A Grad Student Asks Carl Sagan If He Believes in God (1994)

in Religion, Science | June 17th, 2025

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Most sci­en­tists are pre­pared to answer ques­tions about their research from oth­er mem­bers of their field; rather few­er have equipped them­selves to answer ques­tions from the gen­er­al pub­lic about what Dou­glas Adams called life, the uni­verse, and every­thing. Carl Sagan was one of that minor­i­ty, an expert “sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tor” before sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion was rec­og­nized as a field unto itself. In pop­u­lar books and tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions, most notably Cos­mos and its accom­pa­ny­ing series Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, he put him­self out there in the mass media as an enthu­si­as­tic guide to all that was known about the realms beyond our plan­et. More than a few mem­bers of his audi­ence might well have asked them­selves where does God fit into all this.

One such per­son actu­al­ly put that ques­tion to Sagan, at a Q&A ses­sion after the lat­ter’s 1994 “lost lec­ture” at Cor­nell, titled “The Age of Explo­ration.” The ques­tion­er, a grad­u­ate stu­dent, asks, “Is there any type of God to you? Like, is there a pur­pose, giv­en that we’re just sit­ting on this speck in the mid­dle of this sea of stars?”

In response to this dif­fi­cult line of inquiry, Sagan opens a more dif­fi­cult one: “What do you mean when you use the word God?” The stu­dent takes anoth­er tack, ask­ing, “Giv­en all these demo­tions” — defined by Sagan him­self as the con­tin­u­al hum­bling of human­i­ty’s self-image in light of new sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies — “why don’t we just blow our­selves up?” Sagan comes back with yet anoth­er ques­tion: “If we do blow our­selves up, does that dis­prove the exis­tence of God?” The stu­dent admits that he guess­es it does not.

The ques­tion even­tu­al­ly gets Sagan con­sid­er­ing how “the word ‘God’ cov­ers an enor­mous range of dif­fer­ent ideas.” That range “runs from an out­sized, light-skinned male with a long white beard, sit­ting in a throne in the sky, busi­ly tal­ly­ing the fall of every spar­row,” for whose exis­tence Sagan knows of no evi­dence, to “the kind of God that Ein­stein or Spin­oza talked about, which is very close to the sum total of the laws of the uni­verse,” and as such, whose exis­tence even Sagan would have to acknowl­edge. There’s also “the deist God that many of the found­ing fathers of this coun­try believed in,” who’s held to have cre­at­ed the uni­verse and then removed him­self from the scene. With such a broad range of pos­si­ble def­i­n­i­tions, the con­cept of God itself becomes use­less except as “social lubri­ca­tion,” a means of seem­ing to “agree with some­one else with whom you do not agree.” Terms of that mal­leable kind do have their advan­tages, if not to the sci­en­tif­ic mind.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawk­ing & Arthur C. Clarke Dis­cuss God, the Uni­verse, and Every­thing Else

150 Renowned Sec­u­lar Aca­d­e­mics & 20 Chris­t­ian Thinkers Talk­ing About the Exis­tence of God

Hear Carl Sagan Art­ful­ly Refute a Cre­ation­ist on a Talk Radio Show: “The Dar­win­ian Con­cept of Evo­lu­tion is Pro­found­ly Ver­i­fied”

Bertrand Rus­sell on the Exis­tence of God & the After­life (1959)

Bertrand Rus­sell and F.C. Cople­ston Debate the Exis­tence of God, 1948

What Is Reli­gion Actu­al­ly For?: Isaac Asi­mov and Ray Brad­bury Weigh In

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

in Architecture, History, Religion | May 23rd, 2025

Stand­ing atop the Acrop­o­lis in Athens as it has for near­ly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an impres­sive sight indeed. Not that those two and a half mil­len­nia have been kind to the place: one of the most famous ruins of the ancient world is still, after all, a ruin. But it does fire up vis­i­tors’ imag­i­na­tions, fill­ing their heads with visions of how it must have looked back in the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, when it was a func­tion­ing tem­ple and trea­sury. One enthu­si­ast in par­tic­u­lar, an Oxford archae­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor named Juan de Lara, has spent four years using 3D mod­el­ing tools to cre­ate a 3D dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion of the Parthenon at the height of its glo­ry, of which you can get glimpses in the video above and at the pro­jec­t’s offi­cial site.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

The mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing Parthenon 3D, as it’s called, empha­size one ele­ment above all: its almost 40-foot-tall stat­ue of the god­dess Athena Parthenos, bet­ter known mononymi­cal­ly as Athena. The work of the renowned sculp­tor Phidias, who also han­dled the rest of the struc­ture’s sculp­tur­al dec­o­ra­tion, it end­ed up cost­ing twice as much as the build­ing itself.

Though now long lost, the Athena stat­ue was well doc­u­ment­ed enough for de Lara to mod­el its every detail, down to the folds in her gold­en robes and the cracks in her ivory skin. Dur­ing the Pana­thenaic Fes­ti­val, which came around every four years, sun­light would enter the Parthenon at just the right angle to cause a super­nat­ur­al-look­ing illu­mi­na­tion of the god­dess against the sur­round­ing dark­ness.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Of course, that effect was­n’t acci­den­tal. Even if we con­sid­er the cre­ation of the Parthenon to have been divine­ly inspired, we can best under­stand it as a work of man — and a metic­u­lous­ly thought-out work at that. For ancient Greek vis­i­tors, the illu­mi­na­tion of Athena would have been enhanced by the place­ment of roof aper­tures, reflect­ing water pools, and reflec­tive mate­ri­als, whose orig­i­nal incor­po­ra­tion into the space would come as a sur­prise to most mod­ern vis­i­tors. At present, Parthenon 3D offers the clos­est expe­ri­ence we have to a time machine set to the Parthenon as Phidias and archi­tects Ikti­nos and Cal­l­i­crates orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. But as de Lara’s research notes, the build­ing also con­tained numer­ous incense burn­ers, so per­fect real­ism won’t be achieved until smells can go through the inter­net. Vis­it the Parthenon 3D site here.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

Robots Are Carv­ing Repli­cas of the Parthenon Mar­bles: Could They Help the Real Ancient Sculp­tures Return to Greece?

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The “Dark Relics” of Christianity: Preserved Skulls, Blood & Other Grim Artifacts

in History, Religion | May 22nd, 2025

Chris­tian­i­ty often man­i­fests in pop­u­lar cul­ture through cel­e­bra­tions like Christ­mas and East­er, or icons like lambs and fish. Less often do you see it asso­ci­at­ed with vials of blood and dis­em­bod­ied heads. Yet as the new Hochela­ga video above reveals, the most famed Chris­t­ian arti­facts do tend toward the grue­some. Take one par­tic­u­lar­ly renowned exam­ple, the Shroud of Turin: hear the name, and you imag­ine a cloth bear­ing the image of Jesus Christ. But think about it a moment, and you remem­ber that it’s the blood­stained wrap­ping of a cru­ci­fied body — that is, if the tales told about it are true in the first place.

As with any reli­gious relics, you have to decide for your­self what to believe about all of these. If you pay a vis­it to the Basil­i­ca of St. Antho­ny in Pad­ua, you’ll see on dis­play the pre­served jaw of that holy fig­ure — which does, at least, look like a real human jaw. In south­east­ern France, at the basil­i­ca of Saint-Max­imin-la-Sainte-Baume, you’ll find a skull pur­port­ed to be that of Mary Mag­da­lene.

And we cer­tain­ly can’t rule out that it real­ly is, spec­u­la­tive though the evi­dence may be. The sit­u­a­tion grows some­what more com­pli­cat­ed with the head of John the Bap­tist — or rather, the heads of John the Bap­tist, four of which have been claimed in dif­fer­ent places so far.

“Dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, relics were in high demand, and there were always peo­ple will­ing to sup­ply them,” explains Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny. “It’s often joked that, if you gath­ered all the alleged frag­ments of the true cross, you’d have enough wood to build a small for­est.” Even the Shroud of Turin has come under unfor­giv­ing scruti­ny. Radio­car­bon dat­ing has placed it in the mid-four­teenth cen­tu­ry, imply­ing a forgery, but more recent X‑ray tests sug­gest that its linen was made in the first cen­tu­ry, between the years 55 and 74: close enough to what we under­stand as the time of Jesus’ bur­ial. Debates over the authen­tic­i­ty of all these arti­facts will con­tin­ue for cen­turies — and quite pos­si­bly mil­len­nia — to come, but their pow­er­ful embod­i­ment of both “the deeply dis­turb­ing and the haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful” won’t fade away any time soon.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Our Depic­tion of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actu­al­ly Looked Like

The British Muse­um is Full of Loot­ed Arti­facts

Europe’s Old­est Intact Book Was Pre­served and Found in the Cof­fin of a Saint

Did Psy­che­del­ic Mush­rooms Appear in Medieval Chris­t­ian Art?: A Video Essay

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Our Depiction of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actually Looked Like

in History, Religion | May 12th, 2025

Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you prob­a­bly envi­sion him (or, if you pre­fer, Him) in much the same way as most every­one else does. The long hair and beard, the robe, the san­dals, the beatif­ic gaze: these traits have all man­i­fest­ed across two mil­len­nia of Chris­t­ian art. “How­ev­er, these depic­tions don’t exact­ly match the pro­file of a first-cen­tu­ry Jew­ish car­pen­ter from the Mid­dle East,” says Hochela­ga host Tom­mie Trelawny in the new video above, an inves­ti­ga­tion into how our mod­ern con­cept of how Jesus looked came to be — and into what we can know about his real appear­ance.

First, we must turn to the Bible. In the King James Ver­sion, Rev­e­la­tion describes Jesus thus: “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a fur­nace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. He had in His right hand sev­en stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His coun­te­nance was like the sun shin­ing in its strength.” That’s it for the New Tes­ta­ment. As for the Old Tes­ta­ment, Isa­iah describes a fig­ure that could pos­si­bly be Jesus by cred­it­ing him with “no form nor come­li­ness; and when we shall see him, there is no beau­ty that we should desire him.”

This scant Bib­li­cal evi­dence hard­ly aligns with the high-pro­file depic­tions of Jesus we’ve all seen. For many around the world today, the “default rep­re­sen­ta­tion” is the down­right glam­orous 1940 por­trait Head of Christ by the Amer­i­can painter Warn­er Sall­man (a Chicagoan, inci­den­tal­ly, much like the new­ly elect­ed Pope Leo XIV). One could see that art­work as the cul­mi­na­tion of a fair­ly long his­to­ry of visu­al depic­tions of Jesus, which first became abun­dant in the Roman Empire of the fourth cen­tu­ry under Con­stan­tine. Accord­ing to Gre­co-Roman mythol­o­gy, “hav­ing long hair and a beard were sym­bols of divine pow­er.” Ear­ly Chris­tians thus “want­ed to present their god using sim­i­lar artis­tic con­ven­tions,” plac­ing Jesus in a league with the likes of Zeus.

That’s the basic look Jesus has in most rep­re­sen­ta­tions, from the botched Span­ish fres­co that became a meme to the cru­ci­fied Mr. Uni­verse in South Korea, where I live, to Andy Warhol’s Christ $9.98. And yet, accord­ing to the dic­tates of Leviti­cus, “you shall not round the cor­ners of your heads, nei­ther shalt thou mar the cor­ners of thy beard.” Trelawny takes this into account when attempt­ing to recon­struct the his­tor­i­cal Jesus, also not­ing that, since Jesus could only be iden­ti­fied by Judas’ kiss of betray­al, he must have looked much like all the oth­er men around him. The result, when all of this is fed into an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence image gen­er­a­tor, is very much an every­man, which may be as his­tor­i­cal­ly accu­rate as we can get. But then, each time and place cre­ates its own Jesus — and now, with AI, each of us can do the same for our­selves.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Ten Ear­li­est Depic­tions of Jesus: How Art Visu­al­ized Jesus in the First Cen­turies After His Death

What Makes Caravaggio’s The Tak­ing of Christ a Time­less, Great Paint­ing?

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Paint­ed The Last Sup­per: A Deep Dive Into a Mas­ter­piece

The Real Sto­ry of East­er: How We Got from the First East­er in the Bible to Bun­nies, Eggs & Choco­late

Intro­duc­tion to New Tes­ta­ment His­to­ry and Lit­er­a­ture: A Free Yale Course

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How a Papal Conclave Works, and Who Might Be the Next Pope

in History, Religion | May 7th, 2025

On Tues­day, the car­di­nals locked them­selves into the Sis­tine Chapel, offi­cial­ly begin­ning the con­clave to elect the 267th pope. First for­mal­ized by Pope Gre­go­ry X in 1274, the con­clave (a word derived from the Latin words cum clave, mean­ing “with a key”) fol­lows a high­ly script­ed process honed over the past 800 years. How the con­clave works, and how it came into being—all of that gets cov­ered in the Reli­gion for Break­fast video above. It’s host­ed by the reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar Dr. Andrew M. Hen­ry.

Below, you can also delve into the more recent his­to­ry of papal elec­tions. Cre­at­ed by Use­ful Charts, this video cov­ers every papal con­clave since 1958 and includes a pre­dic­tion for who the next pope will be once the white smoke ris­es. Who is the next like­ly pon­tiff? No spoil­ers here. You’ll have to watch the video to find out.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Mas­ter­pieces Up Close

When There Were Three Popes at Once: An Ani­mat­ed Video Drawn in the Style of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script

Pope Fran­cis Set to Release a Rock/Pop Album: Lis­ten to the First Sin­gle

Pope John Paul II Takes Bat­ting Prac­tice in Cal­i­for­nia, 1987

 

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Take a 3D Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Masterpieces Up Close

in Art, History, Religion | May 7th, 2025

Today, 133 car­di­nals from around the world enter the con­clave to deter­mine the next pope, dur­ing which they’ll cast their votes in the Sis­tine Chapel. Despite being one of the most famous tourist attrac­tions in Europe, the Sis­tine Chapel still serves as a venue for such impor­tant offi­cial func­tions, just as it has since its com­ple­tion in 1481. When its name­sake Pope Six­tus IV com­mis­sioned it, he also ordered its walls cov­ered in fres­coes by some of the finest artists of that peri­od of the Renais­sance, includ­ing San­dro Bot­ti­cel­li, Domeni­co Ghirlandaio, and Cosi­mo Rossel­li. He also made the unusu­al choice of hav­ing the cross-vault ceil­ing cov­ered by a blue-and-gold paint­ing of the night sky, ably exe­cut­ed by Pier­mat­teo Lau­ro de’ Man­fre­di da Amelia.

No longer do the car­di­nals vote for their next leader under the stars, nor have they for about half a mil­len­ni­um. Even if you’ve nev­er set foot in the Sis­tine Chapel, you sure­ly know it as the build­ing whose ceil­ing was paint­ed by Michelan­ge­lo, lying flat on a scaf­fold all the while (a pleas­ing but high­ly doubt­ful image in the col­lec­tive cul­tur­al mem­o­ry).

In fact, that mas­ter of Renais­sance mas­ters did­n’t touch his brush to the place until 1508. He’d been brought in by a lat­er pope, Julius II, after hav­ing first resist­ed the com­mis­sion, insist­ing that he was a sculp­tor first, not a painter. For­tu­nate­ly for Renais­sance art enthu­si­asts, not only did Julius II pre­vail upon Michelan­ge­lo, so, near­ly thir­ty years lat­er, did Paul III, who had him paint over the altar the work that turned out to be the Last Judg­ment.

In the video at the top of the post, his­to­ry-and-archi­tec­ture YouTu­ber Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tions of his­toric places like Venice, Pom­peii, the Cathe­dral of San­ta Maria del Fiore, and St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, which was also touched by the hand of Michelan­ge­lo) nar­rates a 3D vir­tu­al tour of the Sis­tine Chapel. That for­mat makes it pos­si­ble to see not only its numer­ous works of Bib­li­cal art, by Michelan­ge­lo and a host of oth­er painters besides, from every pos­si­ble angle, but also the build­ing itself just as it would have looked in eras past, even before Michelan­ge­lo made his con­tri­bu­tion. The more you under­stand each indi­vid­ual ele­ment, the bet­ter you can appre­ci­ate this “ver­i­ta­ble Div­ina Com­me­dia of the Renais­sance,” as Bra­vo calls it, when next you can see it in per­son. That, of course, will only be after the con­clave fin­ish­es up: in a few hours, or days, or weeks, or maybe — a phe­nom­e­non not unex­am­pled in the his­to­ry of the church — a few years.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sis­tine Chapel: A $22,000 Art-Book Col­lec­tion Fea­tures Remark­able High-Res­o­lu­tion Views of the Murals of Michelan­ge­lo, Bot­ti­cel­li & Oth­er Renais­sance Mas­ters

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

The Vat­i­can Library Goes Online and Dig­i­tizes Tens of Thou­sands of Man­u­scripts, Books, Coins, and More

Michelangelo’s David: The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry Behind the Renais­sance Mar­ble Cre­ation

A Secret Room with Draw­ings Attrib­uted to Michelan­ge­lo Opens to Vis­i­tors in Flo­rence

Michelangelo’s Illus­trat­ed Gro­cery List

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Japanese Zen Monk Explains What Zen Is Really About

in Life, Religion | May 6th, 2025

Despite devel­op­ing in Asia, as the Chi­nese form of a reli­gion orig­i­nal­ly brought over from India and lat­er refined in Japan, Zen Bud­dhism has long appealed to West­ern­ers as well. Some of that owes to the spare, ele­gant aes­thet­ics with which pop­u­lar cul­ture asso­ciates it, and more to the promise it holds out: free­dom from stress, anx­i­ety, and indeed suf­fer­ing of all kinds. In the­o­ry, the Zen prac­ti­tion­er attains that free­dom not through mas­ter­ing a body of knowl­edge or ascend­ing a hier­ar­chy, but through direct expe­ri­ence of real­i­ty, unmedi­at­ed by thoughts, unwarped by desires, and undi­vid­ed by the clas­si­fi­ca­tion schemes that sep­a­rate one thing from anoth­er. That’s eas­i­er said than done, of course, and for some, not even a life­time of med­i­ta­tion does the trick.

In the inter­view clip above, Rin­zai zen monk Yodo Kono explains how he arrived in the world of Zen. Hav­ing come from a line of monks, he inher­it­ed the role after the deaths of his grand­fa­ther and his father. Already in his late twen­ties, he’d been work­ing as a physics teacher, an occu­pa­tion that — how­ev­er fash­ion­able the sup­posed con­cor­dances between advanced phys­i­cal and Bud­dhist truths — hard­ly pre­pared him for the rig­ors of the tem­ple.

“I entered a role com­plete­ly oppo­site to log­ic,” he remem­bers, “a world where log­ic does­n’t exist.” Think of the Zen kōans we’ve all heard, which demand seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble answers about the sound of one hand clap­ping, or the appear­ance of your face before your par­ents were born.

Advised by his mas­ter to stop try­ing to gain knowl­edge, skills, and under­stand­ing, the frus­trat­ed Yodo Kono began to real­ize that “Zen is every­thing,” the key ques­tion being “how to live with­out wor­ries with­in Zen.” That can’t be learned from any amount of study, but expe­ri­ence alone. Only direct­ly can one feel how we cre­ate our own suf­fer­ing in our minds, and also that we can’t help but do so. This leaves us no choice but to relin­quish our notions of con­trol over real­i­ty. In dai­ly life, he explains in the clip just above (also from the doc­u­men­tary Free­dom From Suf­fer­ing, about the vari­eties of Bud­dhism), one must be able to move freely between “the undi­vid­ed Zen world and the divid­ed world,” the lat­ter being where near­ly all of us already spend our days: not with­out our plea­sures, of course, but also not with­out won­der­ing, every so often, if we can ever know per­ma­nent sat­is­fac­tion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 6‑Step Guide to Zen Bud­dhism, Pre­sent­ed by Psy­chi­a­trist-Zen Mas­ter Robert Waldinger

What Is a Zen Koan? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to East­ern Philo­soph­i­cal Thought Exper­i­ments

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Exer­cise Extreme Mind­ful­ness with These Calm­ing Zen Rock Gar­den Videos

A Beat­box­ing Bud­dhist Monk Cre­ates Music for Med­i­ta­tion

Bud­dhism 101: A Short Intro­duc­to­ry Lec­ture by Jorge Luis Borges

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Real Story of Easter: How We Got from the First Easter in the Bible to Bunnies, Eggs & Chocolate

in Religion | April 18th, 2025

Pop­u­lar cul­ture has long since claimed East­er as an occa­sion for trick­ster rab­bits, dyed-egg hunts, and marsh­mal­low chicks of unnat­ur­al hues — none of which are actu­al­ly in the Bible. Though that prob­a­bly does­n’t sur­prise you, you may not be aware of just how far the mod­ern hol­i­day has drift­ed from its tex­tu­al ori­gins. In the new Hochela­ga video above, that Youtube chan­nel’s Tom­mie Trelawny recounts first the Bib­li­cal sto­ry at the basis of all this, that of the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus. Then he exam­ines how the lat­ter event has since been com­mem­o­rat­ed, an evo­lu­tion that has led to the East­er we know today.

“Jesus’ res­ur­rec­tion would have been cel­e­brat­ed in the very ear­li­est days of Chris­tian­i­ty,” Trelawny explains. “Ini­tial­ly, it was held on the feast of Passover, but even­tu­al­ly, it branched off into its own dis­tinct hol­i­day.” That ini­tial over­lap is reflect­ed in the resem­blance between Pesach, the Hebrew word for Passover, and the Span­ish and French names for East­er, Pas­cua and Pâques.

As for the Eng­lish word East­er itself, it res­onates with the name of “the Ancient Sax­on god­dess Ēostre, deity of spring and fer­til­i­ty.” Much as the Roman mid-win­ter fes­ti­val Sat­ur­na­lia may have inspired Christ­mas, could the pre-Chris­t­ian hol­i­day for Ēostre have inspired East­er?

To an extent, per­haps, though as Trelawny under­scores, East­er was very much derived from Passover. Yet its asso­ci­a­tions with spring­time go well beyond the time of year in which it occurs, not least in the form of all those eggs. In fact, “dec­o­rat­ed eggs are an ancient cus­tom that pre­dates Chris­tian­i­ty by many cen­turies.” Hav­ing stood as “a uni­ver­sal sym­bol for new life,” they also offered Chris­tians an eas­i­ly leg­i­ble “metaphor for Jesus’ sealed tomb, and crack­ing it open as a sym­bol of his res­ur­rec­tion.” As for the East­er Bun­ny, he has a prece­dent in the Ger­man­ic East­er Hare, who “judged chil­dren on whether they’ve been good or bad” — now soft­ened up, pre­dictably, after so many years in Amer­i­ca.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load Beau­ti­ful Free Vin­tage East­er Cards from the New York Pub­lic Library

Stream Andrea Bocelli’s East­er Con­cert from Milan

A Map of All the Coun­tries Men­tioned in the Bible: What The Coun­tries Were Called Then, and Now

A Sur­vival Guide to the Bib­li­cal Apoc­a­lypse

Did the Tow­er of Babel Actu­al­ly Exist?: A Look at the Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence

The Ark Before Noah: Dis­cov­er the Ancient Flood Myths That Came Before the Bible

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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