Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Easter from Ishtar
The claim that Easter is named after a Babylonian goddess, which fails as word history.
Jeremiah 7:18, in every translation this tool compares.
This is a claim about word history, and word history is where it fails. The English name comes from an old spring month. Almost every other language calls the feast some form of Pascha, which is Passover. The Ishtar chain traces back to one nineteenth-century book.
A claim about etymology, not about a being, and it fails as etymology. The English word descends from a spring month name, and most languages call the feast some form of Pascha. The chain runs through Hislop's The Two Babylons, and it fails a second way as well: DDD confirms that Ishtar is never named as a deity anywhere in the Bible, and the only proposed biblical traces are the name Esther (a disputed derivation) and a possible allusion in the title Queen of Heaven (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17-19,25) (DDD s.v. "Ishtar," 452-455). Heiser, Walton, and DDD's Dagan, Astarte, and Ishtar articles never connect Easter to Ishtar at all, and nothing in the local library supports the popular chain.
- Jeremiah 7:18
- Jeremiah 44:17-19,25
- Bede, *De temporum ratione*, on the month name
- DDD s.v. "Ishtar," 452-455 —
