How did worship of an ancient god and goddess come to be associated
with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Although the details
are lost in time, a closer look at the ancient mythology surrounding
their worship will help us understand how pagan practices have survived
in popular Easter customs.
Two of the earliest recorded deities were the Babylonian fertility god Tammuz and the goddess Ishtar. Every year Tammuz "was believed to die, passing away from the cheerful earth to the gloomy subterranean world" (Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, 1993, p. 326).
The seasonal cycle came to be connected with Tammuz's supposed annual death and resurrection. "Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis, the peoples of Egypt and Western Asia represented the yearly decay and revival of life ... which they personified as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead. In name and detail the rites varied from place to place: in substance they were the same" (p. 325).
Many of these rites revolved around inducing the return of Tammuz from the dead. One of these ceremonies is recorded in Ezekiel 8:14, where Ezekiel saw in vision an abominable sight: women "weeping for Tammuz" at the very temple of God.
The Expositor's Bible Commentary says regarding this verse: "Tammuz, later linked to Adonis and Aphrodite by name, was a god of fertility and rain ... In the seasonal mythological cycle, he died early in the fall when vegetation withered. His revival, by the wailing of Ishtar, was marked by the buds of spring and the fertility of the land. Such renewal was encouraged and celebrated by licentious fertility festivals ... The women would have been lamenting Tammuz's death. They perhaps were also following the ritual of Ishtar, wailing for the revival of Tammuz" (Ralph Alexander, Vol. 6, 1986, pp. 783-784).
