Is Easter based on a pagan tradition?

[A_Nony_Mouse]

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How many more years before you will be godsadult? Why does your god always send boys to do the jobs of men?

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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.

Now you really have me confused. Strato's Tower, as far as I know, refers to a Phoenician coastal fortress which was taken by the Hasmoneans in the early first century BC and subsequently taken by Pompey Magnus in 63. Eventually the Romans gave the region to Herod the Great who built the new city of Caesarea Maritima on the site.

In a recounting of Alexander building the causeway to reach the fortified section of Tyre there is a mention of the ruins of a BYT STRT on the shoreside to the north. [Tyre had built a fortified defensive city on a small "island" separated from the land by water. They had enough docking facilities on the island that they were constantly resupplied. Alexander did not have the ships to stop that.]

The usual believer cop out is Strato was a famous general under Alexander. Given ruins of one in Tyre when Alexander arrived that is deliberate BS.

Yes later the Hasmoneans captured another BYT STRT. And there was the one next to the barracks and another one built by Herod in Caesarea.

As I ask, who was Strato and why did he have so many towers? There is no historical mention of anyone by that name. The invented Straton is given no direct connection to any of them or to any tower naming honors nor can it explain the one connected with Alexander and Tyre.

There has to be another explanation. BYT means dwelling place from a house, to palace, to temple, to city, to geographic region. It is not specific to any type of dwelling. Translations which do add a type are solely the creation of the translator based upon what he believes to be the nature of the word it is connected with. Thus BYT YHWH can be translated Temple of Yahweh or the imagined poetic House of the Lord. As I have pointed out any poetic value of the original text comes from the efforts of the translators not from the original text.

So translating BYT in connection with STRT as tower is not in the text. It is only in the mind of the translator. So the question goes back to who or what was STRT? Given the early mention in the late 4th c. BC it could not have been a reference to either a general or Straton. The total absence of any mention of an STRT in any surviving record as a person does not suggest any connection of a person with the BYTs.

So then I look to the simplest alternate name, aSTaRTe the goddess who had several spelling variants such as Ashara. By attributes she is the same goddess from Ishtar to Aphrodite. It is amazing and worthy of note there is no mention of temples to her in bibleland. But we do as have mention as Temple of Astarte. Four distinct ones I have come across. It is not reasonable to say the one in Jerusalem is the exception that is not a reference to her temple.

The idea that Herod would name the Antonia Fortress for Mark Antony makes sense...or would have had it been built earlier than 19BC. Antony probably arranged the death of the last Hasmonean king Antigonus who had backed the Parthians when they invaded Judaea c 40 BC. Antony would have had plenty of reason to kill him and a little helping hand to Herod was probably the least of them. But. Antony was dead by 30 BC and Herod had crawled to Octavian and switched sides. He was confirmed in his kingship by Octavian and naming something for Octavian's enemy some 11 years later seems like a dreadfully unpolitical thing for a superior politician like Herod to have done. However, Roman nobility being what it was, Mark Antony had married Octavian's sister, Octavia, and the second daughter from that union was named Antonia and she was married to Nero Claudius Drusus who was the son of Augustus' wife, Livia, by her first marriage. Tiberius was the other son from that pair and Antonia was the mother of the Emperor Claudius. So...if you were going to suggest that the tower was named for Antonia I might buy that.

Agreed that is the rationale against the name being that Antony. And I have no particular reason to reject it. I do however have Caesar being pissed at Ptolemy for killing a Roman even if one Caesar would have killed had he gotten to him first. The same could have applied in this case in that it was honoring a Roman regardless of his actions in life. And that is about the only thing which leads me to say Marc Antony rather than some other Antony.