Marnas was the Baal of Gaza.
In the Roman period Marnas was the chief deity of the city. St. Jerome mentions this Temple of Marnas.
The oldest express testimony of the cult of Marnas is, according to De Saulcy, that of certain coins of Hadrian, with the superscription Gaza Marna.
"In the last days of paganism, as we learn from Marcus Diaconus, in his Life of Porphyry of Gaza, this great god of Gaza was regarded as the god of rains, and invoked against famine. That Marnas was lineally descended from Dagon is probable in every way, and it is therefore interesting to note that he gave oracles, that he had a circular temple, where he was sometimes worshipped by human sacrifices, that there were twenty wells in the sacred circuit, and that there was also a place of adoration to him, situated, in old Semitic fashion, outside the town."[57]
This temple outside the town was possibly the place called Bethelia, one and three-quarter miles north of Gaza.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] A few traces of the cult of Baal and Astarte are to be found in England.—Quarterly Statement of P. E. F., Oct. 1909, pp. 280-4.
[56] See the story of Demeter and Persephone in Neale's Stories of Heathen Mythology, pp. 102-10. S.P.C.K. 1905.
[57] Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. xviii, ninth edition, p. 756.