ARE EASTER AND ISHTAR RELATED? POSSIBLY NOT!

I am not sure what the WT says,but in a UNITED CHURCH OF GOD magazine(Good News),it is stated that Eostre ,a Germanic goddess from whom the Easter Festival is supposedly named after,is related to ISHTAR.

It says however in my etymological dictionary that Eostre/Easter is related to the word East.

Are these people sure about all things?

 

True, there's several possible origins.  For a starter, though, note that the anti-holidays movement went from Church of God to Watchtower Society. 

Many if not most all Witnesses think the Watchtower Society began the anti-holidays (anti-Easter, anti-Christmas) etc, but it actually with the C of G.  The Watchtower liked the approach as it helps separate their members better from other religions, thus keeping more of the members and their contributions of time and money.

The name Easter besides possibly being from the word eastern which is from where Christianity came in relation to England (the Near EAST), may also be from the fact that the Bible says Christ returns from the east to resurrect, although many modern scholars have also said the Latin expression White Week (the week people wore white before being baptised in the spring) was mistranslated to Easter.  Too, the name origin could be a combination of these things.

The Roman Catholic clergyman-scholar Bede wrote in the Middle Ages in England that he himself guessed it might come from Eostrum, also known as the goddess Ishtarte.  Although only a guess the World Book Encyclopedia (it or a major writer for it had ties to Freddie Franz the Watchtower's third President back when he was alive) wrote what Bede said in its Easter article and from then on most subsequent encyclopedias have repeated it like a gospel truth, causing many to most internet websites so far to also repeat it.

 

Here's still another possibility. 

The word component Estre/Eastre (Middle English Estretide meaning Easter Time or Old English Eastretide meaning the same) means East or Eastern as with Christianity coming out of the East.  However, somehow the word East (as in the direction east) may also have a common semantic or meaning relationship linking it to the similar name of the goddess Eostre.  For example She, the goddess, was a goddess of the spring time which was noted for winds coming out of the East.

These are all only guesses although as valid as Bede's.   The important thing is that even if the Christians of England had named this day dedicated to remembering Christ's resurrection process, still it is a positive event that was and is definitely Christian, in no way pagan.  The rabbits and eggs are also symbols of rebirth via the Christian resurrection, never used as sexual fertility symbols despite what the C of G and Watchtower say.

Does BEDE actually mention Ishtar because  there is no mention of Eostre elsewhere,there is a Edes(sp?)in the Norse myhlology with a similiar name, but I don't think she was a goddess.

A lot of this being said is `fakelore' .

One thing being said about Easter only dates from 1990.

 

i SEE THAT a JW has put up an article on JW United website.

Something should tell him that Oestrogen has nothing to do with Easter!

 

Thanks you for your replies.

Yes, you are right, this is yet another FALSE ETYMOLOGY of Alexander Hislop that the Society (and the WWCOG under Herbert W. Armstrong) adopted in order to support their unhistorical claim that all religion comes from ancient Babylon.

Easter has its Old English form as éastre, which Bede (Temp. Rat. xv.) derived from the name of the goddess Eostre whose festival was celebrated at the vernal equinox (the Northumbrian spelling was Éastre, in fact). The Old High German version is ôstara and the original Proto-Germanic form is *austrôn- "dawn" (with the suffix *-t(e)ro- "in the direction of", found also in Old Norse austr "east", Old High German óstar "eastern", and Old English éasterra "more to the east, eastern"), ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *awes- "to shine". This goddess is only found in the form *Aus-t(e)ro- in the Germanic languages.... in other Indo-European languages, the root is *Aus-ós, as in Greek Eós, Latin Auróra (both are goddesses of the Dawn in Greco-Roman mythology), while the *aus-t(e)ro root in Latin has the sense of "south" rather than "east", hence Latin auster "southerly wind' and austrális 'southern' (whence Australia). The simple root *awes also gave rise to Sanskrit uvása "they shone" and usar- "dawn", Doric Greek aós "dawn", Latin aurum "gold", Old Irish fair "sunrise," Welsh gwawr "aurora", Albanian agu "dawn," Latvian ausma "dawn," Lithuanian aushta "day break", and Tocharian A wäs "gold". The suffixed form *aus-t(e)ro meanwhile also gave rise to Sanskrit ušas-tara- 'eastern', Lithuanian austrìnis "northeast wind", and Latvian austra "dawn".

Now, the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the Syro-Phoenecian Astarte, the Canaanite goddess Athtart and god Athtar, and the Hebrew Ashtoreth all derive from an altogether different root (< *`thtr), which is philologically unrelated to PIE *awes (particularly because of the initial `ayin). The etymological origin of *`thtr however is problematic. The clearest candidate is *`thr "irrigate", found in such forms as Arabic `aththarî "soil artificially irrigated", but Mark Smith points out that this word could have been derived from the god's name since Ishtar/Athtar/Astarte in either male or female form was a deity of fertility and irrigation. A better candidate may well be Indo-European *(Ha-)ster "star" (the *H is a laryngeal, corresponding to the `ayin of the Semitic name), borrowed into Semitic through contact with early Indo-Europeans (the Hittites and the Indo-Iranian Mitanni kingdom were second millennium BC Indo-Europeans in contact with Mesopotamians). PIE *(Ha-)ster gave rise to Hittite haster "star" (which attests the initial laryngeal), Sanskrit str- "star", Avestan starem, Armenian astl, Greek astér, astrón (whence "astronomy"), Latin stélla, Breton and Cornish sterenn, Old Norse staírnó, Old English steorra (whence English "star"), and Tocharian A s´re. This word also appears in South Semitic in Tigre `astär "heaven," Ge'ez `astar "sky", Amharic astär "star", and Bilin astär "sky". Note especially that Ishtar/Asthart/Astarte was an astral goddess, representing Venus or one of the guises of Venus, and the Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar was Inanna whose name may derive from Nin-anna "Lady of Heaven" (tho this may have been a folk etymology of a non-Sumerian name). There have been some attempts to trace both the Semitic and Indo-European forms to a Proto-Nostratic, but the evidence for this is weak since the cognates are not found elsewhere in Afro-Asiatic.

Basically, the two names look superficially similar but each have different etymological parentages. If anything, Ishtar was borrowed by the Babylonians, not the other way around.

BTW, very little is known about Eostre since the goddess is attested only by Bede, who notes that Eosturmónaþ was the name for the month of April, "once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month". Although it has been claimed by some that Eostre was a back-formation created by Bede from the name of the month and he had no actual knowledge of the goddess itself, comparative evidence from German (originally amassed by Jacob Grimm) suggests indeed that such a Germanic goddess did exist (Ôstara in Old High German). Note that the worship of the goddess itself had already died out by the time of Bede but the name of the month lingered, just as such "pagan" names of months like January (from the god Janus), March (from Mars), and days of the week like Thursday (from Thor), and Saturday (from Saturn) are still used today in English (and by the WTS too!). It is thus specious to claim that the name itself renders Easter observances pagan; in fact, they were known in Anglo-Saxon England by the name Pascha for a long time until "Easter" replaced it. What might distantly derive from Eostre worship is the non-religious Osterhase "Easter bunny" (as suggested by Grimm) and the sunrise service, tho the evidence for both is quite slender and the latter has much motivation from Christian traditions as well (e.g. the symbolism of the sun rising with Jesus rising from the dead, the women arising at dawn to the tomb, etc.). The particular slant given to the "origin of Easter" given by the Society is not the only way to interpret the sparse evidence. Certainly, having a service on Easter morning that celebrates the resurrection is not pagan at all for such paschal services were held all throughout Christian lands since the second century AD at least and which have nothing at all to do with these Germanic traditions.

THANKS,LEOLAIA.

THE ETYMOLOGICAL INFORMATION IS VERY FASCINATING,I AM INTERESTED IN ETYMOLOGY!

This all has to do with the mindset of the JWs and other related groups who are obsessed with discrediting the mainstream churches as apostate since the days of the apostles. And these clowns appeared after nearly 2000 years to put things right, that's how important they are and how much respect ppl must have for them.



Surprisingly, whatever the word Easter means, in most other European languages the word comes from the Jewish word for the passover pesach, eg French paques, Spanish pascua, Greek and Russian Pascha, Swedish pask, only in German it is Ostern.

I looked up Alexander Hislop and he was saying that Beltis was pronounced ISHTAR etc saying that Beltane and Easter were same thing.