[gothic-l] Re: Sacrificial cycles

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Troels,
You wrote:
>Normally you talk about Gaut/Odin or Woden/Odin making Odin a
>development from one or two gods, but you assumed Gaut to have a 19
>years cycle. If you have nothing attested about the cycle of the
>German Wodan before the calender of Aun began in 476, how do you then
>know that his cycle was 8 and not 19 years like Gaut?
>
>Isn't this a supposition too like Gaut?

There is nothing that prevents an 8-year cycle from co-existing
with a 19-year cycle.

The 19 year Meton cycle need also not have come from "the Romans",
but rather from the Christian Church, that has used it for a very
long time to calculate the date of Easter, and still does (if I
am not mistaken). Since the date of Easter has to be synchronized with
the phase of the Moon (Easter being in origin a Jewish festival,
and the Jews used a lunar calendar), it was necessary for the Church to
have access to a lunar calendar, i.e. some rule that predicts the phase
of the moon on a given date. Here the 19-year rule is without competition,
because it is so simple, and it is also gives correct results; that is
it's predictions agree with the observed Lunar phase on a given date.

I do not know in what year the Anglo-Saxons became christianized, but
it must have been quite early. Not long afterwards they too began
to use the 19-year rule for calculating Easter. Before they became
Christian the Anglo-Saxons already had a Lunar calendar that worked
by inserting a 13th month at certain intervals (every 3 years with
some exceptions I think). The 13th month was however not inserted
inbetween the midwinter months, but into the middle of the summer
months.

Best regards
Keth



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