> Perhaps one day I'll learn Anglo-saxon. This is apparently rather like learning
> German...
Or just combine both :)
> > P.S.: Now solve the riddle of Ostern/Eastern.
> Oh no, now I'm getting even further off topic! Historically, Christianity has
> had a habit of placing Christian festivals next to pagan ones so as to help
> subsume them. A classic example is the winter solstice, which has had Christmas
> (Weihnachten) dumped on it. But the name of the North European solstice
> festival, Yule, has survived in many languages' names for Christmas.
> In the case of the Pascha, the date was based on the Passover - the Jewish
> festival at the spring equinox. This put in close to pagan equinoctial
> festivals, and the pagan name, Easter/Ostern, has survived in English and
> German. The usual explanation is that it derives from the name of a pagan
> goddess, Aostre.
> Good enough?
Nop - missed - or to be correct, you name one very broad used
theorie, which needs a lot of 'accidents' to create the meaning.
The Passah is of course the base in biblical sense, and for most
romanic languages also the root of the name (french: paques).
These God/Goddess theory is used in some variation, there is
even one to find a trace to the Roman name for sunset: Aurora.
But in fact, most theories can be traced to the 18th centurie,
where such combinations (Goddess or Latin) was 'hip'.
Base of the name is the old Germanic word 'ausa' (pour water)
and 'austr' (pouring water). Derivated from that the word
Ostern points to one central idea in the christian ideology:
Babtizing of the people - in this ritus, the highes Festival
with the single highest ritual is performed.
Also the christian baptism tradition did took over a pre
christian ritus: 'vatni ausa' (be poured with water) -
a ritus where children have been named when they got
their 'first' bath - the Christian tradition of baptising
children is based on this 'aquisition' - before that,
baptizeing happened only to adults.
This Theorie is also supported if you take different slavic
names for Ostern/Eastern into account.
Further reading (German):
'Ostern – Geschichte eines Wortes' from Ju"rgen Udolph
(C. Winter Universita"tsverlag Heidelberg,ISBN 3-8253-0866-9)
Gruss
H.
P.S.: I thought you would give the 'english' explanation, based
one Beda's speculations that the name is derivated from the
old english name for april Eosturmonath (Aeh, did you say you
want to learn Anglo-saxon ? Stay with German - thats equivalent :),
that should have been based on the name of a goddess (This could
only come into the mind of a latin influenced Monk).
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Ich denke, also bin ich, also gut
HRK
Received on Fri Apr 16 1999 - 15:32:04 BST