Welcome to Communion

Welcome to Communio Sanctorum, the history of the Christian Church.

This special episode of Communio Sanctorum is going to post to the sanctorum.

combe.combe.combe. website on Easter Sunday of 2015. I realize that many subscribers will hear it at a later time,

but since each week's episode posts early Sunday morning, and this is Resurrection Sunday,

a special podcast seemed appropriate. This week we'll be taking a look at the place of the

celebration of Easter in the early church.

There's considerable controversy over the origin of the word Easter as the label that's come to be attached to the Christian commemoration of the resurrection of Christ.

It's best to see the word coming from the Germanic languages and the Teutonic goddess of spring, Estra.

Her festival marked the Vernal equinox, and with the arrival of Christianity,

the holiday morphed to be an anniversary of the resurrection of Christ.

Today, you'll occasionally hear someone connect the word Easter to the Canaanite goddess Astarte,

the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, or some other such ancient deity. While there may be some

etymological connection between the Teutonic Estre and the Mesopotamian Ishtar, it's been submerged

under the mists of time. But for many years before

the label Easter was attached to the day, the church referred to it as Pasca, a Greco-Roman word for

the Hebrew word for Passover. Let's not forget that Christianity's roots lie in Judaism.

The gospel, that's the heart of the Christian

message, is that Jesus fulfills all that the Jewish Passover points to. Just as the blood of the

first Passover lambs delivered the Jews from bondage in Egypt, the blood of Christ, the Passover

Lamb of God, delivers believers from bondage to sin and death. And in the first

decades of the church, most Christians were Jews. Their Easter was really a Christian Passover,

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