Is Easter based on a pagan tradition?

[A_Nony_Mouse]

There is mention of temple to Ashara next to the Atonine Barris (Barracks of Anthony, the HQ of the Roman garrison)

Really? Where might that "mention" be?

I did get it wrong in using the Ashara spelling instead of the Astarte STRT spelling. BYT STRT, Temple of Astarte, aka Strato's Tower. And perhaps I should have said the original baris as it is not clear the names were the same. I have always assumed the name derived from Marc Antony.

The believer translation never answers the question who was Strato and why did he have so many towers?

This is not my material and I have bee remiss for a long time in including the original URL for credit.
Where was the Temple of Herod?
Specifically it is Josephus again.


In Herodian times, the site of Ashtereth's high place was dominated by an eight-sided tower called Strato's Tower (the name being a corruption of Astoreth, which was written as STRT in the unpointed Hebrew of the time). We know from Josephus that Strato's Tower lay to the north of the Temple and south of Baris. Later, a military fortress and tower, called the Akra, was built to the south of the Temple Mount by Antiochus after he destroyed the walls of the Temple. The Akra, a military installation, was offensive to the Jews because it afforded a view into the Temple area. It was therefore destroyed by Simon in the later Hasmonean period.

The Temple precinct
The Temple area had two major components, the so-called Court of the Gentiles that surrounded it and a sacred platform on which the Temple rested along with the walled Women's Court, Court of Israel, and Priest's Court. This Temple precinct was originally 500 cubits square and occupied only part of the Herodian Temple precinct, although it too was missing a notch in its northwestern corner where the pagan site of Asteroth lay. Josephus cites an old prophesy that if the Jews ever "squared the Temple", it would be destroyed, and he asserts that doing so was the cause of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. That is, Herod razed Strato's Tower and the old Baris fortress and built a new Baris (Baris Antonia) on the northeast corner of his enlarged Temple Mount. This made a nice, square sacred area around the Temple platform but violated God's injunction by incorporating the idolatrous site of pagan worship into its design.

(1) Baris Antonia was built to defend Mount Moriah against invasion from the north--the only easy route to the Temple. The east and west slopes were steep and the city lay to the south. The most defensible place for the location of the fortress was just south of the narrow constriction between the ravines that ran into the Kidron Valley on the east and the Valley of the Cheesemakers on the west. In fact, these two ridges were joined at the top by a man-made moat which would have made an attack on the Baris even more difficult. (The moat was noted in Wilson's survey of Jerusalem, so its position is known.) This is the arrangement described by Josephus. Had the Temple been located on the Sakhra (the Rock), then there would have been insufficient room for both Strato's Tower and the Baris to have fit between the Temple and the Moat. The northern placement favored by the Temple Mount Faithful leaves no room for even the defensive tower, Baris, to be situated between the Temple and the fosse.


Herod built a new temple to Astarte in Caesarea perhaps as a replacement.

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As Israelites like the Munchkins are mythical creatures I think the issue is moot.

Of coarse you do, you just got your butt kick around the block because you're to lazy to do research.

Face saving opinion from a believer. And the kicking has always been sufficient to satisfy the negative standards of believers.

But us rational people are still awaiting the first physical evidence of the existence of the biblical Israelites from the believers.

Believers have negative standards as unless there is an impossible proof of a negative they will continue to believe without physical evidence.

However I will give you a question from your point of view. Who but a mythical people could believe rabbits chew cud?

As for your unfamiliarity with rabbits they store food in their cheeks and chew it later when safe instead of regurgitation and rechewing. Are you proposing the two were considered different more than a few centuries ago?

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but rabbits do not regurgitate their food in order to chew it again, they pass it as feces and chew those.

Last I heard it is as above, eat fast any place and chew when safe. Safe is often little more that up on their haunches looking around for approaching danger.