Leah ([info]rue10) wrote,
@ 2004-04-11 09:23:00
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Current mood: accomplished

The Death of Jesus Christ: A Passover Story
So I had a provocative if not particularly theoretically sound idea this morning upon waking (and saying "happy easter!" to myself, anticipating many happy purchases of on-sale Cadbury bunny eggs).

This whole Easter thing? Totally a Passover story.

Which makes sense, if you think about it. The first Christians were Jews taking a step . . . I don't want to say forward, I think I'd rather say to the side, like on a parallel track . . . and so all the mythology, all the symbolism, that could be brought to bear in the crafting of a new and "better" story was the Jewish kind.

So you've got the Last Supper, which is the Passover Seder, and that happened on Thursday (which would have equated to the first night of Passover, obviously, that year)? And then the whole crucifying thing happens on, um, Friday (second night), right? And Jesus rises again Sunday, Easter, (almost-fourth night), hangs around for a couple of days (this is the part I'm least clear on), but it seems like, by the end of Passover, the guy's gone, ascended, taken up into heaven. Coincidence? Possibly, but probably not.

And what's the message of Easter, anyway? Freedom, right? From sin. Being, yes, Saved. From sin and hell and eternal damnation, and all that. Sounds a whole heck of a lot like the Passover story to me, except maybe minus the exodus, and Jesus as a slightly less prosaically-magical Moses. Water to blood, water to wine. Satan, you let my people go. The "I'll die for you" thing is a bit of new twist, absolutely, and the whole story rachets everything up a level. But Moses was Hebrew and raised Egyptian, like Jesus was divine and raised as man. And each led their people out of something bad and into a new promised land. Because when you think of how Judaism's kind of lacking a heaven anywhere but earth, a land of milk and honey after bricks and toil sounds awfully close.

Even if you've gotta wander forty years to get there.


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(Anonymous)
2004-04-11 08:30 am UTC (link)
Very interesting perspective. Wish I'd thought of it. Anyway, the Easter Bunny/Afakomen Rabbit left you some Cadbury Eggs here at home this morning. Guess it didn't get the message that you were living in Dallas. So, should I send them or put them in the freezer until you come home (or the Rabbit is sent there to visit--ofcourse then there's the chance that the eggs won't make it to Texas.)

Moo

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[info]chrisjournal
2004-04-11 11:07 am UTC (link)
Which makes sense, if you think about it. The first Christians were Jews taking a step . . . I don't want to say forward, I think I'd rather say to the side, like on a parallel track . . . and so all the mythology, all the symbolism, that could be brought to bear in the crafting of a new and "better" story was the Jewish kind.

You're touching on a personal button of mine with this. I remember Passion Thursdays from my Catholic childhood so vividly: It was at once a solemn, formal ritual and a laughing, celebrating festival meal. And I remember also going to my first seder at now-husband's mother's. They were all as surprised as I was when, upon seeing the table and reading the english translations from the seders, I realized that it was a completely familiar ceremony. It just stopped short of completion ;-) I had the same reaction to my first experiences with Shabbat celebrations and Yom Kippur. Catholics, at least, use the same prayers in what I've forgotten the word for, but is the Old Testament segment of the liturgy. Not to mention (I didn't) the fact that the blessings in Hebrew for the bread and wine translate into English exactly the same as the blessings used over the host and wine in the liturgy of the Eucharist.

In a literal way, it makes perfect sense. Jesus was a Jew, after all. And what's celebrated in Catholic Masses, above all, is his life and teachings. It was a very strange feeling for me, coming into this thing without a Jewish background, to realize just how much in common the two religions have. My MIL was very uncomfortable with acknowledging the similarities, and I avoid addressing it aloud so that she doesn't have to feel uncomfortable, but from a personal point of view, it just fits right in with what I've always believed about God/religion/the universe: nothing brand-specific about it under the sun, not really. If you check into Mohammed and even Buddah, you'll find other eerie similarities of myth patterning. Practices vary, and interpretations obviously vary widely, but religions do have a pattern to them, perhaps because humans all have the same basic needs?

Rambling now...thanks for the thought!

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[info]rue10
2004-04-11 01:12 pm UTC (link)
Pleasure to be of service. :)

That's strange, that your Mother-in-law was so uncomfortable about the similarities-- it seems, at the very least, she could be like "Yeah, that Christianity, tsk, total Judaism rip-off!" if she wanted to still put distance between the two. (My mother's take on it was: "Jesus was a great teacher . . . and what he was teaching was Judaism.") And I think, yeah, definately patterns in all currently-successful world religions. It's a shared world we're hanging out in, so you have to figure, a lot of the same problems. Christianity and Judaism just get a double whammy of similarity since they both sprung from the same source (as I'm quite inclined to think of modern day Judaism as as much of an offshoot as Christianity, in a lot of ways, of that incarnation that was around back in Jesus's day).

Also, on a somewhat related note, I am currently eating a piece of your chocolate cake, and it's amazing. I usually don't like chocolate cake so much, but I think I've figured out the problem: not enough chocolate, too much . . . cake. This is perfect. :P And very liable to make me sick . . . in the good way. :)

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[info]chrisjournal
2004-04-11 01:30 pm UTC (link)
That's strange, that your Mother-in-law was so uncomfortable about the similarities-- it seems, at the very least, she could be like "Yeah, that Christianity, tsk, total Judaism rip-off!"

Nods. That about sums up the reaction of everyone else in his family, and me too, really. I think her issues stem from having been brought up in the North Carolina bible belt, where evangelical christianity pervades everything in the culture. The way I understand it, evangelical protestant practices are radically different from Catholic ones -- hubby always says: "We were more closely matched than if you'd married a Baptist." And I think he's right.

That cake...yeah. It's phenomenal, and dangerous. Just barely a cake. Yum, yum, yum. And of course, there's the moral crisis in making it: do I lick the spoon and bowl, even though it has raw eggs?

Happy gay-Easter!

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[info]rue10
2004-04-11 01:58 pm UTC (link)
(buries face in hands) I did! I licked the spoon! Raw eggs and all! I'm just glad no one was around to see me do it.:P

And yeah, go NC bible belt. Though, I mean, I grew up in Charlotte, so while there's the knowledge that it's the bible belt, and state policy obviously supports that fact, I remained fairly sheltered in my liberal household and my arts magnet high school. :) Then again, I was also in high school 6 years ago, so I'd imagine it's a bit different than when your MIL was. . . .

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[info]doctorhemolymph
2004-04-11 05:00 pm UTC (link)
Modern day Judaism as much of an offshoot as Christianity?

I tend to think of modern day REFORM Judaism as being (in MY rare opinion) nearly identical in spirit (though not in form) as Gospel Christianity (NOT Pauline Christianity.)

What is Reform Judaism about anyway?
Strict legalism doesn't really matter. Don't need to be kosher. Can do work on Shabbat. Tolerance. Loving neighbors. Community.

Then again, Reform Judaism differs in that it places so much emphasis on PLACE (Israel, Israel, Israel! Jews need their own geographical space!), history and form.

I'm just saying...I think of orthodox Jews, observant Catholics and fundamentalist protestants as much modern day Pharisees as anything. But I'd be far from the first to say so.

Furthermore, I don't consider Christianity to be a "rip-off" of Judaism but rather a "reform" of Judaism. Judaism had missed the point, so Jesus explained how to get the act together. Unfortunately, the tradition also picked up this focus on Historical death/resurrection/ascension which to me seems like little more than a helpful story for dealing with the craaaaaazzzy!!! times of New Testament era Palestinia.

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Yes...
[info]seferin
2004-04-11 11:11 am UTC (link)
but Judiasm DOES have a heaven.

http://www.600000men.com/book/heaven.html

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Re: Yes...
[info]rue10
2004-04-11 01:16 pm UTC (link)
Piffle, that's like wimpy heaven. :P No, okay, sure, but nobody ever told me that at synagogue. And compared to the centeredness of heaven/hell in Christianity, it's practically non-existant. It's so far afield of the central tenats of practicing Judaism that it hardly seems worth mentioning.

Thank you, regardless, for the link. Very interesting.

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Re: Yes...
[info]doctorhemolymph
2004-04-11 05:10 pm UTC (link)
I don't know this for a FACT, but I get the sense of the very literal time-dependent "heaven" place and "hell" place are mostly interpreted from New Testament rather than very clearly described.

There's a lot of how sinners will be "burned away" and there is talk about how in the "kingdom of heaven" things will be like this, but I think you can read it to be not so far off the general Jewish idea of present salvation or lack thereof.

Okay...now I'm actually looking up stuff in my NIV concordance...

There's a great little passage here about how at the end of days a beast and a false prophet will appear and will delude everybody and then they will be "thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur." Rev. 19:20.

Not much of that in the Jewish tradition.

And here, according to the NIV, I am INCORRECT. "But anyone who says, "you fool!" will be in danger of the fire of hell." Matthew 5:22. But then again, who is doing the translation anyway?

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Re: Yes...
[info]seferin
2004-04-11 06:28 pm UTC (link)
That's me... informative, even when I am wrong

:)

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[info]doctorhemolymph
2004-04-11 11:55 am UTC (link)
Absolutely correct my friend.

Plus another thing: In Passover, the Jews were living as strangers in another land. Many, but subjugated by Egyptian authority. And found escape in the literal, geographical kingdom of Jersusalem.

Jesus' followers were subjugated in their own land. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah had been conquered by the Romans (among others) and were subject to a non-Jewish state law created by men (Romans) and not God.

So here, Jesus, with his death establishes a new Kingdom of heaven, that doesn't really require GOING anywhere, just changing how you act and believe in order to get there. Wait a minute, I just reread your post. It seems like you already said this. Whoops.

There's also all that parable by Jesus about the wheat and the chaffe (spelling?) and how in the end of days the latter is burned away, leaving the saved to enter the kingdom. Red Sea, Egyptians drowned, Jews saved.

Now here's the tricky part. A friend of mine and I had a brief argument over this last night at Cantor's Deli on Fairfax Ave. where I was eating a liverwurst sandwich on rye and he was eating chips and guacamole. What is the significance of Christrians extracting themselves from the Hebrew calendar (where Passover falls in a different place during each solar year) and tying Easter to a much more stable location in the solar year?

Should Easter be tied always to the Jewish Passover, because the event of the Seder is integral to the day to day narrative of the resurrection? I mean, Palm Sunday, Good Friday...Which day things happened on seems to really matter, and these things all happened (for Jesus) during the Jewish week. Or does it make more sense to tie Easter to the solar year, by which we measure all other events and which is more in tune with natural cycles (seasons, animal migrations, etc.)?

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[info]rue10
2004-04-11 01:05 pm UTC (link)
I kind of touched on that (the thing you said I said) but only in a very vague manner, because a) I wanted other people to comment and tell me more or tell me I was wrong (because of course I'm such a master of rhetoric that if I had said more no one would have been able to do so, yeah right) and b) I didn't get to really fully flesh out my thoughts for Beth picked me up for happy-gay-Easter (I was in Oak Lawn in a house with many many gay men for a number of hours today). So there you go. :)

On the date-of-Easter thing, I think that, well, Easter alREADy moves around. It's not a date thing, it's the whateverth Sunday in whichevereth month or something, right? Though it is always Sunday. So you'd think it would be natural to move it to match Passover, but then again, the whole Easter thing seems pretty tied to the duration of time between Friday and Sunday (Good Friday, Easter Sunday), and with Sunday being sacred and all (is that BECAUSE of Easter being Sunday? I can't think of another reason . . . or is Easter on Sunday because Sunday is sacred for other reasons, etc), it seems like it'd be impossible to move (other than, of course, to other Sundays.

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[info]chrisjournal
2004-04-11 01:25 pm UTC (link)
More random religious trivia -- Easter isn't set on a solar calendar, but a lunar one, meant precisely to tie it to Passover, but as time went on and Christianity became more its own thing than a Jewish sect, they split off from the sanhedrins and their secret methods of calculating dates and started handling their own calendars. Much mess ensued. Nowadays, the short-form rule is that Easter is set at the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox. There is a small probability that I can't name that Passover (on the Hebrew lunar calendar) and Easter (on the ecclesiastical lunar calendar) might not synchronize, but the rules are certainly set up so that they will. The ecclesiastic calendar has been reset a couple of times in history, and some Eastern churches calculate on a slightly different (astronomical cycle) basis, but generally, the whole first sunday past first full moon past equinox holds.

What's really fascinating is what happens when you look back over historical celebrations of *both* holidays and investigate the parallels to Pagan festivals...

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[info]rue10
2004-04-11 02:02 pm UTC (link)
That's fantastic trivia. Religion is obviously not for the lazy. :) Um, or the mathematically challenged. . . .

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[info]greentwist
2004-04-11 03:47 pm UTC (link)
I'm glad you beat me to this, chrisjournal. Because while I sort of understand the lunar-calendar setup of Easter, you said it much better than I could have without internet research. Yay for trivia!

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[info]doctorhemolymph
2004-04-11 05:14 pm UTC (link)
Wow. Well that's something I DEFINITELY didn't know!

Regarding paralells with pagan holidays...Wouldn't the Jewish ones be mostly found with Canaanite-type folks, which I would know just about nothing about?

And Christian ones would mostly match with fertility/spring business right? Isn't the name "easter" from sort sort of pagan goddess or what not?

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[info]cafedallas
2004-05-08 02:50 pm UTC (link)
random tidbits in no particular order.
yes, "easter" is a morphing of the goddess "astarte", who was worshipped by the phonecians/canaanites (same peoples, just a distinction between the land locked and the oceanside). when solomon hired hiram to build the temple in jerusalem (THE TEMPLE), it had a lot of strange goddess-related decorations that lingered - lots of purple (phonecia translates into "land of purple") which is derived from conch shells, one of the most common symbols of goddess worship, as well as lotus, fig, and pomegranate, which are also very feminine symbols. even after the first temple was destroyed by the invasion of the babylonians, the new reincarnation of it held onto these, probably unrecognized by the temple elders, symbols of the "horribly pagan" goddess worship.
on the topic of the bunnies and such. yes, they're all connected to the old pagan fertility rites. rabbits have always been symbols of fertility, and eggs, of course, are a natural symbol of the reproductive cycle. so, when the church started making the liturgical calendar, it turned out to be a lot easier to keep the dates of current festivals, and just add some of their own themes. hence, we have easter/passover hanging out with spring fertility rites, which were designed to help the god and goddess have a healthy marriage. may was traditionally celebrated as the month of their marriage (it was unlucky to marry in the same month, but EXTREMEMLY lucky to marry immediately afterward. hence, the popularity of june weddings), so the devotees started early in helping them become fertile for their honeymoon. same thing happened with christmas. we all know that jesus/yeshua was actually born sometime in august, but that got bumped to december so that they could take advantage of the pre-existing winter solstice celebrations, designed to help people not go crazy in the "deep midwinter". (i think hanukkah was placed here for the same reasons, but i'm not positive about that). so, we bring evergreens into our homes, not to celebrate all the pines growing in the deserts of israel, but to remind us of the life that will return to the world, if only we can make it a few more weeks.
this is my belated contribution to the discussion. do with it what you will.

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[info]cafedallas
2004-05-08 02:51 pm UTC (link)
oh, and don't forget about the maypole. several girls, all in pretty dresses, dancing around a giant phallic symbol, yesno?

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[info]doctorhemolymph
2004-05-23 10:15 pm UTC (link)
Not bad at all. I remain impressed. Sorry I took so long to respond, with ajust a bland response, but I've been out of town and when I returned I saw that and felt that it shouldn't go unappreciated.

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[info]doctorhemolymph
2004-04-19 11:06 am UTC (link)
So I'm sitting in a cafe yesterday, doing my reading for tax and this big fat orthodox Jewish guy comes in the door, walks up to me, says "Hey, are you Jewish?" and I make the mistake of saying yes and we get into this big conversation where he is trying to get me to become observant and...

Well repeatedly in the conversation he draws distinctions between punishments and rewards on earth as compared to those you receive in heaven when you die. He says to me that the purpose of the Jewish punitive law of the torah is partially to give the criminal a chance to repent before dying so as to not have the greater punishment in heaven. Sounded totally like Christian heaven to me. No direct mention of hell either.

He also told me that the holocaust was God's punishment upon Jews in Europe for not leaving in '39 when they had the chance and for intermarrying.

And I know all this sounds crazy, but I have a feeling that a lot of what he was saying was not nearly as non-mainstream as it sounds. I think there's some totally bizarre thought in the orthodox Jewish community that Jews on the outside are mostly unaware of. I was.

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[info]rue10
2004-04-19 08:19 pm UTC (link)
It's good to know I can be as freaked out by some Jews as I am by some Christians. :P That's very very strange. And there's a moral in there about talking to large orthodox Jews. Or something. . . .

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[info]doctorhemolymph
2004-04-20 12:31 am UTC (link)
No real moral. I'm cursed to walk the world stating and restating my unprincipled, uninformed opinions on religion.

Wherever someone wants to blow hot air my face, I'm willing to blow it back at them.

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Theoretically Sound
(Anonymous)
2004-04-12 11:29 am UTC (link)
The similarities are pretty much *all* by intention, I think. The life and death of Jesus is intended to parallel Jewish history over and over again. These parallels are often the signs by which the bible makes the case that He is in fact the Messiah. There are little asides all over the new testament that say this or that had to occur "in fulfillment of the scripture". He's actually called out of Egypt like Moses. Spends forty days in the desert = 40 years of the flood (Noah) = 40 years in the desert (Exodus). He carries His cross (in some of the gospels, I think) which is intended to parallel Isaac (bearing the wood for his own holocaust). The rising on the third day parallels Jonah's three days in the belly of the whale, and maybe Daniel too (although I don't remeber how long he was in the lion's den). He dies on the cross before they have to break his legs because you can't sacrafice a lamb with a broken bone. Twelve disciples = Twelve tribes = Joseph's twelve brothers who betray him and sell him into bondage. John the Baptist is Elijah, etc, etc, etc.
From the Christian perspective, all the events in the old testament clearly foreshadow Jesus, He is the completion of prophecies. From a alternate perspective, you could argue that Jesus is a microcosom of Jewish history, and His life story is a way to transmit the "highlights" of Judaism to the rest of the world, a kind of Jewish starter kit for the Pagans. I actually know a guy who calls this the 'Yahweh for Dummies' theory.

-Jim

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Re: Theoretically Sound
(Anonymous)
2004-04-17 07:12 am UTC (link)
So i finally am back online and caught up with this post, and was about to make a comment very similar to Jim's. (This is a very interesting string of conversations, by the way!)

Thus i change what i would have posted by asking a question for the original post: Must the story have already come to an end?

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Re: Theoretically Sound
(Anonymous)
2004-04-17 07:14 am UTC (link)
Damn anonymous comment systems! This comment and last's was made by me.

joshua rudd

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(Anonymous)
2004-04-13 10:32 am UTC (link)
Just a brief comment. According to the Gospels, Jesus remained on earth for 40 days after his resurrection. During this time, he spoke and ate with his disciples and many others. At one point he meet with up to 500 people. So the Easter story doesn't end with the resurrection, rather it is merely the beginning of the story of the restoration of all things.

Suneel Gill
Mohegan Lake NY

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