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... t: For (the goddess) Asherah (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 13 th 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 10 th or 11 th 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 perishability 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 Taannek or Tell Tiinnik), 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 Lapps Stand, dating from the 10 th century BCE. The Lapps 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 Israels history her popularity wasnt 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 Jobs, 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 15 th 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-hinton they have built the high place of Top heth 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-hinton, 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 prophets 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 Gods 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- exotic lineage system and the orthodox family patrimonies over which El had presided was likely being eroded in the 7 th 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 childrens 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 cant 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 4 th century BCE, tell of how Asa removes March 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, Jacobs wife Rachel in Genesis 31. 17 - 35 and 35. 1 - 4 and King Davids 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 Gods 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 doesnt occur in the Hebrew Bible, Shekhina is a frequently used Talmudic term denoting the visible and audible manifestation of Gods 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 1 st 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 couples fulfillment of the biblical commandment to be fruitful and multiply (Smith 14). Asherah and her asherah 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 lamp stand 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 (Fall 93): 385 - 432. Becking, Bob, Meindert Dijkstra, Mark C. A. Korea 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 (Sep 86): 385 - 409. Emerson, J. A. Yahweh and his Asherah: The Goddess or Her Symbol?
Vegas Testament 49. 3 (Jul 99): 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 (June 87): 333 - 41. Smith, Mark S. Origins of Biblical Monotheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Taylor, John Walter. Tree Worship.
Mankind Quarterly 20. 5 (Sep-Dec 79): 79 - 142.
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