Re: Passover/Easter (was: Italogallic in Zera,and other languages.)

yl-ruil <yl-ruil@...> wrote:

>> FFlores wrote:
>> Where does the word "Easter" come from, BTW?
>
>"Easter" was quite a while back, it was the Vernal Equinox. Originally,
>Easter (OE. eastre, Old Frisian asteron, OHG ostarun) was the festival of
>Eostre (actually the WS form was Eastre, Eostre was Bede's Northumbrian
>form), the goddess of the dawn. The Proto-Germanic was *Austron, based on
>*austra "east", from PIE *aus-, which also gave Latin aurora.

*Austra was "east"? I would have thought it was "south" instead!
Anyway, thanks. As an incredible coincidence, last Sunday I bought
a book, _History of the Calendar_, by David Ewing Duncan,* where he
puts special emphasis on the conflicts about the right date for
the celebration of Easter -- and explained the origin of the name,
which arose, he says, more or less at the same time and for the
same reason as the days of the week were rechristened (!) according
to the names of the local gods: inculturation. There's even a part
of a letter of Pope Gregory I to Augustine (sp?) of Canterbury
explaining that he must not destroy the temples, but place Christian
altars inside them, and take advantage of local sacred dates, super-
imposing them with Christian dates (e. g. dedicated to saints or
maybe ad hoc).

* Duncan appears to be a Christian Scientist; I don't know about
their beliefs, but that might explain a certain amused tone in
his depictions of early Christianity.


--Pablo Flores
  http://www.geocities.com/pablo-david/index.html
  ... I cannot combine any characters that the divine Library
  has not foreseen, which in some of its secret tongues do not
  bear some terrible meaning. No-one can articulate a syllable
  not filled of caresses and fears; which is not, in some one
  of those languages, the powerful name of a god...
                   Jorge Luis Borges, _The Library of Babel_