More Eostre nonsense from people who should know better

I was rather surprised when a friend posted a link on Facebook to an article peddling the rather worn-out legends about Eostre and the pagan origins of Easter. Easter scuppers the certainties of modern fundamentalists:

I regarded the pagan roots of Easter to be an uncontroversial matter. For a start, the word itself, “Easter”, is usually regarded as being derived from Anglo-Saxon forms such as “Estara” or “Ostara” (and cognates) associated with a dawn goddess and common spring festivals celebrated in the British Isles and Northern Europe long before Christianity. According to some, those associations extend back to the Babylonian deity Astarte. More obviously, the ubiquitous egg given as a gift (or munched as a chocolate indulgence) at Easter is a widely employed fertility symbol that signals the rebirth of vegetation and the end of animal hibernation after the northern hemisphere’s winter.

What was suprising was not that this was posted -- at this time of year one finds all sorts of fluff pieces like this in newspapers, usually written by junior journalists after half-an-hour's research using Internet search engines. No, the surprising thing was that this was written by a person who claims to have done doctoral studies, and to have taught religious studies at academic insitutions, yet has swallowed the modern urban legends of "Eostre/Ostara" so uncritically.

To start with the title, someone who teaches religious studies should know that the ones who spread these urban legends most assiduously are the very Fundamentalists whose certainties he claims to be scuppering. 

I've written about such things before, so I wont repeat here all the things I've said elsewhere, but for anyone interested, here are some other blog posts on Easter and the urban legends about it:

• Easter -- Christian or pagan 
• Easter for some 

 On the point that Christians took over pre-existing pagan beliefs, festivals, etc., it is largely bogus about Easter and Hallowe'en (the latter is almost certainly a pagan borrowing from Christians) and debatable in the case of Christmas. The thing that Christians most demonstrably borrowed from pagans is hell -- see Go to Hell.

One point perhaps worth emphasising here is the one about Easter eggs as fertility symbols etc. The author of the article gives no evidence of this claim, but may perhaps have heard of Occams Razor. In trying to explain or predict some phenomenon, the fewer assumptions one makes the better. And the simplest explanation of the phenomenon of Easter eggs is that Christians traditionally fast during Lent, which, among other things, means abstention from  eggs for 50 days, so breaking the fast with eggs should not come as a surprise. Nowadays Christians in the West are more likely to fast from chocclate, so perhaps the custom of eating chocolate eggs is also appropriate.

Back in the 1970s some neopagans liked to propagate the urban legend that Christians "stole" Easter from pagans.[1] But nowadays knowledgeable pagans have also been debunking this, 

• Pagan fertility symbols
• Some myth-busting Easter facts

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Notes

[1] I know that many modern pagens dislike the "neo-" prefix, and prefer to be known simply as pagans, but since I've never heard this claim made by paleopagans, I have used the term "neopagan" here. 

Glocal Christianity: How Christian is my business?

Excellent post from Matt Stone on what makes a Christian business and what makes a business Christian. Well worth reading.

Glocal Christianity: How Christian is my business?:

For years now Hillsong have been running a Christian Business Directory for Christians in western Sydney, and apart from the missiological issues this inevitably raises, I have also long wondered, what does it mean to call a business “Christian”?

There can be many problems, which take many different forms. Some businesses use Christian symbols in their logos. That does not make them Christian, it just means they are trying to con Christians into supporting them. One church I was in asked a parishioner to design a logo that could be used on church stationery. Another parishioner, who ran a light engineering business, promptly nicked the logo to use on his business stationery -- thus implying that his business had the endorsement of the church.

A few years ago a bloke quoted for some building alterations on our house. He was full of Christian talk, but he took the money and didn't finish the job. His name was Lukas Neethling, so if you ever come across the guy, beware of any business deals you make with him!

That kind of thing gives Christians a bad name in the secular world. But the most telling exampleof the bad reputation of Christians was when I applied for a job as a bus driver with London Transport. They wanted three references. I gave them some, and they rejected them. References from anyone connected with the church were unacceptable. I'd just arrived from South Africa as a semi-refugee, having skipped the country one step ahead of the Security Police. I didn't know anyone in Britain who wasn't connected with the church. Eventually I gave them the names of some professors at the University of Natal whose courses I had taken, but hardly knew me at all, and those were acceptable.

Of course such things can take different forms, and it's not always in the form of a published directory. A few years ago there was a TV sitcom called Birds of a feather, about two sisters, Tracy and Sharon, who ran a working class cafe. One was divorced and the other's husband was in jail. A yuppie Jewish friend persuaded them to turn their cafe into an upmarket bagel bar, and their business fell off drastically. The husband in jail was Greek, so they went to see the Orthodox priest, who remarked on Sharon not being seen in church since her wedding, and when she was suitably contrite, pulled out a card index of business contacts, and at the end of the episode their business was prospering again. That kind of networking was dead true to life. I've seen it many times.

A more positive example comes from more than 30 years ago in Namibia. The Anglican bishop, Colin Winter, gave a series of Holy Week addresses in a Durban church, and urged people to come and help the church in Namibia. One guy there, Ed Morrow, said "I'm just a builder, what can I do?" And the bishop said, in effect, come anyway, God will show you. So he and his wife let their house, put their furniture into storage, bought a second-hand Volkswagen Kombi into which they loaded their stove, and set out to drive 1500 miles to Windhoek. When they arrived the church registered a building company. They wanted to call it Ikon Construction, but the Registrar of Companies said that was taken, so they called it Noki Cosntruction instead. The Diocese owned 198 shares, Ed Morrow owned one, and the diocesan secretary owned one. They asked clergy if anyone wanted to learn the building trade, and three blokes came from Ovamboland, 500 miles to the north. They went everywhere in the old Kombi, to work, to church, to social occasions. They were referred to as "the Noki outjies" (that's an in South African joke; if you're from elsewhere, skip it, it'll take too long to explain). At the end of a year, Ed reported to the diocesan synod. He said they had shown it was possible to run a business on Christian lines and still make a profit. They paid three times the going rate for workers, they quoted fair prices, and they did a good job. They had gained the respect of their customers.

But Matt goes way beyond these trivial examples in his post, so do have a read of it.

PS

I looked to see who else was talking about this stuff and this is what I saw:

Mentions by Day

Posts mentioning business ethics per day for the past 30 days.

Anyone know why Technorati shows such a drastic drop off at the beginning of June?

Peace is kosher and halaal -- but is it nistisimou?

The Times - Peace is kosher and halaal:

"Muslim and Jewish students got together yesterday to cook up a storm at the University of Johannesburg.

The Centre for Islamic Studies and the SA Union of Jewish Students joined forces to promote peace by cooking a meal together.

Caylee Talpert, chairman of the Jewish organisation, said: “This event is meant to mend bridges and to make us all realise that we are all the same. This will ensure that we develop friendships based on knowing each other.”

The cafeteria kitchen at the university was filled with eager students in aprons and chef’s hats.

While I'm pretty certain some Lenten fare (nistisimou) is decidedly not kosher, like shellfish, the vegan style of Lenten fasting food is probably both kosher and halaal as well.

And while some food products are marked Kosher, and some are marked Halaal, I've never seen any marked as Nistisimou. I've been to conferences and meetings where Kosher and Halaal food has been offered and served, but never Lenten fare.

Even in Greese, I've found it difficult to find fasting food. The exception, ironically enough, was MacDonalds, which offered a "McLent" special (MacSarakosti): a veggie burger or six spring rolls. One hopes that the chips weren't flavoured with beef (a Hindu sued them in the USA over that), and that the potatoes weren't genetically modified with genes derived from rat fat.