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

At 3:33 pm -0400 28/4/00, John Cowan wrote:
[....]
>
>(I find it inconceivable that Ray Brown would be sarcastic about anybody's
>religion, and I think you must have misunderstood him.)
Thank you, John.

Yes, I once had a profound religious experience - long years back it now
seems - which overturned much of what I'd been taught & which quite
literally left me stunned intellectually.  I had to relearn - very
humbling.  And I was opposed at first by my family, till they learned to
accept it.  So I try to respect other people's religions and, following the
exhotation of Paul, to be all things to all people.

I just like a bit of respect in return.

>Anyway, here it is:
>
>"Eostermonath, qui nunc pascalis mensis interpretur, quondam a dea
>illorum quae Eostre vocabatur et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen
>habuit."
>
>All net.sources, whether pagan, orthodox Christian, or Judaising
>Christian (and almost all of them violently tendentious),
>seem to agree that this is all we hear about Eostre from
>any source, except that there are surviving placenames in Germany
>that probably (according to Grimm) reflect the same entity.
Ah, I see you've been doing a similar search to the one I made. I wish I
could say it'd been fun   :=(

>What is clear, though, is that Bede identifies Easter-month with
>the Roman April, which pretty much eliminates any notion of the
>vernal equinox.
>
>(Which of course does not mean that religions are not free to change
>their ritual calendars to fit the changing times and the increase of
>knowledge: all religions that have calendars at all, AFAIK, have done so.)
Oh yes - I agee with both the above paragraphs.

If someone wants to celebrate the Vernal Equinox & call it 'Easter', that's
up to them.  But what I kind of resent is when I'm told that my Easter is
in someway not real and that their Easter is the true, original one -
especially when, as you observe, there is no evidence that 'twas ever so.

I wish my Orthodox friends a Happy Easter!

Ray.


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