SLD

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42154769...ience-science/

Interesting article that claims that originally Yahweh was married to Asherah. Asherah appears in the Old Testament, in some places as Baal's consort. But this indicates that she may originally have been worshiped as Yahweh's wife as some archeological fragments indicate the two being together.

In Kings, Josiah drives out the prostitutes of Asherah from the temple. What were they doing there to begin with if Asherah was not part of the original Jewish Pantheon? I've seen other references to Yahweh not being the only God that the Israelite tribes actually worshipped - he just evolved into the head god and later the only god.

Interesting and thought provoking.

SLD

GakuseiDon

Where does Asherah appear in the OT as Baal's consort?

Where in Kings does Josiah do that? The closest I could find was:

2Ki 23:7 And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that [were] by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

In 2 Kings 21, the king in Jerusalem put altars to Baal "and made a grove [asherah]" -- I doubt he made a goddess! -- and this brought down the wrath of God.

The KJV translates "asherah" as groves. Here are all the occurances of "asherah" in the OT:
http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/...ngs=H842&t=KJV

Most of them have to do with "making groves" and "cutting down groves", which isn't consistent to "asherah" being the goddess herself.

Littlejohn

"..In 2 Kings 21, the king in Jerusalem put altars to Baal "and made a grove [asherah]".."

This is simply absurd! .. But what a 'grove'??..

The Canaanite-Phoenician goddess Astarte derived its name from the same goddess that in Mesopotamia (Babylon) was named ISHTART, initially known as Inanna or 'Queen of Heaven', because associated with the pseudo brightest star in the night sky: VENUS, called into latin-greek context 'Lucifer', meaning bringer of light, as was the last star to disappear from view with the rise of dawn. Therefore, it was also called 'Morning's Star'.

Since the Jews, especially after the monotheistic reform desired by the Jewish king Josiah, they deeply hated the Canaanites and their gods, they disparagingly called Astarte with ASHERATH, a term derived from ASHER, whose ancient meaning was POLE and NOT grove! (* ) ... So, Asherath meant 'the one of the pole ' (ie 'the goddess of the pole')

The reason is quite simple: in front of shrines or simple altars of worship erected on high places (hills, mountains) dedicated to this polyvalent Goddess, were placed the sacred poles (in Hebrew 'asherim'), as phallic symbols. In fact, among other things Ishtart/Astarte was best known as the patron goddess of pregnant women and of fertility in general. The Jewish reformers knew this and was for this reason that they abhorred the custom of kings prior of Josiah to raising the poles in honor of the Goddess (that is, in order to stimulate its protecting action in towards fertility).


Greetings

______________________

Note:

(*) - if ever, this meaning could be understood only in 'extended' sense, because the pole was obtained by a tree.


Littlejohn

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SLD

Uhh, even your own link refers to Asherah as Ba'al's consort. Hard to understand how it's merely a reference to a grove if that's the case and several of the other bible translation use the word Ashterah instead of merely grove. Judges 3:7

That passage doesn't make sense if they serve merely Baal and the grove. It indicates that the two deities were worshiped together at least.

SLD

GakuseiDon

I'm not arguing against that, nor even whether Yahweh had a wife. I'm just interested in what was in the OT.

It does, but that isn't what I was asking. Does "Asherah" mean "wooden idols" or does it mean the goddess herself? Not much further on in Judges 6, the KJV has:

Jdg 6:25 And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Take thy father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that [is] by it:
26 And build an altar unto the LORD thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down.
27 Then Gideon took ten men of his servants, and did as the LORD had said unto him: and [so] it was, because he feared his father's household, and the men of the city, that he could not do [it] by day, that he did [it] by night.
28 And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down, and the grove was cut down that [was] by it, and the second bullock was offered upon the altar [that was] built.

Sounds like it should be translated as "wooden images" rather than "[goddess] Asherah". Anyway, just wondering whether the claims of the article could be supported in the OT.

spin

Later redactors of Jewish literature didn't like the mention of other deities, so they perverted their presence in the literature. We see the act in process when Baal names in the literature are changed to insults, eg Ishbaal is changed to Ishbosheth and Meribbaal is changed to Mephibosheth, comparing accounts in Samuel with those in Chronicles. With Asherah a process was initiated in which the goddess began to be superseded by her symbols.

But in 1 Kgs 15:13 Maacah makes a horrid thing (ie an idol) for Asherah. In 1 Kgs 18:19 the prophets of Baal are mentioned with the prophets of Asherah. 2 Kgs 21:7 has Manasseh making a carved image for Asherah. So, sometimes when Asherah is mentioned it is the goddess and at others it is a representation that has superseded her.

But her mention doesn't end there. Her symbol is the tree and one of her sacred places is the grove, so see how many times the naughty Judahites get found "under every green tree". Married to Yahweh, as she is in the archaeological record, she is the queen of heaven and under that title she is also mentioned in the bible. And while the tree is a symbol for Asherah, the old symbol for Yahweh was the pillar (massebah). You'll note that after the dream of the ladder Jacob set up a sacred pillar. More interesting though, when Joshua made a covenant with the people, in Josh 24:26 he set up a pillar under an oak tree in the sanctuary of the lord. There you have Yahweh and Asherah together in the sanctuary.

andrewcriddle

Rightly or wrongly I'm a bit dubious about the reference to prophets of Asherah in 1 Kings 18:19. The prophets of Asherah are never mentioned before or after this verse.

Andrew Criddle

John Kesler

John Day makes this point on page 44 of Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan (or via: amazon.co.uk). He states that, "[the prophets of Asherah] play no role in the subsequent account of the ordeal on Mt Carmel, and the words are marked with an asterisk in the Hexapla, implying that they were not an original part of the Septuagint text."

Toto

Fertility Goddess Asherah: Was God's Wife Edited out of the Bible?

Discovery News: God's Wife Edited out of the Bible - Almost

ph2ter

It's quite naive to think that King Josiah exterminated the religious system taken from another nation. He actually carried out religious reform never before seen in Israel.

2 Kings 23
4The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. 5He did away with the pagan priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. 6He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. 7He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the Lord and where women did weaving for Asherah.

8Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the shrines at the gates—at the entrance to the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which is on the left of the city gate. 9Although the priests of the high places did not serve at the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.

10He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in the fire to Molech. 11He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court near the room of an official named Nathan-Melech. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.

12He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley. 13The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molechc the detestable god of the people of Ammon. 14Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones.

15Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. 16Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the Lord proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.