Asherah in Ancient Israel

[William Schryver]

In the recent

[Daniel Peterson]

I regret that I'm leaving on Saturday and will be out of the country for almost the entire month of September, as I would like to participate in and encourage a substantive discussion of these topics. And, in the meantime, I've got a couple of academic papers that I need to complete. (I'm just posting this so that readers will know and understand why, of all people, I'm not participating here.)

I think the topic interesting and important.

[Ron Beron]

I think it would be important to make a distinction between the goddess, Asherah and the cultic artifact, also known as an asherah (small a). While the evidence is replete that the asherah was worshiped alongside that of the massavot, trees, and even in the temple. There is less evidence that a goddess Asherah was worshiped in the temple as goddess. Instead she was perhaps only a representation of a goddess.

While the Canaanites et al probably worshiped Asherah as the consort of El and perhaps even in early Israel, the only real evidence we have of any worship of Asherah can be found in about 40 references in the Bible. Of these 40 references only a few reflect an actual goddess while in the other they indicate a tree, a grove of trees or a tree stump that has cultic symbolism. There are five references to Asherah as a goddess.

In I Kings 15:13, it states "He also removed Ma'acah his mother from being queen mother because she had an abominable image made for Ashe'rah; and Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron." In this case the abominable image or miphleset indicates not something that is made but the asherah is something that causes people to shudder.

In II Kings 21:3,7, "And the graven image of Ashe'rah that he had made he set in the house of which the LORD said to David and to Solomon his son, "In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name for ever;". Like the asherah in I Kings we have another wooden structure.

I Kings 18:19, "19 Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the four hundred and fifty prophets of Ba'al and the four hundred prophets of Ashe'rah, who eat at Jez'ebel's table." In I Kings 18:40, "And Eli'jah said to them, "Seize the prophets of Ba'al; let not one of them escape." And they seized them; and Eli'jah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and killed them there." There is no mention here of the deaths of the priests of asherah. Could this have been added later as Shmuel Ahituv suggests in the latest issue of BAR?

Another thing that crops up is the term used for asherah. While there is much uncertainty in its meaning the only thing that is truly evident is that it was used in pagan worship.

The KJV, following the translations of the LXX and Vulgate of asherah as a sacred grove, may have been incorrect:

It is possible that the LXX has not been correctly interpreted and that a[lsov was used, not to refer to a grove of trees, but merely to indicate a sacred area or object.

The Peshitta translates hr`a as the name of a goddess, but in most instances uses such words as dehleth

[William Schryver]

EA,

Thanks for your reply. This is, indeed, a very interesting topic. I've found some more source material on it since my original post. However, I've been really busy today, so my reply to your post will probably have to wait until sometime tomorrow. I'm hoping that Addictio, and perhaps even The Dude, will choose to participate. Hopefully The Dude will request to receive "Pundit" status in order to participate here. Certainly if I can be considered qualified, so can he. I also hope that DCP will take his laptop "down under" and find some time to participate. As Ray A can confirm, they do have internet access below the equator.

Will

[consiglieri]

On another, non-pundit, thread,

ENEMY ACE WRITES: I was doing some further reading on the Asherah mentioned so extensively on these boards and I noticed that Ba'al, the Canaanite personification of El, and whose consort was Asherah was NOT monogamous. In fact, he had quite a harem including Anath (also known as Anat, Egyptian Antit, Anit, Anti ), Padriya, Talliya, and Arsiya.

MY QUESTION: Have we been missing a possibility with the Book of Mormon title, "Anti-Nephi-Lehi"?

Is this a place where an Egyptian connection is displayed in the text, as opposed to the commonly-assumed Greek?

Is this perhaps another reference to the female personification of Wisdom, found elsewhere in the Book of Mormon?

No non-pundits have responded to this yet, so I thought I would give the pundit-only crowd a crack.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[William Schryver]

Enemy Ace:

I think it would be important to make a distinction between the goddess, Asherah and the cultic artifact, also known as an asherah (small a). While the evidence is replete that the asherah was worshiped alongside that of the massavot, trees, and even in the temple. There is less evidence that a goddess Asherah was worshiped in the temple as goddess. Instead she was perhaps only a representation of a goddess.

You could very well be correct in your observation. It is becoming increasingly undeniable that some kind of representation of Asherah was in the first temple. In what form she was represented, and for what purpose is far less certain. There are many scholars who now see in the menorah a persistent image of the tree symbol that hearkens back to the period during which Asherah had a place in the temple.

We do know that Asherah was identified with trees, and specifically, with the Tree of Life. It is this association that makes the images in Nephi

[Ron Beron]

We do know that Asherah was identified with trees, and specifically, with the Tree of Life.  It is this association that makes the images in Nephi

[clarkgoble]

Could someone answer a brief question for me. Exactly how is Mullen's The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature thought of today by the general scholarly community. I know it caused quite a commotion when it was first published back in the 80's and it obviously has strong bearing on the debate at hand. (I could kick myself for not nabbing a copy for $20 a few years back when I had the chance)

The second point would simply be to urge caution against a general structuralism ala Jung, Campbell or others. I think the problems with that approach are well known. I'd be the first to admit a deep skepticism of Jungian approaches to these things, especially considering that the ultimate ground for such parallels is not transmission or common historical use but common cognitive structures among humans combined with common environmental queues.

[The_Monk]

Could someone answer a brief question for me. Exactly how is Mullen's The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature thought of today by the general scholarly community.

Mark Smith, a prominent scholar currently dealing with Ugaritic/Israelite topics, cites Mullen positively throughout what I've read of his Origins of Biblical Monotheism.

Smith's other books are

The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel

The Memoirs of God: History, Memory, and the Experience of the Divine in Ancient Israel

Ugaritic Narrative Poetry

Untold Stories: The Bible and Ugaritic Studies in the Twentieth Century

The Origins and Development of the Waw-Consecutive: Northwest Semitic Evidence of Ugarit and Qumran (Harvard Semitic Studies, Vol. No. 39)

Smith is well-known and thought of in the field.

[Daniel Peterson]

The second point would simply be to urge caution against a general structuralism ala Jung, Campbell or others. I think the problems with that approach are well known. I'd be the first to admit a deep skepticism of Jungian approaches to these things, especially considering that the ultimate ground for such parallels is not transmission or common historical use but common cognitive structures among humans combined with common environmental queues.

A personal take: To adapt a comment attributed to Josef Goebbels (not typically one of my literary influences), "Whenever I hear the word Jung, I reach for my revolver."

[e=mc2]

Is that so he can shoot himself for not having as many insights and interesting ideas as Jung did?

You can agree or disagree with Jung, but there is fundamentally no question that his magnum opus "Mysterium Coniunctionis" is by any standard simply hands down, the finest treatment of that theme anywhere in written literature. It is over the top astonishing. What bothers some folks about Jung, I would suspect is that he took the Alchemists (and the Gnostics when they were rediscovered in 1945 at Nag Hammadi!) seriously. It is the same approach which Leonora Leet took with the Kabblistic Zohar rabbis in her four books on the Kabbalah, and we all are much the better informed for her magnificent revelations on almost every page of her over 2,000 pages of writings.

[katherine the great]

This is my completely NON expert opinion since so many people on this board are more well read on ancient Israel. I have a hard time seeing Asherah worship as ever having been acceptable to God. Not because worshipping the Heavenly Mother is wrong, but because doing so as part of temple worship would have made the tendency to let it turn into full scale fertility worship too great.

[Ron Beron]

This is my completely NON expert opinion since so many people on this board are more well read on ancient Israel. I have a hard time seeing Asherah worship as ever having been acceptable to God. Not because worshipping the Heavenly Mother is wrong, but because doing so as part of temple worship would have made the tendency to let it turn into full scale fertility worship too great.

The ironic thing was that it wasn't accepted as part of a full scale fertility worship, but rather accepted as part of an archaic remnant of an earlier religious practice as was serpent worship. I believe it was Hezekiah who rid the temple of both the serpent and asherah artifacts. While officially the religious worship was ostensibly disengaged from fertility and serpent worship it remained in force as part of the common religious practice of the people. Some (Wm Dever) would argue that it continues in one form or another today.