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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Do Zeus and Jupiter derive from `light' ?
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Date: Wed, 12 Jul 1995 21:35:20 GMT
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In article <goolsby-1107951339270001@port11.rain.org>,
Je Goolsby <goolsby@rain.org> wrote:

>Jesus and Jupiter related? Sure, if not one way surely another. 

Ah, the battle cry of the inveterate _matto_!  They *must* be
related!  I will it so!

>You just
>don't create a religion without giving it some authority and it can
>usually be traced through words.

True enough, but why would the early Christians look to Olympus for
sources of authority?  The Greek gods had been slipping the hearts
of the people since the time of Heraclitus.

>There were three or four Dionysian Festivals in Greece (Athens?), each
>lasting for days. A major one coincided with the Vernal Equinox and was
>your standard global matriarchal spring fertility thing that endured a few
>million years before "civilization."

"a few million years"?  How on earth can you state this so blithely?
Lucy is only about three million years old and even our theories about 
the religion of the relatively recent Neanderthals are almost entirely
based on conjecture.  There is not the slimmest evidence for a 100,000
year-old matriarchal cult, let alone anything earlier.

[much deleted]

>*De*vine, brings us back to happy Dionysus. Psycho*de*lic comes from
>'bright' and 'clear.' How about *de*ity? Latin, Decir: say, enlighten, and
>*de*cide: act like a god. *Di*vide comes from the 'divider of destiny.'
>The *de*vangari is the Sanskrit alphabet.

Paragraphs like this lead me to believe that the rest of your post is
meant in a playful spirit and shouldn't be confused in any way with actual 
linguistics.
-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
