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Hi A.
"Fundamentalist" seems exactly the word I meant here, though Jewish fundamentalism, is quite different from christian fundamentalism. Nevertheless, there is a rigid resillience against reading the text for anything but what it literally says, no reading behind the text, understanding how it got to be what it says.

Solid scholars can straightjacket themselves. I've seen this so frequently.

But this has no reflection on the biblical text's inherent inviolability.

I'm quite aware of this line of thought, which I don't find reasonable. It's just the sort of fundamentalist fudge I have in mind with that term. It attempts to smooth over the differences in the Hebrew bible with regard to the use of )$RH. Yet it is these differences which should help us understand the ad hoc textual manipulation they evince in the hands of scribes.

The proposal to read the preposition L- not as "to" but "as" (usually K-) requires the anomalous reading to be justified from the linguistic context, yet I see nothing to support it.

(And as I tried to point out our lack of the exact significance of MPLCT is not so important as the context clarifies enough of that significance.)

How would he know?

If Asherah is really what the scribes have made it to be, using plural forms both masculine and feminine (again another sign of the ad hoc approach to the sublimation of Asherah), what religion and deity should we see this manifestation relating to?

Oh come on! Note with BRKT )TKM LYHWH $MRN WL)$RTH that both YHWH and )$RTH bear the preposition L-, giving the two references a similar status: the speaker blesses you (pl) both to Yahweh Shomron and to (his) Asherah ("by Yahweh" etc. if you prefer). Making Asherah a cultic item would render the statement strange at best. The simplest understanding without losing sense is that Asherah was a deity just as Yhwh was -- that one could bless someone to.

(The real significance of the -H suffix of )$RTH may still be not understood, as it could also be YHW-H as well, given that the common theophoric element in Hebrew names was actually YHW.)

(That's a pretty painful leap on Tigay's part.)

Naaa. What we have is a bunch of people who don't like the notion of Yahweh having had a consort. When Joshua set up the stone under the oak in the holy precinct (Josh 24:26), the symbol of the male deity set up before the symbol of the female deity. The relationship is there. Do you need to wonder what odious stuff went on later under every green tree? Who was the queen of heaven that later texts harangue? Is it not Asherah who is related to the tree, her symbol the tree or a carved representation of one?

Despite the fact that we have references to Asherah in epigraphy and in the Hebrew bible. Convincing.

I find it as I said, fundamentalist. It doesn't seem to interact with the text at all, but tries to unify it so that the seams are hidden. I'm sure he explains away the prophets of Asherah as something other than prophets of a deity referred to as Asherah (1K18). They are of course paralleled with the prophets of Baal, but there is little doubt that Baal was a deity, despite attempts by Hebrew scribes to reduce him also. We know the goddess Asherah from Ugarit. It is only perverseness -- as I see it -- on the part of those who wish to ignore her to take the manipulations of the Hebrew text by later scribes as evincing the original intentions regarding Asherah.

If you are so concerned about the successful reduction of Asherah, what do you think about the similarly successful reduction of Mot, who survives in the Hebrew bible in several theophoric names? (Just think of the "peace of death".) Mot can still be seen in the HB, but the house of Mot imagery gets taken now as simply house of death and the notion of the house belonging to Mot can be passed over. In short, scribes have been more successful reducing only some deities. There is not an argument here to ignore the deity.

Just put it down to my haste. The fact that Asherah is portrayed as a cultic something puts her/it beyond they pale of later Yahwistic religion, apparently putting her/it into a different religious current in Yehud, suggesting at least some other deity of which she/it is a manifestation.

I'll try not to be condescending to this sort of trivialisation.

We know from Ugarit that Asherah is a deity. We know from Kuntillet Ajrud that someone could be blessed to her. We know from the Hebrew bible that she had prophets. We know that a "graven" image PSL was made of her (2K21:7), as were made for (other) gods. That she could be parodied as her symbol, just as other gods were reduced to merely being the statues made to them, is plainly seen in the bible. What has happened to those other deities should put one on guard with regard to Asherah, a well-known deity, as well.


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Apikorus

Ahituv is perfectly fine with modern text criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Your definition of "fundamentalist" here seems to be anyone who reads the text differently than you!

We know from the HB that an asherah was a wooden pole. 1 Kings 15:13 describes a mifletzet which was made and later cut down and burned. So the mifletzet also seems to be a wooden pole. The grammar allows the interpretation that the mifletzet was made as an asherah, your remarks about L- and K- notwithstanding. I know of no other example where a mifletzet is cut down and burned. Associating the mifletzet with the asherah seems the most parsimonious reading.

Or it might be possessive, as many (most?) scholars presume, in which case it might be an object. I agree that we simply don't know. My point is that competent scholars come down on both sides of the issue.

Just because a scholar disagrees with the notion of Yahweh having a consort it does not necessarily entail that he is overtly, subconsciously, or surreptitiously promulgating Jewish/Christian theology. It cheapens the debate to insist this must be the case.

We also have references to Astarte (ashtoret), and ones in which she is explicitly referred to as a goddess (1 Ki 11:5,33).

I'll cop to the trivialization charge, but the usage of asherah in the HB and in Israelite epigraphy is somewhat obscure, as Ahituv suggests.

Incidentally, I'm more convinced by Dever and I do think that Asherah was Yahweh's consort. I'm just enjoying the back-and-forth with you (as always), and I find that Ahituv raises some potent issues. The most difficult texts for Ahituv are the ones you point out: 2 Ki 21:3,7, 2 Ki 23:4, and especially 1 Ki 18:19 ("prophets of the asherah"). His response to the latter is to say that Wellhausen identified "and the 400 prophets of the asherah" as a later interpolation, but this hardly solves the problem.

To recap: the term asherah in the Hebrew Bible generally (35 of 40 instances) refers to a wooden pole or a living tree. Of the remaining five cases, I think two are hard to interpret as referring to something other than a deity: 1 Ki 18:19 and 2 Ki 23:4. Still, there is no explicit identification of asherah with a deity (as there is for ashtoret), no temples of asherah, etc. The inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud can very sensibly be read as referring to Asherah as Yahweh's consort, but some highly competent scholars (who have no identifiable fundamentalistic inclinations) conclude otherwise, that "his asherah" is an object.

Boro Nut

Wonderful news. This is just the shot-in-the-arm that international anti-semitism needs. I've come over all 'Tomorrow Belongs To Me'.

Boro Nut

yalla

I am not sure this is correct.

see Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrians

This article relates the Hurrians to the discoveries at Nuzi which seems to be the source for the statement above....see this link:
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~semitic/...uziTablets.htm

which refers to " Nearly 5000 tablets were found in the excavations at Nuzi, mostly business and legal documents...."

But my reason for being doubtful comes from T. Thompson "The Mythic Past", Preface page xii where he states:

"When I first began this work I had been so convinced of the historicity of the tales of the patriarchs... that I unquestionably accepted parallels with the Late Bronze Age family contracts found in ...Nuzi....
It was all the more upsetting when, in 1969, after more than 2 years work, it became clear that the family customs and property laws of ancient Nuzi were neither unique in ancient Near East law nor implied by the Genesis stories. Many of these contracts had been misread and misinterpreted. At least one contract had been mistranslated with the purpose of creating a parallel with the Bible. The entire claim of Nuzi parallels to the patrirchal customs had been a thinly veiled fabrication, a product of wish-fulfilment. An
entire social world had been created which had never existed."

I would be interested in other knowledgable opinions on this matter, I have no idea myself, I'm just reading what T.T. says.
A quick reading of the material linked to Wiki does not seem to support the connection of the patriarchs to the Hurrians.
cheers
yalla

Valahan

My point basically, expressed more eloquently.

spin

Hi A.
Cheeky, and no. I'm not putting forward anything novel or idiosyncratic. I have merely seen this sort of fundamentalist explaining away of wrinkles far too frequently.

This isn't even a quarter truth. You only know what the text is saying and what it is saying in certain cases. How that statement reflects what was needs to be established and you can't do that with a slavish reading of the text while ignoring the cultural climate indicated by the Ugaritic literature and the rest of the biblical references to Asherah.

There is of course no problem in associating the object with Asherah. It is the equation of the object with the deity, which is an act already seen regarding other deities in the biblical literature.

And Ashteroth (Ishtar, etc) was a separate deity, again clear from Ugarit.

This isn't quite accurate, not "obscure" so much as "obscurant". There was a deliberate cover up.

I must admit, I avoid Dever as a general waste of time in anything he does. The works I would recommend on Asherah are

Judith Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah
Tilde Binger, Asherah
Richard Pettey, Asherah: Goddess of Israel

(as well as works by Mark Smith)

2 Kgs 23:4 is just as useful, talking of vessels made for Baal, for Asherah and for all the host of heaven, and using the same preposition L- here as is done with the MPLCT L)$RH, refuting the unjustifiable change proposed by Ahituv from "to/for" to "as". As I said, to go against the common reading of a term (in this case the preposition) one has to justify the less frequent reading from the linguistic context.

That Asherah is paralleled by Baal and the host of heaven in the verse plainly indicates that she was considered a deity.

Lumping together the tree with the carved figure you wish to call a pole is further manipulating the data. These are not the same thing and shouldn't be treated as such. The distinction shows a more complex situation with regard to the treatment of Asherah in the bible and early Judahite Canaanite tradition than the fundamentalist approach cares to acknowledge. One can add that Asherah (which may in fact have been a title as Baal was) is clearly seen as a feminine noun, in that it features the feminine -T- with suffix, yet can end up in the hands of one scribe as masculine, )$RY[M] (Ex 34:13), showing the ad hoc scribal approach to the reduction of Asherah.

We should be used to this literary debasement. Just consider Jdg 3:7 which talks of serving "the Baalim and the Asherot". As Asherah is reduced to the collection of effigies, so is Baal, yet you have no problem in realising that Baal was a single deity. So why the feigned difficulty with Asherah?

The argument about temples is silly. That cultic vessels could be provided for her or that Asherah is paralleled in places with Baal or the whole host of heaven places her as a deity. One has to start with the conviction that Asherah can't be a deity in order to arrive at that conclusion. We see with Asherah that the anti-Canaanite approach was more successful than with Baal, but that similar polemic was used against both. To miss out on this point is willfulness in my eyes.

I disagree with the last parenthesis. While WF Albright was a highly competent scholar his fundamentalist inclinations frequently disfigured his analyses. Competence as a scholar doesn't preclude fundamentalism. Albright set archaeology in Israel back decades. Scholars who are unwilling to read beyond the texts (they seem zealous to protect) are doing analogous damage to philology.


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Apikorus

Here's Smith on Asherah ("The Early History of God", pp. 47-48):

"Just as there is little evidence for El as a separate Israelite god in the era of the Judges, so Asherah is poorly attested as a separate Israelite goddess in this period. Arguments for Asherah as a goddess rest on Judges 6 and elsewhere where she is mentioned with Baal. Yet the story in Judges 6 focuses much more attention on Baal worship and none on Asherah. Only the asherah, the symbol that bears the name of the goddess, is criticized. Furthermore, unlike 'el and ba'al, 'aserah does not appear as the theophoric element in Hebrew proper names. In recent years it has been claimed that Asherah was an Israelite goddess and the consort of Yahweh, because her name or at least the cultic item symbolizing her, the asherah, appears in the eighth-century inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom. To anticipate that discussion, *'srth in these inscriptions refers to the symbol originally named after the goddess, although in the eighth century it may not have symbolized the goddess. This conclusion does not address, however, the issue of whether Asherah was distinguished as a separate goddess and consort of Yahweh in the period of the Judges. Indeed, it may be argues that her symbol was part of the cult of Yahweh during this period, but it did not symbolize a goddess. Just as El and Baal and their imagery were adapted to the cult of Yahweh, the asherah was a symbol in Yahwistic cult during the period."

As for Tilde Binger, she does not wholly accept the identification of Asherah in the HB with Athirat, consort of El, from the Ugaritic literature.

Judith Hadley's work engages the archaeological record nicely, although in this she is of course preceded by Dever, and by several decades. Overall her views are very much consonant with those of Dever. She claims, by the way, that

"Perhaps by the time of dtr, and certainly by the time of the Chronicler, the term ceased to be used with any knowledge of the goddess whom it had originally represented."

If indeed "Asherot" is not a scribal error. In Judg 2:13, 10:6, 1 Sam 7.3,4 and 12:10 the text reads "the Baalim and the Ashtarot," as it does in Judg 3:7 in the Peshitta and the Vulgate (and, according to John Day, in two Hebrew mss).

Regarding Kuntillet Ajrud, there's a good discussion of asherah vs. Asherah in J. Emerton, Vetus Testamentum 49, 315-37 (1999). (Emerton was Judith Hadley's thesis supervisor, and Hadley's volume on Asherah was an outgrowth of her Ph.D. thesis.) Emerton's conclusion:

"Thus, the interpretation of the words lyhwh... wl'srth as "by Yahweh... and by his asherah" is in keeping with attested Hebrew usage, whereas "by Yahweh... and by his Asherah" lacks any clear analogy in Hebrew. It is therefore best to give preference to the former interpretation."

I emphatically agree with the above. But this is a bit of a bait and switch. I wasn't talking about Albright, but about P. Kyle McCarter Jr. and Ze'ev Meshel. You can trot out Albright as a parade example of a scholar whose research was tainted by his confessional stance, but you'll need a bit more evidence in order to tar the likes of McCarter with the same brush.

spin

Hi A.

I cited the authors as supplying more discussion which was less along the lines of making the complex evidence smooth. I don't necessarily agree with their conclusions.
Smith is more conservative with the Asherah evidence. In the same volume he mentions various deities in Hebrew territory in the time of the judges, ending "and perhaps Asherah" (p.30), and similar. I don't endorse his position. However, he deals with the material in a manner more acceptible to my understanding of better procedure.

But that doesn't say too much about what Binger actually did say about Asherah, just that the relationship between Ugaritic Athirat and Canaanite Asherah was not simple. (Smith is less hesitant with a parenthesis after mentioning Athirat which said "biblical Asherah" - The Origins of Bib. Monotheism, p.55.)

[QUOTE=Apikorus]Judith Hadley's work engages the archaeological record nicely, although in this she is of course preceded by Dever, and by several decades. Overall her views are very much consonant with those of Dever. She claims, by the way, that

"Perhaps by the time of dtr, and certainly by the time of the Chronicler, the term ceased to be used with any knowledge of the goddess whom it had originally represented."

I'd think the Peshitta and Vulgate simply represent scribal confusion, assuming that Asherot was a big error to be corrected. Obviously, in the context of Baalim it was not an error, but part of the rhetoric with the plurals which reduced the deities to their statues -- as in the case of the Asherim as well. Besides, as Ashtaroth starts with an AYIN, it's hard to see Asherot, starting with an ALEF (quite a different form), as a scribal error.

This line of thought seems to overlook the implication of the statement which includes blessing "by Yahweh of Shomron and by his Asherah". It makes no sense to me to argue that Asherah was not a deity (nor a circumlocution for a deity), by which someone could be blessed.

Harsh criticism maybe. But no change of topic.

I took up your "some highly competent scholars (who have no identifiable fundamentalistic inclinations) conclude otherwise", saying that I disagreed with your parenthesis, using Albright as a typical example to make you beware of arguments relying on competence. Albright was highly competent, as are all those you mention. As a lot of his work was flawed by his beliefs, I won't accept that simply because someone is competent, that we have to give extra credence to their statements.

They ain't sacrosanct, are they?

I would rather see McCarter dealing with the Copper Scroll or things less liable to tainting. Meshel, perhaps should stick with archaeology -- I don't know, but what I've seen of his work (only in the context of K.A.) I'd question his interpretative framework.

But I haven't touched the Asherah literature for some years, so I may be a little forgetful of it. I remember how Binge, I think, presents the different approaches to the translation of the relevant non-biblical Hebrew texts and some of the differences appeared to have in part been ideological.


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Apikorus

I agree, and under the principle of lectio difficilior praeferenda we should retain "Asherot" in Judg 3:7. But I do think the evidence is complex, as you yourself say.

There's a grammatical problem of having a proper noun take a pronominal suffix. It would of course be best to read through Emerton's VT article to apprehend the details of his analysis. (I have a pdf version which I can email to you, if you don't have access to the VT archives -- send me a PM if you are interested.)

I suppose McCarter is a Presbyterian but having read a good deal of his stuff I really can't detect any fundamentalist tinge. He should be presumed innocent until proven guilty -- a fine American tradition, at least until we elected our current President.

You are right in that Meshel's initial suggestion for the reading of the KA inscription has received little support. But is he a crypto-fundamentalist?

I agree that scholars who smooth over the evidence have to be read with caution, but at the same time they often pursue a broader picture which can help crystallize one's conception of what was going on. None of us can place himself in the Iron Age, and a simple regurgitation of the data doesn't vivify the text or the material record -- at least not for me.

spin

Hey A.
A great deal has been made of this "grammatical problem". Let me aggravate it: it should be clear from the -YHW theophoric in the Hebrew onomasticon that the name of the deity was originally YHW -- have you seen examples of names including an abbreviated theophoric in other cultures?? This would make the -H at the end of YHW- in the K.A. inscription a similar (or same) desinence to that after Asherah. If the name was originally YHW, then what does YHWH actually mean? The problem is that the philologist doesn't have enough to go by in the brief inscription to know exactly what it means, yet they are extremely willing to press the opinion that Asherah was not a deity. Well, given the grammatical necessity of the preposition in the context -- explicitly used for both entities, putting them on the same status --, the "grammatical problem" distorts the rest of the evidence and conclusions based on it are obviously wrong.

I take a different approach regarding religious studies: that all analysts are probably guilty of tendentious analyses until proven innocent. It is the nature of the field. It is very hard to come across a disinvolved analyst.

I think I'd tried to suggest a difference between christian and Jewish fundamentalism. However, I keep coming across efforts to salvage the veracity of biblical information for no apparent reason, efforts to project bible (and Mishnah) into archaeology. When someone like Finkelstein or Zeev Herzog cops the flak they have received for so long from Jewish quarters because they do not stringently support the letter of the bible, I find the notion of tendentiousness towards literary fundamentalism prevalent, so I question the validity of any analysis until found visibly based on evidence rather than tendency (even though I might disagree with those analyses which I find clearly evidence based).

This is difficult to understand for me. Doesn't this broader picture manipulate the way they interpret the data? I do appreciate the necessity of knowing what can be known of the cultural context of a cultural artefact, but is that what you think they pursue? The literature needs to be placed in the relevant cultural context and not assumed to be there. One can't assume one's conclusions.

Heaven forbid! However, there is a school around who has been asking whether a history of Israel can be written. This is because there has been too much mystification of the task. The broader picture that writers have seems not to be directly relatable to their task. In such a situation other analyses of the data must be pursued with greater rigor in order for it to survive the threat of the "broader picture" with its smoothing tendencies.


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