Posted by: Stephen Winick
If you’re curious about modern holiday beliefs and calendar customs, you might be reading or doing research about them online. Chances are, you come across some stories that the presenters claim are ancient, and reach into the pre-Christian past. One popular story you might have seen recently involves the origin of the Easter Bunny. Essentially, the tale is that Ostara, the ancient Germanic goddess of the spring, transformed a bird into a hare, and the hare responded by laying colored eggs for her festival. Some online sources, such as Goddess Gift, claim this story is very old indeed. Others, such as Family Christmas Online, say it was invented in the 1980s.
So whom should you believe? As it turns out, neither one! I’ve traced the story back to the late 19th century. So it may not be ancient, but it’s not that new either.
Let me back up a moment to set the scene. On Easter Sunday 2016, I had the pleasure of appearing on CBS Sunday Morning as a folklore expert in a segment on the Easter Bunny. The resulting story can be viewed at this link. The interview gave me an incentive to organize my thoughts on the matter and publish two blog posts, which you can view here and here. In the comments section of the first of these posts, reader Holly B. asked about the story of Ostara and the hare.
As I detailed in the first Easter Bunny post, Ostara herself is a shadowy figure in Germanic folklore. Her story begins with Eostre, an early medieval English goddess who is not documented from pagan sources at all, and turns up in only one early Christian source, the writings of the English churchman Bede. Bede may have been right that there was such a goddess, or he may have been spreading the received wisdom of his era, and scholars have debated this point for years. Jacob Grimm, the brilliant linguist and folklorist, is one of many scholars who took Bede at his word, and in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie, he proposed that Eostre must have been a local version of a more widespread Germanic goddess, whom he named Ostara. It’s impossible to tell if Ostara as a goddess ever existed outside Grimm’s proposal. As for Eostre, there’s no evidence of her worship except in Bede’s book, and possibly in place names (which could, however, just mean “east”). There are certainly no ancient stories in which she transforms a bird into a hare. [1]
In 1874, in another book also titled Deutsche Mythologie, Adolf Holtzmann speculated about the already-popular German tradition of the “Easter hare” (the tradition from which our Easter bunny derives) by associating it with the goddess, thus claiming for the first time a connection between Ostara and the hare:
The Easter Hare is inexplicable to to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of [the Celtic goddess] Abnoba.” [My translation from German.]
More developed stories have since emerged connecting Eostre/Ostara and the hare, one of which was the subject of Holly B.’s question:
I have been trying to track the origins of Easter rabbit myths, and of course very little primary source material exists for oral traditions. There seem to be two versions of the story of Eostre and the hare: that she found a bird with frozen wings and saved it by transforming it into a rabbit, which retained the ability to lay eggs; and that a bird who laid beautiful eggs was so proud that Eostre was irked and turned it into a rabbit, but she was so moved by the rabbit’s despair that she allowed it to lay beautiful eggs once a year. These stories are attributed to Anglo-Saxon folklore, and so it makes sense for it to appear in Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, but I can find no sources for either story, modern or otherwise. As a librarian, it is driving me batty. This article and the comments have been helpful.
Holly B’s question is particularly interesting because recent years have seen a backlash against these stories, and modern authors seem eager to claim they are very recent indeed. As an example, the popular blog Family Christmas Online calls the story “a modern-day hoax popularized by ‘New Age’ circles,” and further asserts that “no such myth was ever associated with Eostre or any similar goddess before 1987.”
Family Christmas Online goes on to describe their belief as to the origin of the story:
As far as I can tell the Eostre bird-bunny story dates back to an article published in a K-12 school resource by feel-good writer and frequent Oprah guest Sarah Ban Breathnach. In 1990, she incorporated the article’s content in Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions: Reviving Victorian Family Celebrations of Comfort & Joy. Then, in 2002, Jean-Andrew Dickmann published a version of Breathnach’s story as “The Coming of Eostre” in Cricket Magazine a “Weekly Reader” sort of publication.
In response to Holly B, and contrary to Family Christmas Online, a few weeks ago I traced versions of the story back to the June 8, 1889 issue of the journal American Notes and Queries, page 64:
The Hare and Easter –Whence comes the legend of the Hare in connection with Easter?
–RWH PHILADELPHIA PAIn Germany and among the Pennsylvania Germans toy rabbits or hares made of canton flannel stuffed with cotton are given as gifts on Easter morning. The children are told that this Osh’ter Has laid the Easter eggs. This curious idea is thus explained: The hare was originally a bird, and was changed into a quadruped by the goddess Ostara; in gratitude to Ostara or Eastre, the hare exercises its original bird function to lay eggs for the goddess on her festal day.
Unfortunately, this reference was given as an answer to someone’s question, with no source cited. So although I had traced it back over a century, I still didn’t know where it came from with any certainty. Nevertheless, I expressed my “best guess”:
If I had to guess, I would say it probably came from a German scholar writing in the wake of Grimm. As we have seen, Holtzmann’s speculation seems to be the first direct connection between hares and Ostara, so the story, in a form that includes Ostara, cannot predate Holtzmann (1874). Wackernagel, by 1882, already had a specific story in which Ostara “rode over the fields in the spring in a wagon drawn by hares.” So it’s not too surprising that, seven years later, someone would have come up with a more developed narrative. I’ll continue to look for a more definitive source.
Now I’m able to report some more definitive sources. First, a very similar report to the one in American Notes and Queries appeared as a note by H. Krebs in the first volume of the English journal Folk-Lore in 1883, but this time with a citation:
Easter-Eggs and the Hare.—Some time ago the question was raised how it came that, according to South German still prevailing folk-lore, the Hare is believed by children to lay the Easter-eggs. I venture now to offer a probable answer to it. Originally the hare seems to have been a bird which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara (the Anglo-Saxon Eàstre or Eostre, as Bede calls her) transformed into a quadruped. For this reason the Hare, in grateful recollection of its former quality as bird and swift messenger of the Spring-Goddess, is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter-time (r. Oberle’s Ueberreste germanischen Heidentums im Christentum, 8vo, Baden-Baden, 1883, p. 104.)
As we can see, Krebs was reporting a new explanation citing a German book by K. A. Oberle, which was at the time brand new. Looking at that book, we see that Krebs’s passage is a word-for-word translation of a sentence by Oberle:
Der Hase scheint vorerst ein Vogel gewesen zu sein, den die Göttin in ein vierfüssiges Tier verwandelte; darum kann er in dankbarer Erinnerung an seine frühere Eigenschaft als Vogel am Feste der Göttin Eier legen.
But where did Oberle get the idea that the goddess transformed a bird into a “four-footed animal?” He does not give a specific source for the story of the goddess changing a bird into a hare, but he does give a general source for his information about Ostara: Holtzmann, who (as we have already seen) is the origin of the idea that Ostara and hares were connected. Looking back at Holtzmann, I found the following sentence:
Uebrigens ist doch der Hase ein Vogel gewesen, da er Eier legt….
This translates to:
By the way, the hare must once have been a bird, because it lays eggs….
This simple statement seems to be Oberle’s source for the idea that the goddess Ostara changed a bird into a hare. As in English, the German sentence CAN mean that an individual hare used to be an individual bird—or in other words that a bird was transformed into a hare. But it can also mean that the role of the hare in the story used to be occupied by a bird. In my reading, Holtzmann seems just to have been speculating that a previous version of the story featured a bird, but Oberle made the leap to a tale in which a physical transformation occurred, and then ascribed that transformation to the goddess Ostara. [2] He likely did this because his book was specifically intended to argue for survivals of paganism in Christian Germany, and giving the Easter Hare a definitively pagan origin served this scholarly agenda. In adding this element, Oberle provided the essence of the current popular stories.
Shortly after these stories began to appear in academic venues, they were imported into popular books, newspapers, and magazines. The November 1896 issue of Popular Science Monthly carried an article by Walter James Hoffman called “Popular Superstitions,” which stated:
The association of the hare with eggs is curious and the explanation is found in the belief that originally the hare seems to have been a bird which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara turned into a quadruped. For this reason the hare in grateful recognition of its former quality as a bird and swift messenger of the Spring Goddess is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter time.
Quite early, the story began to be prefaced by statements about how very ancient it was. For example, Michigan’s Crawford Avalanche of April 12, 1900, tells us that the story is “one of the oldest in mythology,” despite the fact that it was then less than twenty years old:
ORIGIN OF EASTER RABBITS
According to Teutonic Tradition Bunny Was Once a BirdOne of the quaint and interesting features of our modern Easter carnival is the appearance in shop windows, side by side with the emblematic colored egg, of a pert tall-eared rabbit, and those who cannot understand why bunny should have a place in our Easter decorations shrug their shoulders and think it a trick to please the children. But the legend of the Easter rabbit is one of the oldest in mythology, and is mentioned in the early folk lore of South Germany. Originally, it appears, the rabbit was a bird, which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara–goddess of the east or of spring–transformed into a quadruped. For this reason the rabbit or hare is grateful, and in remembrance of its former condition as a bird and as a swift messenger of spring, and of the goddess whom it served, is able to lay colored Easter eggs on her festival in the spring time, the colors illustrating the theory that when it was a bird the rabbit laid colored eggs, and an egg has always been a symbol of the resurrection, and therefore used as an illustration at Easter.
A story in the Richmond (Virginia) Times from March 30, 1902, claims the story reflects the blind and barbarous nature of the heathen Saxons:
Easter a Relic of Pagan Days
Strange as it may seem, Eastertide, like Christmas, is a relic of pagan days. In former days, when the dawn of civilization was just beginning to break, that time of the year when winter was passing away and summer approaching, was made a period of festivity. The people in their blind fashion thanked the unseen beings who ruled the world for the breaking up of the frost-time and prayed for plenteous harvests and fruitful flocks and herds. When Christianity pushed its way further and further into the then barbaric world the early missionaries, not wishing to antagonize their prospective converts, took this festival and consecrated its observance to the new form of faith. In England the festival became known as “Easter” from the goddess Eostre, and in the eggs so widely looked upon as typical of Easter is a mark of the old legend of a bird that was changed into a hare in the spring.
As time went on, the story was sometimes blended with other tales or beliefs about Ostara, none of them older than Grimm’s 1835 book. The Warren, Minnesota, Sheaf of April 13, 1911 ran the following version with a new detail about Ostara’s chariot, drawn from the already growing (and already fanciful) literature about the goddess:
The Easter bunny is said to have been the bird which at one time drew the chariot of the Goddess of Spring and was turned into a hare. Every year however, at the coming of spring the hare remembers, and in commemoration of its original bird nature lays eggs as an offering to Spring and Youth it symbolizes.
Sometimes the story grew even more in the telling. The detail that the goddess changed the bird into a hare specifically to help it endure the cold appears in a version printed in Ohio’s Fulton County Tribune for April 13, 1922:
WAS MESSENGER OF GODDESS
Pretty Legend Which Connects the Hare With the Symbol of the Awakening of Life.It appears from a very ancient, but little known tradition, that the rabbit, or rather the hare; sacred to Ostara, was originally a bird, very possibly the swallow. The goddess finding her winged messenger was not fitted to endure all toils and climates, transformed her into a brisk, quick-footed little quadruped with long ears, a warm furry coat, and no tail to speak of, ready and able to summon belated spring from wherever she might be lingering, and to guide her safely, even among the icebergs of the frozen north. Thenceforward the hare, the emblem of fertility, was known as the friend and messenger of the spring goddess; and in memory of her former existence as a bird, the hare once a year, at Easter, lays the gaily colored eggs that are the symbol of the awakening of earth and the renewal of life. This is the mythological explanation of the connection of Easter eggs and bunnies, but there are many other stories telling why the sportive hare is responsible for the bright-hued eggs at this spring festival.
It’s interesting to note the clear debt that many of the more popular stories owe to the versions first published in academic books and journals. The 1896 article in Popular Science Monthly, and the newspaper account from 1922, both use the word “quadruped,” first used in the very first English-language version from Folk-Lore in 1883, itself a translation of the German “vierfüssiges Tier” from Oberle’s account. It’s also interesting that Family Christmas Online dismisses Sarah Ban Breathnach’s claim, made in the book Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions, that she found her source material in Victorian magazines. In fact, given its origin in 1883, and the fact that it was recounted in Popular Science Monthly (a Victorian magazine, albeit an American one with academic leanings), her story seems quite plausible.
The above was a just a brief rundown of early versions I turned up in books, magazines, and especially newspapers. I haven’t come across a version in which the bird was transformed as a punishment for pride, which is one of the stories recounted by Holly B., That may indeed have a more recent origin. Searching the Library’s Chronicling America collection for more versions of the story might fill in even more details. One thing is clear, however: while the story of Ostara turning a bird into a hare is not ancient, it’s also not new. [3] It is, like most things about Ostara, a 19th century German idea affected by the Romantic Nationalist movement. Since the story arises from the work of Jacob Grimm, it’s also interesting as an example of folklore that arose from the work of folklorists.
[1] As a reader of the previous posts pointed out, local shrines in Germany have turned up with the somewhat similar name “Matronae Austriahenae,” but again since both “Eostre” and “Austriahenae” are etymologically related to “east,” it’s impossible to tell if there’s any relationship or if we have several goddesses understood as in some sense eastern.
[2] Many thanks to my Library of Congress colleague Sybille Jagusch for helping me understand the German texts.
[3] Whether the story can be considered “New Age,” as Family Christmas Online suggests, is another question. Depending on how we define the New Age movement, it may itself not be that new. Although many define New Age proper as having begun in the 1970s, it clearly has roots in the blend of Western esotericism and Eastern religion that emerged in the nineteenth century. The Ostara story is mostly popular in Neopagan communities, which usually hold themselves distinct from New Age thought. But there is overlap among all these ideas.
Mona Terwedow says:
Right before the excerpt from the Warren, MN Sheaf, it says, “As time went on, the story was sometimes blended with other tales or beliefs about Ostara, none of them older than Grimm’s 1935 book.” I think that should read “1835.”
Stephen Winick says:
Mona, thank you! I’ve made that change!
JoAnn Conrad says:
Do you have any indication as to who the illustrators of any of these are? These images in the context of their other work in this kind of mass publishing.
Stephen Winick says:
JoAnn, thanks for your query. There is no obvious information attached to any of the illustrations. Since all of them were published prior to 1923, we believe that they are all in the public domain now. There is a link to each newspaper page and you may be able to find out more there.
Stéphanie Sheen says:
Dear Stephen, thank you for this beautifull article (and those related to it). As a practicing neo-pagan I often come across wild claims concerning the origins of stories, names, customs and practices. For some reason many members of the neo-pagan community feel the need to validate their practices by inventing “ancient” roots. I like to get thigs straight however and can really appreciate the work you’ve done here.
I miss two things however;
1: That the Hare does not burrow but creates a “nest” called a form in tall grass to bear its young. Here is a connection to birds that might have had a role to play in the forming of the idea that the hare was once a bird?
2: that the hare undergoes a striking change of behaviour during march making it a much more obvious candidate for being a mascott to spring festivities than any other mammal.I have a conjecture of my own to make: That the changing of the easter hare into a rabbit happened around the time of industrialisation, when masses of people hardly ever left the cities and many probably couldnt tell the difference between a hare and a rabbit (which is sadly still true in many cases).
I would love to hear your opinion, and I hope I may refer my own students in Wicca and paganism to your articles by placing a link on my own blog (which is in Dutch as I live in the Netherlands)
Thank you in advance, your work is very valuable!
StéphanieStéphanie Sheen says:
I have in the meantime found several stories that pheasants and partridges sometimes acually choose a hares form to lay their eggs in.
It could even be possible that a hare might chase a bird out of its form that had just laid an egg there, thus creating a situation where one might find a hare “sitting” on an egg…Stephen Winick says:
Thanks for your comments, Stéphanie. Those are intriguing connections between hares and eggs that might well account for some aspects of the “Easter hare” story!
klaatu says:
I think it’s really all because eggs and bunnies are fertility symbols also typical of fairly early spring, and I suggest that Ostara is a fertility goddess. Probably the association is to fertility, with no actual sorry ever told of any such transformation.
All of this being said, research into UseNet in alt.gothic for a thread titled “kill the wabbit”. It’s a rather different take inspired by then-current efforts by certain fundamentalist Christian to try to rid the observations of besides of paganism.
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks for your comment, Klaatu. The idea that Ostara is a fertility goddess is part of the whole “dawn goddess complex” that we’ve discussed at length in the comments to this previous blog post. As you’ll read in that post, there’s no contemporary evidence that Eostre was such a goddess, and no contemporary evidence of belief in any goddess called “Ostara” at all. Finally, there is no documented association between Ostara and bunnies or eggs until the nineteenth century when such an association was suggested by Holtzmann. Clearly, some form of the “fertility goddess” explanation was in Holtzmann’s mind when he suggested such an association, so the modern speculation that she was a fertility goddess is the source of the association between her, hares, and eggs. To conclude because of the association that she must have been a fertility goddess would be purely circular reasoning.
The evidence does support an association between hares and eggs (without Ostara) going back to the seventeenth century at least. Fertility and the Spring season are certainly parts of that association, but other comments here have pointed out other interesting connections, too!
Thanks again: I will look for that thread on alt.gothic!
Uriah says:
First thing that popped in my mind is the Chinese zodiac which you will notice the rooster/bird with eggs is opposite the hare. This has to do with a shift either in seasons or night to day would be my guess? Maybe even eclipses?
Betsy McGovern says:
I just read something about Ishtar, an ancient goddess of fertility, and her symbols of eggs and rabbits. I’ve come across her in modern interest in feminine theology. Is there truth in that?
Stephen Winick says:
Hi Betsy,
No, there’s no evidence Ishtar was related at all to Easter, and no evidence at all of eggs and hares being associated with her. It’s become a common meme on the internet in the last few years, but it has no basis in archaeology or mythology.
Holmes says:
Good articlde, thank you. Appreciate someone who tries to get at the truth.
Ruby Ruse says:
Thank you so much for researching this so thoroughly. I love the story of Easter and Her bunny and was dismayed when I came across articles proclaiming it as a hoax. Then again, perhaps all mythologies (even those of prominent religions) could all be dismissed as hoaxes.
Nancy K. says:
I truly appreciate all the effort that went into this article. I also enjoyed the comments from everyone. I do have one question for Stéphanie Sheen; you mentioned a noted change in a hares behavior moving into Spring. What is it exactly, is it a due to mating? Thank you in advance!
Sing Yee says:
Nancy,
Hares are nocturnal animals, but will appear in the day in Spring to mate. They also nest on the surface, which might contribute to the depiction of a bird-like nest.
Marilyn M says:
Thank you for the excellent article and historical research. The comments are thoughtful. Over time, all legends and myths change, and this is likely true with Ostara and the hare. When I was in India and as I researched Hindu myths for my book on stories from different religions, I was struck by the many versions of every myth. People are perfectly happy with that. They tell whichever version they prefer and nobody complains that it isn’t accurate, because it all amounts to the same thing: life is a mystery, let’s explain it with stories! Myths are not hoaxes, they’re a rich hodge-podge of what people are taught and need to believe. Happy Spring to all.
Mick Brown says:
‘Ishtar'(Easter) needs to be researched far more deeply I read about this 7 yrs ago & by responses from others in reply I find it comes from the East, poss mythology, but as you know rabbits were not original of UK they were brought to UK by the invading Roman Armies to feed them I could go on but I won’t Hares are indigenous of our Isle only sent this as you state that this ISHTAR is balderdash please explain or books I can obtain to seek truth regarding the matter …thank you.
Stephen Winick says:
Dear Mick,
As you will see from reading this post and the previous ones on Easter, the “Easter bunny” is first recorded as a hare, not a rabbit, so that would not be a bar to an English origin. But in any case the tradition turns up in Europe first in Germany, and in America among German Americans, so it seems to be an indigenous German tradition, not an English one. There is no shred of evidence for an English tradition of a hare or rabbit associated with Easter until relatively modern times.
Also, to clarify, no one would say that “Ishtar” is “balderdash.” Ishtar is a Mesopotamian goddess. However, there is no evidence of any connection between her and Easter. Ishtar was worshiped by speakers of Akkadian, a Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) language, and Ostara, if her cult existed at all, was worshiped by speakers of Germanic (Indo-European) languages. The resemblance between the names is a coincidence. Claims like this, spread mostly by internet memes, cannot be “disproven.” There never was any evidence for a connection between Ishtar and Easter in the first place. The burden of proof rests with the person making the claim, not the person who disbelieves it. It’s hard to recommend books because as far as I know few reputable books have taken the claim seriously enough to argue against it. The claim is another product of 19th-century speculative scholars which has not stood the test of time.
Magus says:
Ostara is Oestre, Easter which is the Eastern star. The morningstar. Venus. She awakens the sun in the morning, just as she awakens the spring from the dead Winter. The Easternstar/morningstar can also bee seen as Aphrodite, Lucifer, Lucia, Prometheus and ishtar. Ishtar, Inanna, Venus, Aphrodite, Ostara and Freyja are all the same fertillity goddess. She is the goddess of spring, of Life, light and love. To understand this one has to have a holistic perspective, one has to read alot of different myths and see how they intertwine. “As the Germanic languages descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), historical linguists have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn *H₂ewsṓs (→ *Ausṓs), from which descends the Common Germanic divinity from whom Ēostre and Ostara are held to descend.” -Wikipedia
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Magus.
Although you’ve quoted Wikipedia at the end of your comment, Wikipedia does not agree with most of the assertions you have made. While it does say that historical linguists trace the name from proto-Indo-European, it also notes, “In his 1835 Deutsche Mythologie, Jacob Grimm cites comparative evidence to reconstruct a potential continental Germanic goddess whose name would have been preserved in the Old High German name of Easter, *Ostara. (Emphasis mine.)”
In other words, there is no confirmed existence for the goddess name “Ostara” in any language. It is a theoretical suggestion of one historical linguist, and as the discipline developed, further historical linguists traced that theorized name to the equally conjectural Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn *H₂ewsṓs. This is a purely linguistic exercise, and only shows that the name Grimm proposed was historically plausible–that is, if the Germans worshiped such a goddess it is likely she was called by a name similar to *Ostara. It doesn’t prove whether they did in fact worship any such goddess.
Even if *Ostara was a goddess worshiped in Germany, and even if she was descended from a goddess *H₂ewsṓs worshiped by proto-Indo-Europeans, she would not be related to Ishtar or Inanna, whose names are not Indo-European. This suggestion was made by a Scottish minister named Alexander Hislop in an 1853 anti-Catholic tract called The Two Babylons. As Wikipedia notes: “Because Hislop’s claims have no linguistics foundation, his claims were rejected, but the Two Babylons would go on to have some influence in popular culture. In the 2000s, a popular Internet meme similarly claimed an incorrect linguistic connection between English Easter and Ishtar. (Emphasis mine.)”
Markus Wolf says:
I know I’m four years late to this party, but thank you for doing this amazing research. I learned alot that I can pass on to my students.
Mark Hawthorne says:
You write, “He likely did this because his book was specifically intended to argue for survivals of paganism in Christian Germany…” Should that be “… for the survival of …”?
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks for the suggestion, Mark, but I did mean “survivals.” This was a particular theory popular in folklore studies at the time, most associated with the English scholar Edward Burnett Tylor. Tylor suggested that elements of then-current culture might be “survivals” of previous, more primitive phases of culture. By this he meant that the idea or practice survived, but the original meaning had been forgotten. So the Easter Bunny would be a “survival” in this sense if it had originally been associated with a Germanic goddess but most 19th century Germans were unaware of this and thought of it as a secular folklore figure. Oberle used the word “Überreste,” “remains,” but he meant much the same thing as we call (or used to call) “survivals” in English folkloristics.
Johannes says:
Wow, great article! I’m writing a sermon on Easter, and wanted to investigate some of this Easter Bunny background. Your article was by far the most thorough expose on the topic. Well done and God bless you.
Johannes says:
p.s. Are you aware of how the rabit has been associated with virgin Mary since the 1500’s? For example in the painting “Madonna of the Rabbit” by Titian.
Jo Alex SG says:
Thank you so much for this most interesting posting with such amazing old illustrations and utterly precious links.
By the way, you may probably already know of this but I thought I had better share this link just in case, since it´s a rare opportunity to get such an old English translation of the iconic work:A free PDF with an English translation by James Steven Stallybrass from 1882 of Jacob Grimm’s first volume of “Teutonic Mythology”:
https://www.norron-mytologi.info/diverse/TeutonicMythology1.pdfJLJones says:
Thanks for a wonderful source of fact on this curious topic. Can you tell us, though, what you make of the lack of evidence to support either Ostara or the bird/hare connection? In your experience, should such evidence if it exists have been found by now? In its absence, can the speculation of researchers fill the gaps just as scientific postulates can pre-date yet predict discoveries?
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks for your comment, JLJones. It’s always possible new evidence will turn up. For the existence of Ostara, we would just need an inscription to her by that name in any Germanic-speaking country. Such sites do turn up from time to time, so it’s not impossible we will one day find one. For the bird/hare connection, it’s much less likely that a text with that degree of detail about pagan Germanic deities will turn up from pagan or early Christian times, so the story is unlikely to be corroborated. In any case, I think this post shows that the evidence begins with speculations by 19th century German scholars, over a thousand years after the story would have to have existed in oral tradition, so it also seems unlikely on those grounds.
Speculation can fill gaps in the record, but in this case there may not be a gap at all. The only reason Grimm thought it likely that the cult of a goddess named Ostara had existed in Germany was that Old High German used cognate names for Easter and April to the English ones: Ostarun and Ostermanoth. But the use of a pagan deity’s name for the holiday is otherwise idiosyncratic to England, so it would be a great coincidence for the same thing to have happened in Germany, since they adopted Christianity at different times. And as later scholars pointed out, Germany was largely converted by English clerics like St. Boniface, so it would be natural for them to have gotten these words for a Christian holiday from the English, when they got Christianity. Thus there needn’t have been a Germanic goddess in Germany named Ostara to explain the word Ostarun; they simply called Easter “Ostarun” because they adopted its English name. Many scholars feel that’s a more likely explanation for the Old Germanic words for Easter and April. There also isn’t a “gap” in the Germanic pantheon to be filled by Ostara…like Celts, Germanic peoples had hundreds of local deities, and no clear hierarchy that would allow us to determine if one were somehow missing from the record.
For more on my own approach to this, and that of a scholar who doesn’t fully agree with me, see the comments on this previous blog post.
Bob Hall says:
I wish Stephen Winick had devoted one last paragraph summarizing what he said above. It needs a concise summary or conclusion.
Steve Williams says:
I really enjoyed and learned a lot from both of your Ostara/Easter Bunny articles after coming across them this Easter.
However, Grimm did not come up with the belief that the ancient German tribes believed in a goddess named Ostara/Ostera. That belief was around for over a century prior to Grimm’s 1835 book. The earliest example I could find for this belief was the 1702 pamphlet De Ostera Saxonum (The Saxon Ostera) by German historian, genealogist and chronicler of noble families – Luneburg Mushard. Here’s a link to the pamphlet on Google Books:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/De_Ostera_Saxonum_respond_Johanne_Christ/r7xhAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1On page 10 Mushard’s pamphlet he cites a 1649 book on the history of Noblemen Germanics by Johann Schild de Caucis. This book is also on Google Books and a link to the page in question just shows a reference to Bede’s work:
This 1649 book spells Eostre as “Oostera”, it’s possible the first “O” may be some type of printing error in place of a beginning “E”.
After Mushard’s pamphlet there were many different works which mention the putative German goddess Ostera throughout the 18th century. I don’t know how much of this backstory they were aware or even if they had even heard of Mushard, but it seems unlikely that Grimm brothers had never heard of Ostera before. Ostera had already became linked to some “Oster-” related placenames. So maybe the Grimms misstook some name traditions related to Ostera which only may have only been about a century old and misinterpreted them as have deep pre-Christian roots?
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Steve! Those works were unknown to the scholars I cited in my original posts on this five years ago. A lot of old books are being added to text-bases such as Google Books, and I imagine a lot more will turn up, which is exciting!
You say it’s unlikely Grimm had not read other writers claiming that Ostara was worshipped in Germany, but in fact he cites no previous scholar on this and admits that “The Anglo-Saxon historian [Bede] tells us the names of two beings [Hrede and Eostre], whom he expressly calls ancient goddesses of his people, but of whose existence not a trace is left amongst other Germans.” (Emphasis mine.) Grimm thus makes it clear he was aware of no evidence for Eostre anywhere except Bede, and was either unaware of or discounted claims that “Ost” place names were related to her worship since those would certainly have been “traces of her existence left among other Germans.” If Grimm was aware of any previous claim such as de Caucis’s or Mushard’s, he felt he didn’t need to cite it, possibly because these claims were based on no evidence other than Bede, and therefore just as speculative as his own. But these are also obscure works, and it’s entirely plausible Grimm didn’t know them.
It’s not clear to me whether de Caucis is claiming that “Oostera” was worshipped on the Continent, or if he is merely repeating Bede’s claim that she was worshipped in England. Mushard seems to suggest she was worshipped among Saxons on the Continent as well as in England. Grimm appears to have added the idea that she was worshipped generally among Germanic tribes, with a proto-Germanic name, *Ostara.
These are exciting discoveries, but as you suggest they don’t change the main contours of the history: Bede mentioned Eostre being worshipped in England, and no-one suggested she was worshipped on the Continent until about 1,000 years later, when antiquarians raised the idea. They based their speculation entirely on Bede and on the Germanic names for Easter and April. Grimm either independently had the idea that Eostre was worshipped on the continent, or at least popularized it, adding most of the details about *Ostara being a goddess common to many Germanic peoples, representing the Dawn.
Susie Heald says:
My husband & I just finished watching a 6 episode miniseries on Netflix called “Equinox.” You have probably seen it.
It’s an engrossing, yet disturbing in some ways, story of Ostara and the hare. It takes place in Denmark, and is a mysterious story of a girl investigating her older sister’s disappearance and discovering bizarre facts along the way.
I read that a Season 2 is being made.Faeryn says:
I would like to start by saying how much I appreciate the author’s time and dedication this task. The research alone must have been daunting. I am doing research of my own and appreciate cited, well-written, gathered and sharing of information like this. Bless the internet!
However, I was thrown off whilst reading the third or fourth paragraph where the author states simply that there are “no” ancient stories where “x” or “y” is mentioned.
Perhaps I am underestimating the research done by and/or education & experience of the author, but to definitively claim that there are “no ancient stories” about ANY myth, legend, story, folklore, etc. seems to me like a nearly impossible claim to validate. In my opinion it would be difficult for even the most educated and dedicated researcher of myth, literature, legend, folklore, history, etc. to accurately make such a claim. The span or reach of myth, legend, folklore, stories, texts, literature is literally global and with the inclusion of the myths, legends, stories, etc. that were passed down exclusively orally and never documented… The task becomes perhaps impossible?
I would love to constructively criticized if I am incorrect or missing important information.
Thanks for reading!
Faeryn
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks for your comment, Faeryn. To be clear, I didn’t say there WERE no ancient stories in which “x or y is mentioned,” I said there ARE no ancient stories in which Ostara transforms a bird into a hare. Construed as I intended it, this means the Germanic goddess Ostara as proposed by antiquarians based on the evidence of Bede. We don’t need to revisit all of history or travel everywhere on earth, because no claims were made about anything outside of the places and times where people spoke Germanic languages. Proto-Germanic existed by about 500 BCE, but there is no extant text in Germanic until about 200 CE. If we generously assume the “ancient” world to last until 1000 or so, I’m saying there aren’t any such stories about Ostara in the Germanic languages before 1000 CE. I also used the present tense: there ARE no stories, not there WERE no stories. That is to say, if there WERE ancient stories, none survived.
Disproving this claim would not, as you suggest, be an impossible task: one would just have to find a Germanic text from before 1000 CE which contains this story. It’s not impossible that an unknown manuscript will turn up, which will prove my claim wrong. Until then, though, I think it’s a viable statement!
Natasha Gerson says:
Seeking provenance on ancient paganism among the ‘ Pensylvanian Dutch’ is a bit odd. After all, they were Christian puritans who actually left the old world to be rid of everything they considered heathendom.
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Natasha.
It’s not really odd at all. The Pennsylvania Dutch weren’t “puritans who actually left the old world to be rid of everything they considered heathendom.” I think you may be referring here to the Anabaptist groups like the Amish, but the majority of Pennsylvania Dutch settlers weren’t in those groups. The majority were Lutherans, but there were also Moravians, Reformed, and other protestant denominations, and Catholics as well. So the majority of Pennsylvania Dutch are just as likely to have pre-christian elements in their belief and practice as any other Americans.
In general, Pennsylvania Dutch settlers came for a variety of reasons, including religious persecution during counter-reformation movements in Europe, but also simple economic opportunity. Early Pennsylvania Dutch were for the most part mainstream Americans, taking part in daily life, commerce, and politics just like other ordinary Americans. In fact, the first Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives was a Pennsylvania Dutch Congressman from Trappe.
Samantha Gunner says:
You are missing a very crucial detail that while everyone thought Bede wrote the earliest references, Eostre was found later in a matron record… I apologize but I do forget the name of it.
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Samantha! I’m not sure what you mean by “a matron record,” but I think you may be referring to the Matronae Austriahenae. This is a group of goddesses to which a group of inscriptions was found in Germany in 1958. Although some scholars proposed a connection between these goddesses and “Eostre” as mentioned by Bede, there really isn’t any evidence of such a connection. Both the “Eost” in “Eostre” and the “Austria” in “Austriahenae” simply mean “east,” but we don’t know exactly what “Austriahenae” means. It is likely a place (think place names like Eastham), or a social group (think nationalities like Austrians). So the Matronae in that case would be “the mothers from the place called Austriahenae” or “the mothers of the people called Austriahenae,” neither of which would connect them naturally to a goddess worshipped in England. In other words, the similarity in names could easily be purely coincidental.
There are, however, good reasons to think the Matronae are NOT connected to Eostre. According to Bede, Eostre was celebrated in April, but “Matronae” were celebrated at Modreniht, in December. Further, the Matronae Austriahenae are triple goddesses for whom it was customary to leave votive inscriptions on stone, while Eostre is a single goddess to whom no inscription has ever been found. In other words, these two goddess concepts have no known attributes in common, and therefore don’t seem to be closely related. Therefore, most scholars are not convinced of the connection.
Ash says:
I love this article! I do wonder though— have you ever read this passage by Julius Ceasar from the Commentarii de Bello Gallico;
“The Britons consider it contrary to divine law to eat the hare, the chicken or the goose. They raise these, however, for their own amusem*nt or pleasure.”
Either way thank you for sharing your research!
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Ash! Yes, it is well known that some of the Celtic Britons considered the hare sacred, and as you can read in one of my other posts on the Easter Bunny, the idea that the “Easter hare” started out as an animal sacred to Ostara was a conjecture by Adolf Holtzmann in 1874, who used similar customs among the Celts as his model:
“The Easter Hare is inexplicable to to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of [the Celtic goddess] Abnoba.” [My translation from German.]
Susana says:
Thank you for such an interesting article! I live in Norway and this is what I found in a local newspaper:
“Det er ikke lett å finne gode, skriftlige kilder om påskeharen, men vi kjenner til at den dukker opp i en sveitsisk barnesang fra 1789. Og denne sangen er referert til i andre kilder fra 1682, kan Ørnulf Hodne fortelle. Han er gjesteforsker ved Det humanistiske fakultet i Oslo og har skrevet bok om norske påsketradisjoner.”
“It’s bot easy to find good written sources about the Easter hare, but we know it is mentioned in a Swiss children’s song from 1789. And that song is found in another source in 1683, according to Ørnulf Hodne. He is a guest researcher in the Faculty of Humanities in the University of Oslo and wrote a book about Norwegian Easter traditions.” My translation.
Anthony says:
What a great find! I had been curious about the origin of the bunny/egg tradition since I was a wee one.
I would just be a bit hesitant to take Family Christmas Online’s statement against the bunny/egg thing too seriously. Their reaction of the bunny egg thing not being connected to Ostara or anything Pagan for that matter seems like just more lashing out against contemporary Pagan traditions pointing out the obvious (but not always getting it completely right themselves either). Having gone to their site, it was pretty evident that it was essentially a home spun style Christian oriented site. And there is nothing wrong with that. I actually found the site pleasant, fun, and nostalgic.
However, there has been quite a bit of kick back from various Christian groups over the years, when it is pointed out that so many pre-Christian traditions have been borrowed or appropriated by the Church back in the day. And that practice is nothing unique to the Church. Every religion has done this, especially when the followers of one religion had at one point invaded the country of a completely different religion.
Yet, in our day and age, this is happening between Christian’s and NeoPagan’s As far as the folklore itself, I think one of the best remaining ways to gather information on this (if any is left to be had by this time), is to talk to the old folk in some of the smaller less modern towns in Germany. There may still be traces of folklore still being passed around. But if my guess is true, from reading through folklore books of the late 19th century and early 20th century, folklorists of that time were already noting that the old traditions were fading fast as a result of modernism and doubting if anything would be left in a generation or two. That was over a century ago!
It’s a sad situation, really, when we lose so much of our heritage in this way. But, it is the story of humanity since the beginning of written history.
Issy morgana le fe says:
Thank you that was a wicked story. Really cheered up an already hugely successful easter dog walking through some woods with my dog a lurcher saluki and danced on some carved wooden mushrooms…..true paganism lives on Just wanted to say Thank you. X from issybella morgan. X feel free to email me a reply to my reply if you get bored. And ill email you a photo of the wooden mushroomsin uk. X
Douglas Chierici says:
Why is the resurrection of Christ called Easter? The Venerable Bede wrote about Eostra in 725 I believe. One source refers to this goddess as the “goddess of spring” saying “There is also an etymological link to Ostara or Austra, the spring goddess worshipped by the tribes of northern Europe, after whom the month of April, Ostermonat, was named, and whose existence was verified in 1958, when more than 150 Romano-Germanic votive inscriptions to the matronae Austria-henea were discovered near Morken-Harff in Germany..” hares have been fertility symbols for some time. Is it really so far fetched that a spring goddess was celebrated during the spring equinox using commonly held fertility symbols?
Stephen Winick says:
It’s not farfetched, but we don’t assume something is true just because it’s not farfetched. There’s no evidence of any association between Eostre and the matronae Austriahenea, nor between either of those goddesses and “fertility symbols” such as eggs and hares. As I wrote in another answer about the Matronae:
This is a group of goddesses to which a group of inscriptions was found in Germany in 1958. Although some scholars proposed a connection between these goddesses and “Eostre” as mentioned by Bede, there really isn’t any evidence of such a connection. Both the “Eost” in “Eostre” and the “Austria” in “Austriahenae” simply mean “east,” but we don’t know exactly what “Austriahenae” means. It is likely a place (think place names like Eastham), or a social group (think nationalities like Austrians). So the Matronae in that case would be “the mothers from the place called Austriahenae” or “the mothers of the people called Austriahenae,” neither of which would connect them naturally to a goddess worshipped in England. In other words, the similarity in names could easily be purely coincidental.
There are, however, good reasons to think the Matronae are NOT connected to Eostre. According to Bede, Eostre was celebrated in April, but “Matronae” were celebrated at Modreniht, in December. Further, the Matronae Austriahenae are triple goddesses for whom it was customary to leave votive inscriptions on stone, while Eostre is a single goddess to whom no inscription has ever been found. In other words, these two goddess concepts have no known attributes in common, and therefore don’t seem to be closely related. Therefore, most scholars are not convinced of the connection.
Tami says:
It’s always difficult to trace folklore to their origins, especially when they’re connected to religious belief in some way.
I can say the story of Ostara changing the bird to a rabbit/hare has been confirmed to me, personally, as a very ancient story (before modern man) through spiritual means. But I am aware that today’s society demands physical proof all things before they can be accepted.
It can be acceptable to search for a personal truth, when no other options exist. Ostara walks/walked the Black Forest to bring spring to the forest.
It is possible that the story was remotely, regionally shared orally for centuries, and it wasn’t shared in written form until the Grimms traveled looking for stories to write.
JON B says:
Easter is around March when hares display and mate, thus march hare.
Hares do not burrow they often live in open fields, Leverets can be found quietly hiding in the day in small groups in a field, like many ground nesting birds.Associations therefore are presented in hare behaviour, and as the agricultural labourers voice is hardly represented in the literary tradition it is unsurprising you have found little written evidence.
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Jon B! A few other comments have pointed this out too–thanks! It is absolutely true that the hare is a natural animal to associate with Spring, and I can see the association of hares with ground-nesting birds being a source for the Easter Hare idea. But there is no goddess necessary for either of those ideas to be influencing modern traditions.
JON B says:
In looking for a folk tradition in only the written record, it is possible to see the intrinsic bias of the modern academic,
First there is a presumption that access to writing was universal. It was not, the class which could write and record excluded, the very people we would call the folk and very little interest in that class’es traditions was recorded until the nineteenth century.
An American academic may class me as English, but entirely overlook that my culture is not of all the things an American may class as English, as few Americans are aware of English working class culture.
Thus an academic from your culture, which it seems to me wants to suppress notions of class, not only in American culture because of a mantra ‘all are equal’, but extends this mostly without thought to its ideas of other peoples.
The American Academic thus starts with a bias that cannot properly categorise information.
Then we have the idea that the truth will be found by studying texts is not being examined, and it is being extended, to the only proof is by showing a text which records a fact.
If we are to accept the festival now called Easter that we know has pagan heathen roots in time immemorial, a question leaps out-
Why is this the only such festival in human history that has not got a god or goddess associated with it?
Without an answer this idea that a testified goddess is not associated with a festival of the same name I would say is an untenantable academic position.
Further that animals exhibiting unusual behaviour around the time of the festival would not become associated with it by a people who live off the land would be unusual.
Hares eggs.
We have hares behaving like ground nesting birds.
Yet no eggs are found, so they must be magical.
There is a very similar tradition from Slavic peoples.
The fern flower,
Unlike other plants ferns do not flower, but in the Slavic traditions, it is said that to find a flowering fern is very lucky, and the flower is the most magical and beautiful of all flowers.
I think the connection is obvious in the two stories and points to a way of thinking which would naturally create such stories, in fact it would be odd if they did not arise.
The association of Easter with a particular moon of the year is recorded, and even now is still adhered,
Thus a personification of the festival or goddess, and animals that are associated, will all be associated together, one would need hard evidence to say they are not associated, more than I can’t find a reference in a book written by people of a different culture.Stephen Winick says:
Jon B., I’m very aware of English working-class culture. Folklorists have historically studied mainly rural working-class culture, and my studies took me in that direction; I read an awful lot of social and socialist histories of the British working class in my studies, and particularly studied traditional song of both agricultural and industrial laborers in Britain.
Folklorists are also fully aware of the issue of oral tradition vs. writing; it’s exactly what we study. But just because people couldn’t write about (say) an annual “Feast of Frogs” in ancient Britain, it doesn’t follow that such a “Feast of Frogs” existed. It’s a true problem that sometimes no evidence survives, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t require evidence before accepting claims.
Just one other point of disagreement: there is no such thing as “hard evidence” that any two things are NOT associated. There can only be hard evidence that they ARE associated. So it’s always up to people claiming an association to provide the hard evidence of that association.
Nunyabuizz says:
You sound like a typical jealous Christian .
Stephen Winick says:
I am neither–but apologies if I do sound like one!
JON B says:
This examination of both archaeological and text from latin texts on the ancient British points to a strong link with hares and a goddess, and the reverence which the ancient Brits treated the hare,
Stephen Winick says:
Jon B, I don’t know what examination you refer to. But the ancient British were not Germanic, so if they had a goddess associated with a hare, it could not have been a version of the putative Ostara, whose cult would have been brought over to Britain later. For example, the problem with recent archaeological finds involving hare-shaped brooches in Britain are:
(1) There is no explicit association with any god or goddess, and even the scholars who think they had a religious significance admit that it’s possible they’re simply brooches shaped like hares, which would have been appropriate iconography at the time for a romantic gift between spouses or lovers.
(2) The brooches predate the invasion of Britain by Germanic settlers, so if there WAS a god or goddess associated with the brooches, it couldn’t be a widespread Germanic goddess like the proposed Ostara, whose cult had yet to arrive; it would have to be a Celtic or Classical god or goddess. To the extent that the locations of the brooches overlap with the areas of Eostre-related place names, they create more problems than they solve for advocates of the existence of a widespread Ostara, since they suggest Eostre (if such a goddess was worshipped) was not Germanic in origin but Celtic. Eostre would thus a be a Germanic name for an earlier British goddess worshipped in Britain before the Germanic settlers arrived–which would mean she was NOT derived from a proposed continental goddess called Ostara.
Thanks for your comment!
JON B says:
You set up there is no proof by looking at the written record, but the people who would take part in an such festivities and make these connections were excluded from the written record until the nineteenth century.
Thus not finding anything by looking in the wrong place proves nothing.
However, that both Celts and Germans had Easter festivals is testified.
Further that Caesar states the Belgic tribes were German, and the tribes of southern Britain were Belgic undermines your argument. Genetically it is accepted that the English are 80% related to pre Roman populations, and only 20% post roman migration, so a continuity of culture would be hard to disprove. Especially if we consider this pagan festival has lasted beyond the christian era.
If my link did not come through look up
Prof Naomi Sykes from the University of Exeter‘Historical evidence suggests Britons of the period associated the animals with deities and considered them too special to eat. Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar’s firsthand account of the Gallic wars, says “the Britons consider it contrary to divine law to eat the hare, the chicken or the goose. They raise these, however, for their own amusem*nt or pleasure.”
Radiocarbon analysis of hare and chicken skeletons from a number of sites in Hampshire and Herefordshire backs up that assertion, showing that the two species were introduced simultaneously to Britain between the fifth and third centuries BC. Excavation has previously revealed the animals had been carefully buried without being butchered.’
An assertion that there is no connection to an ancient festival and a god or goddess, is extraordinary, as it would be the only such festival that is not personified by a divine figure. And an extra ordinary assertion requires extraordinary proof, a lot more than looking in the wrong place and not finding anything.
Stephen Winick says:
Jon B, Caesar doesn’t state that the Belgic tribes were German, he states that they lived near the Germans (but across the Rhine from them), and were constantly waging war against them:
Of all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because […] they are the nearest to the Germans, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0001%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D1
Caesar also says that when the Belgae took up arms, the Germans on their side of the Rhine joined them, showing that that Belgae and the left-bank Germans were not the same. Caesar does say that some of the Belgae “sprang from” the Germans, so maybe this is what you mean. James McKillop in the Dictionary of Celtic Mythology writes that scholarly consensus is that Caesar simply meant some of them had come from east of the Rhine, not that they spoke Germanic languages. Scholarly consensus also holds that the Belgae spoke what we would now call a Celtic language, and that the word Belgae is itself a Celtic word. The Oxford Dictionary of English calls them “an ancient Celtic people inhabiting Gaul north of the Seine and Marne Rivers,” and the Oxford dictionary of World History calls them “An Iron Age Celtic people of north-west Europe.”
I know Naomi Sykes’s work; nothing here disagrees with it in any serious way. In fact, the Easter Origins project (EasterE.g), on which she was Principal Investigator, cited this very article as “exciting new research.” Her teammate Adrian Bott called it “Stephen Winick’s brilliant analysis of how the now-famous ‘Ostara and the Hare’ story emerged from a misunderstanding of a text,” and EasterE.g retweeted that opinion!
She and her team state that archaeological evidence tempts us to imagine a hare goddess, but that there is no conclusive evidence…exactly my position: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00438243.2018.1515655
JON B says:
As an American you might look at the subject: Puritans and Easter festivities,
Given how late a date in American history christmass became a public holiday, are people even going to write about pagan traditions openly in that strict atmosphere.
Boys whipped for skipping to school on christmass day for instance, let alone having the day off.
Simply even if the traditions are remembered or observed it will only take place in secret.
That once there is a more liberal America traditions so like ancient festivals come back so quickly of itself points to a greater affinity to ancient customs than would be in the written record.Stephen Winick says:
As an American I was fascinated to learn that the Easter Bunny was a German tradition which became part of American culture through the Pennsylvania Dutch! You can read about that in another of my blog posts:
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/03/easter-bunny/?loclr=blogflt
Adrian Bott, who is English, likes to point out that in nineteenth century British newspapers, the “Easter Hare” is referred to as a German tradition which needed to be explained because there was no Easter hare or rabbit tradition in England yet. It seems to have become popular in America first among German-speakers, then among English-speakers, and then in England as an import from America. As Dr. Sykes’s team at Exeter points out, in a British context, “Links between the hare and Easter only started in modern Britain.”
https://www.exeter.ac.uk/research/news/articles/title_853401_en.html
JON B says:
Is a celebration the same in every village?
I can point to not just Easter, but christmass, lent, Mayday, Midsummer, Haloween/bonfire night etc,
and say that as so many villages have celebrations that differ from each other they must all be modern inventions, but we both know that would be mad.To say there was no ancient original starting celebration, because it can’t be shown in text that there was no variation over 2500 years would also be mad.
We might say Bede was wrong, but we have no evidence he was wrong. If you do please show it.
What we do know is there was an ancient festival the time of which was and is dictated by the moon, not a date of the year. We also know that the ancients used a Luna/solar calendar, which the months shifted and some years even had thirteen months.,
Easter caused the church great problems in trying to calculate, Irish church differed from Rome over this and it nearly caused a split, as it was an alien way of calculation to the leaders of the church at that time, but natural to western Europeans they were trying to convert by overlaying christian festivals over heathen festivities.
Bad scholarship!
I suggest you read the full text not just snippets before you try to quote Caesar.
Are you looking for truth, or to just defend a position?
I notice you are silent about the Celts also celebrating this festival.We know every pagan festival had a goddess or god associated with it, or was a personification of it.
We know an agricultural folk would take great notice of the behaviour of animals and nature, and an animal that entirely changed its behaviour at one time of year, say from a timid nocturnal habit to open displays in the sun would draw attention, and strong associations.
Thus it is right to say Easter is an ancient heathen festival there was a goddess associated with it, and also associated with the moon and animals that were held in reverence by those ancient folk.
Variations from place to place and over 2500 years including periods of intense religious bigotry does not alter that.Stephen Winick says:
Thanks again for your comments, Jon B. Nobody did say there was no “ancient starting celebration.” Even Bede didn’t say it was associated with the moon and animals, though.
The only story this post specifically treats is the idea that a goddess called Ostara changed a bird into a hare. That arose in the 19th century. My previous post points out there is no evidence of a hare associated with either Easter or its pagan antecedents in Germany until the 17th century, or in Britain until the 20th. In this I am in agreement with the Easter Origins team led by Dr. Sykes, as I have pointed out in previous comments, though of course we probably differ on some details, as do the individual members of her commission.
I hope you are having a lovely Easter!
Justaguy says:
This may be relevant:
“In chapter 15 (De mensibus Anglorum, “The English months”) of his 8th-century work De temporum ratione (“The Reckoning of Time”), Bede describes the indigenous month names of the English people. After describing the worship of the goddess Rheda during the Anglo-Saxon month of Hrēþ-mōnaþ, Bede writes about Ēosturmōnaþ, the month of the goddess Ēostre:”Germanic names for places dating back much earlier can be translated as “Place of Eostre” and similar. So your “18th-19th century” thing might be a bit off.
Stephen Winick says:
Justaguy, the “18th-19th century” thing as you call refers only to the story of Ostara changing a bird into a hare, which is not in Bede or any of the other sources you mention. I do discuss Bede and the other evidence in this article, and even more in the previous one, which you can find at this link:
https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/03/easter-bunny/?loclr=blogflt
If you have evidence of a story about Eostre or Ostara changing a bird into a hare before the nineteenth century, please let me know. Otherwise, this article’s dating remains accurate. Thanks!
April Bee says:
Thank you, this is a fun read for Easter morning. Folklore and origins of stories and myths are really fascinating. It’s also interesting that this was posted seven years ago and seems to generate a new discussion every spring.
Your arguments seem to me pretty sound and objective. You state many times that while there is no evidence for these ideas existing in pre-christian times, we can’t say with certainty that they didn’t exist. All we know is that there is no evidence in the record. There is nothing more we can say on that without stepping beyond the realm of logic.
Beyond that, if those stories speak to modern people, that’s fine. The stories don’t have to be ancient to help us make sense of the world or feel a spiritual connection to it. You aren’t saying anything that negates anyone else’s belief system (although of course some people put more value on certain things if they can be said to be “ancient”)
I’m not Christian or Neo-pagan, so I’ll just enjoy this nice day in early spring in my own way, having had the pleasure of learning a little history while enjoying the fact that there are still some mysteries to be solved. Thanks, and happy Easter!Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, April Bee!
Bill Kincaid says:
Thank you for this post, and for returning to it so faithfully over the years to answer comments! I found it while searching for sources on the connections between pagan and Christian festivals/holy days.
Having done some casual researching of that connection, I’m starting to think the original biblical version of Christianity was helped greatly by the later appropriation of pagan customs. Those appropriations meant pagans did not have to give up their many traditional festivals, and by the invention of saints, they were provided equivalent replacements for all those many gods people had been fond of praying to prior to the emergence of Christian monotheism. In my casual reading, I had assumed the hare was simply Ostera’s symbolic “accessory”, in the vein of Minerva’s owl. Very interesting to learn from your post the hare is evidently an 19th C add-on to our ancient English goddess of spring. She got along fine without it for many centuries, so I don’t mind seeing the hare demoted to recent addition status
I wish you a very happy Easter, and I hope I haven’t given you any ideas about demoting Minerva’s owl!
Stephen Winick says:
Minerva’s owl is our favorite here at the Library of Congress, and I frequently wear an owl pin to work! No demotion is contemplated!
jon berbank says:
What does your evidence depict.
That the lower classes were hardly referred to before the nineteenth century in text.
That you place text above all other information, we can tell this in that you state-
”Even Bede didn’t say it was associated with the moon”
yet we know the very timing of Easter was and still is set by the moon. So the association is fixed and a proven thing.However what your information depicts is that when America was finally thinking about holidays (sorry vacations) for the workforce, writers felt the need to emphasise the Lutheran Germanic traditions of Easter, presumably because other traditions of Easter like Irish, or those of other catholic immigrants would make such a holiday unpalatable to wasps.
Stephen Winick says:
I don’t think wasps vs. Catholics had anything to do with it–it’s just hard to predict what will catch on. St. Patrick’s Day was for many years a larger celebration here than in Ireland, so it’s not as if no Irish catholic celebrations are observed here. I just think there are more Germans in the United States than most people realize, and sometimes their contributions become very mainstream.
As for the moon, yes, Christian Easter is governed by the moon. But Bede doesn’t say that the Pagan celebration of Eostre was. He just says it occurred in April. So being associated with the moon is not a thing that Bede’s description of Eostre’s festival and Christian Easter have in common.
Remember, we know Christian Easter did not have its date set according to an ancient English festival–the date of Easter is governed by the moon because the Church was beginning with the Jewish lunisolar calendar, not European pagan celebrations. The paschal computus used in England at that time was the one devised by Dionysus Exiguus in Rome before 540; it is described by Bede in the same treatise in which he mentions Eostre. So the calculation of Easter had nothing to do with Eostre or any English goddess, and there’s no evidence Eostre’s festival was associated with the moon, as only Bede mentions her and he does not mention the moon in connection with her.
All we know of Eostre is what Bede tells us, and he says nothing of the moon or of animals. Anyone is free to speculate about what her celebration might have been like, but as we have no evidence, it will remain speculation.
Incidentally, your first usage was correct: in America Easter is a holiday, not a vacation. Holidays are specific days observed as religious or secular celebrations. Vacations are time taken away from work. They may coincide, so many people take a vacation around Christmas. But no one would say “Easter is an important vacation in American culture,” and indeed most Americans don’t take a vacation at Easter. So I think there wasn’t much thought about “vacations for the workforce” involved in our selection of Easter symbols.
jon berbank says:
Edited snippets of text alone does not tell a story.
Bede also wrote about the traditional English calendar of the time which was luna/solar not just solar which Rome had adopted.
Æftera Geola, After Yule.
Sōlmōnath. wet sand or mud, the month of cakes.
March Hrēðmonath. a goddess named Hreða, or Rheda. Her name eventually became Lide in some southern dialects of English, and the name Lide or Lide-month was still being used locally in parts of southwest England until as recently as the 19th century.
Eostremonath, Eostre.
Thrimilce, the month of three milkings.
Ærraliða, before-mild.
Æfteraliða, after-mild.
In some years a “leap month” was added to the calendar at the height of the summer, which was Thriliða, third-mild.
Weodmonath, plant month.
Hāligmonath, holy month.
Winterfylleth, winter full moon.
Blōtmonath. the month of blood sacrifices.
Ærra Geola, before Yule.
The nineteen year cycle known as the ‘Metonic Cycle’ means the month is kept in phase with the moon. And month in old English means cycle of the moon and is derived from the word moon.
Bede in talking about this is telling us exactly what you say he does not say. I again advise you to read the full text rather than picking out snippets to try to support an erroneous argument.
The Metonic cycle is very old and testified as early as 1000 to 800 bce by the use of symbols on the Berlin golden hats, which is long before the Metonic cycle was first found in Babylon. Also ‘rune sticks’ in Scandinavia show it was still being used in the nineteenth century by farmers as Romes old calendar had become completely out of phase with the year and the new calendar we use now had not yet been introduced there till long after other parts of Europe.
So in Anglo- Saxon England at the time of Bede month was not an abetory number of days like our modern caloendar
.Stephen Winick says:
Thanks Jon B.
I have, in fact, read all of Bede. His work on Easter was an extension of Dionysius Exiguus tables, not based on the English months. It’s true he placed both his account of the English months and his Easter table in the same book, but he is not at all saying that the date of Easter is based on Eostre’s festival. In fact, he does not tell us or claim to know when during the month of April Eostre’s festival occurred or why a given day was chosen. In a general sense of course you are right that the months themselves were lunar months, and all dates were based in some sense on lunar calculations. But since he is not specific as to when or how Eostre was worshipped, her festival might not have been lunar, that is, it might not have occurred on a specific defined “date,” at all. It might have occurred according to an agricultural or natural occurrence not directly tied to the moon–for example, when the cherries bloomed, which was usually in April. We just don’t know, and he doesn’t claim to know either, except that April was named for her. Claiming she is a lunar goddess or that her festival was a lunar festival goes beyond what we know, as does claiming she was associated with eggs or hares.
jon berbank says:
Easter might have been on a specific date in the solar calendar.
No it is set by the moon now, as it has always been.
All spring festivals were set by the moon, even Jewish and Islamic, which disposed of the solar reckoning entirely, as the middle east is not as seasonally affected as it is further north.
All ancient Europeans use a Metonic system of one form or another, even Rome started with this form of calculation, but it became corrupted by dictators adding and taking away days from the months. As you can see in the modern calendar with Caesars July and Octavius’s August both being given extra days 31 to show the Emperors importance.
No, there is absolutely no foundation for your assertion.
What you are doing is imposing your culture and understanding on a different culture without referencing what they mean by a word or phrase.
To you it seems a month is just a way of dividing a 365+ day year. It seems you do not know what a month is based on, either using etymology or by studying the culture you are lifting snippets of text from. You ignore or do not know of the disputes the Irish church had with Rome over the setting of Easter and even Bede’s part in it.
It seems you just want to be right rather than even making perfunctory checks working out how a purely solar reckoning for dates would lead to leap months as Bede tells us there are.Stephen Winick says:
Yes, again, Easter is set by the moon because of its roots in the Jewish calendar. That’s exactly what I said in my comment of 2023/04/09 at 10:28.
But there is no evidence Eostre’s festival was set by the moon, because Eostre’s festival has a separate history from Christian Easter, which was already celebrated by other names by the time Christianity reached England and the holiday’s name became “Easter” in English. Bede is the only source who mentions Eostre’s festival, and he does not say it was based on the moon. As I pointed out, it could have been based on agriculture or nature–the blooming of the cherries or something similar. There is as much basis for saying that as there is for saying it was a lunar festival.
I know all about the debates about the dates of Easter, thank you. I have read all of Caesar and all of Bede in Latin, thank you. It is very kind of you to be concerned about other cultures!
But this post isn’t really about any of that. It’s about the story that Eostre changed a bird into a hare; this story arose in the 19th Century. The rest of the argument involves people wishing to read a lot into ancient sources which isn’t actually there, including a connection between Eostre and hares. Although some archaeological finds have been deemed “suggestive” or “tempting,” there is still no real evidence of such a connection.
jon berbank says:
When is Easter in an Anglo-Saxon year with 12 months, and when is it in an Anglo-Saxon year with a leap month so thirteen months, as Bede tells us they used.
How are those months affected?
Thus on what date would Eostremonath start in our modern calendar?
You’re clever you read latin just answer that!Stephen Winick says:
Ha, that’s a tricky (or trick) question in many ways. The most obvious correct answer is that Easter didn’t occur in an Anglo-Saxon year with a leap month, because Christians didn’t use this calendar. Bede is specifically describing the ancient English calendar of Pagan or Heathen England, not the Christian English calendar of his own time. The first words of that chapter are “Antiqui autem Anglorum populi…,” “The ancient English people, however….” There’s no evidence to indicate that anyone ever tried to reckon the date of Easter according to this calendar.
The second way it’s tricky is that, if you were to match up the dates of Easter with this calendar, the thirteenth month probably wouldn’t affect Easter in its own year because Bede tells us it was added in the summer, which is after Easter. It would affect subsequent Easters.
A third trick in the question is that the whole reason for an Easter computus is to reconcile a lunisolar (Hebrew) calendar with a solar (Julian or later Gregorian) calendar. The pre-Christian English calendar WAS lunisolar, so if that 13th month was doing its job properly, you could celebrate Easter on the same date each year if you wanted to and it wouldn’t move around much compared to Passover, which was what the computus was trying to achieve, broadly speaking and within certain parameters. So the likely answer is that Easter would fall on the same date each year, especially if the calendar were associated with its own branch of Christianity not associated with Rome.
In general, though, Bede didn’t give us that level of specificity, so we can’t really say. His whole chapter on the English calendar is about a paragraph long and doesn’t tell us basic facts like whether the lunar months were sidereal or synodic, when a month began (full moon, new moon, etc.), whether the months had the same number of days, etc. He also contradicts himself, saying for example that they had four seasons of three months each, and also only two seasons of six months each. So people attempting to reconstruct this calendar have had to extrapolate quite a bit.
jon berbank says:
You don’t seem to know what the Metonic cycle is, please look it up.
The phases of the moon, do not run in synchrony with a single solar year. which is why a full moon or new moon does not fall on the same day every year. However over a nineteen year period, to a great accuracy the phases of the moon and solar year come into alignment and a new moon will be on the same solar date as it was nineteen years before. To do this in some years one might have to add extra months, as there are more cycles of the moon than twelve a year. thus if we look at a calendar that has leap months in other words extra months being added in some years we can be quite sure it is using a Metonic calendar. There are other ways of making sure the sun and moon are in phase for major festivals like having an indeterminate interval at the end of the year where days or weeks can be added to make sure the festivals are in phase the next year.
If a culture is using such a system we can tell it sees both the sun and moon as being very significant to its time keeping.
In stating the above I am not being contentious in any way.
So is there evidence the Germanic calendar was metronic? I will attempt just show that, but that all European first calendars were metronic in one way or another, and in so doing show evidence that the moon would be hugely significant in reckoning any festival. Not just literate societies like the Greeks which talk about the significance of the moon, but from non-literate societies.
So if I can point to this evidence would that be enough to persuade you, that Eostra and the moon would naturally be associated?Stephen Winick says:
I know what the Metonic cycle is, thank you. I also know that Bede doesn’t mention it in connection with the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons, so we don’t know if they knew of it. As you say, in general people added leap months to keep the solar and lunar years in phase, but the pre-Christian English method and frequency of adding leap months isn’t known. In general, if they were doing it effectively, there would be no need to change the dates of festivals if they didn’t want to, so it wouldn’t be necessary to move Eostre’s festival to a different date, but they could choose to do so if they wanted it to coincide with (say) the blooming cherries. We have no information about whether they did, so anything we could say on how a leap month would affect it would be speculation.
In general, Eostre is a cultural, not a natural, phenomenon. Any association between Eostre and the moon is cultural, not natural. What you seem to mean by “Eostra and the moon would naturally be associated” is that such an association seems logical to you. You’re entitled to that opinion, although it’s not a mainstream opinion. (See below for the more mainstream position of Eostre being a solar goddess of the dawn.) Even if it were mainstream, holding such an opinion is different from being able to show that the association between Eostre and the moon was part of ancient English culture. We can’t show that.
Showing evidence that some Germanic calendars used a Metonic cycle isn’t really going to change this. We still wouldn’t know if the calendar described by Bede used the Metonic cycle, nor would Bede’s calendar using the Metonic cycle prove an association between Eostre and the moon.
More than this, those who advocate for an international “*Ostara” goddess base their understanding of her worship on the idea that her name means “East” because she represents the dawn or rising sun. The proposed etymology connecting “Eostre” to a wider “Ostara” relies on her being a solar goddess whose name means “to glow red.” Her festival being in the spring is explained as being solar: a celebration of the greening of the earth and the lengthening days. Her festival is usually also thought to be set by the sun, not the moon. Most people suggest the Spring Equinox as the date of her festival; we don’t actually know when it was, but that’s the usual guess. So, even among those who believe Eostre’s cult existed, and that a wider pan-Germanic cult of *Ostara existed, she is explained as a solar goddess, not a lunar goddess. Your position that her festival must have been set by the moon and she must have been associated with the moon is a real outlier in this regard.
Having said all that, it’s probably worth repeating the following, because comments on our blogs are required to be on-topic. These comments focusing solely on the calendar are beginning to drift off-topic:
The only story this post specifically treats is the tale that a goddess called Ostara changed a bird into a hare. This post shows that that story arose in the 19th century. My previous post points out there is no evidence of a hare associated with either Easter or its pagan antecedents in Germany until the 17th century, or in Britain until the 20th.
Thanks again for your comments! On-topic comments are always welcome, as long as they comply with our comments policy.
Harlei harrington says:
I had a question, I had heard that pegans also sacrificed ppl on this day, even babies as it was a day of fertility, and would dip eggs in the blood as well as drink it. Is that true?
Stephen Winick says:
There is no evidence at all for that. In other words, it’s not true!
Colin says:
Mr Winick, Apologies for coming late to the party but just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your post! Thank you for taking the time to research this topic and to set out your thoughts so engagingly! Best wishes!
Mew Xacata says:
Ostara is a religion that I actively practice into which details 32 Deities, 21 Sacred Laws and Five Doctrines. It’s canon includes the LOTR and several other sacred texts, all compiled as a pantheon by a girl named Merlin Pendragon, the adoptive daughter of Arthur Pendragon and visionary.
Now, if this sounds silly, remember: just as Gwynevere is the root name for “Jennifer,” Merlin is the root name for “Marilyn.”. Ironically, the historic Merlin lent her name to a wizard that had a different spelling in Arthurian legend.
Ostara is really Gaelic for “eternity,” a concept into which the Gods are noted for. Adherents are not called “Ostarans” but rather “Gawain.”
Ostara is pronounced more or less “ester” as in Fester (No relations to the Addams Family) and Gawain is both singular and plural. Now this knight of Arthurian legend is a little bit touchy, but please no criticism.
Just remember: Celtic history is tacky given the diversity of the Celtic languages, so there’s no telling if my comment has any basis in reality. If we can have a consensus, then Godspeed.
Kate Laity says:
As a medievalist I ask you to reconsider the use of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’, itself a nineteenth century invention that does not reflect the reality of pre-conquest medieval England.
Stephen Winick says:
Thank you, Kate. I’m a medievalist myself, but lapsed! I haven’t followed the debate that’s been going on about the term “Anglo-Saxon” in real time, but I read up on it after your comment, so thank you for alerting me to it. I’ve taken your suggestion to heart, and removed the term from my own prose, but I’ve kept the old term in quotations from other writers, as I don’t think it rises to the level that I need to expurgate it.
At the risk of arrant pedantry, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that “Anglo-Saxon” in the sense that I have used it is a nineteenth century invention. The terms from which Anglo-Saxon derives began to be used in English by the 10th century, in Royal Charters and in poems like “Aldhelm.” OED believes the Latin term “Angul-Saxones” was borrowed from early English usage, though it seems just as likely to be the opposite, that English got it from Latin. In this case it may initially have been an ethnonym created by Continental Europeans to distinguish Insular Saxons from Continental Saxons. Ælfred calls himself “Angul-Saxonum Rex,” perhaps expressing an aspiration to be King of more people than he actually was, so in this sense you’re quite correct that it didn’t always reflect reality!
It’s true that these terms weren’t used much in English in the post-1066 medieval period, but they kept being used in Latin and emerge into English again in the late sixteenth century, as “Anglesaxon” in 1589 and “Anglo-Saxon” by 1602. Various spellings of the term are then used throughout the 17th and 18th centuries to refer to early medieval English people, language, and culture, which is how I have used it here.
In the very late 18th and 19th centuries, as you’ve suggested, a new meaning of the word emerged: the word came to describe contemporary people. Modern English people and their white colonial descendants, along with their institutions and attitudes, began to be described as “Anglo-Saxon.” This allowed it to become much more charged with racial and nationalist meaning than it had been when it referred exclusively to pre-conquest England. So the nineteenth century invention you describe pertains to a different meaning of “Anglo-Saxon,” not the one I employed.
Still, words are leaky containers, and if the older meaning has been contaminated with this (more) colonialist meaning, I’ll take your suggestion and stop using a term which was never that accurate to begin with!
Mew Xacata says:
I made a few errors on my comment. Ostaric followers are called “Manx” and Ostara is pronounced “ow-stare-uh.” I forgot to tell you that in Ostara, we defend the Akashia (or Akashia Records) from sorcerers and false prophets. The Easter Bunny is just a figure of speech, but the eggs are reminiscent of precious stones and crystals. Let’s just say that the Easter decorations are a by-product of Ostara.
Jamie Hagen says:
As you previously stated eggs have long been a symbol of the resurrection, likewise the hare has long been a symbol of Mary the mother of God due to their interesting nature of being able to concieve without a partner. Their are very old pictures of Mary the mother of God being featured with hares as well as pictures of Mary Mageline being featured with the first Easter egg.
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks for your comment!
I’m not sure what you mean by “their interesting nature of being able to concieve without a partner,” and I’m not sure of the significance of “very old pictures,” but it’s certainly true that the Virgin Mary has sometimes been associated with hares.
The art of coloring and decorating eggs is far older than Mary Magdalene, but by definition they couldn’t have been “Easter eggs” until her lifetime or after. There’s no real evidence for the stories associating Mary Magdalene and Easter eggs, but they are good stories.
Matt says:
I think you are absolutely right about the hare-bird myth’s recent origins. On these other points, would you agree that the Easter celebration/festival has always been associated with spring, fertility, planting, goddesses, North star/Venus, and death/resurrection for 6000 years beginning with the Syrian goddess Inanna? Would you agree that Ishtar and Astarte were celebrated in spring festivals for several thousand years up to the Christianization of Europe? Would you agree that Eostre/Ostara as Germanic goddesses were appropriated from Ishtar/Astarte? Would you agree that phonetically (pronounced exactly the same), symbolically (meaning star), and mythologically (representing spring, goddess, etc.), Easter, Ishtar, Astarte, and Eostre are virtually the same? In my view, Easter has been the predominant goddess celebration throughout Western history that was Christianized. Nothing wrong with Jesus, or the Gospels… but damn, the resurrection story of Jesus got overwritten on top of the perennial story of the Divine Feminine.
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks for your comment, Matt.
No, I would not agree with any of those assertions. I’ll run down why very quickly:
You say: “The Easter celebration/festival has always been associated with spring, fertility, planting, goddesses, North star/Venus, and death/resurrection for 6000 years beginning with the Syrian goddess Inanna.”
This depends on what you mean by “the Easter celebration.” If you mean what is called Pascha in Greek and Latin, it was based on a Jewish holiday, and given its current Christian form because of the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. That celebration was already widespread in Christianity when it was brought to England and had its name changed to Easter. The only thing the Christians certainly took from Germanic paganism is the name of the holiday. If you mean the celebration of Eostre mentioned by Bede, he doesn’t tell us anything about it so it would be pure speculation to claim it had any features in common with a festival of Innana.
You say: “Eostre/Ostara as Germanic goddesses were appropriated from Ishtar/Astarte.”
No, this is not the case. The resemblance between the words Ishtar and Easter is a coincidence. They come from unrelated languages. As I pointed out in a previous comment: “Even if *Ostara was a goddess worshiped in Germany, and even if she was descended from a goddess *H₂ewsṓs worshiped by proto-Indo-Europeans, she would not be related to Ishtar or Inanna, whose names are not Indo-European. This suggestion was made by a Scottish minister named Alexander Hislop in an 1853 anti-Catholic tract called The Two Babylons. As Wikipedia notes: “Because Hislop’s claims have no linguistics foundation, his claims were rejected, but The Two Babylons would go on to have some influence in popular culture. In the 2000s, a popular Internet meme similarly claimed an incorrect linguistic connection between English Easter and Ishtar.”
You say: “Easter, Ishtar, Astarte, and Eostre are virtually the same.”
Not so. Literally the only thing Bede tells us about Eostre is that she had a festival in April. We know nothing else about her. There is no basis for the statement that she is “virtually the same” as any other goddess, since we have no idea what she was like. *Ostara was proposed by scholars, based on the evidence of Eostre. There is no hard evidence of such a goddess worshipped by anyone, and no evidence at all of what she was like. So everything we think we know about her is the result of speculation based on other goddesses, and a claim that she is similar to those other goddesses is therefore purely circular reasoning.
Easter is simply not an example of a European Pagan holiday that was Christianized. Pascha was initially based on Passover, not a European Pagan holiday. Celebration of Pascha was well established by the second century, and its date fixed in 325 CE, before any large-scale conversion of Germanic pagans. So neither the fact of Pascha’s celebration nor its date can be the result of influence from European Paganism. In those early days, it was not called “Easter,” and therefore there is no reason to imagine any connection to Ishtar either. The holiday got its name changed in England to Eostur and then Easter, in a time and place where no one had heard of Ishtar.
Of course, vernacular practices associated with Easter, such as coloring eggs and the like, could be the result of Pagan influence. But the main features of the holiday for Christians who celebrate it are not.
Matt says:
Stepen, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate smart people, and you are. However, I think I can bring you agreement by clarifying a couple of points.
1). I understand the Jewish/Christian celebration of Passover. It was a combining of Pesach and Hag-Hamatzot, both Spring rituals of the Israelite herding and farming communities to protect against evil and assure blessings of the planting and the livestock. As Spring is celebrated in all cultures of antiquity, it is safe to assume that Israelites celebrate Passover at nearly the same time as the Babalonians/Assyrians celebrated a festival to their goddess of spring and fertility, Ishtar. These two cultural celebrations occurred in the same region for several millennia and were deeply ingrained. So, your first premise is incorrect in two ways, that Easter is based on a Jewish holiday. First, Easter (East-Star, Ish-tar) as the pagan celebration found iterations in goddesses and festivals all throughout the Mediterranean and Europe, always separate from Passover. Passover and the Spring celebration to Ishtar are not to be conflated. Secondly, the Jesus resurrection celebration is not to be conflated with Passover either. They are not the same and observed on different days While the Christian churches acknowledge Passover, they do not “celebrate” like the Jews. And, the Christians did not change anything about Passover or usurp in any way.
2). You do not agree that “Eostre/Ostara as Germanic goddesses were appropriated from Ishtar/Astarte.” In every single case, Ish-tar = As-tarte = Os-tara = East-Star (Eostre was phonetic Old English, but was a direct translation of the German word for Easter Os-Stern). It is preposterous to say that there is no connection when the direct meaning of the word and its phonetics are EXACTLY the same (less syllable stress/dialect variation). It is also an unfounded assertion that Germanic Ostara would not be related to Ishtar because the word Ishtar is not Indo-European. Actually, the assertion is downright stupid. No language evolved in a vacuum, the root “tar/tara” was borrowed into the Germanic languages. Ish,Ost,Eost,Ast without any disagreement means “East,” and more specifically the Eastern star/Morning star, Venus.
3). You say, “a claim that she (Ostara) is similar to those other goddesses” is therefore purely circular reasoning. No, not at all. Circular reasoning presupposes “A” based on conjecture “B.” In this case, we agree “A” (Ishtar) is a fact of history. “B” that Ostara is derived from Ishtar in a symbolic and mythological lineage is a hypothesis. In this regard, you would need to offer an alternative hypothesis as to where Ostera came. She appears in the written record with Bede, but as everybody says, he’s not an adequate source to make a determinative judgment. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It’s too bad we do not have more sources about German pagan festivals and celebrations by historians. But, again, the one mention we have is that Ostara is the goddess of spring who has the same name (indisputable) as Ishtar. It is a dead-ringer. I will concede the point that the goddess Ostara may not have been worshiped with idols or in temples, but the pagans all throughout the West did know what they were celebrating. It was the premiere celebration of the year. Kind of like “Father Christmas/Santa Claus,” the myth/deity of East-Star was so ubiquitous everybody knew the story. So, it obviously doesn’t begin with Bede. If you don’t agree with my hypothesis, what are the likely origins of what Bede poorly chronicled?
4). You say, “There is no hard evidence of such a goddess worshiped by anyone, and no evidence at all of what she was like.” Yes, Ostara did not need to be developed as a Germanic goddess, if the myth was universal across wide regions of Europe and the Mediterranean. Also, because East-Star/Ostara means Venus it holds that all the cultures understood the sprint of rebirth and fertility in the context of the celestial bodies. Unlike modern culture, pre-technological cultures understood the movement of planets and stars to be inextricably connected to daily life. The path of Venus/East-Star in Spring IS the story of Ishtar and resurrection/rebirth. That is a fact, beyond any doubt. It is not just a myth, the story is written in the heavens. The people watched it happen before their very eyes, as the herald of a new season of life.
5). You say, “Easter is simply not an example of a European Pagan holiday that was Christianized” As mentioned in point one, Easter was not Christianized Pesach. Pesach did not influence the concurrent pagan celebration of Ishtar/Astarte. They were separate cultural traditions. This is what happened. The pagans all over the Holy Roman Empire celebrated a Spring festival of rebirth called East-Star. Can’t stop a party. So, like all other pagan festivals, the Catholic Church usurped the meaning and myth behind the party. The historical Jesus did not rise from the dead after three days. That is the Inanna/Ishtar resurrection story appropriated. But, hey, the pagans are converted and they can still have a party in Spring celebrating rebirth. Everybody wins (except the goddess).
Stephen Winick says:
I don’t agree with most of this, Matt. Ishtar did not ever mean “East-Star” in Akkadian. The words for East and Star in Akkadian are nothing like “Ishtar.”
“Eostre” was also not borrowed from “Ostern.” There’s no independent evidence of any continental Germanic goddess like *Ostara–she is, rather, a historical linguistic conjecture made by scholars, based on Bede’s testimony that such a goddess existed in England, and the existence of similar words for the Easter holiday in English and German. But a lot of scholars now believe that the simplest explanation for English and German having cognate words for Easter is not the existence of *Ostara. Rather, they argue that the old and modern German words for Easter are simply derived from English “Easter,” because most of Germany was converted by English missionaries who already called Easter “Eostre.”
So if *Ostara never existed, what is my “alternate hypothesis” (as you call it) explaining Eostre? It’s not mine per se, but was suggested long ago, and supported by Richard Sermon (2008) and Phillip Shaw (2011): that Eostre was simply a local goddess from Bede’s area of England. The archaeological record (or rather the complete lack of archaeological record concerning both Eostre and Ostara), along with some place name data, support this hypothesis, but like most of ancient history it will never be “proven.”
I have had long discussions on this in the comment threads to this and other posts here on “Folklife Today,” and you’re welcome to read them–just search the blog for “Easter!”
Matt says:
Stephen, thank you for your reply.
Please be patient. I can show a strongly suggestive proto-indo-European link between Easter-Ishtar. It has been hiding in plain sight and Hilsop missed it. Not that he is the expert, he was disagreeable in many ways, but after scholars discounted him and became skeptical of Bede/Grimm, nobody wants to go against the current popular opinion regarding this issue. My contention is that it is not settled and there is still much to learn with the historical references we do have by making new associations between them.
In the case of linguistic evolution/appropriation over time the “phenomenon” (natural or cultural) described by words always precedes the words themselves. Words are limited descriptors. Single words have different meanings. And, different words can mean the same thing. The Akkadian “kakkabu” and its variations are translated as “like a star,” “star shaped,“ “shining,” “a rosette,” “a brand for animals/slaves.” Sure, this word became “stars” in Hebrew. But, what about a special star? A star that crossed the heavens. It heralded the dawn in the East before the sun rose after mysteriously disappearing for three days from the western horizon, reborn! This was the goddess star, the crossing star, evening star, and morning star/eastern star. ISHTAR. Everywhere you see this goddess depicted over thousands of years and in multiple cultures her personified form is accompanied by her symbol the eight pointed “Star of Ishtar/Inanna,” known to represent the planet Venus. To say that the word (with matching phoneme) Ishtar had no reference to “star” (the specific word the ancients would use when pointing to the morning star in the East), or could not be used in language to represent “star” is rationally/academically incomprehensible.
As far as “East” that would be a direction associated with both the morning star/Ishtar and the goddess of the dawn Eos (h2ewsos) that you already pointed out. That is still a pagan “root” for the word Easter. East has nothing to do with Passover and as a direction would never be translated from “Pascha.” It is not outside the realm of possibility that the first phoneme/syllable in the pronunciation of Ishtar became synonymous with the cardinal direction of East. I’m not putting too much weight on that argument, as the “East” part of Ostern/Eostre is an obvious reference to the daily resurrection of the sun or seasonal resurrection of the planet Venus/Ishtar-still more pagan than Christian.
But here is the fun part, that I don’t think has been discussed elsewhere! It hinges around the girl’s name and associated book of the Hebrew Old Testament, Esther. Linguistics first. Proto-Into-European (*h2ster) means “star.” Old Persian (Stara/Setare), Persian (Hester), and its Hebrew translation, “Esther” become a GIRL’s name meaning Heavenly Star. That is a DIRECT phonetic AND semantic match for Ishtar and her salutations, “Goddess Star” or “Lady of Heaven.” And, I’m sure you’re familiar with all the Greek (aster) and Latin (astra) permutations of “star” in those languages and English.
While you let that sink in, dust off your Bible and read the Book of Esther. It takes less than ten minutes. Or, here is the spoiler. It is the Babylonian captivity. The Jews are subjugated again. A Jewish heroine of unparalleled beauty is approved by seven princes (guardians?) as a new queen for the Babylonian king. There is a plot to kill all the Jews. She strips her beautiful garments and mourns with sackcloth and ashes for three days. She faces the king without a summons (usually punishable by death) but wins his favor and the permission to stop the plot! Her people are saved on the third day and are told to observe a “new” feast of Purim. Not only is this a retelling of the descent of Inanna/Ishtar as a seat of your pants novella, but she has the exact same name of the Babylonian goddess whose spring festival she is usurping. And, this makes perfect sense! As the Jews gain dominance politically again they need to convert the pagans. What better way to do that than to tell a much better story than the descent of Inanna and permit the same festivals and customs, minus the fornication. Of note, is that Hebrew scholars have no problem admitting this about Esther (nor does my New American Catholic Bible in the footnotes) It’s the Israelites win against their previous captors for whom the tables have been turned. And Jews still eat little vulva Purim cakes filled with seed fruit, once the invitation for romance/sex/celebration during the feast of Inanna/Ishtar .
Your thoughts?
Note: I couldn’t find the Easter blog on the Folklife Today page. I apologize if there was a better thread to post this.
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Matt. It’s long been suggested that there is a connection between Ishtar and Star. Many modern scholars don’t think so, so the position is not “rationally/academically incomprehensible.” It’s just that many people who have studied the matter disagree with you. There may be such a connection, but many scholars also don’t agree with you about the direction of the loan. Many believe that Proto-Semitic borrowed *ʕaṯtar- from Proto-Indo-European *h₂stḗr (the root of “star”), leading to Akkadian having a version of the word. Sumerians then named a goddess “Ishtar” after this borrowed word for “star.” In this case, the word “star” in Indo-European languages, and names derived from “star,” are not descended from “Ishtar,” they’re just derived in the normal way Indo-European words descended into our modern languages, and Indo-European peoples were completely unaware that their word “star” had been borrowed for the name of a Mesopotamian goddess.
As for “east” and “dawn,” the observation of the dawn in the east is universal among humans, and it’s more likely in most scholars’ estimation that gods and goddesses of the east and dawn arose separately all over the world, including in England, than that a supposed cult of Ishtar migrated from Iraq to England. We don’t posit that all thunder gods are derived from Ishkur, so why must we accept that all dawn goddesses are based on Ishtar? If dawn goddesses arose separately, then Eostre MIGHT be conceptually related to Ishtar, and might have some features in common with her, simply based on them both being dawn goddesses. But the problem is that Bede never says Eostre is a dawn goddess or associates her with Venus or stars, or tells us of any of her features except a festival in April. We may project “dawn” onto her, or Venus, or stars, based on her name meaning “east;” but these are conjectures, not things we know about Eostre. In the meantime, I don’t think there’s any good evidence of any annual celebration of Ishtar from ancient records, although some people similarly project a springtime feast and symbols onto Ishtar from other dawn goddesses. So the situation we often get is people pointing out “resemblances” between different dawn goddesses that only seem to exist because people in the past compiled what they knew about dawn goddesses into one composite picture and projected that picture back onto individual goddesses. This is the circular reasoning I spoke of before.
If we believe Bede, there is a Pagan root for the WORD Easter, yes. But the HOLIDAY of Easter is called that only in English and German. Everywhere else it’s called a variant of the word “passover.” It’s not called Easter in North Germanic or Scandinavian languages, or even in West Germanic languages like Dutch. We know the history of the holiday of Easter, and how it came to England and Germany, and we know it’s more or less the same holiday that’s celebrated in Italy, France, Spain, Sweden, etc., where it was never called “Easter.” It’s in this sense that I say Easter was not a Pagan holiday that was borrowed into Christianity. It’s a holiday created by Christians, assigned to a particular time of year by Christians, and then brought to Europe. It happens to land in some European countries at times where there may have been Pagan holidays. But unlike other Christian holidays such as All Hallows, it doesn’t seem to have been assigned to a time where Pagan holidays were being celebrated already in order to make conversion easier–rather, there is a long and detailed reason for setting the date of Easter that had nothing to do with converting Pagans in Europe. In England, the month during which this holiday fell was already called “Eastermonth” because of a previous holiday, so the Christian holiday came to be called Easter there. English clerics then converted Germany, so the holiday came to be called Easter there as well. In other words, the fact that it’s called “Easter” in some West Germanic languages appears to be a historical accident, not a hidden deep history that was expunged everywhere else the paschal feast is celebrated. From Pagan holidays, Easter may also have borrowed the secular aspects such as bunnies and eggs. Or, those secular aspects may be truly secular, since bunnies and eggs are plentiful in Spring.
It’s also long been suggested there is an etymological connection between Ishtar and Esther, and in general this is accepted as a strong possibility. But again, we don’t know what the connection is. There’s no clear mythological connection. Contrary to your statement, the story of Esther has very little in common with the story of the Descent of Inanna. There is no extant myth that involves both Ishtar and Marduk (for whom Mordecai seems to be named). The scholarly consensus on the Esther story is that it’s a work of fiction created to justify Jews celebrating a secular Persian holiday. As such, it needn’t have deep mythological roots, and indeed it doesn’t seem to. Some scholars believe that Esther and Mordecai have simply taken a Persian and a Babylonian name because they or their ancestors lived in those places. Assimilated Jews often take names common in the places they live, Americans having for example a “Hebrew name” and an “English name”; the story tells us that “Esther” is a name assumed later, and that her given name is Hadassah. As with many deities, the name of “Ishtar” might have become a woman’s given name, but then, so might the word “star” in a secular sense. So Esther (and the writer of the megillah) might not even have known of a connection between the name and a goddess Ishtar. Assuming Esther did know, she might have assumed a name with religious overtones to more completely hide her Jewish roots, as the story suggests by pointing out that “STR” is the Hebrew root for “conceal.” Meanwhile, “Marduk” or Mordecai was a common given name among advisors to the Persian kings. So it’s not surprising that people should have these names in that time and place, and there’s no reason to assume any mythological significance for the names. But in any case, Purim is not Easter, so this is essentially a change of subject.
The Easter posts can be found here:
Thanks again!
Azure V. says:
Good evening, or morning.
I have nothing of scholarly importance to impart upon this thread, however I just wanted to express how much of an absolute fan I have become of you, Stephen. From the well written and organized article you posted years ago, to the dedication you have shown in maintaining current communication with your commenters, and further still to the little owl pin you claim to wear, everything I have come to glean about you and your personality from this one blog has filled me with admiration for your intellect and character. I adore that your stance is completely and wholly scholarly in nature; you have no overtly obvious religious or personal morals seem into the tapestry of your article or follow-up comments. To me, the tone of your text is filled with the pure simple joy of knowing something to be as true as it possibly can be, at least until it is one day possibly proven otherwise. I wish more of the world were like you; I wish I was like you, but in my youth I have discovered an inability to maintain focus on texts that are generally lifeless in nature or, well, extraordinary in word choice to the point of confusion (in the sense that I could understand the words individually, yet combined and strung together I feel as though I’m on the receiving end of a button-mashing combo move from some over-played video game).Anyway. The vibe I get from your posts very much reflects the type of individual who not only works in, but borderline lives in a library. If I am understanding correctly that this is your livelihood, I am confident you picked the right profession. You seem very passionate about knowing things, and yet have the patience to maintain a sense of decorum even in the face of stubborn (should I say ignorance?) individuals who really just either want to be right or want to prove you wrong somehow- even if it means they have to completely derail the topic of discussion to merely attempt to do so.
Well, I won’t lie, I’m not feeling slightly embarrassed by how blatantly I feel I’m flattering you, but you deserve it. And it’s 4 AM for me, so I’ve a bit of late night/early morning courage to ignore the awkwardness I’m sure I’m the only one feeling.
Anywayyyyssss
TLDR
You’re cool, and thank you for your contributions to the Internet 🙂Stephen Winick says:
Wow, thanks, Azure V.!
matt says:
Thank you for your reply. I had been putting together a long response, but then found two well-researched articles that pretty much sum it up. The core argument is that the WORD Easter does not derive from the Passover custom it evolved from. There would be no controversy if all the Christian world just called the holiday Resurrection Sunday or a version of Pasche. So you have the neo-pagans and atheists like Richard Dawkins saying “ha!” your are celebrating a pagan holiday! And they propagated the Easter-Ishtar meme that put the internet and thousands of Christians on the defensive (even though Hislop originated this idea). There is just as much misinformation in the defense of Easter as a purely Chrisitian tradition, which it is not. All the arguments I made earlier are supported in an academic article by Richard Sermon, and another good lay article commentary on it.
https://www.academia.edu/19634106/From_Easter_to_Ostara_the_Reinvention_of_a_Pagan_Goddess
Stephen Winick says:
Hi Matt,
You say: “All the arguments I made earlier are supported in an academic article by Richard Sermon, and another good lay article commentary on it.” But in fact, neither of those sites agrees with most of what you’ve been saying. Richard Sermon agrees with me—in fact, he’s one of the scholars I have cited in my responses, so it’s more accurate to say I agree with him.
In brief, your claim was:“In every single case, Ish-tar = As-tarte = Os-tara = East-Star (Eostre was phonetic Old English, but was a direct translation of the German word for Easter Os-Stern).”
Sermon’s main suggestion, included in the abstract and repeated twice in the paper, is that the cult of *Ostara as reconstructed by Grimm and others did not exist. Rather, Easter is called Ostern in German because English clerics who converted Germany brought the name with them, and because the Englishman Alcuin was Charlemagne’s main advisor in religious matters. In other words, Ostern is a translation of Eostre; this is the opposite of your claim that Eostre was translated from Ostern. This is exactly what I expressed in my answer to comment 55.
Sermon presents two other linguistic possibilities, but none of them agrees with the word Ostara meaning “East Star.” One theory is that Ostarun is derived from a different PIE root meaning “draw water,” and referred originally to baptism; the other is that “Eostre” was a mistranslation of “white” since Easter week was sometimes called “white week,” and since the Latin for “dawn” resembles the Latin for “white.” (This last is not generally accepted since the *H₂ewsṓs root does not usually mean “dawn” in Germanic languages.) Neither of these agrees at all with the idea of Ostara meaning “East-Star.” Your contention that “In every single case, Ish-tar = As-tarte = Os-tara = East-Star” is not supported, to my knowledge, by any linguist or archaeologist, and is certainly not supported by Sermon in this essay.
The second site you linked to shows that there was apparently a Greek-speaking non-citizen resident (peregrinus) of Roman Britain living in late antiquity who worshipped Astarte. This is not a great surprise. Hundreds of classical inscriptions have been found all over Britain. But if a cult of Astarte thrived to the extent that people were worshipping her 300 years later by the name Eostre, we would expect many more inscriptions than one. In Britain there are, for example, dozens of inscriptions to Silvanus and to Hercules, hundreds to Jupiter and Mars. The fact that there was one to Astarte does not prove her cult had any great influence, it just proves the occasional Greek or Syrian came through Britain.
Sermon of course does mention the Astarte altar, but he doubts that it has anything to do with Eostre because (1) it is an isolated altar, not indicating a cult center; (2) it is the only inscription to Astarte ever found in Britain, and (3) it is over 400 years before Bede, with no evidence of any presence of an Astarte cult in the interim.
I would add a fourth reason to doubt: it’s in Greek, which is the language neither of the local population nor of the colonial authorities. There were Greek-speaking soldiers and traders in Britain of course, but they were more transient and had fewer compatriots than either Roman citizens or local Britons. It’s harder to imagine a community of Astarte worshippers than of Jupiter worshippers, because there weren’t large populations from Asia in Britain, and the archaeological record backs this up.
Finally, another caution is that we only assume it says “of Astarte,” which would be “ΑΣΤAPΤΗΣ;” in practice there’s a big gouge in it and unusual orthography, which means what we can actually read is “ΑCΤ…ΤΗC.” Astarte’s a good guess, made in the 18th century, but we can’t be sure.
The Skribbatous site actually discounts the entire etymological argument positing any connections among Eostre, Ostara, and Ishtar going back to Proto-Indo-European, so it disagrees with all of the “East-star” material you laid out above. Instead, it suggests that worship of Astarte herself, under that name, might have been imported to Britain in Roman times by Greek-speakers, and that Eostre developed out of this local imported cult of Astarte in a couple of hundred years. That’s a very different argument from the one you’ve been making.
The Skribbatous site claims that “it’s problematic to imagine “how a cult like Ēostre’s could have developed uniquely amongst the English within the relatively short timespan that they were pagan” without this foreign influence, and concludes that “It’s not a very workable scenario.” In fact, it’s perfectly workable. There are many indications that Germanic peoples, like Celtic peoples, had a multitude of local gods, worshipped in small areas over short spans of time, many of which are lost to history. Philip Shaw (2011) points out that the gods we know about are probably just “the tip of the iceberg of irrecoverable deities,” and that votive inscriptions indicate a great variety of deities “even within short timescales and comparatively small areas.” Indeed, the idea that she couldn’t be of English origin is a strange suggestion to make regarding only Ēostre, considering that Bede himself in the same chapter mentions another English goddess, Hreda or Hrēþe, who also has no known Continental counterpart. Either we have to discount Bede (in which case there never was a goddess Eostre), or we need to find an explanation for Hreda, or we have to admit there’s no impediment to new gods and goddesses arising among the English.
Essentially, Sermon and Skribbatous present two ideas. The first is that Eostre was purely local and English in origin, but then, by historical accident, had her name given to a Christian holiday in English and German. The other is that Astarte, an ancient foreign goddess from Asia, was imported to England by Greek speakers a few hundred years before the Saxons arrived, had her name changed to Eostre, was worshipped long enough for Bede to know about her, and by a similar accident had HER name given to a Christian holiday in English and then German. Neither of these matches the scenario you describe. Sermon seems to find the first option more plausible (advancing it without giving reasons why he doubts it), and Shaw certainly does. I do as well. The anonymous Skribbatous author finds the other option more plausible, but I’m not sure why. Even Skribbatous, however, doesn’t go so far as to say that’s actually what happened:
“Do I think Ēostre is Astarte? No, that can’t be proved…but connecting Astarte to Ēostre is actually a more tenable theory than the reconstructed “Germanic Dawn Goddess” is.
So, I’m with both Sermon and Skribbatous on Ēostre NOT being Astarte, and I’m also with both of them on Ēostre NOT being a pan-Germanic or Pan-European dawn goddess, but I’m with Sermon on the most reasonable conclusion being an English origin for Ēostre.If I understood your position, it was that Astarte essentially became a pan-European dawn goddess, whose English name was Ēostre.
Another of your contentions throughout was that goddesses associated with Venus and goddesses associated with dawn are the same.
The Skribbatous site, on the other hand, says:
“Venus does not bear comparison to a Dawn Goddess.”
As you can see, it’s certainly not true that all your arguments are supported by these articles.
Having said all that, it’s probably worth repeating the following, because comments on our blogs are required to be on-topic. These comments focusing solely on the relationship between Ishtar and Eostre have drifted off-topic:
The only story this post specifically treats is the tale that a goddess called Ostara changed a bird into a hare. This post shows that that story arose in the 19th century. My previous post points out there is no evidence of a hare associated with either Easter or its pagan antecedents in Germany until the 17th century, or in Britain until the 20th.
Thanks again for your comments! On-topic comments are always welcome, as long as they comply with our comments policy.
Matt says:
I found this post searching “Ostara.” And the thread conversation seemed to be open to looking at the origin of the word Easter. This topic would not belong in your other posts. I apologize if it is off topic. I really do appreciate your expertise and feedback. I understand it takes a lot of time to reply… and I do not expect you to do so right away. I really enjoy the dialogue and have learned from your critiques. I am only replying now to sort of save my dignity… your reply was a bit of a smack-down.
Yes, I did mix up the loan between England and Germany that presupposes Eostre and a spring holiday dedicated to her arose spontaneously in Kent. Apologies. Yes, “East-Star” is way oversimplified but almost everyone agrees with the Eos/Dawn root of the first syllable. East derives from Eos… and is phonetically closer to the pronunciation of Easter. Some version of STR makes the second syllable in 10+ Germanic languages and in all cases means “star” if seen as a root. Again, my ignorance of academic linguistics shows. I did not realize that “Eostre” was considered a “whole chunk” and not a conjunction of two root words for each syllable. It is confusing in that the words East, Dawn, Spring, Goddess, Morning Star and the Planet Venus have roots in different ancient languages from PIE, Proto Semitic, Akkadian, Sanskrit to literally hundreds of others on the language tree that seem to have overlapping meaning and phonemes between those things, yet could still be used between various language speakers worldwide to reference mainly Venus or the Morning Star. That is the one constant and the Morning Star was very significant to hundreds myths about Spring and rebirth.
My main thesis was that a “dawn-star” spring goddess of April MUST relate to Venus or the “morning-star” in a region that was previously occupied by Romans for 350 years. The Roman month of Aprillis (derived from Astarte via Aphrodite) involved a celebration of spring, the dawn/morning star (Venus), and vernal equinox called Veneralia. Setting linguistics aside, ALL European pagan cultures celebrated the arrival of spring at the vernal equinox before Christianity having nothing whatsoever to do with Passover or the Jesus resurrection myth. The question is not “if” Eostre or Eosturmonath is pagan. The question is how this celebration evolved from local and imported cultural influences over time. That is a long conversation with a lot of moving parts. It certainly is not decided only by the linguists (though that input is important) who either cannot agree on numerous theories or just don’t have enough evidence to say for sure that given arguments about the origin of Easter as a word and as a cultural celebration are “true” or “false.”
The idea of speakers of multiple German dialects over a thousand years referencing the third most imprortant celestial body in the night sky as “East” or “Dawn” Star to represent Spring is just as much a conjecture as Bede/Grimm’s Eostre/Ostara. I mean, they didn’t have a written word to work with, just a word from oral tradition that they did their best to reconstruct.
I will exit this dialogue, with respect to your vast knowledge and thank you for giving me the opportunity to learn some new things.
Peace and Blessings!
Stephen Winick says:
Thanks, Matt. Sorry if my previous response sounded harsh; it wasn’t intentional!
To answer you briefly, you say:
(1) My main thesis was that a “dawn-star” spring goddess of April MUST relate to Venus or the “morning-star” in a region that was previously occupied by Romans for 350 years.
(2) The Roman month of Aprillis (derived from Astarte via Aphrodite) involved a celebration of spring, the dawn/morning star (Venus), and vernal equinox called Veneralia.
(3) Setting linguistics aside, ALL European pagan cultures celebrated the arrival of spring at the vernal equinox before Christianity having nothing whatsoever to do with Passover or the Jesus resurrection myth.
(4) The question is not “if” Eostre or Eosturmonath is pagan. The question is how this celebration evolved from local and imported cultural influences over time.
My responses:
(1) One of the reasons many scholars no longer think of Eostre as a “dawn goddess” is that in Germanic languages, unlike other Indo-European languages, the word for Dawn is not related to the word for East. Calling something “east” in English or German doesn’t make us think of “dawn.” We don’t try to evoke the beauty of the dawn by saying “it was as beautiful as east,” nor would most of us name our daughters “East” to suggest dawn-like qualities. This was apparently already true of Germanic languages at the time that the Saxons invaded England (because it’s true of the Germanic languages generally, suggesting it was true of proto-Germanic), making both *Ostara and Eostre unlikely names for a Germanic dawn goddess, who would more likely be called something like *Dagan. As I’ve covered before, “Star” is not etymologically part of Eostre, which just means “East.” So there’s not much justification in even calling her a “‘dawn-star’ Spring goddess;” both “dawn” and “star” are meanings projected onto her from our ideas about other goddesses.
(2) Under the Roman Julian calendar, the spring equinox is not in Aprilis, but in Martius, and given the name Hilaria. Martius corresponds to Bede’s other month named after a goddess, “Rhed-monath a deo illorum Rheda.” So celebration of the Spring equinox would more naturally be assigned to Rheda rather than Eostre.
(3) In fact, there’s little evidence that pagan west-Europeans celebrated the Spring equinox at all. Both the modern Pagan “wheel of the year” and the various Norse-derived modern Heathen sects call the Spring equinox by Grimm’s reconstructed name “Ostara,” precisely because there isn’t a surviving Celtic, Germanic, or Norse word for the March equinox. Similarly, the September equinox in both Celtic and Norse-derived modern polytheism is often given the somewhat arbitrary Welsh name Mabon, assigned in about 1970, because no older Celtic, Germanic or Norse name for that equinox survives either. Most evidence, at least for Western Europe, points to the cross-quarter days and solstices having great importance, but not so much the equinoxes–although as you say, the Romans did observe them with minor festivals.
(4) No one said there was a question whether Eostre or Eosturmonath were pagan; of course they are. I said Easter is not pagan, because Easter is a Christian feast first celebrated in the early Church long before Saxons came to England. It was brought to Europe under the name Pascha. In England and Germany, it happened to be renamed after a month which had in turn been named after a goddess; but this was not true in Italy, Greece, France, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Wales, Ireland, etc. The only thing about Easter that we know was appropriated from paganism is the English and German name for the holiday. (Most scholars also don’t support your contention that the story of Jesus’s resurrection was based on the descent of Inanna, with which it has very little in common.)
Obviously, we could go on forever, but I do think this has gone off topic, and we should probably leave it here. Many thanks again for your comments!
Matt says:
Just a question. I am deferring to your expertise. Did Bede construct the word Eostre from oral testimony about the alleged goddess and month she was named after? In other words, he heard the two syllables (phonemes) “Eos-Stre” in conversation about the topic, rather than ever having a written example of the word? Thus, he created the word for the unknown to him goddess without reference to prior written examples?
Second, did he do the same with Eos-Stur-Monath? Or, was there any reference of this word in print before his writing?
Stephen Winick says:
Books were not printed in English for hundreds of years after Bede, so there was certainly no “reference of this word in print.” If you mean “in writing” for both words, we just don’t know and probably never will. No pre-Bede reference to Eostre has survived, but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t seen one. With only a few exceptions such as Pliny, we can only infer which books by pagans Bede had read because he avoided citing non-Christian authors; but we know from the textual similarities that he did use pagan sources without attribution. Almost no English-language manuscripts have survived from before the time of Bede, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any or that he hadn’t seen them. Even the surviving manuscripts of Bede’s (Latin, Christian) book were copied out after his death, so we can’t confirm how he personally spelled anything. Alas, any ingenious theories calling Eosturmonath “*Eos-Stur-Monath” must remain modern speculation.
matt says:
Hi Stephen, Only saving straightforward questions for you. I know it is off topic, but it is still an Easter question. I understand the Catholic church wanted to distance themselves from celebrating the resurrection, Palm Sunday, or Holy Week as “passover” because of confusion with the Jewish celebration happening at the same time and possibly due to outright hostility to the Jewish faith at the time. It is interesting that Christainatiy started with a mandate to “spread the word” or evangelize the Gospels in a very multicultural environment of the Roman Empire. It starts out where Christians sort of modify Passover with an emphasis on Palm Sunday and Jesus being celebrated as the passover sacrifice or passover lamb. So now they have a new religious ritual, feast day celebration with the same name and timing as the Jewish one that preceded it. It’s not that Christians don’t “believe” in the Passover, they accept that doctrine as-is, but just start celebrating a different ritual with a new myth. As you stated, early christians celebrated Pasche all throughout the Christianized world, and the Orthodox Church still to this day uses the word Pasche officially, not Easter. Yet, somehow in the backwoods of the Church’s developing sphere of influence a local Saxon word for a spring month and alleged feast to an alleged goddess gets borrowed back to the Papal Headquarters. In the 8th century Bede and ALL of Christendom celebrated the resurrection/Holy Week as Pasche.
Here is my question. And, I looked and looked. When did the Catholic Church first start using the word Easter to describe Holy Week? My guess was that it was sometime in the Avignon Papacy only because it held jurisdiction over Saxon/Germanic locals using the word Easter to describe spring festivals/feasts at the time the word was borrowed. Or, for all we know the Lutheran church first started using the word in the 15th century and then the Catholics followed suit. The extension of that question is why? We know the pagan/heathen/folk religions celebrated “something” in spring (that may or may not have a goddess associated with it). Why would the all-powerful church headquarters (Lutheran or Catholic) with all their obsessive fussing and violence over “proper” resurrection doctrine adopt a local folk religion word to describe their most holy day of ritual celebration?
Stephen Winick says:
Hi Matt,
I’m not an expert on the Catholic Church, but I’ll give this a shot. First off, I’m not sure what you mean by “using the word Easter.” The official language of the Catholic Church is not English, so the central Church authorities don’t use the word Easter. They use Pascha. But the church has never effectively forbidden Catholics from calling holidays by their own languages’ vernacular names. So for example, the English call Holy Thursday “Maundy Thursday” and Pentecost “Whitsun” and the Feast of the Annunciation “Lady Day.” Similarly, the French call Shrove Tuesday “Mardi Gras,” the Norwegians call Christmas “Jul,” and the Welsh call Good Friday “Dydd Gwener y Groglith.” Even “Christmas” is just a “local folk religion word” used only in English for what is officially Nativitas. So if the Church DIDN’T let English people call it “Easter,” that would be the anomaly that required explanation.
As for your suggestion that the name Easter was purely local, remember that the likely scenario is that the name Easter was brought to Germany by English clerics who converted the Germans. Charlemagne’s advisor Einhard tells us that Charlemagne gave the months names “in his native language,” one of which was “Osturmanoth.” This tells us that Charlemagne spoke a dialect of Old High German and likely called the holiday by a version of the name Easter. Now remember Charlemagne’s alliances with Pope Adrian I and Leo III. Charlemagne’s political and military power saved Leo’s life and papacy when the pope was attacked and beaten in 799, and partly as a return favor, Leo crowned Charlemagne “Emperor,” reviving the Western Roman Empire. For many years thereafter the Church’s power was bolstered by the armies of the “Holy Roman Empire,” which spoke German and called the holiday a version of “Easter.” So it’s not that surprising that the Church would tolerate this name.
So the short answer is that the Church doesn’t use the name Easter in its official language, but it seemingly has always tolerated versions of the name in the Germanic languages. This is certainly because it is generally tolerant of vernacular names for holidays, and possibly also because German-speakers were the muscle of the church for centuries beginning with Charlemagne.
matt says:
Actually, this is the perfect answer. It kind of explains everything in a way that everyone is half right. Easter as a word originates as a description of a Saxon/English/Germanic pagan/folk/heathen spring feast/ritual/celebration. The particulars of which are lost to history (especially the existence of a hypothetical regional or appropriated goddess), and the recent neo-pagan/Wiccan creations are a sincere, if inaccurate recreation of this lost cultural practice. That does not mean “Easter,” as is celebrated by Christians, is of “pagan” origin, even if a few hold-out traditions related to colored eggs, hot cross buns, and hares are non-doctrinal. As you explain beautifully, while the vernacular word had other local connotations, the culture shifted what was represented by the word in Charlemagne’s time to the dominant Catholic celebration of Holy Week/Christ’s resurrection. The church never meant to pick up any pagan sympathies by allowing use of the word, but likely assumed it was a direct (even though it’s not) translation of Pasha/Passover. The somewhat far-fetched theory of the phonemes represented by the syllables “Es/Est” and “Str/Ster” (that means dawn/east and star in all germanic/indo-european languages) is creative hypotheses, with no evidence to prove or disprove its connection to the goddess incarnations of the dawn or Venus represented by Ishtar or Astarte. Thus, we can only hope for excavations or lost texts to come to light that give us clues as to any cultural practices and beliefs related to what the locals celebrated before Bede as Eosturmonath. I sincerely thank you for advancing my understanding and certainly humbling my at first arrogant posts.
Matt says:
Just for fun here… I want to point out that there were Jewish settlers in Germanic city-states as early as 350 AD. More than that, Jewish merchants and financiers gained high positions of influence and respect in the region despite periodic anti-semetic purges. Politics, war, finance, and trade (in addition to religion, farming, and folk customs) are inextricably linked with the need for a common calendar. It is interesting that the Hebrew month of Adar celebrates in Purim the Israelite heroine, Esther, her adventure noted in the book of the same name in the Old Testament Bible. A mainstay of Purim is the baking of Purim cakes. That is a four thousand year tradition that is still observed today. How crazy is it that the Anglo-Saxon calendar month, Solmonab means “month of (baking) hearth-cakes.” Though Bede received criticism for this translation early on, others preferring to translate the month as “mud-month,” other references for the Old Saxon word, Sol have confirmed its translation as “hearth-cake.” We don’t know if the Germanic tribes had a concurrent folk tradition to bake cakes to either of the goddesses Bede hypothesized, but it would be odd to think they did, especially when the historical consensus now agrees there is no other evidence besides his conjecture for Rheda/Hretha or Eostre. So the naming of the month is either a result of Bede’s lazy conjecture or a four thousand year old tradition practiced by a highly influential yet politically inert co-culture that thrived within both the previous declining Roman empire and the budding Christian aristocracy and Germanic city-states. The next Jewish month is Nissan, known as the month of redemption. In Bede’s Rhedmonath, the phoneme “rhed” is the same as Latin “redi” meaning redemption. This is just a bridge and it only holds weight in context of Hebrew connection in the Anglo-Saxon months that precede it and come after it. Next Hebrew month is Iyyar pronounced “Ea-Yar” It is the month Passover is celebrated. Remembering that we have no written words (only phonemes) to document the evolution of many languages fertilized between Latin speaking Romans/Britons, Old German/Norse speaking tribes, and European Jews, it is just as well to say that in 700 AD the syllables making the sound, “Ea-Star” evolved from exchanges in academic, business, finance, and political circles between influential Jews and the local “dominant” cultures. And here again we find overlap in the sound of the word with only an added hard consonant “st” in the middle of the word and a very strong correlation with the celebration (Pascha and Spring) that the month represents. It is also supportive that Iyyar means both rosette/blossom as well as “radiance,’ “light.” Hmm… a Germanic or Latin translation for radiance would be “Ster/Star/Aster” Quick aside, my close friend in graduate school was Indian and he told me his name was “Amish” pronounced like the Pennsylvania-Dutch religious sect. It wasn’t until I attended his wedding that I heard his family and friends pronouncing his name correctly and totally different than how he told me to pronounce it, that I understood he was trying to make it easy for his white-American friends to speak his name. So, a high placed Jewish merchant in 500 AD is writing up a ship’s manifest for goods to be delivered in “Iyyar-monath” and explains to his Anglo business associate it means “month of radiance” like “Star.” The Anglo, comfortable with hard consonants, but not wanting to offend replies, “Yes, the goods will be delivered by Ea-St-Yar-Monath.” My guess is as good as Bede’s. Someday if there is an afterlife, I’d love to know how this all went down.
Stephen Winick says:
Hi again, Matt. I’m afraid I can’t agree that your opinion is as good as Bede’s, nor that Bede’s opinion constitutes a “guess.” So let’s start there: it is simply not true that “the historical consensus now agrees there is no other evidence besides [Bede’s] conjecture for Rheda/Hretha or Eostre.” That statement is wrong on two counts.
First, there is no scholarly consensus that his statements are conjecture. He himself does not say they are conjecture, though he had the option to do so. If there is any scholarly consensus, it is that these statements are more likely to be things he had heard than things he simply guessed; he had no need to report guesses as fact, nor would it be honest to do so. It would on the other hand be honest to report things he had heard as fact, so long as he believed them to be true. If Bede heard and believed that Eosturmonath was named after a goddess named Eostre, which is the situation most scholars believe occurred, his statement was not conjecture–though it may or may not be considered hearsay.
Second, the scholarly consensus is merely that there is no other DIRECT evidence for these goddesses. But those who study pre-Christian Germanic religion believe there is substantial circ*mstantial evidence supporting Bede’s claim, especially for Eostre. This includes place-name evidence, and the fact that the form “Eosturmonath” and many of the place-name forms seem etymologically more correct if they refer to a goddess than if they refer to the direction east or things that are eastern. (Note that Bede was not familiar with the language rules from which “Eosturmonath” would be derived from “Eostre,” so he could not have effectively faked this.)
As for your statement that “the phoneme ‘rhed’ is the same as Latin ‘redi’ meaning redemption,” this too is erroneous. You’re actually talking about phones or groups of phones, organized into morphemes, not phonemes. “Redi” is not a phoneme in this Latin context, nor does it mean “redemption;” the morphemes in Redemptio are “re-” and “emptio.” The “d” stems from a a phonetic convention in Latin of placing a d between “re-” and a morpheme beginning with a vowel. One could argue that “red-” is a form of the morpheme “re-,” but the morpheme “re-” or “red-” simply means “back” or “again.” It is the other morpheme, “emptio,” meaning “procure” or “buy,” that gives “redemption” most of its meaning. Finally, though sometimes spelled “rhed” in modern times, the OE morpheme you’re speaking about is spelled “Hrēd” by Bede. “Hrēd” is obviously phonetically different from “re-” or “red-,” and though this has lost phonemic significance in modern English it had that significance in Old English; “read” meant “red” but “hread” meant “reed.” So these language elements are not “the same,” nor are they “phonemes,” and in fact phonemically “hred” is different in OE than “red.”
If we follow your logic that “hrēd” is somehow “the same” as Latin “re(d)-,” the month “Hrēdmonath” would not mean “month of redemption” but possibly something like “repeated month” or “month of return.” But “hrēd” does not have this meaning in any other Germanic context. Given that Bede spells OE “monaþ” as “monath,” most scholars believe he was similarly using “Hrēd” for “Hréð,” which was conventional when writing OE words in the Latin alphabet. Thus, scholars believe the first phoneme in this word is “hréð,” which is likely to derive from “hréð,” which was a noun meaning “victory,” or from “hréðe,” which was an adjective meaning “fierce.” Given that the equivalent Roman month was named after a war god, Mars, the idea that the English month should be named for a goddess whose name meant “fierce” or “victory” is perfectly logical.
Your speculations about Adar and Solmonath are a bit hard to follow. “Adar” doesn’t mean “month of baking.” I don’t believe there’s any evidence that “the baking of Purim cakes” is an ancient tradition, but even if it were, most other holidays also involve cake: all kinds of cakes are eaten at Hanukkah, Shavuot is associated with cheesecake and other dairy cakes, and honey cake is eaten at Rosh Hashanah. To single out Purim as a holiday associated with cake in order to connect Adar to baking and thus to Solmonath suggests you’re trying to reach a predetermined conclusion.
Your final conjecture about Hebrew and Germanic languages interacting to derive Easter from “Iyyar” and “star” suffers from the same logical flaw. Iyyar does not mean “star” in Hebrew, it means “light” or “radiance.” Thus, a Germanic or Latin translation of “Iyyar” (or “radiance”) would not be “star,” it would be “light” or “shine” (Germanic) or “brilliance,” “radiance” (Latin.) Adding the idea of a “star” to the month would not make the concept of “light” easier to understand for either the Hebrew-speaker or the Germanic-speaker. Your derivation of “Easter” from “star” is thus not seemingly governed by the logic of the situation you imagined, but by the predetermined outcome you wished to reach.
matt says:
Thank you as always for your thoughtful reply. I believe there is a truth out there as to the mystery of the word Easter. However, what everyone agrees on is that we just don’t have enough information to solidly back any theory. I just read the 2020 HR Harriman paper, Easter, Why Are You Like This? On Timing, Names, and Symbols of Easter. The second half of the paper (starting on p 27) pretty much summarizes the academic discussion about the mystery of the origin of the word. He opens the section with a ridicule of the Ishtar folk-hypothesis, which I understand… the Christian Holiday was not usurped from a GERMANIC pagan goddess festival. We’ve established that it was its own tradition, if anything usurped from Jewish Passover with Jesus as the Paschal lamb, and only the colloquial use of the mystery SOUND “Eos-tre” likely represents a local cultural reference. I checked the definition of morpheme vs. phoneme, and I was trying to convey that the “sound” of a word was only known to Bede (you confirmed that in a previous reply). In that case, we have no written word in Old German/Saxon by which to perform linguistic analysis of morphemes. Bede had a two syllable sound for which he created the word. The morpheme was “goddess.” But, there are no written “root” words to work with. As of yet they have not been discovered in reference to an earlier written account of Eostre. All it would take to settle this mystery would be the discovery of one shrine to such a goddess with a word carved in stone to represent her. But, for Harriman and others to laugh at the phonetic connection between Ishtar, Astarte, Eostre, Easter, etc is absurd. Yes, they rightly point to the fact that Bede’s word could have nothing to do with an Akkadian root. Duh. But, without an etched in stone example NOBODY can perform linguistic analysis on the origin of the word through the language tree. We have no evidence from which language it originally came from in a region that was cross-fertilized mainly between Romans and Germanic tribes. Though not politically represented, the Jewish culture was also part of this cross-fertilization. Kind of like the Native Americans in the US, even as a subjugated minority loaned thousands of words (though phonemes) and many cultural references to English, French, and Dutch colonists/traders.
And how about this nugget. “Germanic tribesmen often fought as Roman soldiers, known as foederati, in exchange for military service and the right to settle in Roman borderlands. Germanic tribesmen were often citizens or sons of citizens of Rome, and many fought for Rome for decades or even centuries. By the late Imperial era, the majority of the Roman army was ethnically Germanic.” Do you think it’s possible that many Germanic soldiers visited Roman temples and told the tales of their glory upon retiring back “home?” The goddess temples would be akin to our Disney Land… the main attraction. Do you think that the Roman pagan soldiers celebrated their “festivals” alongside their Germanic brothers in arms? Told their goddess myths around the campfires. Of course. This is how culture and language evolves, not from root words on paper discussed by academics neatly pasted on the “language tree.”
So, if Eostre really noted a goddess (and there are no other local historical accounts), It is absolutely reasonable that within the cross-fertilization between the cultures of the Roman Empire, where Astarte was as popular as Taylor Swift, that word of her traveled back to the back-country. Oh, it did. Her name was actually carved in an altar in Corbridge, England. Proof of the Astarte/Eostre connection? No. Reasonable hypothesis? Yes.
The Jewish hypothesis is also reasonable. Churches and financiers require accurate calendars. Due to medieval usury laws, financing became a profession mainly of Jews. Iyyar/Easter may have been a stretch, but the biggest connection is with Adar, a month dedicated to celebrating Esther. Yes, Purim cakes are ancient, going back to the celebration of the end of Babylonian captivity. They were also called Haman cakes in honor of Esther and Malachi’s victory over their foiled rival. The “cake” connection may seem trivial, but it is not. In Jeremiah 7:18 the Israelites are admonished for baking cakes to “the Queen of Heaven” (Ishtar). This was a Babylonian/Cannonite tradition predating the captivity of the Isralites. There are hundreds of cake molds in the archaeological record with impressions of Ishtar/Inanna to prove it. The other traditional form of the cake was a folded triangle (vulva) filled with seed fruit (sem*n). Fertility goddess, right?
In case I didn’t point it out earlier, Esther is a cultural appropriation of Ishtar. After the Babylonian captivity, the Hebrew priests could not get “the people” to stop celebrating the raucous festival nor the women from praying to Ishtar and baking her “offering cakes” in her likeness (idolatry). The Book of Esther was a new myth to write over the myth of the Babylonian goddess so that the Hebrew women could still back their offering cakes (now Purim cakes) and everyone could celebrate Adar and the heroine Esther, rather than Ishtar. This is no secret, the rabbinical scholars fully admit it. If you read the Book of Esther, there is absolutely no way to unsee the appropriation of Ishtar. It is a unique book, written for popular reading every year, like a superhero story. It is suspenseful, erotic, funny, and ironic. On its own a great read. Besides all these connections, there is still the issue of Solmonath. Adar is a month where Jews make the Purim cakes for Esther. Solmonath is described as “month of making hearth cakes” to an unnamed goddess. I think you can see that the cake making tradition could come to the local German tribes via both the Roman pagan influence (Astarte got cakes too) or the Jewish influence. Another cultural crossroads, besides Jewish merchants and financiers, were Jewish bakeries. I’ll bet women of all stripes frequented medieval Jewish bakeries and loved to hear the story behind those tasty cakes. Sadly, when the Jews were persecuted, their cakes were appropriated and Christianized in a new incarnation as the Hot Cross Bun- still filled with seed fruit and baked for Esther, I mean, Easter (ha ha).
Stephen Winick says:
Sorry, Matt, but I can’t agree with any of this, and most of it has been dealt with in previous comments, including the Astarte altar and the Purim claims. In the first paragraph you make false claims about what I said: to wit, I never “confirmed” that Bede had only the sound of the word Eostre and no written examples; I said we don’t know because he doesn’t say what his source was and a previous written source could have existed but not survived. I don’t know what you mean when you say “the morpheme was ‘goddess'” or that Jews and Native Americans loaned words “through phonemes.”
Your second paragraph about temples being like Disneyland is obscure. Yes, Germanic soldiers met Romans, obviously, and no one has said otherwise.
Your third paragraph revisits the Astarte altar. We addressed this in a previous set of comments.
Your fourth paragraph claims that “Purim cakes are ancient” but there is no evidence of this. The cakes you’re talking about (which you say resemble vulvas and are filled with seeds) are hamantaschen. Hamantaschen are a tradition among Ashkenazi Jews but not Sephardic or Mizrahi Jews. This suggests they weren’t brought to northern Europe by Jews but adopted by Jews from Northern European neighbors once they arrived there. The triangle folding technique is common to other German and Yiddish dumplings such as kreplach. It is now generally accepted by food historians that “hamantaschen” were just a Jewish borrowing of German “mohn-taschen,” poppy-pockets, a popular medieval pastry. Evidence for them among Jews dates back only to the Renaissance. Meanwhile, the cakes mentioned in Jeremiah have nothing obvious to do with Purim. There’s also no evidence that hamantaschen have anything to do with hot cross buns. All holidays have baked goods, and it would be difficult to pick two “cakes” more different from one another.
I answered your points about Esther’s name elsewhere: assimilated Jews generally have a Hebrew name and a name in the language of the country they live in. Hadassah is her Hebrew name, Esther is her Persian name. The name Esther may be based on Ishtar, but it was still a woman’s name. My Jewish parents named me (in English) with a name associated with a Christian martyr. But there is no religious significance to that. They just picked a male name they liked. There’s no evidence whoever wrote the Esther story knew anything about Ishtar or any mythology concerning her. I answered this more fully in my reply to comment 56.
Having said all that, it’s probably worth repeating the following, because comments on our blogs are required to be on-topic. These comments focusing solely on the relationship between Ishtar, Esther, and other figures have drifted off-topic. This is especially true of comments that just repeat things you have already said but for which you present no further evidence:
The only story this post specifically treats is the tale that a goddess called Ostara changed a bird into a hare. This post shows that that story arose in the 19th century. My previous post points out there is no evidence of a hare associated with either Easter or its pagan antecedents in Germany until the 17th century, or in Britain until the 20th.
Thanks again for your comments! On-topic comments are always welcome, as long as they comply with our comments policy
Matt says:
Just wanted to note the Kashubian connection. Jastre (Easter) Jastarnia (place) Jastra (Goddess of Spring that means “bright” or “star.”) Slavic girls name Estera/Estere that also means bright or shining like Ostara.
“J” in Jastre is pronounced as a “Y” Ye-Ster so, very similar to the pronunciation of Eostre.
As Kashubian is a Slavic language it is interesting to note the wholesale adoption of the Pre-Christian sound of the word, meaning, and Spring-time festival it represented. In other words, in a language that would be a contemporary with Old Saxon it’s possible that “Jastre” was not “loaned” from OS, but rather both Kashubian and Germanic languages/customs were describing a goddess and festival more ancient than them both (likely Roman). Kashubian is old enough to seed the word/goddess/custom to Germanic tribes, but that seems unlikely. More likely, they both preserved the Spring mystery goddess from an earlier tradition.
Stephen Winick says:
You’d have to provide independent evidence, such as an ancient inscription to Jastra, to show that she was a goddess really worshipped by anybody. I believe, rather, that *Jastra is just like *Ostara, a conjectural goddess based on the fact that the Kashubian word for Easter is Jastre, and based on Bede’s story about Eostre. As for Jastre, Kashubian is a West Slavic language and other languages in this group don’t call the holiday Jastre. Nor do East Slavic or South Slavic languages. So if Jastre (Slavic) and Eostur/Easter (Germanic) are versions of the same word, either proto-Slavs had this goddess and festival, but both the goddess and the word were forgotten among all the Slavic communities except the ones that lived closest to Germans, or Jastre is simply a loan word from Germanic. The latter not only makes much more linguistic sense, but obvious historical sense since Kashubia has always bordered German-speaking lands and was in fact part of Prussia for centuries.
Such wide-ranging conjecture can be fun, but again it should be repeated that comments need to be on topic: The only story this post specifically treats is the tale that a goddess called Ostara changed a bird into a hare. This post shows that that story arose in the 19th century. My previous post points out there is no evidence of a hare associated with either Easter or its pagan antecedents in Germany until the 17th century, or in Britain until the 20th.
Thanks again for your comments! On-topic comments are always welcome, as long as they comply with our comments policy
