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

yl-ruil scripsit:

> > I must track the passage down.  The goddess is vanishing before my very
> eyes.
>
> Please don't be sarcastic, I get enough of this constant badgering to
> validate my beliefs at uni. I _won't_ retort with my argument that Jesus
> Christ, only begotten son of the LORD God was actually a pagan himself. Why
> not leave us rather inoffensive bunch alone and get back to
> interdenominational wrangling?
(I find it inconceivable that Ray Brown would be sarcastic about anybody's
religion, and I think you must have misunderstood him.)

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.

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.)

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin