Bible Study Course Lesson 3 – 15
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Those of you familiar with your Bible may object that surely Easter is both mentioned and commanded
in the Bible. But, while you may be forgiven for thinking so, the opposite is actually the case. The word
Easter appears once in the KJV, in Acts 12:4, where it says “intending after Easter to…”. But
remember that God only inspired the Bible – not the translators of the Bible. So is that really what God
inspired to be said?
“There never was a more absurd or unhappy translation than this…. The word Easter now
denotes the festival observed by many Christian churches in honour of the resurrection of
the Saviour. But the original has no reference to that; nor is there the SLIGHTEST
evidence that any such festival was observed at the time when this book was written.”
(Barnes New Testament Notes)
“The translation is not only unhappy, as it does not convey at all the meaning of the
original, but because it may contribute to foster an opinion that such a festival was
observed in the times of the apostles. The word Easter is of Saxon origin, and is
supposed to be derived from Eostre, the goddess of love, or the Venus of the North, in
honour of whom a festival was celebrated by our pagan ancestors in the month of April.”
(Ibid.)
The original Greek word used in the Bible was pascha, from the Hebrew word meaning “passover” to
commemorate the original Passover in Egypt; the observance of which Jesus replaced with the
Passover for the New Covenant. The Bible does NOT call it Easter.
So the Bible term is the Lord’s Supper, right? 1 Corinthians 11:20. What, specifically, does the Bible
tell us to commemorate with the Passover? Jesus’ resurrection? 1 Corinthians 11:26. There is no
command, no suggestion, no example, of anyone commemorating Jesus’ resurrection in the Bible.
Why, then, does the entire world do it?
LIFE CYCLE OF MESOPOTAMIA
In the midst of an otherwise completely desolate and mostly useless land, the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers have an annual flood cycle that makes for an incredibly fertile region. It’s called Mesopotamia
(Greek meso=middle, potamia=rivers), because it’s literally the land between (and around) the rivers.
This fertility was greatly expanded by the digging of canals for irrigation and drainage, making farming
possible far beyond the ordinary bounds of the river’s flood plain. This allowed a huge population
explosion as a result of abundant food, and led to the need for, and made possible, larger cities to
manage the canals.
Southern Mesopotamia – the region around Babylon, Uruk, and so on – knew two seasons, summer and
winter. Early summer was the time of harvest, and began on the new moon nearest the spring equinox,
so usually sometime in March. Winter was the time of planting, and began 6 months later near the fall
equinox around September.
The seasons couldn’t be more different; winter was cool and wet, summer was hot and dry. The main
crop was barley, which was planted around the fall equinox, when weather was still warm and the
summer drought was over. Fields were irrigated to soften the soil, tilled and planted in September-
November.
The winter was cool, and crops grew slowly as the land slumbered. But the rivers that gave fertility
were also a source of destruction, as sometimes heavy winter rains could cause the rivers to overflow,
washing away the newly planted crops.
Spring would bring the grain quickly to harvest just after the spring equinox, in April-May, as the river
level started to rise from melting mountain snow. Work was feverish because they labored under a tight
deadline – every spring the rivers overflowed their banks, usually in April or May.
If this happened too soon, the crops that were ready for harvest could be destroyed. Or if the winter
were abnormally cold, and the plants grew too slowly, they wouldn’t be ready before the river
inevitably inundated the whole land.
They built dams and levees to control the river, but every so often a disastrous flood would come along
and wipe out entire crops, and sometimes the city along with them. So there were many reasons to beg
the deities to keep such calamities from happening.
After the harvest, grain was threshed and stored, distributed among the people, and safely stored for the
coming year, usually by June-July at the latest. This happened just as the worst heat of the summer was
killing all vegetation across the land. (All these facts derived from Wikipedia, “Agriculture in Ancient
Mesopotamia”).
Now to the sun-worshiping Babylonians an impossible coincidence appeared here – the time of
planting and harvest occurs precisely at the fall and spring solstices! And what’s more, the conclusion
of threshing and the death of vegetation falls at the summer equinox!
So the Babylonians could not have missed the fact that the key points of the Babylonian agricultural
cycle were tied closely to three of the key points of the solar cycle! The question is, what did they do
with that information?
DUMUZI
Dumuzi was a demigod with a human father and a divine mother in ancient Mesopotamia. As a
shepherd who competed with a farmer for the love of Ishtar, there is a clear echo of the Cain-and-Abel
story, again rewritten with Babylonian propaganda in mind.
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Dumuzi is almost certainly a retelling of the Nimrod story, since Ishtar was the queen of (the gate of)
heaven, and Nimrod/Dumuzi was the king of that same gate. So why not just use Nimrod’s name?
Because it was supposed to deceive God’s people.
Nimrod was condemned by name in the Bible, and everyone knew it! So they had to tell the story under
a different name and hope that, by changing enough of the details (which they were going to do anyway,
to twist the story to their advantage), that no one would notice. And no one did!
Starting as a mere half-human shepherd, he became the deity in charge of all non-human fertility,
animal or vegetable; in a sense, he was the patron saint of life. And as the god of life, when the hot, dry
winds of summer around the summer solstice wasted vegetation across the land and everything died…
this was logically seen as the death of Dumuzi.
“The existence of Dumuzi’s resurrection, symbolizing the vegetation cycle from
sowing (death) to blooming (resurrection), became authoritative.” (Encyclopedia.com,
“Dumuzi”).
Apply the golden rule – try to think what you would have done, as a Babylonian peasant or priest,
trying to make sense of a strange world. We know Dumuzi died in midsummer. The next event in the
agricultural cycle was around the fall equinox – when the land was plowed and the seed was planted in
the ground. A dead seed was buried so that it could bring forth life. Is this a stretch, or an obvious fact
you’d have to be a fool not to understand? 1 Corinthians 15:36-37.
The overwhelming persuasiveness of this idea comes from the fact that Dumuzi’s burial takes place at
exactly the time when the sun succumbs to the power of darkness, and gradually loses the fight – just as
his dead “seed” body is buried in the earth!
The sun continues to “die” until December 21st, and then turns around and starts to push back the
darkness as the days lengthen into spring. This miraculous recovery of the sun, this rebirth in the
midst of darkest winter, was a cause for great celebration around the world, as the sun-god and
Dumuzi were reborn for another year!
The beginning of life after the winter solstice and the rebirth of Dumuzi will be explained much more
thoroughly in the next lesson (but you already know what we’re talking about, don’t you?)
Next comes the spring equinox, when the sun has battled the
forces of darkness back into a corner until they finally yield
sovereignty to the sun – just as Dumuzi’s fertility bursts forth
across all the land, with everything from the harvest of wheat to
the birth of lambs showing his benevolent hand blessing the
Earth!
And on this day, this moment of Dumuzi’s triumphant return to
the land, the moment of the sun’s greatest victory over the
forces of darkness, on this moment every Christian around the
world gathers to watch him conquer death and bring life to the
world!
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Because at that moment “He is risen!!” and has put an end to the winter’s works of darkness!! But who
is risen, exactly? I mean seriously, in pictures like these they aren’t even TRYING to pretend this isn’t
the sun-god you worship at Easter!
THE EVOLUTION OF DUMUZI
I should admit that this is a very large subject, and that the timing of these festivals and, to some extent,
their interpretation is controversial. It’s hard to summarize a religion that evolved non-stop for 2,000
years with any accuracy since it kept changing over time, and more so when it was adopted by foreign
cultures and integrated with their local deities – most of whom were based on the same concept of
fertility and sun-worship, but who had evolved differently in their own land.
The false church doesn’t mind moving things around, changing the meaning of things; they’re always
at work improving their counterfeit of true Christianity. Because unlike the true church, the details
don’t matter to the great whore or her lover-savior (Hebrews 13:8).
God has to keep the Sabbath on the 7th day, because there was a REASON He chose that day that
matters to us (Colossians 2:16-17). It is necessary for us to understand His plan that things are done
RIGHT. But Dumuzi and Ishtar are far more flexible – because they really don’t care which day as long
as it isn’t God’s day!
So it’s not possible to recreate any one version of his worship because it kept changing; but then again,
it’s not necessary – we only need to understand his heart, and the nature of these festivals, to find
out that Dumuzi’s worship has continued unabated since the tower of Babel, and is proudly
worshiped by every Christian on Earth today as their savior!
Few disagree that Tammuz began as a shepherd, who was inevitably seen as the mate of the fertility
goddess – the yin to his yang. It was impossible that the two chief deities responsible for fertility would
not be… fertile… with each other.
So every new year – sometimes in spring, sometimes in fall, depending on the culture and the era – the
festival of the Akitu was kept which celebrated the divine marriage of Ishtar and Dumuzi. In this
ceremony, the king of the city would, with extensive ceremony and preparation, lay with Ishtar in a
holy bed and act out the part of Dumuzi while the high priestess of Ishtar’s temple would act out her
part – a literal “union” of church and state.
The union of the king and goddess was seen as the direct cause of life throughout the land – blessings
of good harvests, the multiplying of game and stock animals, in short the rebirth of the land. So the
“child” of this holy union was simply “Fertility”, or “Life”. Put differently, Dumuzi lay with Ishtar and
their child was Dumuzi, renewed!
The ceremony also had a practical side – it legitimized the king by showing that the goddess herself
approved of him enough to invite him into her bed. Thus it was useful both religiously and politically.
It was, by far, the most important celebration of the year and survived for millennia in many different
cultures – although the details changed a lot over time.
Remember, this was meant to be a deception. The origins of these myths date back to a time when
Noah and his sons knew the real truth, the real story of Adam and Eve; and the strength of their
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deception was that they built on those legends. One in particular gave him a big push – God’s prophecy
in Genesis 3:14-15.
In nearly every ancient myth – including several you’ve read, like the Epic of Baal – the god of Death
or Chaos is seen as a serpent. Babylon called her Tiamat, Greece called him Typhon, the Egyptians
called him Apophis. This evil serpent was in fact, as you learned earlier, the way Satan describes Jesus.
And this prophecy, well known to everyone in the post-flood world, promised that a woman would have
a seed which would destroy the works of the serpent/darkness/chaos. The false church used that, by
calling Dumuzi that same seed!
“Dumuzi was basically viewed as the power in the grain, dying when the grain was
milled.” (Brittanica.com, “Dumuzi”)
He was literally seen as seed of wheat; planted in the ground in the fall; struggling through the winter,
and conquering death-as-the-serpent in the spring! Dying in the midsummer, as his grain was milled at
the summer solstice. Then replanted as a dead body in the fall with due weeping, not long before
Halloween (think about it).
So when Dumuzi lay with Ishtar, the great mother goddess, their seed – the soon-to-be-harvested
grain – was seen as Dumuzi reborn, the promised seed of the Mother of all mankind who would
redeem mankind by destroying the serpent!
SURVIVING DEATH
The fertile young Dumuzi would, inevitably die in the summer and then the cycle would begin all over
again. Having associated Dumuzi’s life cycle with that of the sun, and again with that of the idealized
man’s life, it made sense to look for answers to life after death in the cycles of the sun.
When the sun falls under the horizon every day, it’s obvious that he goes under the Earth, where people
are buried, and thus it was seen as a type of death. A variety of myths explain what happened to him
there, as he fought his way through the underworld to come out on the far side of the Earth in the east.
Naturally, people who died and went under the ground wanted to have the same triumphant return as
they fight their way through the underworld to rebirth. This, again, is attested in more myths than I can
count.
With the rise of Dumuzi’s solar side, it made sense to shift the key moments of his festival to coincide
more nearly with the sun’s own cycles. In midsummer, the sun is at his strongest, but starts to fail – this
could be seen not as the death of Dumuzi, as it had once been because of the hot summer, but rather as
him receiving a “deadly wound”, often pictured as a snake bite in a variety of myths about a variety of
sun-gods.
This paved the way to move the death of Dumuzi from the summer to the fall, when the sun first lagged
behind the darkness, and he officially “lost” the battle against darkness, and to better coincide with
when Dumuzi’s “seed” was buried.
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Still later, elements of the fall ceremony were transferred to immediately precede the spring ceremony,
so it could be a far more powerful cycle of sacrifice, death, mourning, and conclude by celebrating his
marriage to the church.
WEEPING FOR DUMUZI
Dumuzi’s relationship with Ishtar was complicated, at best. This is summed up in “Inanna’s descent
into the underworld”, an ancient Babylonian epic (Inanna is identical to Ishtar). To make a very long
story short, Ishtar descends into the underworld for no apparent reason and gets trapped there, and dies
(sort of).
Having thought this might happen, she left instructions behind with the living and so after three days
and nights, her friends mount an effort to rescue her, which involves circumventing the rules of the
underworld – which mostly works, but at a heavy price. She can leave… but only if someone takes her
place.
So she’s temporarily freed from hell to find a replacement, but she doesn’t want to send anyone to hell
who mourned her. So she looks around her old stomping grounds, and most of her friends missed her –
but Dumuzi, her own husband, wasn’t missing her visibly enough, so she sent him to hell in her place.
Naturally, he wasn’t thrilled with this idea and fled, being helped by the sun-god, taking various forms
including a gazelle until finally being betrayed by a friend and caught by the demons of hell and carried
below to take her place.
But as time passes, she misses him. She, his mother, and sister all mourn Dumuzi constantly, and
finally she mounts a rescue operation of her own to bring him back, which of course succeeds but once
again at a price – it turns out, someone has to be in hell. So she sends his sister to hell for half the year
in Dumuzi’s place so he can be with her on Earth for half of the year.
From a solar aspect, this explains the two seasons in Babylon as being the presence of Dumuzi on Earth
as powerful sun-god, or the presence of his sister Ereshkigal as weaker sun-god (compare to the idea of
yin and yang).
But look at this story as propaganda of the false church, as you learned how to do in the last lesson;
what is this really telling us? We know Ishtar represents the false church. And to save herself from hell,
she sent Dumuzi there instead. So he literally died in her place – as her savior (admittedly, in this
story, unwillingly).
Later it was her love of him that brought him back to life – and with that life, the fertility of all the land
for the next year. So she is literally responsible for his resurrection (her responsibility for his death is
downplayed, of course).
Every year this myth was reenacted, and all the women across the land wept for Dumuzi – the
implication of the story is that if you didn’t, you might go to hell in his place just as he replaced Ishtar.
But also, because if you didn’t weep for him the sun-god might not show him to Ishtar, and fertility
might never come back to the land.
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But just as the pagans compressed an entire human life cycle (burial, birth, fertility, prime, death and
burial) into one year, so they later compressed it to a handful of days or weeks, then still more into a
cycle that happened in a single season over just three days.
I think you know where this is going. But first, another savior-of-mankind deity must be studied:
OSIRIS
Osiris’ cult is as old as Dumuzi’s, but we have much greater documentation for Osiris, since his
religion was kept more consistent over the years, and unlike Dumuzi, we have tons of actual paintings
of his worship scattered around tombs and pyramids all over Egypt. Like Dumuzi he was the husband
of the fertility goddess Isis who, for all practical purposes, is identical with Ishtar.
“The existence of Dumuzi’s resurrection, symbolizing the vegetation cycle from
sowing (death) to blooming (resurrection), became authoritative. This composite
portrait placed him together with other divinities in the Eastern Mediterranean area,
including the Egyptian Osiris (whose resurrection is well-established in myth)”
(Encyclopedia.com, “Dumuzi”).
“By Ptolemaic times (305–30 BCE), [the festival of Osiris] also included the planting of
seeds in an “Osiris bed”, a mummy-shaped bed of soil, connecting the resurrection of
Osiris with the seasonal growth of plants.” (Ibid)
Both deities have the exact same meaning attached to their resurrections – the life of the land. Which is
perfectly logical, since both Egypt and Babylon had strict agricultural cycles surrounding a flooding
river. The details of their stories are different, but the overall course of their lives is eerily similar to
each other – and to that of the false Jesus.
Like Jesus and Dumuzi, Osiris was murdered and, in his case, dismembered and spread across Egypt.
Isis and Osiris’ sister mourned for him along with all Egypt, which was reenacted yearly by priestesses
during the festival of Osiris.
“Isis is the epitome of a mourning widow. Her and Nephthys’ love and grief for their
brother help restore him to life, as does Isis’ recitation of magical spells. Funerary texts
contain speeches by Isis in which she expresses her sorrow at Osiris’ death, her sexual
desire for him, and even anger that he has left her. All these emotions play a part in his
revival, as they are meant to stir him into action. Finally, Isis restores breath and life to
Osiris’ body and copulates with him, conceiving their son, Horus.” (Wikipedia, “Isis”)
Isis finally found his body entombed inside a tree – remember that, it’s important in the next lesson –
and successfully extracted him from the tree and magically reassembled his body just long enough to
get herself pregnant by him, which resulted in their son Horus being born.
“As ruler of the land of the dead and as a god connected with maat [truth, order], Osiris
became the judge in this posthumous trial, offering life after death to those who followed
his example. New Kingdom funerary texts… liken Ra himself [the premier sun-god] to a
deceased soul. In them, he travels through the Duat [hell] and unites with Osiris to be
reborn at dawn. Thus, Osiris was not only believed to enable rebirth for the dead;
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he renewed the sun, the source of life and maat, and thus renewed the world itself.”
(Wikipedia, Osiris Myth)
So Osiris’ death and subsequent job as ruler of the afterlife means he had the keys to hell; and
Egyptians looked to him for life after death. He was literally a savior god, who became one with the
sun-god Ra, and was resurrected at dawn!
Again… you see where I’m going with this right?
MOURNING BAAL
You recall from the prior lessons that when Baal fought Yam and lost, he was wept for by the whole
land – chief among them his virgin sister Anat:
“Also Anat goes, and treads every mountain to the midst of the Earth. Every hill to the
midst of the fields…. She comes upon Baal prostrate on the earth… The mountain in
mourning She roams. In grief, through the forest. She cuts cheek and chin. She lacerates
Her forearms. She plows like a garden Her chest, like a vale She lacerates the back.
[compare Leviticus 19:28].”
“‘Baal is dead! Woe to the people of Dagon’s son! Woe to the multitudes of Athar-Baal!
Let us go down into the earth.’ With Her goes down the Torch of the Gods, Shapash.
Until She is sated with weeping, She drinks tears like wine. Aloud She cries to the Torch
of the Gods, Shapash: ‘Load Aliyan Baal on to Me!’
The Torch of the Gods, Shapash, hearkens. She lifts Aliyan Baal, On the shoulders of
Anath She places Him, She raises Him into the heights of Saphon. She weeps for Him
and buries Him. She puts Him in the grave of the Gods of the earth.” (Epic of Baal)
Shapash was the Canaanite form of Shamash. The rest of it is a long story, but after this extensive
weeping across the Earth, even El (the Father) himself wept and finally the sun-deity helped Anat find
and resurrect Baal (Satan), who then defeated Mot, God of Death (the resurrected Jesus), to restore
happiness to the land.
The theme of weeping for a dead god is widespread across the ancient world; these are just three of the
easiest ones to document, and they happen to be three of the most important for Biblical researchers,
since these are the three cultures God’s people had the most contact with in the ancient world.
Suffice it to say that nearly every ancient culture had a weeping-for-a-dead-god festival every year,
followed later by a glad celebration for the survival of that same god and the consequent fertility/life
that the people would enjoy as a result.
FALSE VIRGIN
Everyone knows Jesus was born of a virgin; and He was… but this was not a secret (Isaiah 7:14). And
even before then, the angels almost certainly knew about it – so this left His enemies plenty of time to
create false virgins to fulfill or preempt this prophecy. There are a lot of perpetual virgin goddesses in
the ancient world, but most people don’t realize that Isis was also a virgin mother.
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“Just as they view the Nile as the efflux of Osiris, thus they hold the earth to be the body
of Isis, not the whole earth but as much of it as the Nile goes over, fructifying it and
uniting with it; and from this union they assume Horus to be procreated.” (The Nile
Mosaic of Palestrina, P. G. P. Meyboom)
This is identical to the Dumuzi-Ishtar baby, who was also a virgin birth because it wasn’t actually a
child – it was just a renewal of Dumuzi’s own life. This quote this doesn’t mention a virgin birth, but
again, their art betrays them.
The story went that after Isis found and reassembled Osiris’ mutilated body, she found all the pieces
except the most important one. So she magically recreated it and used that to get herself pregnant. She
used her wings (she is the holy spirit, remember?) and was able to breathe life back into him long
enough to get her pregnant while in bird form using a magic phallus that didn’t actually exist.
Below, you can see the hawk Isis, whom dead Osiris is apparently very happy to see, being
impregnated with Horus, by Osiris’ djed. By being impregnated as a bird with magic phallus the
human Isis could remain a virgin! (Just as Mary was impregnated by the holy-spirit-as-a-bird in all the
Catholic art, preserving her virginity.)
Thus Osiris became, after death, the father of a child representing fertility of the land by a virgin
mother… just as Dumuzi had a fertility-of-the-land immaculate child with Ishtar! Just as God the Holy
Spirit had an immaculate child with Mary who brought life to all!
THE CRUCIFIX
Below right you have the Egyptian djed. This was arguably the most common symbol in ancient Egypt,
and it was interpreted in at least three different ways by the Egyptians; first, it was seen as the sacred
tree that entombed him with the branches trimmed off; second, as the spine of Osiris (one of the body
parts that Isis recovered). And finally, as the phallus of Osiris (compare to the above image), the
quintessential sign of life-generation.
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“The ‘djed’ is in the form of the hieroglyphic sign, which means ‘enduring,’
and ‘stable’ and would thus confer these qualities on the owner of the
amulet.” (British museum curator’s description of photo at right).
So to clarify; this sign at right conveys enduring-ness to the owners of the amulet.
They are found in absurd abundance scattered all over ancient Egypt. It’s obvious
they look vaguely like a cross, and they were used in exactly the same way – as
an amulet of protection, as a sign of eternal life.
“In the Predynastic Period [the djed] may have originally been a
representation of a fertility pole upon which sheaves of grain were
suspended at festivals. This pole may have been a feature of early fertility
rituals which eventually came to be associated with the god who made the
land fertile.” (Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient.eu, article “Osiris”)
So at this festival, the djed had grain literally draped upon it.
Dumuzi was the literally believed to be IN the grain. Likewise,
Osiris had gardens planted in which the grain symbolized his
life (left). So then, Dumuzi and Osiris were, in essence,
draped on the djed. Put differently, the bread of life was
crucified, hung on a very cross-like object. Think about it.
“The god Ptah carried a sceptre which combined the djed and
the Ankh (symbol of life) and is referenced as ‘The Noble
Djed’ in ancient inscriptions.” (Ibid, photo below left).
In the photo below at far right, from left to right, you see the signs of the was (power, authority), djed
(stability, permanence), and the ankh (life, resurrection). Together, combined in the “noble djed” they
mean “eternal life and power –- just as Jesus’ resurrection means to modern Christians in the “holy
cross”!
Both are the sign of a dead and risen savior, which if owned, will impart that same enduring quality of
life and authority to your own afterlife! Surely, no modern Christian would feel out of place in ancient
Egypt!
“The djed also symbolized the backbone of Osiris
in that, just as Osiris rose from the dead, the
deceased would rise from their body after death.
In the same way that the human backbone
allowed one to sit up and stand and walk, the
spiritual image of Osiris’ backbone would
encourage the soul to rise up from the body and
move toward the afterlife.” (Ibid.).
But notice the noble djed forms a perfect Latin cross; and
if you stretch your imagination just a little bit, this is a
complete crucifix; the was, symbol of authority (false
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Jesus) is in front, hung upon a sun-cross, with the halo of the ankh in the background! So not only does
it look like a crucifix, but it has all the same meanings as a crucifix does!
What are the odds…?
THE RESURRECTION OF OSIRIS
At Denderah, an Egyptian temple, there is an extensive series of paintings showing the death and
resurrection of Osiris. In one of the final ones [below left; below right, a drawing of the scene to see it
clearer], we see Osiris resurrected at last, receiving the ankh – the “sign of life” to the Egyptians,
representative of the powers of the deity to “sustain life and to revive human souls in the afterlife”
(Wikipedia, Ankh).
It doesn’t take a scholar to see that Osiris is being handed, quite literally, the keys of life and death at
his resurrection, the same key that Jesus was to receive (Revelation 1:18). Only… to the Egyptians, that
“key” took the form of a cross.
Not just any cross – the precise
form of a cross one would see
if they beheld a cross while
watching the rising of the sun!
Left, you have an Egyptian
sunrise inside of the ankh, at
the right the “glory of God”
behind the cross at Easter
forming the exact same image!
The Catholics call this symbol
the crux ansata, the ancient
Egyptians call it the ankh and
to both of them it is the sign
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of their RISEN SAVIOR! And it’s the same cross any Easter-sunrise attendee would see minutes after
sunrise. Think about that.
They rejoiced because they just watched their savior rise from the dead… their savior, not the true
Savior!
The true Savior who, as you learned in the very first lesson, was most definitely NOT resurrected
at dawn, or on Sunday at all!
The same savior Christians across the world pray to for salvation every spring on a crisp morning
near the equinox, while holding a symbol directly patterned after the ancient Egyptian symbol of
eternal life!
FUNERAL FOR A GOD
It’s not merely the idea of mourning and celebrating for a God that Christians have copied; it’s not
merely the time of year, or the symbols they use that mimics the rituals of Babylon, Canaan, and
Egypt… today’s Christians worship their risen savior in the exact same way as the heathen did!
“Another major funerary festival, a national event spread over several days… [in it]
the djed pillar, an emblem of Osiris, was ritually raised into an upright position,
symbolizing Osiris’s restoration.” [and to show that he was still… fertile. Think about it.]
(Wikipedia, Osiris Myth)
The Djed Pillar Festival was held annually at which an actual djed pillar was built and raised by the
local priesthood on the first day of the harvest season. Raising the pillar may have originally
symbolized the grains rising from the earth but, in time, came to represent the god Osiris returning
from the dead. (Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient.eu, article “Djed”)
Above left, a picture describing the ritual raising of the djed. This image oversimplifies it, for it was
usually a ritual where everyone, in particular the highest ranking people, would grab ropes and pull a
massive djed upright. Sort of like the picture at right, practiced on Easter by “Christians”… but just like
Christians, before they could celebrate his resurrection, they first had to mourn his murder!
“[Osiris] stands as the prototype of great resurrection-gods who die that they may live
again. His sufferings, his death, and his resurrection were enacted year by year in a
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great mystery play in Abydos. In that mystery-play was set forth, first, what the Greeks
call his agon, his contest with his enemy Set [God of Chaos];
“Then his pathos, his suffering, or downfall and defeat, his wounding, his death, and
his burial; finally his resurrection and “recognition,” his anagnorisis [the discovering of
his true nature, in this case as divine] either as himself or as his only begotten son Horus.”
(Art and Ritual, Jane Ellen Harrison)
Unnecessary Greek words aside, this basically says that on one day – say, I don’t know, Friday – the
Egyptian savior struggled with his enemies and lost and over the course of the next three days was
defeated, wounded, died, buried, resurrected, and given “recognition” as rightful judge of the dead.
Does that ever happen in a city near you? A procession for a savior God that portrays His agony dying
on a very djed-like cross, where the city mourns His death and subsequently rejoices at His triumphant
resurrection?
“The celebrations in March–April that marked the death of the god [Dumuzi] also
seem to have been dramatically performed. Many of the laments for the occasion have as
a setting a procession out into the desert to the fold of the slain god.” (Brittanica.com,
“Dumuzi”)
So let’s recap; Osiris and Dumuzi were both murdered, and symbolically hung on a cross, and
resurrected at dawn. Dumuzi’s celebrations were held, according to this quote, in March-April. Both
were celebrated by a procession wherein the dead god was carried outside the city, and made a
grand passage after his murder through the underworld and into triumphant immortality.
All while their besotted followers lamented the death of the god and then celebrated, rejoicing over his
miraculous rebirth. There’s one more thing though – you’re going to love this. At the moment of
sunrise on the third day of the feast, when Osiris was seen to have conquered his enemies, all the crowd
would shout with a joyous cry:
“the keepers of the robes and the priests bring forth the sacred chest containing a small
golden coffer [Osiris’ casket], into which they pour some potable water which they have
taken up, and a great shout arises from the company for joy that Osiris is found.”
(Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, circa 100 AD)
In other words… as the dawn breaks in the east, on the spring equinox, a large crowd celebrates the
resurrection of their savior, whose sacred sign was the cross in which he was entombed, with the joyous
cry…
HE IS RISEN!!!
Do I need to say it?
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
These are not random pagan traditions. Maybe God didn’t mind Celtic pagans, maybe Amerindian
mythology pleases Him (He does, and it doesn’t, but whatever). The point is, these aren’t just any
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pagan traditions. These myths are the beliefs of BABYLON and EGYPT and CANAAN. Was God
unclear about how He felt about their religion? Jeremiah 50:1-8, Leviticus 18:3.
When God said “don’t do like they do”, THIS IS WHAT THEY WERE DOING! When God said
“don’t worship me like they worship their gods”, THIS IS LITERALLY, EXACTLY, PRECISELY
WHAT THEY WERE DOING!
People desperate to cling to their pagan traditions are fond of saying things like “well, maybe it is
pagan, but Jesus’ resurrection was HUGE! We have to celebrate it somehow! And anyway, He didn’t
say we couldn’t celebrate Easter!”
Actually, He did; no, it wasn’t called Easter then. God knew the name would change, and the name that
was used then wouldn’t apply in, say, 200 BC or 1200 AD; so God did something better – He
DESCRIBED the worship of Dumuzi, Baal, and Osiris for us!
In Ezekiel 8:1-13 God described two great abominations, people in His church worshiping “an image
of jealousy” – which isn’t described, but which must either be a cross, or an image of His alleged wife.
Then He shows Ezekiel an even worse abomination, the worship of idols of every sort. Then He
promises to show Ezekiel something even worse:
Ezekiel 8:14-15 Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD’S house which was toward
the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen
this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
The third abomination, the greatest so far, was women weeping for Tammuz – the alternate spelling of
Dumuzi. They did this at many times over the years, and today, they weep for Tammuz on good Friday,
as part of a three day ceremony celebrating Osiris-Tammuz-Baal-the-Sun’s journey from death into life,
just like ancient Egyptians did (the real Jesus neither died on Friday, nor commanded us to weep for
Him).
Each of these is a successively greater abomination to God; He despises each of these things quite a
bit more than the one before it. Given that He starts
out with idolatry in general, it means He hates the
next thing a LOT. As always, this lesson is summed
up in a single verse, if you’d only thought about it:
Ezekiel 8:16 And he brought me into the inner court
of the LORD’S house, and, behold, at the door of the
temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar,
were about five and twenty men, with their backs
toward the temple of the LORD, and their faces
toward the east; and THEY WORSHIPPED THE
SUN TOWARD THE EAST.
This was a sunrise service, because that’s the only
time when the sun is in the east – at dawn! This is
literally a description of Easter sunrise services,
Osiris services, Tammuz services, or Baal-worship!
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In other words, God showed Ezekiel something very much like the picture at right – then told Ezekiel
how He felt about it in verses 17-18.
Easter is by far the most important holiday to Christians; if they only go to church one day a year,
that’s the one. And after listing idolatry of a rival image of God, idolatry of all sorts of animistic deities,
and finally the lament of the false God Tammuz… the greatest of all these abominations, the worst
possible thing God could show Ezekiel as an example of the rebellion of His people…
Was Easter.
[Disclaimer: for someone who hates idolatry, I sure paste a lot of pictures of idols in these lessons. Let
it be known that nothing would please me more than for the last idol from the last church to fall on the
head of the last priest, and my own massive folder of idol pictures to be wiped from existence with it –
and the hard drive they were stored on burned as unclean.
But denying history in the name of worshiping God is one of the things that led us to this situation –
these are the idols of Babylon, and much as I would like to grind them to powder and make people eat
the dust (Exodus 32:20), understanding them can help people realize the hidden symbols of Babylon
which are worshiped as symbols of Christ (2 Corinthians 2:11) – and until everyone in the world
knows that, they need to be plastered in their true context in front of as many eyes as possible.
It’s not enough to simply destroy the idols – that’s been tried many times. We have to shame the idols,
humiliate them, expose their darkest secrets to the world, and only then will they stay dead (Isaiah
42:17, Isaiah 1:29, Isaiah 45:16, etc.).
Finally, in the interests of telling a better story, I replaced “Tammuz” in some references and sources
with “Dumuzi” to keep the story clear and to preserve the surprise for the Ezekiel 8 reference. So if
you can’t find Dumuzi in the original reference, it’s probably because it was about Tammuz – the other,
more common, spelling of his name.]