XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: hayesmstw@hotmail.com   
      
   On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 04:36:08 GMT, Sean  wrote:   
      
   >Larry Swain wrote:   
   >   
   >> But one shouldn't assume that Theodore's "program" if you will was   
   >> successful in stamping out native stories and traditions.  For one thing   
   >> it wasn't designed to that   
   >   
   >But it was designed to replace the Pagan religion with Christianity,   
   >which would have included either suppressing or Christianizing   
   >the Pagan rites, myths and festivals, etc. It must have been a lot   
   >easier to redefine the Pagan harvest festival as "All Saints' Eve"   
   >than to somehow integrate the story of Wotan and Freya somewhere   
   >into Genesis.   
      
   All this "would have" and "must have" sounds like Marxist rhetoric. If that's   
   what the ideology says should have happened, thyen it "must have" happened,   
   regardless of empirical events.   
      
   The celebration of All Saints on 1 November only became widespread long after   
   Theodore of Tarsus, and I don't think that there is any evidence that the   
   pagan Anglo-Saxons observed "All Saints Eve" as a "pagan harvest festival".   
   Sprinkling your postings with factoids like that does nothing to make them   
   convincing.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes   
   Web: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hayesstw   
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