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Answering Good Friday and Easter Questions

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Many events occurred during what many Christians call Holy Week, leading up to the Crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday and his bodily Resurrection on Sunday. Some professing Christians are confused, annoyed, and even judgmental about our celebrations of Easter, and misotheists join in the attacks.

Some Christians and misotheists falsely claim that Easter has pagan origins. There is also the question 3 days and nights that Jesus was in the tomb.
Credit: Free Christian Illustrations
One of the questions people have is when they count on their fingers, they believe that Jesus could not have been crucified on Friday and rise from the dead on Sunday. This comes from shoehorning modern counting methods into ancient Jewish reckoning. We do want to be honest with the text, don't we? 

Another problem some people have is the claim that Easter is based on pagan traditions. Unfortunately, this nonsense is spread by modern church traditions and ill-informed pastors. Ignorance of history and languages are not excuses for Pecksniffian attitudes of religious people who look down on those of us who choose to celebrate Easter. 

If you get up on the hill and look down for the bigger picture, so what? If the name and dates associated with the Resurrection were originally from the pagans and then Christianized, it would not change the reality of the Crucifixion and bodily Resurrection of Jesus! Many names in our culture today have pagan origins. This is being written in March, which was named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is posting on Wednesday, named after Wodan (the equivalent of the Norse god Odin). I used to schedule these on Thor's Day. Does anyone care about those names, and many others? That'll be the day!

In fact, I used to believe the pagan tradition think myself, and took down some posts I had made years ago where I spread the error.

"But Cowboy Bob, not Jesus or anyone else commanded us to celebrate his Resurrection or Christmas, either!" 

That's an irrational way of forbidding something, because there are many things that were not commanded that should be refused if those people wanted to be consistent. Also, Jesus celebrated the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah), which was certainly not commanded. Looks like the wheels came off that wagon.

Let's move on to the article featured here today. It was written in 2008 and updated in 2020, so we got that goin' for us, which is nice. It is quite in-depth and I found it fascinating. It would be very helpful to you to read it. Also, below is a 16-minute video that covers some of the highlights of the big one. After that, a few other links of interest. Read, watch, learn. Savvy?

To read the article, head on over to "Easter and Good Friday: questions and answers". The other material follows.