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

At 7:51 pm +0100 24/4/00, yl-ruil wrote:
[....]
>
>"Easter" was quite a while back, it was the Vernal Equinox.
By definition, it wasn't of course.  The Vernal Equinox, as I'm sure
yl-ruil knows, is one of the factors used in determing the date of Easter,
the other being the date of the full moon.

>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.
This begs a few questions IMHO.  Old English for Easter is 'éastre', with
initial _long_ e; like the modern German 'Ostern' it is clearly cognate
with the word for 'east', 'éast' in Old English; 'Ost' in modern German.

>The Proto-Germanic was *Austron, based on
>*austra "east", from PIE *aus-, which also gave Latin aurora.
Latin auro:ra (with long o) is derived quite regularly from earlier
*a:uso:sa which, in turn is from a root *a:uso:s (note long initial a).
The latter came into protoGreek as *a:uho:s --> *ha:wo:s, from which we
have, as expected - Homeric he:o:s (<-- *he:wo:s, with loss of [w]
'digamma'), Corinthian ha:wo:s, Attic heo:s (with shortening of initial
vowel) and Ionic e:o:s.

I'm not so well versed on protoGermanic, but presumably we have to posit a
PIE *a:ws- which is comes into Gemanic with the extension -str- as *a:ustr-
meaning 'East' and into Greek & Latin with the extension -o:s(a), and
meaning 'dawn'.  Is this stem attested in other IE languages, with or
without any extension?  Indeed, do all IndoEuropeanists unreservedly
connect the Germanic, Latin & Greek forms?  I think we have one or two
'IndoEuropeanists' on the list who can, maybe, give us the answer   :)

The east, of course, long had a significant meaning for early Christians.
Churches were always built in medieval times with east/west orientation;
very often the exact orientation was determined by where the sun rose on
the feast day of the saint to whom the church was to be dedicated.  All
maps were drawn with the east at the top - hence out use of the verb to
'orientate'.  The east & the dawn signify the coming of light.  And Easter
ceremonies anciently began (as they still do) with the 'ceremony of light'.

Hence I see no problem with a straigh connexion of Easter & East.

We have IIRC only the Venerable Bede's authority to connecting 'éastre'
with the name of the goddess Eostre (or Eastre) whose name begins with a
short e.  Do we have any independent accounts or evidence about this
goddess.  Is here name really derived from the same root as East, Latin &
Greek words given above.  If so, how do we account for the different
vocalization of éastre and Eastre?  Or has been got the goddess's name
wrong?  Or is her name rather to be associated with the 'austr-' found in
Latin 'Auster' (south wind), [hence 'austra:lis' "southern" and the modern
Australia "the southern land"]?

Do we have, indeed, independent evidence about this goddess - other than
what Bede tells us?  What exactly was she goddess of?  When was her
festival?  Was it actually at the Vernal Equinox itself or was the moon
also used in calculating the exact date?

These are genuine questions.  I don't know the answers.  But the older I
get, the more Bede's etymology seems to me like a perpetuation of 'folk
etymology' of his day.

>
>BTW, is an oestrus cycle anything like a menstrual cycle,
Quite similar - and one thing we can be certain of, Greek 'oistros' has
nothing to do with Easter (nor, I guess, with Eastre).

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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