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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer)
Subject: What is Purim about anyway (and Krishna)?
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Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 22:14:32 GMT
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Not so very long ago, taibi91@matrix.newpaltz.edu (solomon taibi) said...

>Yet I know that in Hebrew "Esther" is "Hadassah".  So how did we get from
>"Hadassah" to "Esther" in English, and does the name "Hadassah" have a
>literal meaning in Hebrew? 

  The literal meaning of the common Hebrew noun "hadassah" is "myrtle".  
Now Hadassah, neice of Mordechai, was chosen by the king to become the 
new queen.  He renamed her in Persian, and "Esther" means "Star".  It's 
neither a translation nor a modification of her Hebrew name.  (Note that 
Persian is an Indo-European language, which explains the similarity among 
Persian "esther", Greek "aster", German "Stern", English "star", etc.)

>Another Esther question:  At Esther 1:14 in the King James version it
>mentions someone named "Carshena" (one of the men at Ahashuerus' big
>party).  It seems to me in reading the Hebrew (admittedly my knowledge is
>limited) that the name would be more accurately tranliterated as
>"Krishna".

  The way it's pointed in my TN"K, it looks like it's pronounced
"kar-sh@-NA".  Both the RESH and the SHIN have a sheva vowel, but
pronouncing them both silently would make a doubly-closed syllable in the
middle of a word, so at least one of them has to be pronounced.  That's
definitely not a sheva with the initial KAF.  The English translation on
the facing page (with transliterations of Hebrew names, rather than the
usual English forms) gives "Karshena". 
  Bottom line:  Krishna is not mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures!

-- 
                              ==----=                    Steve MacGregor
                             ([.] [.])                     Phoenix, AZ
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        Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!
