvious one (what does a bearded dude on the north pole have to do with the birth of Jesus? For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus, but its also a kind of spirit of its own who brings presents, and for some reason usually depicted as a girl?)…

> For Germans specifically: The "Christkind" is Baby Jesus Well, that is a good example to see how those things develop. Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind. (And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style)

> Martin Luther didn't like how saints were praised and tried to convince people to pray to Christ instead of Saint Nicolas. Which then Catholic reaches formed to the Christkind.

#maliciouscompliance

But really, that's interesting! I didn't know Luther was the origin of this. Even more, it's almost a Christmas ritual of its own to discuss whether the presents are brought by Santa or the Christkind, etc. Wasn't aware that those tongue-in-cheek discussions have traces of the actual Catholic/Protestant conflict in them.

> (And then later Coca Cola took over spreading Santa Clause in their style)

Oh yeah, forgot the Nikolaus/Weihnachtsmann duality, which I think was an attempt by the church to get their saint back from the clutches of Coca Cola/pop culture. I guess they succeeded partially, because now we have both of them as separate characters.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#59

Post by rawgabbit »

danwills wrote: post #14

I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life.. yet it still includes a good amount of the prior symbolism (rabbits, eggs etc)! Still great to have a short break from work! Not arguing against it at all, it just seems a bit bizarre to me overall.

The holy day of Christian Easter coincides with the Jewish Passover as Jesus celebrated the Last Supper before his death and resurrection. Passover or Seder is on the eve of the 15th day of Nisan which is the first full moon after the beginning of Spring.

By the time of the first Nicea ecumenical council, Christians argued against using the Jewish calendar as by the 300s, it dated Passover before the spring equinox. The early church was now the official religion of the Roman Empire who followed the solar calendar.

In other words Easter and Passover has always been associated with Spring.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover_Seder

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_of_Easter

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#60

Post by LtWorf »

fortran77 wrote: post #55
LtWorf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realise that jewish people have had easter for a certain number of years before christ?

Ummm, Jews don't have Easter. Right now we are in the Chol Hamoed part of Passover/Pesach, with the Chag resuming and sundown tonight and continuing for 2 days.

Yes I don't speak hebrew… It's just called "jewish easter" in my language. And?
Post reply on HN