This following is from a thread last year,
Ishtar and Easter, and below I reproduce one of my posts in it. The AV is perfectly accurate, as may be seen.
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Ishtar and Easter
The Indo-European roots of our languages have the prefix
aus-, which means
to shine, important derivatives of which are the words east, Easter, aurora. It has the idea, “the direction of the sunrise.” The Old High German
ostan – east – derives from this root. That the dawn-goddess
Eastre or
Oestar derives from the same root does not mean they are the same word with the same meaning. The Indo-European
ausos- refers to the dawn, and also to the Indo-European goddess of the dawn. [Taken from
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] Ed, the section, “Indo-European Roots”, p. 2095.]
Greek philosophers gave the word
logos certain meanings, while the apostle John imbued it with an entirely different (though related) significance. Because Easter has etymological roots in common with a dawn goddess, does not negate its own peculiar etymology and associations, among which are east, shining, rising, resurrection, as noted below.
The English word
Easter is of German/Saxon origin and not Babylonian as Alexander Hislop falsely claimed. The German equivalent is
Oster. Oster (Ostern being the modern day equivalent) is related to
Ost which means the rising of the sun, or simply in English,
east. Oster comes from the old Teutonic form of
auferstehen / auferstehung, which means
resurrection, which in the older Teutonic form comes from two words,
Ester meaning
first, and
stehen meaning
to stand. These two words combine to form
erstehen which is an old German form of
auferstehen, the modern day German word for
resurrection.
In English etymology the word
Ester coming from the German
Oster, morphed into the modern day term
Easter. Similarily in German the word
Oster in Luther’s Day has now become
Ostern, which are the same words but with different spelling. Tyndale with his expertise in the German language knew of the
Ester - Oster association. Luther obviously considered
Oster as both a synonym for the
Jewish Passover and a phrase used for the
resurrection of Christ. In Luther’s German New Testament we find Ostern, Osterlamm, Osterfest, Fest, and only once das Passa (Heb. 11.28). In His Old Testament he used the German word
Passaopffer, Osterfest, Ostern, and
Osterlamm once each.
In Exodus 12.11 Luther rendered Passah with a marginal note referring to the
'Osterlamm'. Even in contemporary German the phrase "
das jüdische Osterfest" (the Jewish Passover) demonstrates that the German
Oster can mean both the Jewish and Christian festivals. In fact the meaning of the German word
Ostern is today just as the English word
Easter was until the KJV translators skillfully put it in it’s correct semantic range, thus separating forever the
Old Easter and the
New Easter. After 1611 the Old Testament Easter became
Passover, a trend Tyndale had begun to accomplish. –excerpted from Nick Sayers
article.
(Caveat: I don't agree with Passantino's views below on holidays) Apologist Gretchen Passantino remarks,
Easter is an English corruption from the proto-Germanic root word meaning "to rise." (We see this in the contemporary German cognate "öst-" and the English cognate "east," the direction from which the sun rises in the morning.) It refers not only to Christ
rising from the dead, but also to his
ascension to heaven and to our future
rising with him at his Second Coming for final judgment. It is
not true that it derives from the pagan Germanic goddess Oestar or from the Babylonian goddess Ishtar -- both fertility symbols signifying the coming of spring images of fertility, new life, and renewal.
From the article,
Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Easter, 1999 by Gretchen Passantino, Answers In Action website
C. F. Cruse remarked, "Our word
EASTER is of Saxon origin and of precisely the same import with its German cognate
OSTERN. The latter is derived from the old Teutonic form of auferstehen / auferstehung, that is -
RESURRECTION." (
Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, Translated by C. F. Cruse, Hendrickson Publishers, p 437)
Most likely I won’t convince those whose see an Ishtar / Oestar goddess connection with the word Easter (and there
is an etymologic but not a meaning-equivalent connection with the Germanic Oestar) – I am posting this for the sake of those who hold to the King James Bible, to confirm them in the warranted confidence they hold in that sacred Book.
A thought: was Luther, with his thorough knowledge of German, Tyndale with not only his knowledge of German and genius for English, but highly accomplished in many languages, and later John Owen (to name but a few), all ignorant in that they would either not know of or purposely insert / accept a pagan goddess festival as a word for the resurrection of our Lord?
[end post from Ishtar and Easter]
