It’s Easter, again and every Easter I think I’m going to write something mostly banal about the true meaning of the holiday: bunnies laying colorful hard-boiled eggs, and woven baskets filled with chocolate and caramel candies. Somehow, we’ve mixed a pagan celebration with a distinctive sacred event for many. As far as I can tell, the church never tried to ban the spring renewal celebration (eggs) and just adopted it as part of Christian renewal. The church did the same in Mexico with The Day of the Dead, the day after Halloween. They folded in a cultural tradition with church ritual. Well, that pretty much covers it. Bye.

Not really. I’ve been discovering, online, that the closer this day came, the more aggressive Christians have become online. One guy actually saying he’d bet his life the entire bible was true. I hope he was only being hyperbolic but these days, you could never actually know, could you? I can’t imagine him running into a serious biblical scholar (there are lot’s of them) and espousing such drama and the scholar taking him up on it. Now what?

How about the harmonization of the resurrection stories? Think about it: Four gospels with four completely different accounts of the supposed same event. No one ever noticed this? Well, of course they did and there’s been attempt after attempt to logically explain the differences since, well, the existence of those same four gospels. An early church father, Augustine, wrote an entire book, Harmony of the Gospels, attempting to take the inconsistencies between the four and basically said that the truth wasn’t in the accounts but the core truth of Jesus rising. That makes it simple for anything, doesn’t it? /if the facts don’t fit, ignore the facts for the desired outcome. Kind of strange for some that pursued nature philosophy so diligently. The issue was always if the subject went against scripture.

And why do Christians always refer to their messiah as Jesus Christ (not an epithet)? Jesus’ last name wasn’t Christ, in fact, there’s no mention of any specific surname for Jesus in the gospels or any other book in the New Testament. If the authors of the gospels were aware of Jewish tradition at the time, Jesus would have been down as “Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth”. In Aramaic, which was the language in Jesus time, he would have been Jesus bar Joseph., and he was referred to being the son of Joseph (John 6:42). Christ is a title, the greek word for messiah. To refer to this person as Jesus Christ would be like me referring to my dentist as Jenny Dentist. Correct appellation would be Jesus the Christ, but I think that may place too much pressure on the brain for some. Plus, it doesn’t work well as an epithet, especially when a middle initial is added.