Fish on Friday to Help Fish Mongers?

[PaulDupre]

OK, so Christians celebrate a holiday named Easter, with icons like rabbits, eggs and such things. Even though it’s named after Ishtar the fertility goddess, it really has nothing to do with fertility or eggs or rabbits who have zillions of babies, or springtime or renewal or the rebirth of flowers. Even though it’s pretty self-evident that it’s a pre-Christian holiday (which you admit yourself with references to Pesach, etc.) it’s actually not a pre-Christian holiday. It’s all about Jesus.

Sounds fine to me. In the end it’s about how you see the tradition.

Hi LaMar,
There is no doubt that Easter started out as a pagan rites-of-spring festival. There are many Catholic holy days that started out as such. The Church is wise enough to co-opt local traditions and use them as teaching opportunities. The Church transforms culture, it doesn’t destroy it.

A good example I witnessed personally was this: When I was a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, I saw the occasional bonfire in the street, where formerly Buddhist converts to Evangelical churches would burn all of their family’s ancestor-worship paraphernalia (some pieces handed down for many generations) to prove they were no longer pagans. They would take it upon themselves to destroy precious family heirlooms because their new pastors told them that reverencing their ancestors was akin to idolatry and would send them to hell. This destruction caused great pain to the non-Christian relatives whose sacred objects were burned and gave rise to a widespread hatred of Christianity.

BTW, “ancestor-worship” is a misnomer for modern English speakers. They don’t “worship” their ancestors in the sense that a monotheist worships God. It is a form of deep veneration and remembrance - much like the way Catholics relate to Mary and the Saints (in previous centuries that deep respect was called “worship” in English, too). The Buddhists have “spirit tablets” where they believe the spirits of their departed ancestors live (or at least come to visit). These are very ornate and beautiful.

The Catholic Church, in contrast to the Evangelicals, have their members bring the spirit tablets to the church, where they are respectfully displayed along the walls of the chapel, and the ancestors are praised and remembered during the mass. The CC uses the opportunity to explain the concept of the Communion of Saints - a concept very precious to Chinese Catholics for obvious reasons. They also gently correct the notion that the spirits of their ancestors live in the tablets, and teach that the righteous ancestors are now with God in heaven and they will meet them after death.

That is the difference between destroying culture and transforming it. We Catholics say that the Holy Spirit transforms everything and everyone He touches. I saw that as a Mormon and never forgot it. It was one of many factors that drew me back to the Catholic faith.

God love you,
Paul

 

[latin_rite]

OK, so Christians celebrate a holiday named Easter, with icons like rabbits, eggs and such things. .

No we Christians don’t celebrate a holiday called Easter with Icons like rabbits eggs and such things. We celebrate a holiday called Easter with the one living God. You’re confusing catholism with Disney.

Even though it’s named after Ishtar the fertility goddess, it really has nothing to do with fertility or eggs or rabbits who have zillions of babies, or springtime or renewal or the rebirth of flowers…

No it is not named after ishtar. Like I said Easter is derived from the word ester, a old Germanic word meaning resurrection . And yes Easter has nothing to do with over sexed rabbits or chocolate eggs.

Even though it’s pretty self-evident that it’s a pre-Christian holiday (which you admit yourself with references to Pesach, etc.) it’s actually not a pre-Christian holiday. It’s all about Jesus…

Celebrating your god ishtar is certainly a pre-Christian celebration. Celebrating Easter is not. See above for reasons why. And yes Pesach is most certainty a pre Christian celebration, but hardly pagan as Catholics do not view Jews as pagans. And yes it does make it all

.

As an aside, I’ve studied languages for about 15 years now. Your etymology could use some work…

Yet I what would at best and most generous would be called a layman on this matter, can understand how Ishtar and Easter have nothing in common. Not even in the origin of the terminology of the two words. It’s like saying two, too and to are the same words because they sound the same.

There’s an old saying from Shakespeare, in plain English. “methinks the lady doth protest too much”. .

What is that some kind of reverse phycology. thing.? Trying to make me stop disagreeing with you by saying that I am wrong just because I disagree with you is 3rd grade stuff? “ o yeah I better stop disagreeing with you. Wouldn’t want to think I’m even more wrong.

You Catholics seem to be the most contentious and insecure people I have ever seen. Every single comment devolves into bickering and hatred. It’s damn near pathological, and pretty amusing for us newcomers.

So what makes us contentious and insecure? is it because we don’t agree with you? Maybe you would like us to pay you lip service and just agree with you? Pat you on the head like some over excited child and say that’s a good boy now run along and play, instead of treating you as an adult? Maybe you’re the Insecure one . You seem to think anyone who disagrees with you must hate you. Anyway.
On a side note: I think the reason why pagans like to TRY and compare Christianity with their pagan “rites”. is that they are looking for some validity to their “religion”

 

[latin_rite]

While we are on the subject i would like to wish everyone a happy easter. (and yes i did have a lovely dinner of fish and calamari ring with salad.)

 

[LilyM]

While we are on the subject i would like to wish everyone a happy easter. (and yes i did have a lovely dinner of fish and calamari ring with salad.)

Whereas I stuck with pasta with asparagus and a toasted cheese sandwich for my other meal - though I did, oddly enough, have fish yesterday (Thursday) - must be one of those old pagan ‘Thurday Tinned-Tuna-God Worship’ things we’ve heard so much about.

 

[kalt]

It’s exactly the same thing. Only the explanations for the custom have changed.

It’s like May Day, which started out in Sumeria, went into Judaism. You guys celebrate it with flowers in baskets. Socialists celebrate it with parades.

This Sunday we’ll be celebrating the fertility festival of Ishtar/Astaroth/Easter – the holiday is 2700 years older than any idea of Jesus.

Same ideas, different trappings and explanations around them. That’s what’s so interesting. People are fascinated by the same things, and choose the same symbols to express the same concepts, irrelevant to race, religion or era. Cool, huh?

Similar, but not exact.

All cultures borrow the “trappings” from each other, but the meaning, though sometimes similar, is not exactly the same. You can’t exchange one for the other.

 

[pjn6444]

Uh yeah…this whole Christians stole Isthar thing is a bit of a stretch. First Pagan is a broad term encompassing pretty much all of non Christendom. Second bunnies and eggs are a secular thing that made its way in. Third if it was just an adaptation of a pagan holiday, why would there be any fasting or remembrance or sacrifice. If springtime is coming with no bad things leading to it. It would seem more conducive for 40 days of drunkenness and partying. That is just me. Fourth IF indeed we took their holiday, then we really showed them. We took their holiday and now worship our God on it instead of theirs. And lastly you will probably still say we stole Isthar. You probably also think that Catholicism is just a re- adaptation of ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology. So if you still believe in all you claim to just go look it up.

 

[Semper_Fi_1]

It didn’t start out as “Fish on Friday”, for one. It is no meat on Friday, and now after Vatican II it’s no meat on Friday or substitute a penance for it.

Is this a question for the Aplogetics board? I didnt think so, so I’m asking it here.

Many people believe that we have fish on Fridays because a Pope “back when” decided to create this discipline to help his buddies who were fish mongers Apparenlty the Vatican had a stake in the fish industry, according to this story.

What is the truth about meatless Fridays? When did it start? Who started it? Why no meat on Friday? Why not no milk or bread on Friday, instead? Was this to promote fish consumption?

IMO, no meat on Friday doens’t nec. mean fish on Friday.

 

[Semper_Fi_1]

This Sunday we’ll be celebrating the fertility festival of Ishtar/Astaroth/Easter – the holiday is 2700 years older than any idea of Jesus.

This Sunday we’ll be celebrating Pascha, which is on different days according to which calendar you’re on (Eastern or western). The whole Easter + Ishtar ‘connection’ is utter nonsense. It started in Egypt as a Coptic Christian holiday and the date was no where near what it is today.

 

[Yerusalyim]

My wife made a lovely potatoe and bean soup today, I ate a bowl with a slice of fresh olive bread…she had sausage with hers…she’s allowed, she’s pregnant.

 

[latin_rite]

On another side note. I have never eaten red meat on good Friday in my life. My protestant/agnostic mother wouldn’t let us. in fact many of my protestant friends do not eat meat on good Friday. In fact country wide wether people are Catholic, Protestant or even non religious have family bbq’s or parties were fish is the only thing or main part of the menu. So much so if you want to buy seafood at a reasonable price for good Friday you need to get in very early. I guess that was one of the great things about Australia. That people were so tolerant of others religions that traditions intermingled. Infact with my school friends the only way I knew that any of them we’re Catholic was if they went to a Catholic school. I say use to and was because. sadly this is all changing.
with the influx of mega Churches and the like what people certain religious beliefs are is starting to become more of a issue. Last federal election was the first time the two leaders went on about what religion they were.

 

[strngrnrth]

I’ve studied languages and religions for many years myself – enough to know better than to cite religioustolerance as a source for a historic claim about religion. No, Easter does not mean Ishtar, and no, Christians do not celebrate the fertility rite as a religious holiday and then get all mixed up about where it came from and weave a story of resurrection around it. Christians celebrate the historically supported fact that huge crowds separately witnessed the resurrected Jesus the Nazorean, whose closest friends personally established a church while networking extensively with other witnesses to Jesus’ life and death. Thus, we celebrate His proving of His claims, made before huge crowds over a huge area, that he is God and the Son of God. The fact that pagans were exposed to Jewish prophecies of Jesus’ life for millennia has been explored many times on CAF recently. That is enough to explain the resemblances (mostly very faint) of Christian theology to pagan stories. Actually, it’s more than enough, given that the pop authors who try to turn the religious ideas of pagans and Christians into “the same thing” have to cherry-pick versions of pagan stories, then trim them of important parts that change their meaning entirely, then add elements that aren’t supported by early documents, then stretch, twist and mutilate the definitions of words, then sit on their product and hold it down with both hands to keep the two different belief systems from springing back into shape and looking different again.
The Egyptian god who was cut up and strewn in the Nile was Osiris, the grain god. In the usual version of the myth, he was partying with his brother, a lifelong enemy, in the land of the gods, which is between the world of the living and the world of the dead. He wasn’t exactly alive to begin with because he didn’t move in the world of the living. His brother/nemesis tricked him (so Osiris didn’t know the future, read minds or give his life willingly at all) into a coffin, then sealed it and dismembered Osiris. Osiris, not exactly dead because gods don’t die in that system of myth, lay in conscious pieces in the water and bank of the Nile. His wife, a goddess, not a human being, and not a virgin, found the parts and reassembled them, causing Osiris to be a little deader than when he was a regular not-exactly-alive-nor-dead god, a little more lively than when he was a not-really-dead-but-definitely-slow-moving god, somewhere in between. She conceived a child by him in the normal human way except that he needed a prosthetic male member to do so. She made one and discarded it when done. He spent eternity in the world of the dead, seen not as a place of bliss nor as the usual abode of gods nor as a return to life but as inferior to reincarnation, underground, where the worst people are eaten by Ammat and Am-Heh (part crocodile) and the people of moderate merit wander around bored but don’t have to work, anyway. Osiris judged the dead, but so did other gods, and he had no effect on the living. He could never return to where he had been before and would not enter the world of the living at any time. Kind of different.

 

[LaMar]

I’ve studied languages and religions for many years myself – enough to know better than to cite religioustolerance as a source for a historic claim about religion.

So, you’ve written two pages of claims, on your own authority…the authority of someone known only as “strngrnrth”, who posts no cv and cites no peer.

The original question was pretty simple. It was: “What’s the origin of fish on fridays?” You gave, well, a half answer, surely paraphrased from some site you found someplace.

Here’s the relevant answer:
"The dead Osiris is associated with the rising of the Nile, which fertilizes Egypt. And the juices of Osiris’s disintegrating body are identified with the waters of the Nile. It is he, therefore, who is the fertilizing force of Egypt.

The missing piece, the genital organs, has been swallowed by a fish. This is the origin of the fish meal on Fridays; it’s a sacramental consuming of the sacred flesh." -From Egypt, The Exodus, and the Myth of Osiris, a lecture by Joseph Campbell.

Your next trick will be to explain (a little better than the last fellow) how a word like Pesach could morph into a word like Easter. It’ll be amusing, in a flat-earth-society sort of way, I’m sure.

 

[strngrnrth]

So, you’ve written two pages of claims, on your own authority…the authority of someone known only as “strngrnrth”, who posts no cv and cites no peer.

The original question was pretty simple. It was: “What’s the origin of fish on fridays?” You gave, well, a half answer, surely paraphrased from some site you found someplace.

Here’s the relevant answer:
"The dead Osiris is associated with the rising of the Nile, which fertilizes Egypt. And the juices of Osiris’s disintegrating body are identified with the waters of the Nile. It is he, therefore, who is the fertilizing force of Egypt.

The missing piece, the genital organs, has been swallowed by a fish. This is the origin of the fish meal on Fridays; it’s a sacramental consuming of the sacred flesh." -From Egypt, The Exodus, and the Myth of Osiris, a lecture by Joseph Campbell.

Your next trick will be to explain (a little better than the last fellow) how a word like Pesach could morph into a word like Easter. It’ll be amusing, in a flat-earth-society sort of way, I’m sure.

Meet me in Apologetics in a few days wen time permits so I can indulge in my hobby of demolishing the claims of people like Campbell.

 

[LaMar]

Meet me in Apologetics in a few days wen time permits so I can indulge in my hobby of demolishing the claims of people like Campbell.

I don’t mean any offense, but I’m not at all interested in an amateur critique of the foremost authority on comparative religion, anthropology and mythology (with the possible exception of Claude Levi-Strauss, who wouldn’t have disagreed with Campbell on something so simplistic as this), written by some anonymous apologist on the internet. I’m sure it’d be about as interesting as reading the transcript of Galileo’s excommunication, or going over to the FAIR board and reading how it’s just peachy for Mormons to conduct mock executions in Catholic sacred space. Yuck.

Paul DuPre has posted a thoughtful and valid rebuttal which intelligent people (myself included) can respect, even if we don’t agree with it in toto. If you’re half as bright as you say you are you’ll take a cue from him.

In any event, have a nice Easter holiday, or Pesach seder, or Spring Equinox…whatever you personally find meaning in, I hope it’s pleasant.

 

[peary]

Originally all Wednesdays and Fridays were I believe total fast days (whether this means no food at all or merely no food til sunset I am not sure), though in some churches (the Coptic Orthodox comes to mind) every fast day of which over half the year is requires no food til preferably sunset (3 is permissable if you can’t do the full version) and all animal products, alcohol and olive oil are forbidden. Thus meat on Friday was never allowed (til Vatican 2), but the allowing fish was most probably a Middle Ages liberalisation, the reason I don’t know though the idea of an official fishmongers for the whole of Christendom in pre-refrigerator days is absurd

It sounds a lot like Ramadan.

 

[latin_rite]

The missing piece, the genital organs, has been swallowed by a fish. This is the origin of the fish meal on Fridays; it’s a sacramental consuming of the sacred flesh." -From Egypt, The Exodus, and the Myth of Osiris, a lecture by Joseph Campbell.

Your next trick will be to explain (a little better than the last fellow) how a word like Pesach could morph into a word like Easter. It’ll be amusing, in a flat-earth-society sort of way, I’m sure.

First off, strngrnrth said he studied for some years both language and religion. And then gave a well thought out and what seemed an informed educated post. You on the other hand claimed to have studied languages for 15 years and yet can’t understand a simple layman’s explanation of a single word. Maybe my explanation was too complicated. Yes that’s right I said complicated even I can’t believe that it was too complicated. I did not say Pesach morphed into Easter. Easter evolved from the word ester which is an old Germanic word for resurrection. If I was to imply that the word Pesach “morphed into any word it would have been Latin Pascha, French PⱵes, Italian Pasqua, and Dutch Pasen. These words still mean Passover. But came to include easter as well. Which is to say those words in those languages
Have two meanings depending on context. After 15 years of study you should be able to grasp this. So maybe instead of trying to belittle people with lame attempts at insults try actually rebuking them. Then maybe that 15 years of study might be a little more obvious.
O and you claim the reason we eat fish on Fridays is because a fish ate some “gods” genitals?
I could just picture it now.
Cardinal. Your holiness what food do you suggest we eat as a sign of penance on Fridays?
Pope: Fish
Cardinal: Why fish?
Pope: Because that’s what ate osiris penis. And it is ishtar day after all.
Cardinal: eerrr …….ok then.
Yup you’re right. A Christian pope tells Christians to eat fish on ishtar day because fish ate the genitals of osrisis. As a way of celebrating the death and resurrection of their saviour. Jesus Christ. Think about it. Like I said in a previous post. The more validity you try and give your “religion” by way of trying to associate it with Christianity just make the more pagans look ignorant and uneducated.

 

[peary]

Every time around Easter I see pagans coming on line saying how we stole Easter or copied it. What the confusion is about Easter for pagans is simple. To them Easter sounds like ishtar. They seem to think Easter is some English variant of the word ishtar. Easter is a English translation of the old Germanic of ester which basically means resurrection . In fact Germany and English speaking countries are the only two places where the word Easter is commonly used. In most languages the word for Easter is exactly the same as the word for Passover, so the relationship between the feast of Passover and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is directly linked. .

The only ones who seemed obsessed with it are fundamentalist evangelicals. To me, Easter is the time of Christ’s Resurrection which we celebrate and honor. Anything more or less than this is irrelevent to me.