[boatbums]

Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence that the ancient Mesopotamians ever associated Ishtar with rabbits in any way. It is a German Protestant tradition with its origins in the late 1600s.

Wrong! Don't blame it on "Protestants" German or otherwise! You've been corrected on this before Cronos, it wasn't Ishtar but Eostre or Ostara and it was described by 8th century Bede as an Anglo-Saxon pagan observance LONG before there was a Reformation. The Catholic church DID replace it with the observance of Christ's resurrection - and plenty of Catholic churches today have Easter bunnies and Easter Egg Hunts.

Ēostre (Old English: *Ēastre [ˈæːɑstre],[1] Northumbrian dialect Ēastro,[2] Mercian dialect and West Saxon dialect (Old English) Ēostre [ˈeːostre];[3] Old High German: *Ôstara; Old Saxon *Āsteron) is a West Germanic spring goddess.[4][5] By way of the Germanic month bearing her name (Northumbrian: Ēosturmōnaþ; West Saxon: Ēastermōnaþ; Old High German: Ôstarmânoth), she is the namesake of the festival of Easter in some languages. Ēostre is attested solely by Bede in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Ēostre's honour, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal month, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

By way of linguistic reconstruction, the matter of a goddess called *Austrō(n) in the Proto-Germanic language has been examined in detail since the foundation of Germanic philology in the 19th century by scholar Jacob Grimm and others. As the Germanic languages descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), historical linguists have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn *H₂ewsṓs, from which descends the Common Germanic divinity at the origin of Ēostre and Ôstara. Additionally, scholars have linked the goddess's name to a variety of Germanic personal names, a series of location names (toponyms) in England, and, discovered in 1958, over 150 inscriptions from the 2nd century CE referring to the matronae Austriahenae.

Theories connecting Ēostre with records of Germanic Easter customs, including hares and eggs, have been proposed. Particularly prior to the discovery of the matronae Austriahenae and further developments in Indo-European studies, debate has occurred among some scholars about whether or not the goddess was an invention of Bede. Ēostre and Ostara are sometimes referenced in modern popular culture and are venerated in some forms of Germanic neopaganism.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre

But tell me why are you hijacking this thread about the Antichrist to argue about Easter???

[Just mythoughts]

Why is there mass confusion about who the anti-Christ literally is? Christ declared He has foretold all things..

People today are no different since the beginning..easily deceived ..

[Cronos]

Copying in Woman_Rar_Criminal as BB copied you in first - so if you got issues, tell her for ccing you

Eostre or Ostara is only seen in the writings by Bede - written centuries AFTER the end of paganism among the Saxons

Did you even bother to read your link? Ēostre is attested solely by Bede in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time,

There is no Saxon attestation of any such deity while there are plenty of attestations to Tiw, Woden, etc.

net-net, Eostre was not a Germanic deity - rather it is related to the proto-Germanic word for "East" - example Austria which in High German is Osterreich. And that was for Spring.

The rabbits etc. are German Protestant 17th century in origin - as written above - read it.