10 Years After

Who Put The Alphabet In Alphabetical Order?

here are a few excerpts from Tom Robbins' Still Life with Woodpecker:

[Sunday] The day of the full moon, when the moon is neither increasing nor decreasing, the Babylonians called Sa-bat, meaning "heart-rest." It was believed that on this day, the woman in the moon, Ishtar, as the moon goodess was known in Babylon, was menstruating, for in babylon, as in virtually every ancient and primitive society, there had been since the earliest times a taboo against a woman working, preparing food, or traveling when she was passing her monthly blood. On Sa-bat, from which comes our Sabbath, men as well as women were commanded to rest, for when the moon menstruated, the taboo was on everyone. Originally (and naturally) observed once a month, the Sabbath was later to be incorporated by the Christians into their Creation myth and made convenientlyweekly. So nowadays hard-minded men with hard muscles and hard hats are relieved fromtheir jobs on Sundays because of an archetypal psychological response to menstruation. [page 22]

Several thinsg that seem suspect to me. I wonder if it was the Christians that altered the monthly Sabbath (if it was initially monthly) to weekly. Also, I've no recollection of Isthar being the woman in the moon to the Babylonians.

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[Middle English sabat, from Old French sabbat, and Old English sabat both from Latin sabbatum, from Greek sabbaton, from Hebrew ^sabb^at, from ^sabat, to cease, rest. See ^sbt in Semitic Roots.] (please note that ^s should have an upside circumflex above it. While the ^a should have a horizontal bar above it. Neither are reproducable with ISO-Latin-1 characters.)
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She lunched on papaya poo poo or mango mu mu some other fruity foo foo bursting with overripe tropical vowels. In hot climates, A provides a shady arch, O is a siphon through which to suck liquids, U a cool cave or tub to slide into; A stands like a surfer with its legs apart, O hangs like a citrus froma bough, Urolls its hula hips - and I and E mimic the cries of monkeys and jungle birds from which they were derived. Consonants, like fair-skinned men, do not thrive torrid zones. Vowels are built for southern comfort, consonants for northern speed. But O how the natives do bOOgIE-wOOgIE while the planters WaLTZ. [page 79]

humorous

"Are you think what I'm thinking?" she asked.
"I doubt it. I was thinking about the origin of the word pumpkin. It's such a cute word. Kind o fplump and firendly -- andsexy in a farmer's daughter sort of way. Perfect. I wonder who came up with that word. Some old pumpkin-patch poet in ancient Greece, I suppose. A traveling saleman out of Babylon"
. . .
His fingers ran like foxes through the forest fire of her hair. " You know," he said, "I'll bet pumpkin is an American word. It just sounds American to me. Sweet dumb well-fed optimistic down-0home ball of fun. I think of a Midwest cheeroleader getting knocked up on the back seat of a Chevy after a frosty Friday night football game. You know what I mean? American Pumpkin."

Actually... the etymology looks something more like :
[Alteration (influenced by -kin), of obsolete pumpion from obsolete French pompon, popon, from Old French pepon, from Late Latin pepn, from Latin, watermelon or gourd, from Greek, ripe, large melon. See pek^w- in Indo-European Roots.]

<computer jargon> A humourous term for the token - the object
(notional or real) that gives its possessor (the "pumpking" or
the "pumpkineer") exclusive access to something, e.g. applying
patches to a master copy of source (for which the pumpkin
is called a "patch pumpkin").