Written by: tlrodriguez
Asherah was a West Semitic goddess first attested to in the cuneiform Ebla texts uncovered in northern Syria (modern day Tell Mardikh) dated to around 2350 BCE, where she appears as only a minor goddess in the pantheon (Smith 385). Her status was much higher in later times however, for she was a goddess well-known at Ugarit, the ancient Canaanite city-state now modern Ras Shamra in Syria, in the 14th century BCE, The Asherah that appears in the material unearthed there is the main consort of the chief god El, divine wet nurse, the ‘progenitress of the gods’, and mother of 70 children (Patai 37). Several recently discovered material remains in Palestine combined with new biblical scholarship testify that she was a goddess worshiped in ancient Israel as well. Though her name appears 40 times in 9 different books of the Hebrew Bible there has been much controversy surrounding her status within the Israelite religion as the verbs associated with the word ‘asherah’ imply some sort of humanly made, carved wooden object which appears to have functioned as an emblem for the god Yahweh. Though most references in the Bible seem to refer to this cultic symbol, some do mention the goddess herself (Hadley 54). Due to newly unearthed material finds dating mostly from the 7th-3rd centuries BCE, it has become undeniable that the goddess Asherah was widely known and venerated in and around Judah and Israel, and that the goddess and/or her cultic object called the ‘asherah’ (or ‘asherim’, plural) was closely associated with the cult of Yahweh. However, later religious reforms drove the cult of the goddess to the periphery of the home and local sanctuary and from the official state religion into folk religion. Although her symbol appears to have outlived her cult, the presence of the Hebrew goddess does still remain in other extra-biblical Jewish traditions.
The belief in the sacred nature of trees and wooden pillars is very old indeed, and the connection between the name ‘Asherah’ and these beliefs may go back to prehistoric times. The first asherims were likely living trees that were objects of worship and ancient writers originally translated the word ‘asherah’ as ‘wood’ or ‘grove’ (Day 13). The oldest Greek epics are believed to have been transcribed around 700-750 BCE, but their origin goes back untold years before that date in an oral tradition, so when we see a passage in “The Odyssey” which alludes to the even older religious tradition that the oak and the rock were the progenitors of humankind, we know we are dealing with what must be among the most ancient religious traditions of humankind (Taylor 14). Mircea Eliade, the respected researcher in the history of religion, has also written of the sacredness of the symbol of the tree and rock, which he believes predates Minoan times, a dating that would place the tradition before 2600 BCE. In all probability the belief traces back all the way to the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the people who emerged from the steppes of southwestern Asia around 4500 BCE and had some sort of association between the storm/sky god and the oak tree (Taylor 56). This sacred connection between the rock and tree is attested to in several Biblical passages as well: Joshua 24.26-27: “Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said to all the people, ‘This stone shall be our witness, for it has heard all the words with the Lord spoke to us’”, Habakkuk 2.19: “Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Awake’ to dumb stone, ‘Arise!’ Can such a thing give oracles? See, it is overlaid with gold and silver, but there is no life breath in it”, Deuteronomy 29.15-16: “You know in what surrounding we lived in the land of Egypt and what we passed by in the nations we traversed, and you saw the loathsome idols of wood and stone, of gold and silver, that they possessed”, Jeremiah 2.27: “They say to a piece of wood, ‘You are my father,” and to a stone, “You gave me birth.”
Though it may seem incontrovertible that Asherah was a goddess in ancient Israel and Judea based on her presence in the texts of their neighbors at Ugarit, it has been the common conception that the nation of Israel was not native to the area of Canaan and had always remained a separate entity from the other cultures of the Near East. The fact of the matter is the two groups shared many similarities in their material culture, such as in their pottery and their burial patterns, as well as linguistic similarities in their respective languages. That the Canaanite and Israelite languages were almost indistinguishable is attested to in the Bible: 2 Kings 18.26, 28: “Then Eliakim, son of Hilkiah, and Shebnah and Joah said to the commander, ‘Please speak to your servants in Aramaic; we understand it. Do not speak to us in Judean within earshot of the people who are on the wall...Then the commander stepped forward and cried out in a loud voice in Judean, ‘Listen to the worlds of the great king, the king of Assyria’; 2 Chronicles 32.18: “In a loud voice they shouted in the Judean language to the people of Jerusalem who were on the wall, to frighten and terrify them so they might capture their city.” However, the best evidence that the Israelites were resident in the land of Canaan from before 1200 BCE was the decipherment of the inscriptions on the Merneptah stele.
The Merneptah stele, discovered in the Pharaoh Merneptah’s mortuary temple in Thebes, is a 7.5-foot-high basalt monument constructed by the pharaoh to celebrate his successful military conquest over several tribes in Canaan, and the nation of Israel does appear among the list. As the reign of Merneptah is believed to have been from 1224-1214 BCE, the implication is that Israel was already well-established and significant enough at that time to be included in the campaign against the political powers of Canaan. Even if the nation of Israel had began to view themselves as having a separate cultural identity by that time, it still remains to be considered if Asherah was alien to them, and if Yahweh was their only deity.
He was not.
The original god of the Israelites was the Canaanite deity El. In the texts from Ugarit El appears as the creator god, supreme ruler of the cosmos and divine counselor. He is at the head of a pantheon that includes several lesser tiers; below him were other divinities including Asherah his wife, Baal the storm god, and Anat and Athtart/Astarte, consort of Baal. El was pictured by his followers as an elderly bearded father-figure who sat at the head of the divine council, but who was later usurped or retired by the outsider storm god Baal. El was never a god to be evoked for help in military combat, but rather was seen as ever wise, kindly and gentle. This may well be the reason he later fell out of favor among the Canaanites, who living in a geographical area bound to involve them in political and military disputes would necessarily feel the need for the patronage of a warrior god such as Baal. Interestingly, this pattern of usurpation of the father god by a warlike outsider god likely holds out for their neighbors the Israelites as well.
Rather than remaining with the monotheistic vision that Yahweh was the one and only god of the people of Israel known to Moses and the patriarchs from the time of Adam and Eve, a critical reading of the Old Testament reveals to the scholar a definite complexity and plurality in ancient Israelite religion. Outside of person names, the word ‘El’ occurs 230 times in the Hebrew Bible, often in context as the supreme deity and at other times in conjunction with the name Yahweh. These biblical texts show evidence of syncretism between the identities of Yahweh and El, and that as the 2 gods came into contact a mixture of beliefs and conceptions of them fused into one. These texts are testimony that the religion of Israel was initially polytheistic like that of Canaan and during the 8th century the majority of the people in Israel and Judea acknowledged the existence of many deities, of which Yahweh was only one of many (Becking 90). He was certainly not the chief deity of Israel, for the very name “Yisra-el” mean “the people of El” (Smith 38). Several Biblical passages indicates that Yahweh (Lord) was unknown to the patriarchs, who instead worshiped El: Genesis 33.20: “He set up a memorial stone there and invoked, ‘El, the God of Israel’”; Genesis 46.3: “I am El, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there will I make you a great nation”, Exodus 6.3: “As El Shaddai (God Almighty) I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but my name, Lord, I did not make known to them”; Deuteronomy 32.8-9: “When Elyon (the most high El) gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up the boundaries for his peoples, according to the number of the sons of El, the portion of Yahweh was his people. Jacob the inheritance allotted to him”; Deuteronomy 34.10-12: “God spoke to Moses and said, ‘I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the form of El Shaddai, but I was not known to them by the name Yahweh’”; Psalm 86.6-9: “The heavens praise your wonders, O Yahweh, your faithfulness too, in the assembly of the holy gods. For who in the skies above can compare with Yahweh? Who is like Yahweh among the sons of god? In the council of the holy gods El is greatly feared; he is more awesome than all who surround him. O Yahweh, god of hosts, who is like you?” But the most striking passage showing the syncretism between the identities of Yahweh and El would have to be Joshua 22.22, often translated as, ‘the God of gods is Yahweh’. The verse in Hebrew reads: EL ELOHIM YHWH, connecting their sacred names into one.
In a further identification with the religion of their neighbors the Canaanites, an analysis of other Biblical passages shows that the chief Israelite deity El too was usurped by a storm and warrior god, in this case not Baal but Yahweh. Far from the vision of Yahweh as the supreme deity and ruler of the cosmos, Yahweh was originally a tribal god from the south, the fierce god of rain and thunder associated with a definite geographic location: Mount Paran in Sinai, northwestern Saudi Arabia (Smith 57): Deuteronomy 33.2: “ He said, ‘The Lord came from Sinai and dawned on his people from Seir; He shone forth from Mount Paran and advanced from Meribath-Kadesh, while at his right hand a fire blazed forth and his wrath devastated the nations’”; Judges 5.4-5: “O Yahweh, when you went out from Seir, when you marched from the land of Edom, the earth quaked and the heavens were shaken, while the clouds sent down showers. Mountains trembled in the presence of the Lord, the One of Sinai in the presence of the Lord, the God of Israel”; Psalm 68.9: “The earth quaked, the heavens shook, before God, the One of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel”; Habakkuk 3.3: “Yahweh comes from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Covered are the heavens with his glory, and with his praise the earth is filled”; 1 Samuel 12.18: “Samuel then called to the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day”; Job 38.25-27: “Who has laid out a channel for the downpour and for the thunderstorm a path, to bring rain to no man’s land, the unpeopled wilderness; to enrich the waste and desolate ground till the desert blooms with verdure?”; Psalm 50.3: “Our God comes and will not be silent! Devouring fire precedes, storming fiercely round about”; Psalm 97.2-5: “Cloud and darkness surround the Lord, justice and right are the foundation of his throne. Fire goes before him; everywhere it consumes his foes. Lightening illumines the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord, before the Lord of the earth”; Psalm 104.3-4: “You make the clouds your chariot; you travel on the wings of the wind. You make the winds your messengers; flaming fire, your ministers”; Isaiah 42.13: “The Lord goes forth like a hero, like a warrior he stirs up his ardor”; Isaiah 31.4: “...So shall the Lord of hosts come down to wage war upon the mountain and hill of Zion”; Job 26.11-13: “The pillars of the heavens tremble and are stunned at his thunderous rebuke; By his power he stirs up the sea, and by his might he crushes Rahab; with his angry breath he hurls the lightening against it relentlessly; His hand pierces the fugitive dragon, as from his hand it strives to flee”; Amos 4.7: “Though I also withheld the rain from you when the harvest was still three months away; I sent rain upon one city but not upon another; One field was watered by rain, but another without rain dried up”; Jeremiah 5.24: “And they say not in their hearts, ‘Let us fear the Lord our God, who gives rain early and late, in its time, who watches us over the appointed weeks of harvest”; Jeremiah 10.13: “When he thunders, the waters in heaven roar, and he brings up clouds from the end of the earth; He makes the lightning flash in the rain, and releases stormwinds from their chambers”; 1 Kings 20.23: “On the other hand, the servants of the king of Aram said to him, ‘Their god is a god of mountains. That is why they defeated us. But if we fight them on level ground, we shall be sure to defeat them.’”
The goddess Asherah may be found in the Hebrew Bible as well, where she seems to have been connected to Yahweh and originally deemed acceptable for worship. The oldest text in the Bible attesting to the Asherah is in Deuteronomy 33.2-3: “Yahweh came from Sinai, and shone forth from his own Seir. He showed himself from Mount Paran. Yea, He came among the myriads of Qudhsu, at this right hand his own Asherah. Indeed, he who loves the clans and all his ones of his left” (Becking 115). A passage in 2 Kings 21.7 has Manasseh placing an image (pesel) of the asherah in the temple of Yahweh, though later in 2 Kings 23.4-7 Josiah has all the asherah symbols removed from the sanctuary. By these examples it can be concluded that the cult of Asherah was at one time practiced in the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem. That there are several explicit prohibitions against the planting of a sacred pole or a tree beside the alter of Yahweh (see for example Deuteronomy 16.21) shows that the practice was happening with some frequency (Becking 73). It’s hard to be sure what to make of the passage in 1 Kings 18.19 where the prophet Elijah calls 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah to a spiritual contest. Though the prophets of Baal were defeated and eventually executed, nothing further is mentioned of the prophets of Asherah. Perhaps with the victory of Yahweh Asherah was then to be considered a proper consort for Yahweh instead of Baal, whose followers may also have claimed her. We do know however that at the time referred to in the passage, during the reign of King Ahab (873-852 BCE), Asherah had been either introduced or reintroduced into the official state religion by Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, and that under Jezebel’s influence King Ahab had ‘made’ an asherah for the temple (Patai 42).
Though the Biblical references to Asherah are sometimes ambiguous the archeological evidence is unequivocal: Asherah was a figure of worship in ancient Israel. This archeological evidence takes the form of inscriptions discovered etched in former religious sanctuaries, the remnants of ceremonial objects found there, and the prevalence of what appear to be fertility figures of yet undetermined usage scattered throughout Israel and Judea. In 1967 several excavations took place at two recently discovered and robbed tombs near Khirbet el-Qom, located 12 km west of Hebron. The remains, dating to circa 750 BCE, had been clumsily handled by the tomb robbers thus making them difficult to decipher but one inscription has been translated as “May you bless Uriah, O Yahweh/and from his enemies, O Asherarata, save him’ (Hadley 96). That Yahweh and Asherah were considered a paired set especially to be invoked in blessings is also attested to by some further inscriptions uncovered at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud.
Kuntillet ‘Ajrud is located approximately 50 km south of Kadesh-barnea in northern Sinai. It is believed the site served a dual purpose as a wayside shrine for the merchants of Phoenicia, Israel and Judah as they traveled to Eliat and Ophir, and as a place of prayer where votive offering might be left by pilgrims going south to Mount Horeb (Hadley 106). The first inscription of importance appears etched above the heads of two figures with bovine features wearing headdresses, the inscription overlapping with the headdress of the first figure. The inscription has been translated as: X says, "say to Yehal(lel el) and to Yo assah and (to Z), I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah” (Hadley 121). This inscription may be a commentary on the figures, whom some believe to be a representation of Yahweh and Asherah, as Yahweh was often represented as a bull calf and the smaller figure stands behind the first, indicating a lesser position, as a consort would be presented. (Also notice the circled ‘breasts’ on the figure, which are featured as well on the seated figure with the lyre, who due to her distance from the other figures may not be a part of the scene). A second inscription at the site reads: Amaryau says, say to my lord: Is it well with you? I bless you by Yahweh of Teman and his asherah. May he bless you and keep you and be with my lord (Hadley 125). Also of importance at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud were the discovery of several poorly preserved inscriptions on plaster found nearby the etched figures, which were discovered on the floors after having fallen from the walls and being broken up in the debris. They read as follows: may their day be long and may they be satisfied/swear...Yahweh, prosper (them)/do good to (them)...; They will celebrate unto/give to...asherah/Asherata (Hadley 130).
Other inscriptions which attested solely to the goddess Asherah were discovered in 1990 at Tel-Miqne, thought to be the biblical city of Ekron, a site located 35 km southwest of Jerusalem and dating to the 7th century BCE. In biblical times Ekron was a major source of olive oil and a number of pottery sherds were uncovered there are likely the remains of jars which were meant to store the oil, perhaps for cultic use. This theory is bolstered by the nature of the inscriptions: Qds l’srt: For (the goddess) Asherat (Hadley 179).
More items for cultic use were discovered at the sites of Lachish and Taanach. At Lachish the remains of a temple dating to the Late Bronze age were uncovered, and among the finds there were a gold plaque used as part of the temple equipment which pictures a naked goddess standing on a trotting horse, holding two lotus blossoms. The figure wears a feathered headdress and her eyes, pubic region and the eye of the horse are all pierced, as if they once held inlays. The goddess has not positively been identified; she may be Astarte, who was associated with horses, though is always depicted as riding, not standing on them, or she may be Asherah, who while in common iconography is depicted standing on a lion, as her epithet Qudshu is often depicted standing on a horse (Hadley 161). Other remains of importance found at Lachish include a decorated goblet from the Fosse temple dating to the 13th century BCE, which depicts a pubic triangle flanked by two ibexes who appear to be eating or drinking from it, and also found in the immediate vicinity was a similar decoration, this with the pubic triangle replaced by a tree. The sherd includes the inscription: “A gift. An offering to my Lady” (Becking 62). Other excavations conducted near Lachish in 1966 and 1968 revealed a sanctuary of a high place which has been dated to the 10th or 11th centuries. Discovered at the sanctuary were the remains of a large stone and directly next to it a heap of black ashes resembling a tree trunk. The orientation and chemical analysis of the ashes indicated that the remains were of an olive tree, likely carved into a wooden pole standing upright in the ground. Due to the perishibility of wood such finds as this are rare, but this evidence does attest to the continuity of Asherah worship at the site from the Late Bronze age throughout the early Israelite period (Hadley 164).
The site of Taanach (modern Tell Ta’annek or Tell Ti’innik) , excavated in 1902 and 1904, is located on the West Bank, at the southwestern border of the plain of Esdraelon, 4 miles south of Meggido. The most remarkable discovery here was what is called the Lapp’s Stand, dating from the 10th century BCE. The Lapp’s Stand is a cultic altar comprising of 4 distinct layers, the bottom of which shows a naked female flanked by 2 lions, above are 2 sphinxes, followed by a tree which stands between 2 ibexes who are either eating or sucking from the tree. The top column of the stand shows a pair of columns flanking a not yet definitively defined quadruped which supports a sun disk (Hadley 169). The quadruped could be a bull calf symbolizing Yahweh or perhaps a horse, which might either refer to Qudshu (Asherah) or to a Biblical passage from 2 Kings 23.11: “the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun”(Becking 72).
No analysis of goddess remains would be complete without a mention of the large number figures uncovered in the area belonging to the Late Bronze age with some extension into the Early Bronze age. Their preponderance throughout the ancient Near East makes it hard to determine just what goddess they are meant to represent, if any. Commonly called “Astarte figurines”, scholars speculate that they were used in sympathetic magic to stimulate agricultural reproduction or human childbirth. These fertility figurines often depict figures standing on lions or horses, wearing elaborate headdress and holding lotus plants or snakes, while the more primitive figures show women holding her hands under their breasts or holding a tambourine in front of the breasts or sometimes a dove. The figures are usually shown naked and the womb and genitals are prominently displayed (Hadley 188).
Though the evidence suggests that the goddess Asherah was a figure of reverence for a large expanse of Israel’s history her popularity wasn’t to last. Towards the end of the monarchic period there appears to have been a reformist movement which opposed her cult, in particular the joint veneration of her within the cult of Yahweh. There are several Biblical passages in reference to this condemnation, among them include the chapter in Judges 6 wherein Gideon destroys the altar and asherah of his father Joash, incurring the wrath of the townspeople whose plan to put Gideon to death for the desecration is thwarted only by the intervention of his father. Other passages such as Deuteronomy 16.21-22 read: “You shall not plant a sacred pole of any kind of wood beside the altar of the Lord, your God, which you will build nor shall you erect a sacred pillar such as the Lord, your God, detests”, while some point to a concerted effort to eliminate any lingering trace of the feminine, as though wishing Yahweh to function in the place of the fertility goddess: Hosea 24.9: “What need has he for idols? It is I who answer and look after him. I am his Anat and his Asherah. I am the luxurious cypress of Israel, from which all good things come, bearing fruit.” Perhaps in order to discredit Asherah and attempt was made to associate her and her symbol with the other ‘abominations of the nations’ which were subsequently outlawed. Deuteronomy 18.9-11 reads: “When you come into the land which the Lord, your God, is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abominations of the peoples there. Let there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter in the fire, nor a fortune-teller, soothsayer, charmer or diviner or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghost and spirits or weeks oracles of the dead”, while Micah 5.11-13 says: “I will abolish the means of divination from your use, and there shall no longer be soothsayers among you. I will abolish your carved images and the sacred pillars from your midst; And you shall no longer adore the works of your hands. I will tear out the sacred poles from your midst, and destroy your cities”. There may have been call to associate the cult of Asherah with divination, as a text found near Taanach dating from the 15th century BCE has been translated: “Further, if there is a wizard of Asherah, let him tell our fortunes, and let me hear quickly (?), and the (ocular) sign and interpretation sent to me” (Day 386). Supporting the theory that Asherah was a giver of divination would be the mention of the wizards of Asherah in 1 Kings 18:19. The ‘mlk’ (or Molech) sacrifice, however, was associated not with Asherah but with the high places and perhaps Yahweh himself, as he was originally seen as a mountain god. That human sacrifices did occur at the high places is attested to in several passages, among them 1 King 3.4-5: “The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, because that was the most renowned high place. Upon its altar Solomon offered a thousand holocausts”. Somewhat suspiciously, the prophet Jeremiah seems overly adamant in his insistence that the ‘mlk’ sacrifices at the high places were performed at the behest of Baal and not Yahweh: Jeremiah 7.31, 19.5, 32.35: “In the Valley of Ben-hinnom they have built the high place of Topheth to immolate in fire their sons and their daughters, such a thing as I never commanded or had in mind”; “They have built high places for Baal to immolate their sons in fire as holocausts to Baal; such a thing as I neither commanded nor spoke of, nor did it ever enter my mind”; “They built high places to Baal in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, and immolated their sons and daughter to Molech, bringing sin upon Judah; this I never commanded them, nor did it ever enter my mind that they should practice such abominations.” A passage in Ezekiel seems to contradict the prophet’s assertion, claiming that Yahweh had called for human sacrifice to punish his people: Ezekiel 20.25-26: “Therefore I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances through which they could not live. I let them become defiled by their gifts, by their immolation of every first-born, so as to make them an object of horror.”
It is likely that the religious reformers sought to remove from the Yahweh cult any trace of the contamination of death or death rituals, which had been previously a widely practiced cultural phenomenon in the land of Canaan. Among the rituals associated with the dead included the feeding of the dead, the consulting of the dead (necromancy) and the mourning of the dead (Smith 135). What is particularly interesting to note here is that many of these rituals had been considered the speciality of women. Previous to 755 BCE necromancy was common practice in Israel and Judah, and a passage in 1 Samuel 28 speaks of one famous practitioner, the Witch of Endor. As to why such a wide-spread practice as necromancy fell out of favor, there is speculation that the prohibitions against it came because it was providing too much competition for the regular (and presumably exclusively male) prophets (Smith 136). Also, many of these ‘abominations of the nations’ were distasteful to the Levites, the priests and scribes of the Yahweh cult, who due to their purity laws had a vested interested in perpetuating an image of Yahweh as sexless, deathless and unrelated to death. There is plenty of evidence to suggest they saw their God as a scribe and lawgiver much like themselves: Exodus 31.18, 34.1: “When the Lord had finished speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of commandments, the stone tablets inscribed by God’s own finger”; “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Cut two stone tablet like the former, that I may write on them the commandments which were on the former tablets that you broke.” (See also the parallel passages in Deuteronomy 4.13 and 5.22.)
The move away from Asherah and towards a strict monotheism may also have had its impetus in the Babylonia diaspora, would have which would have increased exposure of Israel to the Assyrian and Babylonian empires who attributed their victories over Israel to their own gods. As Israel was now at the bottom of the political power heap, the idea of a monotheistic and nationalistic god would no doubt have been a attractive to them, not only as a means of preserving their national identity but also in the comforting thought that an all-powerful deity could exult itself inversely as ruler over the entire universe. That El was not a good choice for a national god is plain, as what is most needed psychologically for a conquered people is not an elder statesman like El but rather a warrior and defender like Yahweh. Also, the pre- exilic lineage system and the orthodox family patrimonies over which El had presided was likely being eroded in the 7th century as the traditional family lands were acquired by an emergent landed class and monarchy and by the devastating effects of prolonged warfare on the traditional family structures. Several Biblical passages written during this time are illustrative of this shift in emphasis from the clan to a new kind of personal responsibility; Ezekiel 14.12-23 and Ezekiel 18 are examples of this change as well as Jeremiah 31.29-30: “In those days they shall no longer say, ‘The fathers ate unripe grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’, but through his own fault only shall anyone die: the teeth of him who eats the unripe grapes will be set on edge” (Smith 89).
Be that as it may, one can’t rule out the continued effects of patriarchal authority on the influence of Asherah in Israelite society and on the lives of the her female worshipers in particular. There is evidence to suggest that the cult of Asherah in Israel may also have been connected with a cult of the queen mother. Parallel passages in 1 Kings 15.13 and II Chronicles 15.16, both written roughly at the end of the 4th century BCE, tell of how Asa removes Maach his mother from the position of ‘Queen Mother’ because she made a ‘horrid thing’ (mipleset) for ‘the asherah’. No one knows exactly what this item mipleset was but we are told it was destroyed while ‘the asherah’ was not, indicating that ‘the asherah’ was in fact ‘Asherah’, the goddess proper, and the mipleset was some cultic item sacred to her, perhaps a wooden pole (Hadley 65). That there may have been some royal feminine aspect of Asherah worship is hinted at in the book of Jeremiah, where there is made mention of the cult of the Queen of Heaven, which the prophet condemns. Jeremiah 7.16-20 reads: “Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.” That women seem to have been major participants and organizers of state religious practices can also be inferred from Ezekiel 814-15: “Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the temple, and I saw sitting there the women who were weeping for Tammuz. Then he said to me: Do you see this, son of man? You shall se other abominations, greater than these.” The act mentioned here was a classic ritual of mourning for the dead, an activity that belonged to the domain of the women responsible for the care of the dead and the death ritual in the family circle. As Ezekiel describes it, it was clearly not a mystery rite but took place openly in the temple as an element of the state religion and the women the prophet condemns were likely professional practitioners. This is unusual in itself, as the Levite laws of purity surrounding the cycles of menstruation and birth made it practically impossible for any adult married female to participate in sanctuary rites and observances (Becking 172). It does seem clear that women were chief in the celebration of the rites of the goddess as stated in 2 Kings 23. 7: “He tore down the apartments of the cult prostitutes which were in the temple of the Lord, and in which the women wove garments for the Asherah.” If indeed women were slowly being pushed out of the official religious sanctuaries it may indicate that the fertility figurines archeologists have uncovered may have served as symbols of the goddess Asherah who still had her place among the household gods, which as several biblical passages show seem to have been of special importance to the women of Israel: for example, Jacob’s wife Rachel in Genesis 31.17-35 and 35.1-4 and King David’s wife Michal in 1 Samuel 19.13, 16.
Although the symbol of the asherah was gradually assimilated into the cult of Yahweh and then subsequently banished from the religion of Israel, there are a few remaining traces of the Hebrew goddess. She survives in the Bible as ‘Wisdom’ personified in a woman, as in the book of Job where she is described as a personage whose way is understood and place known only by God himself, and also in Proverbs where the assertion is made that ‘Wisdom’ was the earliest creation of God, and that ever since those primeval days she has been God’s playmate (Patai 98). Other passages which speak of ‘Wisdom’ in the form of an asherah are Proverbs 3.18: “She is a tree of life to those who grasp her, and he is happy that hold her fast”; Sirach 3.14: “Those who serve her serve the Holy One, those who love her the Lord loves”; and Baruch 4.1: “She is the book of the precepts of God, the law that endures forever; All who cling to her will live, but those will die who forsake her.”
Further, the Shekhina is a direct heir to the goddess Asherah. Though the term doesn’t occur in the Hebrew Bible, Shekhina is a frequently used Talmudic term denoting the visible and audible manifestation of God’s presence, and first appears in the Aramaic transliteration/paraphrase of the bible, the Targum Onkelos. Though its date is in doubt, the book was possibly written as early as the 1st century BCE and was of great importance in Gnostic Judaism (Patai 98). This divine female principal also survives in later Judaism in the form of Shekhina-Matronit, whose mating with God on the Sabbath corresponds to a human couple’s fulfillment of the biblical commandment to be fruitful and multiply (Smith 14). Asherah and her asherim may also remain in modern Judaism in the form of the menorah, one of the oldest symbols of the Jewish faith, a seven-branched candelabrum used in the Temple which was originally in the shape of a stylized tree. This last surviving symbol of her cult, like Shekhina represents Yahweh’s presence and blessing powers (Becking 120) and its antiquity is attested to in Zechariah 4.1-14: “Then the angel who spoke with me returned and awakened me, like a man wakened from this sleep. ‘What do you see?’ he asked me. ‘I see a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl at the top,’ I replied, ‘on it are 7 lamps with their tubes, and beside it are 2 olive trees, one on the right and one on the left.’ I then asked him, ‘What are these 2 olive trees at each side of the lamp stand?’ And again I asked, ‘What are the 2 olive tufts which freely pour out fresh oil through the 2 golden channels?’ ‘Do you not know what these are?’ he said to me. ‘No my lord,’ I answered him. He said, ‘These are the 2 anointed who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.’
Sources
Ackerman, Susan. “The Queen Mother and the Cult in Ancient Israel.” Journal of Biblical Literature 112.3 (Fall93): 385-432.
Becking, Bob, Meindert Dijkstra, Marjo C.A. Korpel and Karel J.H. Vriezen. Only One God? Monotheism in Ancient Israel and the Veneration of the Goddess Asherah. London and New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
Day, John. “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature.” Journal of Biblical Literature 105.3 (Sep86) : 385-409.
Emerton, J.A. “‘Yahweh and his Asherah’: The Goddess or Her Symbol?” Vetus Testamentum 49.3 (Jul99) : 315-38.
Hadley, Judith M. The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Patai, Raphael. The Hebrew Goddess. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990.
Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans Publishing, 2002
Smith, Mark S. “God Male and Female in the Old Testament: Yahweh and His Asherah.” Theological Studies 48.2 (June87): 333-41.
Smith, Mark S. Origins of Biblical Monotheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Taylor, John Walter. “Tree Worship.” Mankind Quarterly 20.5 (Sep-Dec79) : 79-142.