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Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

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Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#91

Post by eitland »

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.

As has already been mentioned by others mostly everything except the name is different.

When it comes to the name, the name isn't anything similar in for example Nordic languages:

Påske (Norwegian, Danish) or påsk (Swedish). Finnish seems to have a similar sounding name. Same with Dutch.

German has Ostern, but I the few others I checked were completely different.

That means even the name similarity only exist in a few languages.

And at the time the Christian celebration of Easter started these languages didn't even exist. The closest language I could find to early Christian history on DeepL was Greek and in Greek the name of Easter seems to be Πάσχ.

With that, this idea should be debunked sufficiently I think.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#92

Post by eitland »

jltsiren wrote: post #68
swat535 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Christi…

But this was about Eostre. Whatever the name meant and wherever it came from, it was pretty clearly the origin of the word "Easter". And there is reasonable evidence of a Germanic goddess with a name something like Eostre or Ostara, related to various Indo-European dawn goddesses, such as Eos, Aurora, and Ushas.

You are watching this through English language glasses and it also seems you haven't thought this through:

In every European language I checked except German, Easter is named something completely different. Either something that sounds like it is inspired by Pesach (the Jewish passover) like our Norwegian or Danish Påske, Swedish Påsk, Dutch Pasen or something completely different.

Won't blame you, there is a lot of channels pushing nonsense about Christianity. That said, I recommend everyone who initially believed this to take a step back and reconsider sources that pushes ideas that falls flat the moment one looks at them :-)

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#93

Post by eitland »

anon291 wrote: post #85
pkphilip wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connection goes further back to Asheroth - the Cannanite goddess of fertility.

No it does not. Asheroth is a Canaanite language term. Easter comes from the Proto-Indo-European for dawn of east, the direction of the sunrise. A very fitting name for the rising of the Son of Man. The direct cognates to Easter are Usas (Indic languages), East, or Aurora.

Remember, Easter is only called Easter (or something similar) in a few languages, I'm only aware of English and German (Oster).

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#94

Post by krapp »

rolandog wrote: post #67
pkphilip wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connection goes further back to Asheroth - the Cannanite goddess of fertility.

The world was not ready for such religions then [0]: > There are several reasons why the worship of Baal and Asherah was such a problem for Israel. First, the worship of Baal and Asherah held the allure of illicit sex, since the religion involved ritual prostitution. [...] The Asherahs/Ashtoreths probably needed better branding. [0]: https://www.gotquestions.org/Baal-and-Asherah.html

"the world?"

Ritual prostitution was common in many ancient religions, and Baal and Asherah were commonly worshipped at the time. It only seems aberrant in hindsight because we live in a world formed from the strict patriarchy and sexual taboos of one specific Semitic religion, and a narrative of history written by its adherents.

That said as far as I know the whole Easter/Eostre connection has been discredited by the actual evidence. Which is unfortunate because it would be such an enjoyable thing to annoy Christians with if it were true.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#95

Post by eitland »

dfxm12 wrote: post #73
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 don't think it is odd at all. In a choice between "our religion can't gain the membership to survive" vs "ok, we can bend the structure of our religion a little to make it more palatable for this huge amount of people", I think the choice is obvious. You might find it odd that Christians think they came up with Easter (or Christmas, or the Epiphany...) though.

With Easter, unlike Christmas, there isn't the same doubt about which time of year it was as it was around the time of the (much) older Jewish Passover celebration.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#96

Post by eitland »

dismalaf wrote: post #75
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.

In many languages "Easter" is a variation of Passover. "Pâques" in French for example, Pascha in Greek and Russian, Pascua in most Latin languages. In others (aome Slavic languages) it's a variation of "Great Day" ("Velikonoce" in Czech for example). " And so on. English and German are the only languages I know with a weird word for Easter. Edit - also Passover is Pesach in Hebrew. So Pesach -> Pascha in Greek, then…

In Norwegian and Danish it is påske and in Swedish it is påsk.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#97

Post by eitland »

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.

Which is the point:

The link between the names only exist in English and German.

In other European languages it is typically called either something that sounds like Pesach or it is called something related to the story of Christ.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#98

Post by eitland »

larusso wrote: post #18
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.

Let’s talk about Christmas then. They deliberately put it at a time where many northern folks had their own traditional end of the year / longest night (opposite to midd summer) festivals. In Germany we have Nikolaus on the 6.12 (goes back to a priest St Nikolaus who did good to people and I believe died on the 6th of December) But the name is striking to Santa Claus which is just a Anglo version of that name. Intere…

There is an explanation elsewhere in the thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43730944

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#99

Post by Amezarak »

larusso wrote: post #43
petesergeant wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s worth pointing out you’re both talking about the Gospel rather than the Bible, a chunk of which predates Jesus

Yes. You‘re correct. When I wrote written I meant put together. Because the process was more to put a compilation together. I‘m not Christian and also atheist so please forgive any wording that my sound like a debunk the whole process. For me the scientific truth is not given that this person as stated in these gospels ever existed. But I‘m very interested in und history and the history of religions. I visited many c…

The formal canonicalization happened later, but most people were using the almost the compilation for centuries beforehand.

Re: Why is Good Friday called Good Friday?

#100

Post by vel0city »

getnormality wrote: post #87

Growing up Catholic, I always figured that it was meant to be paradoxical, to drive home the Christian message. This horribly sad event that is so painful to imagine happening, this event was the most important Good thing that happened in human history. So we have to call it Good Friday. Like many folk etymologies, it sounds like it's not quite right, but it was intuitive at the time...

> to drive home the Christian message

For "the Christian message" the death of Christ is the ultimate good thing. According to Christianity his death brings everyone's salvation, not the resurrection. This is my body which is given for you.

Sad so many Catholic churches fail at actually sharing that message.

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