Talk:Eostre
From Academic Kids
Brilliant! --Yak 13:45, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Can someone please tell us who said the following: "it is reasonably certain that the New Testament contains no reference to a yearly celebration of the resurrection of Christ." It is very confusing to see quotation marks but not know who is being quoted. ThePedanticPrick 01:05, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
The article currently says:
"The most determined proponents of an Ishtar/Easter connection are not neopagans but certain fundamentalist Christians, notably Ralph Woodrow, whose Babylonian Mystery Religion includes the Easter/Ishtar fallacy and condemns the celebration's trappings as unchristian."
This is an assertion without linguistic backing.
The Egyptian name for Isis is "Ast" or "Aset". The connection between this and "Astarte" was known to, and written of, by the Egyptian Christians contemporary while the religions of Ast and Astarte were both thriving. The Romanization of Ast is pronounced "ē sēs". The Babylonian counterpart of Astarte was Ishtar, "ēsh tar". I believe you can find primary source material documents that show that the worshippers of these respective entities did equate them, that this is neither a Roman Imperial gloss nor a Ralph Woodrow fabrication.
I happen to agree that there are many fallacious arguments for one single unbroken continuity of goddess worship, and that such did not exist, certainly not to prehistoric times- but this particular expanse of continuity is legit.
"though as Eostre's characteristics as a goddess have never been recorded, this is entirely speculative."
This is inaccurate as well. There are commonalities of worship in isolated yet disparate regions of Europe and Asia Minor, places that are known to have preserved more ancient linguistic patterns. It is probable that their folk traditions also contain vestiges. If scrutinized cladistically, these customs appear to be remnants of a larger continuity that travels from the estuary of the Danube to England. There is a preponderance of similarities, making common ancestry a legitimate inference.
Coloring eggs and adorning the clothing of marriageable girls with images of rabbits are but two of them. To say the connections have "never been recorded" is inaccurate. At best, we can say we have no written records. Archaeological and anthropological data says otherwise.
The issue is not one of a continuity between Isis and Astarte, but of a continuity between either of these deities and Easter. Speculative linguistic connections are not the same as demonstrable continuity.
Eostre's characteristics have not been recorded. To quote Professor Ron Hutton:
'Our sole authority for Eostre is Bede, who says that she was the Anglo-Saxon goddess after whom the month of April is named. He did not associate her with hares, and modern scholarship finds her name cognate with many Indo-European words for dawn, which presents a high possibility that she was a dawn-goddess, and so April as the Eostre-month was the month of opening and new beginning, which makes sense in a North German climate.'
[i]Coloring eggs and adorning the clothing of marriageable girls with images of rabbits are but two of them. To say the connections have "never been recorded" is inaccurate.[/i]
We do not know whether Eostre even *existed*. The elements you refer to above may or may not be remnants of an Eostre tradition. To say that they *are* records of such presumes the definite existence of that Goddess, which we cannot do.Cavalorn 12:28, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
