spin

Yes, Rainey is a philologist and tends to stick to language related matters, leaving the archaeology to types like Dever.


spin

spin

I must admit that this last statement needs clarification. Rainey as a philologist doesn't put forward substantive arguments based on archaeological evidence. Such actions are the task of archaeologists. (And I can leave out "like Dever" above because it might appear to say that Rainey supports Dever, whereas Rainey leaves archaeology to archaeologists.)


spin

Apikorus

Dever is taking it on the chin from BAR now. In the most recent issue there is a very negative review of his most recent book, "Did God have a Wife?", by Shmuel Ahituv. Ahituv claims, (i) none of the mentions of asherah in the Hebrew Bible unambiguously refers to a goddess; (ii) there is not a single reference to asherah in any Phoenician inscription (which mitigates against continuity of the asherah tradition from the Phoenician's immediate predecessors, the Canaanites, to Iron Age Israel); (iii) the drawing in the famous Kuntillet Ajrud inscription was written after (and on top of) the inscription, "I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah" -- thus the two tauromorphic images (and the third, seated, lyre player) may have nothing to do with the inscription; (iv) the many large-breasted Iron Age dea nutrix figures were charms for lactating mothers -- "prayers in clay" as Ziony Zevit remarks; (v) despite mention of temples to other gods (baal for example) there is no mention of a temple to asherah anywhere in the Hebrew Bible; (vi) Dever erroneously translates and draws unwarranted conclusions from the biblical text. The review is worth reading, although it is written in the contentious, provocative, "neener neener" BAR style that Shanks likes to publish. Basically, Ahituv's conclusion is that asherah in the Hebrew Bible is what the text says it is -- a tree or staff which functions as a cultic appurtenance.

Valahan

Back to the question of Israelite origins, it is possible that the notion of the Israelites as a people or nation separate from their neighbors may be a fiction invented by exiles returning from Babylon.

spin

Hi A.

Just thought I'd take up the fundamentalist review you've dangled!
Naturally, I wouldn't agree with this analysis. For example, when Asa put Maacah aside (1K15:13), it was because she made a "horrid thing" for Asherah (L)$RH, suggesting "dedicated" to Asherah), something which 2C15:16 describes as having been "cut down". (The Mt Carmel show, 1K18, is also transparent.)

We certainly don't have a great selection of epigraphic remains from Phoenicia, so this claim is rather flimsy. We also have to forget the references to Asherah from Ugarit.

The comment on the iconography's relevance is quite reasonable. Shame he didn't take up the actual inscription which depicts Asherah as an entity by which blessing is derived, ie a deity.

But should we take Zevit's conjecturing for anything more than conjecturing? Finds of these figurines are in certainly cultic contexts, so to me Zevit is full of crap.

No mention of a temple to Mot either, but so what? There are enough names with a -MT/-MWT theophoric to make clear the existence of this deity. Lack of a temple mention is no evidence for lack of a deity.

Basically, it appears that our reviewer is confused about symbols and what they refer to and purveys as slavish reading of the text. Naturally, there was a scribal reaction in ancient Hebrew literature to the polytheistic past. Names were changed to sublimate them, eg Baal -> boshet, etc.; gods become their symbols, as in the case of the tree of Asherah becoming Asherah; they become metaphors or transformed into what their name meant, as in the case of the god Mot/Death.

What needs to be understood is that if you have a cultic symbol, as the claim for Asherah as being the cultic symbol, what was this "asherah" a cultic symbol of? Obviously, of some non-Yahwist religious practice, ie of some other god. It's normal in our understanding of the Hebrew reaction to practices of other religious views that gods become the mere images. Of course Asherah gets seen as the carved figure. It's sad that the Shmuel Ahituvs of the world can't get over it and read with understanding.


spin

spin

There was a population referred to as Israel before that period. The Merneptah Stele (at the temple of Karnak) talks of the seed of Israel having been destroyed, so we have an entity called Israel in circa 1200 BCE. Such a kingdom is referred to once in Assyrian records. So, no, it isn't possible that Israel was a post-exilic fiction. What is possible is that Judah, a separate realm from Israel, usurped Israel's traditions.


spin

Valahan

But the Israelites being a separate people from their neighbors i.e. originating somewhere else, having a unique history etc. may be a post-exile fiction.

spin

Given that their language is closely related to other Canaanite languages, such as Ammonite and Moabite, it's hard to see that they originated elsewhere...

All peoples had their unique histories, didn't they?

I tend to cringe when I come across the labelling of traditions as "fiction". Fiction tends to indicate an authorial intention to create a non-real "reality". I don't think traditions fit into notions of authorial intention, as there are many other ways for traditions to develop rather than someone sitting down and creating them.

If one says that it "may be a post-exilic development", I would tend to accept such a notion. This way we leave out the guessing, the mind-reading and the slur. We can talk about there not being any substantive evidence for the idea that Israel having come from outside the Canaanite sphere. Given the lateness of preserved biblical texts, one cannot show when the notion of Israel having come from outside the Canaanite sphere came into existence. But the "returnees" coming to Yehud after the "exile" makes a reasonable context for the use of the notion of Israel having come from outside the Canaanite sphere.


spin

Sauron

Right.

The only problem is that Rainey attacked the Albright/Dever argument based in ceramic/pottery, with a rebuttal based primarily in philological points.

That doesn't work - linguistic analysis will not refute dating of pottery, nor will etymologies destroy a line of evidence based upon ceramics. Rainey ducked the archaeology, and tried to refocus the discussion onto linguistics, where he is more comfortable.

Rainey's strong point is in language - given that, he errs when he tries to engage an argument based upon archaeology. He needs to address the archaeological points on their home turf, instead of trying to change the game to linguistics.

This is what Rainey failed to do in his article.

Apikorus

Howdy, spin. I've been busy doing science and haven't had much time for the boards of late.

Aw, Ahituv is no fundamentalist. He's a (retired) epigrapher from Ben Gurion University, and a solid scholar. He came out strongly in saying that the Yehoash tablet was a forgery, and he was on the committee which declared Lemaire's pomegranate a forgery. I hardly think he's a maximalist, let alone a fundamentalist.

Ahituv astutely claims that the pointing of la-asherah doesn't permit us to distinguish between two possible meanings:

(1) ...because she made a mifletzet for Asherah...

(2) ...because she made a mifletzet as an Asherah...

Here, mifletzet is of uncertain meaning, but is often rendered as "abomination". (In modern Hebrew, mifletzet = monster.) At any rate, Assa cuts down the mifletzet and burns it. So the mifletzet is very likely a wooden pole, just as an asherah is a wooden pole. Ahituv's identification of the mifletzet with the asherah seems pretty sensible to me.

Truth be told I don't know much about Phoenician epigraphy. From what I gather there is more material from various island colonies than from Phoenicia itself, which would render the point somewhat moot vis-a-vis Israel. Noone is saying that the Ugaritic material should be ignored. Indeed, Ahituv believes that the dea nutrix figurines are more likely representations of Astarte than of Asherah.

The inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud read "...by Yahweh of Samaria/Teman and his asherah" (Samaria in this case). It is hardly clear that asherah therein refers to a deity/consort and not to a cultic object. Indeed, several scholars (e.g. Ze'ev Meshal, P. Kyle McCarter Jr.) have maintained that the reference is to an object. (Jeffrey Tigay has adduced a late 2nd Temple text (T. Suk. 3:1) in which Yahweh and a "personified cult object" (an altar) were comparably addressed. This is admittedly far removed from any Iron Age context.) Once the text is severed from the sketch, the case for identifying "his asherah" as a female consort is significantly weakened.

Zevit's interpretation of the figurines seems to me more conservative than Dever's. Again, Ahituv suggests that if they are to be identified with any Canaanite goddess, it should be Astarte.

This is the prevailing scholarly view since Rafael Patai's work ("The Hebrew Goddess"), that the asherah pole is a highly refracted remnant of an earlier tradition in which the deity was worshipped alongside Yahweh. But Baal, Molech, and many other non-Israelite gods survive without this degree of refraction in the Hebrew Bible. I think Ahituv's argument is a reasonably compelling one: there is scant evidence to conclude that the Canaanite deity asherah appears in the Hebrew Bible.

The second half of your last sentence isn't so obvious to me. Maybe the asherah was some kind of divine whomping stick -- some hypostatic manifestation of divine will. Maybe by building an asherah one was attempting to conjure up the deity. Lots of possibilities, it would seem.