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From: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Halloween and Jews (and Christians)
Message-ID: <1236@eosp1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 6-Nov-84 08:29:21 EST
Article-I.D.: eosp1.1236
Posted: Tue Nov  6 08:29:21 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 7-Nov-84 07:51:48 EST
References: <1071@akgua.UUCP> <1651@ucf-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Organization: Exxon Office Systems, Princeton
Lines: 27
Summary: 

> Purim, as you noted, is of Jewish origins. This makes comparison of
> Christian/pagan holidays  with Jewish Purim a non-valid comparison.

Is it fair to have it both ways like this?  We happily point out the
pagan origins of halloween, which may be immaterial, or even
repugnantly false to Christians and atheists who celebrate halloween.
And then we happily ignore the evidence for pagan origins of OUR
holiday, which is obviously religious and not pagan in any sense.

It is certainly our religious right to ignore the similarity of the
names Esther and Mordecai to Ishtar and Marduk (Marduk lives?).
I think we should extend similar rights to others.

I'm bracing for flames on this note.  I would appreciate it if some
of the flames would include:

	- discussing the origin of the word "Esther"
	- discussing the origin of "Mordechai", which to me is
	  a very strange looking Hebrew word
	- commenting on how ancient Marduk and Ishtar are.

I will be happy to summarize to the net.

	- Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
	allegra!eosp1!robison
	or: decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison
	or (emergency): princeton!eosp1!robison