How about this version:
http://www.ldolphin.org/ishtar.html
The word Easter appears once in the King James version of the Bible.Herod has put Peter in prison, "intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people" (Acts 12:4). Yet in the original Greek text the word is not Easter, but Pesach, that is Passover. So why was the name changed? Please read on, and remember Exodus 34:14; For you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous G-d.
"Asherah" the Greek form of this word from the Septuagint is "Astarte", who is the Babylonian goddess of the sea, sea being symbolic of people, and consort of the god El. She was the mother of several gods, including Ba'al, the Babylonian god of the sun. These deities were soon adopted by the Canaanites when they named these female deities the Ashereh or Asherim. These deities were made of wood carved from a type of evergreen tree, or often they were set up in Canaanite homes as full trees cut down from a forest. The Asherim normally were highly acknowledged during two specific occasions. First and foremost, they were the fertility gods of the spring equinox, when the days and nights were approximately the same in length, signifying the beginning of living things growing for the summer season. A very common practice in the Canaanite religion was performed on the first Sunday of the equinox. The families would face east to await the rising of the sun, which was the chief symbol of the sun god, Ba'al. Later on during the day, the children of the Canaanite parents would often go and hunt for eggs, which were symbolic of sex, fertility and new life. It was believed that these eggs came from rabbits, which in the pagan world were symbolic of lust, sexual prowess and reproduction. The Canaanites, however, were not the only ones who worshipped rabbits as deities. The Egyptians and the Persians (Babylon) also held rabbits in high esteem because they believed that rabbits first came from the divine Phoenix birds, who once ruled the ancient skies until they were attacked by other gods in a power struggle. When they were struck down, they reincarnated into rabbits, but kept the ability to produce eggs like the ancient birds to show their origins.
Other stories concerning the egg rose later in the Middle Ages by the Anglo-Saxons, where they believed the origin of the Universe had the earth being hatched out of an enormous egg. Decorating eggs came about to honor their pagan gods and were often presented as gifts to other families to bring them fertility and sexual success during the coming year. And secondly, they were highly worshipped and celebrated during the winter solstice. As according to Jer. 10:1-5; Is. 40:19-20; 41:7 and 44:9-20, the pagans would go out into the forest and do one of two things. Either they chopped down a tree and carved a female deity out of it, or they would simply bring the tree into the house and decorate it with gold and silver ornaments symbolizing the sun and the moon while nailing a stand on the bottom so it would not totter or tip over.
Out of this practice came many other variations of these pagan festivals until the Roman Catholic Church adopted the Asherah worship and named it EASTER around 155 A.D. According to the CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA, Easter was named after a pagan goddess of the Anglo-Saxons named Eostre, the goddess of the dawn. A great controversy arose between the Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church in 325 A.D. on whether to celebrate Easter on Sundays or on whatever day the Jewish Passover fell upon. Unfortunately, the Greeks lost a lot of followers and the Catholics contended that keeping Easter on Sundays would stimulate the practices of both the Christian world and the pagan worshippers. Note that the word CATHOLIC means "universal" or "one world" in thought, concept and practice. Hence, since the original practice of Asherah worship we now have in our time the celebration of Easter, a counterfeit holiday to the true Christian festival of the Passover which was instituted in the Bible and completed in the New Testament when Christ died on the cross as our Passover Lamb.
"...For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us."
Rubbish.
First, the name Easter, or OEstre, was simply the name of the month of the Anglo-Saxon calendar in which the Feast of Our Lord's Resurrection, called Pascha in Greek, always fell. (Note, the same consonants as the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover--I've wondered whether the medieval rabbis who added vowel points didn't change the vowels to avoid having the name be the same as the Christian feast). It has no connection whatever to any Babylonian mythology, and is found only in English. All other languages have a name for the Feast of Our Lord's Resurrection derived from the Greek name, Pascha.
Using it no more makes the feast pagan than does calling Good Friday, Good FRIday, a reference to the Norse pagan goddess Freya, or calling the first day of the week Sunday makes the weekly celebration of Our Lord's Resurrection into a feast of Julian the Apostate's bizarre solar paganism.
Second, decorating eggs is an elaboration of the ancient Christian custom of using red eggs to symbolize the blood of Christ, and recall a miracle wrought in testimony of Our Lord's Resurrection by St. Mary Magdalene: when she brought news of the Resurrection to Pilate (or in some tellings, Caesar in Rome), she was carrying a basket of eggs (white or brown), and Pilate scoffed that he would no more believe that a man would rise from the dead than that the eggs the saint carried would turn red, where upon, they did. We Orthodox have always had red eggs at Pascha, even from the times when there were no Angles or Saxons in Britain or in the Church.
A joyous Feast of the Resurrection to our separated Latin and protestant bretheren, who insist on celebrating early (whether you call it Easter or Pasque): Pascha, following the decision of the First Ecumenical Council and Great Church of Alexandria, to which the Holy Council referred details for final decision, is next Sunday.
Learn Church history. Santayana's dictum doesn't seem to apply to Church history: in Church history, it seems, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to make it up.
I believe the King James writers are correct. This passover was apparently a pagan feast and was the proper rendering.
If you notice the context of Acts 12:4, you'll notice in verse 3 that "then were the days of UNLEAVENED BREAD." If you remember, the date of "UNLEAVENED BREAD" as specified in Leviticus 23:6, was the 15th day of the first month. In Leviticus 23:5, the date for the "PASSOVER" was the 14th day of the first month. In Act 12:4 we read the words "intending after Easter (or Passover) to bring him forth to the people. If it was already the "DAYS OF UNLEAVENED BREAD" or the 15th of the month, how could the 14th come after the 15th? This would be the case if this were the normal "Passover."