Iran

[EasternVol]

Catching up on the thread today, was wondering what was cringier.

1. Reading the 14 yr old’s posts
2. Reading the adults responding

Then I read the Trump tweet.
Yea… yea that was it.

The 14 year old at least seems earnest if misguided and has a better presentation than some of the purported adults.

 

[BeardedVol]

Let's start here - you agree that the historical antecedent of the Christian Pascha is the Hebrew Pesach (called in Aramaic  Pascha) and not "the arbitrary day of a pagan festival" (regardless of the validity of your assertion that "Eostre festivals" were later "folded in")?

Definitively. It was tied to Passover until the council of Niceaa when it was purposefully decoupled from the Jewish holiday, and set to the first after the first full moon after the equinox.

Became Easter or came to be called such by the Anglo-Saxons? Most languages retain the name Pascha (or a phonological evolution thereof).

Venerable Bede wrote about Eoestre in the 7th century, noting that "Eosturmonath' was the name of the "Paschal month', and Eostre was cataloged in the matronae austriahenae dated to 150-250 AD.

Are you quite sure?

I ate whatever was in the basket as a kid; beggars cannot be choosers.

Tell me more. I'm a Greek Orthodox Christian who associates regularly with Roman Catholics. In what respects are our respective Paschal vigils (the feast continues to be called το Πάσχα in Greek and Pascha in Latin) "far removed from Pascha" and rather more like the festival of a conjectured Germanic goddess (the object of much speculation by nineteenth-century folklorists)?

12 years as a converted Catholic. Holy Thursday's vigil of the Last Supper was most significant. The last rites of mass where the body and blood were present, and then vigil all night to represent the disciples in the garden had us signing up for 1-3 hour blocks to pray in the sacristy. Depending on how old the congregation was, Easter Vigil for us would start anywhere between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM, afterwards that was the breaking of lent, and the official end of holy season for the church. We either had a pot luck meal at the church, or we'd go out to a restaurant and take over a large room. With Easter vigil being the official end of holy season, most of the churches I attended didn't have a sunrise service on Easter morning, and had a normal mass, followed of course by the Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday. If you attended Easter Vigil then you didn't have to go to mass on Easter Sunday, so that was day drinking brunch day for me.

Most of the younger priests that I'd encountered, and the older church scholars that had PhDs were pretty open about the church co-opting pagan holidays and incorporating the practices into the early church to further proselytization efforts.

 

[Berry4Heisman14]

You must feel very clever coming up with that all by yourself.

Probably took him hours to conjure up that post. May be the dumbest poster on this whole board and that says a lot

 

[MurphyVol]

Probably took him hours to conjure up that post. May be the dumbest poster on this whole board and that says a lot

Finally! I've been trying to climb out of that bottom slot for years

 

[85SugarVol]

The 14 year old at least seems earnest if misguided and has a better presentation than some of the purported adults.

Quite true.

 

[VAVol85]

The 14 year old at least seems earnest if misguided and has a better presentation than some of the purported adults.

I think I may adopt this as my tagline instead of well known member.

 

[midnight orange]

This is when the fact that he has intentionally surrounded himself with nothing but spineless yes men/women becomes concerning.

Nah… he has handlers. He’s the yes man.

 

[BigOrangeMojo]

Catching up on the thread today, was wondering what was cringier.

1. Reading the 14 yr old’s posts
2. Reading the adults responding

Then I read the Trump tweet.
Yea… yea that was it.

Where are the adults?

 

[85SugarVol]

Hundreds of SEAL Team 6 Commandos, Fake CIA intel and a Battle for Survival Atop 7,000-Foot Ridge: Inside the historic US mission to save F-15 Airman in Iran​

A brave F-15 airman was rescued during an audacious mission involving hundreds of SEAL Team 6 commandos and deceiving Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intel as he battled for his life atop a 7,000-foot ridge.

The unidentified airman, who President Donald Trump has described as a 'brave warrior', got trapped behind enemy lines after the fighter jet was shot down over a remote area of Iran on Friday.

A pilot who was with him safely ejected the aircraft and was rescued by two military helicopters that same day, but the airman remained missing.

He managed to evade Iranians for nearly two days by climbing the tall, narrow mountain while American MQ-9 Reaper drones hovered overhead, shooting missiles at Iranian forces as they got too close to him.

The airman, a weapons system officer, only had a handgun to protect himself and was left 'seriously injured' after being thrown out of the F-15.

CIA agents then planted fake intel that the airman had already been rescued and driven out of Iran, The New York Times reported.

View attachment 824325
An F-15 airman was rescued in a daring mission on Saturday evening after the fighter jet was shot down by Iranian forces. The pilot was safely ejected and rescued by two military helicopters that same day, but the airman remained missing

View attachment 824326
Hundreds of SEAL Team 6 commandos and fake CIA intel helped get him to safety. The airman also bravely climbed a 7,000-foot ridge to fight for his life

View attachment 824327
The airman was referred to as a 'valuable package' that they were trying to move 'out of the country through a maritime exfil,' a senior US official told Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst.

Inside the historic US mission to save F-15 airman in Iran

A courageous US airman managed to make it out alive after going missing behind enemy lines in Iran after his F-15 fighter jet was shot down on Friday as the war escalates.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Happy to hear the weapons officer has been rescued.

Why on earth would they mass 100s of operators, though? Lucky to get out of that without more casualties.

 

[DuckInAPen]

Definitively. It was tied to Passover until the council of Niceaa when it was purposefully decoupled from the Jewish holiday, and set to the first after the first full moon after the equinox.

I greatly appreciate your thoughtful reply, BeardedVol. With regard to the ante-Nicene date of Pascha, two practices are attested (see Eusebius) from mid-2nd century: 14 Nisan (associated especially with the Johannine communities of Asia Minor) and the first Lord's Day (Sunday) after 14 Nisan (the more widespread practice, but associated especially with Rome). The latter practice, which prevailed at Nicaea I, is based on both the Torah and the Gospels and predates St. Augustine of Canterbury's mission to the English by some centuries.

Venerable Bede wrote about Eoestre in the 7th century, noting that "Eosturmonath' was the name of the "Paschal month', and Eostre was cataloged in the matronae austriahenae dated to 150-250 AD.

If this were indicative of a syncretistic absorption of a pagan cult into English Paschal observance, I'd expect 1) that we'd know more about this goddess than just a) her name and b) that the month named after her retained its name after the conversion of the English and 2) that we'd see clear divergences in the Paschal theology and liturgy of the English Church from that of the apostolic sees that were subject to no Germanic influence. I'm inclined to view the retention of the name Eosturmonath as comparable to the use of  Hades in the Septuagint and the Greek New Testament to represent the Hebrew  Sheol, in which the employment of the Greek word for the abode of the souls of the dead in no way implies recognition of the eponymous Greek deity.

As my response is already quite long, I'll reply to the rest separately.

 

[sonofUT62]

Happy to hear the weapons officer has been rescued.

Why on earth would they mass 100s of operators, though? Lucky to get out of that without more casualties.

I am absolutely not a military insider. My friend was a Ranger and now he works for Treasury. After Bin Laden he told me that the actual number of DEVGRU operators is about 250-280 worldwide. Even on the high end I’m calling ******** on “hundreds of SEAL team six guys” being massed in one spot in a 48 hour period. It doesn’t mean I’m right but that number doesn’t seem legit. If for no other reason than the fact there’s nothing covert about it. Just glad the guy was saved either way.

 

[DuckInAPen]

I ate whatever was in the basket as a kid; beggars cannot be choosers.

I objected only to the second-person pronoun addressed to me as though what you wrote reflected my own Paschal observance. Your subsequent response, however, shows me that you meant the you to be taken impersonally. My childhood experience of Easter was, I expect, much the same as yours.

I'll readily admit that the Anglo association of the fecund rabbit with Easter does seem prima facie to be a bit of folklore retained from some pre-Christian fertility rite. I'd be surprised, however, if there was ever anything more than a folk association (that is, if the association were ever reflected somehow in theology and liturgy).

With regard to the Easter egg, however, the egg from which a chick springs provides both a ready metaphor/parable for the tomb from which Life sprung and a convenient bit of animal protein with which to break the fast. Eggs dyed red are distributed to the faithful at the conclusion of the Greek Orthodox Paschal liturgy (which developed primarily in Jerusalem and which, in any case, has no plausible avenue of Germanic influence). Per Wikipedia, it appears that the Easter egg was first adopted by the Christians of Mesopotamia and spread to Western Europe via Byzantium and the Byzantine-Orthodox Slavs.

 

[General Jack]

Looks like someone has a death wish for their own country.

In the soon to be immortal words of Donald J Trump, “praise be to Allah!”

 

[DuckInAPen]

Most of the younger priests that I'd encountered, and the older church scholars that had PhDs were pretty open about the church co-opting pagan holidays and incorporating the practices into the early church to further proselytization efforts.

I don't deny that pagan practices have, at various times and places, been "baptized" for missionary purposes. An instance I've experienced in the Orthodox world is the Slavic custom of filling the church with wild greenery (tree branches and grass) on Pentecost, a practice unknown in the Orthodox churches of the Mediterranean and Levant. This custom seems to have originated in the pre-Christian worship of Perun, but to have been allowed to be redirected to the Holy Spirit, who is, per the Creed, the "giver of life" who vivifies all creation.

I do, however, feel that the extent of such baptism of pagan practices has been grossly exaggerated in popular discourse and that instances of actual syncretism are vanishingly rare outside of heretical communities. The popular association of the Roman date of the Nativity of Christ with the Roman Saturnalia, for instance, or the Roman date of All Saints' with the Celtic Samhain have not, I think, withstood scrutiny (the date of the Nativity, in the former case, being tied to the date of the Crucifiction reckoned as March 25th, and, in the latter case, there being no plausible avenue by which the Christian rite of the city of Rome might be influenced by the observance of pagan 'barbarians' living wholly outside the Roman world).

 

[DuckInAPen]

12 years as a converted Catholic.

If it's not too intrusive of me to ask (and I certainly understand if you'd prefer not to discuss such a personal question with an anonymous stranger in an internet subforum notorious for its posters' intemperance), what led you to leave the Roman Catholic Church and (I gather, perhaps mistakenly) the practice of the Christian faith?

Holy Thursday's vigil of the Last Supper was most significant. The last rites of mass where the body and blood were present, and then vigil all night to represent the disciples in the garden had us signing up for 1-3 hour blocks to pray in the sacristy. Depending on how old the congregation was, Easter Vigil for us would start anywhere between 6:00 PM and 8:00 PM, afterwards that was the breaking of lent, and the official end of holy season for the church. We either had a pot luck meal at the church, or we'd go out to a restaurant and take over a large room. With Easter vigil being the official end of holy season, most of the churches I attended didn't have a sunrise service on Easter morning, and had a normal mass, followed of course by the Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday. If you attended Easter Vigil then you didn't have to go to mass on Easter Sunday, so that was day drinking brunch day for me.

This is all very interesting. Thank you for taking the time to share it. To mitigate its rigor for parish observance, the earlier portion of the Greek Orthodox Paschal vigil, which is properly appointed for vespers on Holy Saturday evening, is celebrated on Saturday morning, after which a light meal (without animal products or oil) may be taken. It is this liturgy that contains the extensive reading of various Old Testament prophecies of the Resurrection. The latter part of our Paschal vigil usually begins with the Midnight Office at 11:00 p.m. on Saturday with the proclamation of the Resurrection at midnight on Sunday. Depending on the circumstances of the parish, the Eucharistic liturgy might conclude anytime between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Sunday morning. It is at this point that the Lenten fast is broken.

 

[Smokey123]

Pray that the Iranian people will soon be free.

Maybe after we turn all of Iran into glass they’ll be free

 

[Smokey123]

If this were indicative of a syncretistic absorption of a pagan cult into English Paschal observance, I'd expect 1) that we'd know more about this goddess than just a) her name and b)

It’s believed that she was a goddess symbolizing fertility and rebirth. Which would align with the Hare, Eggs and Spring equinox

But I don’t think there’s much proof surrounding her or the festival. It comes from a book written by Bede the monk in around 600-700

 

[DuckInAPen]

It’s believed that she was a goddess symbolizing fertility and rebirth. Which would align with the Hare, Eggs and Spring equinox

But I don’t think there’s much proof surrounding her or the festival. It comes from a book written by Bede the monk in around 600-700

Yes, Bede makes an offhand antiquarian comment about her in his De temporum ratione, a comment corroborated by an archeological discovery made in 1958. But he tells us only her name and the month with which she was associated. Unless I'm mistaken (and I welcome correction), everything else is the speculation of folklorists.