Which Goddess to worship on Easter? (video)

Scarlet Ravenswood; Sheldon S., Ananda (DBM), Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit

Playboy Bunnies swapped for Live Nation events at former famed club (NYPost.com)

It's the last day of Passover, when God killed the Jews, as Shalom Auslander reminds us. I prefer to worship a Bunny of which Playboy and the Bible would be proud.

Esther [a] is described in all versions [b] of the Book of Esther as the Jewish queen of a Persian king Ahasuerus [1]. In the narrative, Ahasuerus seeks a new wife after his mate, Queen Vashti, refuses to obey him.

Esther is chosen for her beauty. The king's chief adviser, Haman, is offended by Esther's cousin and guardian, Mordecai, and gets permission from the king to have all the Jews in the kingdom killed.

Esther foils the plan, and instead wins permission from the king for the Jews to kill their enemies, and they do so.

Modern fertility goddesses?

Her story provides a traditional background for the Jewish holiday Purim, which is celebrated on the date given in the story for when Haman's order was to go into effect, which is the same day that the Jews killed their enemies after the plan was reversed.

Etymology: It was a common Jewish practice in antiquity, attested especially in the Book of Daniel (1:7) and I Maccabees (2:2-5), to have not only a Hebrew name but also a name redolent with pagan connotations [2].

In the Tanakh Esther is given two names, Hadassah and Esther (2:7). Various hypotheses vie for the etymology of the latter. Hebrew hadassah is apparently the feminine form of the word for myrtle [3], a plant associated with hope [c], though it first appears as a name of Esther [d]. More

The Bunny, Ostara, or Eostre?

Ēostre (Old English Ēastre, Northumbrian dialect Ēastro, Mercian dialect and West Saxon dialect, or Old English, Ēostre; Old High German Ôstara, Old Saxon Āsteron) is a West Germanic spring goddess.

By way of the Germanic month bearing her name (Northumbrian Ēosturmōnaþ, West Saxon Ēastermōnaþ, Old High German Ôstarmânoth), she is the namesake of the festival of Easter in some languages.

Ēostre is attested solely by Bede in his 8th century work The Reckoning of Time, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo Saxons had held feasts in Ēostre's honor, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian "Paschal" month, a celebration of the resurrection of their Jewish godman.

By way of linguistic reconstruction, the matter of a goddess called Austrō(n) in the Proto-Germanic language has been examined in detail since the foundation of Germanic philology in the 19th century by scholar Jacob Grimm and others.

As the Germanic languages descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), historical linguists have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn H₂ewsṓs, from which descends the Common Germanic divinity at the origin of Ēostre and Ôstara.

Additionally, scholars have linked the goddess's name to a variety of Germanic personal names, a series of location names (toponyms) in England and, discovered in 1958, over 150 inscriptions from the 2nd century CE referring to the matronae Austriahenae. More