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Example research essay topic: Asherah The Goddess Of Israel - 3,293 words

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Asherah was a West Semitic goddess first attested to in the cuneiform El 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 Share in Syria, in the 14 th 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 7 th- 3 rd 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 asherah, 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 ashe rims 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 Elite, 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 Jan 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 8 th 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 Ekron (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 mans 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 Ahab; 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 storm winds 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 (peter) 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). Its 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 Jezebels 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-barnes 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 Edit 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 Year (lel el) and to Yo asian 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/Asherah (Hadley 130). Other inscriptions which attested solely to the goddess Asherah were discovered in 1990 at Tel-Mine, thought to be the biblical city of Ekron, a site located 35 km southwest of Jerusalem and dating to the 7 th 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 lsr...


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