Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
Day or Bel-tine fetes, which the Jews of these days try to account for as due to certain
of their early ancestry being contaminated on the day of the great Passover. Of course
my readers will see that the reason why the northern nations have no harvest rejoicings
in the end of March or early April is because they have no harvest.
The writer in Smith’s Bible Dictionary, 1 like all good and honest men, has recognised
“the hopeless task of reconciling the difficulties” between the relation of the
events of the crucifixion of Christ, as given in the Synoptics and in St. John. The latter
—evidently written by an Alexandrian unfamiliar with Jewish dates and rites—makes
the 13th, or day before the Passover, the day of crucifixion, and of course says nothing
as to Christ eating the Paskal Supper, regarding which the others are so particular.
The Jewish Gemara, according to Sanhedrim vi. 2, puts the whole crucifixion and
burial stories aside, but maintains—possibly in deference to the so continually asserted
Christian tale—that a malefactor was then stoned (according to the law of blasphemy)
and afterwards hung. He was allowed, it says—forty days, a fair period to try and
engage an advocate for his defence, but failing to get one up to the day of the feast,
the law was then enacted on him. 2
It was prescribed to the Jew that at the Paskal feast he should always have two
unleavened bouns, buns, or cakes, some small fishes, a hard egg, and some meal. The
Greek Christians still adhere to this rule, and in their churches deck out a bier with
orange and citron buds, and jessamine, &c. Russians present eggs to anyone they meet
on Easter Day, and men and women freely kiss each other at the same time, a custom
which I conclude now only holds in very rural retreats. Eggs are indeed everywhere
in demand, and it is evident that the Christian churches have recognised the season
when the mundane egg of Egypt and the east was brought to maturity, though they
told their flocks to call it the “Ovum Paschale,” and to offer these in no insignificant
manner, but laboriously adorned with gold and colours, especially gold, as representing
all things Solar. These were to be “eaten in thankfulness on account of the resurrection
of our Lord;” 3 but they were everywhere to be shown in abubdancc, and offered
upon the altars, either real or made of “Pasche,” or Paste, elaborated at such cost as
the offerers could afford. This season was also everywhere to be celebrated by divers
sacred cakes, marked with such phallic insignia as the T, or cross, the circle, cup and
ball of Astarte, &c. 4 The subject is very important, and the Rev. Mr Hislop shows us
that it was so recognised in the earliest periods of Babylonian history. Balls, and games
of balls, had all a religious, because Solo-phallic significance. Brand and Bourne in
their Antiquities express the greatest astonishment at the, to them, inexplicable fact,
that only some sixty or seventy years before their day, “it was customary in some
churches for the bishops and archbishops themselves to play with the inferior clergy,
even at hand-ball; and this even, as Durand witnesseth—even on Easter day itself”
1
Smith’s Concise Bible Dictionary, Art. Passover.
2
Smtih’s Bible Dict. notices this version of the
death.
443
3
Ritual of Pope Paul V. for use in England, see
Brand’s Ants. p. 311.
4
Inman’s Anct. Faiths under the head Buns.