“And the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2)
Part 2 (see my introduction to this discussion in Part 1)
As I mentioned in Part 1, the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible’s description of Israelite religion as focused on the worship of Yahweh alone to the exclusion of all other deities shows this literature to derive from a period significantly later than the monarchy when polytheism was the norm. The biblical narrative projects monotheism (the worship of Yahweh alone) and aniconism (a form of worship without cult icons or symbols of deities) into the distant past of Israel’s history (in fact, all the way to Adam!), and depicts the worship of Asherah as a foreign import into the Israelite cult (an abomination that a few ‘righteous’ kings tried in vain to eradicate). As both of these claims are contradicted by the archaeological evidence discussed above, we can only assume that the biblical authors were not interested in portraying Israelite religion as it actually had been but in constructing a past that conformed to and legitimated the beliefs and practices that had come to be culturally accepted in the world in which they lived (ie. the Persian and Hellenistic periods). They wrote as if their minority religious perspective, which had only recently developed, had always been the standard orthodoxy.
Still, even though a late, Yahweh-alone, anti-polytheistic perspective dominates the central narratives of the OT/HB, the canonical biblical text is a far more valuable source for understanding ancient Israelite goddess worship than it first appears. For not only do the biblical authors provide many clues about the worship of Asherah or the Queen of Heaven (probably just another way of referring to Asherah) from their polemics against her (Jer. 7:18; 44:17-25), but the OT/HB is a rich anthology of literature with traditions of diverse origin, some of which seem to stem from an earlier time when the mythological reality of an Israelite goddess was broadly accepted and others that represent a continuation of goddess belief from the monarchic period into the post-monarchic period.
To understand this, it is important to recognize that while monotheistic-like belief in Yahweh alone eventually became accepted by a large subset of Jewish culture during the late Second Temple period (500 BCE-70 CE), belief in Asherah was not something that died overnight. After the Babylonian destruction of the Judahite kingdom and exile of its leading members, the people who stayed in Judah continued to hold to traditional beliefs and practices, which included a polytheistic theology that conceptualized the divine world as a family of male and female deities (father, mother, son etc). This state of affairs can be assumed to have persisted well after the reestablishment of a Jewish polity under Persian rule (led by Jewish Babylonian returnees), as there was little reason for anyone to abandon their ancestral religion. The continuing vitality and even appeal of this traditional Israelite polytheism is reflected in the trenchant and often violent polemics of the Deuteronomistic authors against it (Deuteronomistic is a name used by scholars to describe the authors of the books Deuteronomy-Kings). In Deuteronomy they portray Moses as enjoining the people just prior to entering the land to go and destroy all the sanctuaries and cult symbols of the indigenous nations (Deut 7:1-5; 12:2-4), and to stone anyone who tries to convince others to worship the gods of the land (Deut 13:6-11), rhetoric which most likely reflects sectarian conflict between different Israelite communities during the post-exilic period.
Remarkably, a few traditions were incorporated into the OT/HB that hearken back to the earlier polytheistic theology of monarchic Israel and show that some within the community of post-exilic Judah continued to recognize a female deity at the same time that others were becoming adherents of a rigorous monotheizing Yahweh-alone cult. In none of these textual traditions is the name of the female deity explicit (which partly explains how they were included in the collection of texts that came to be the canonical OT/HB; their ambiguity of description allowed them to be treated symbolically by later readers), but close analysis of the Hebrew text suggests that they were originally intended to be understood as instantiations of Israelite Asherah.
The most easily recognizable female divinity found in the Hebrew Scriptures is that of Lady Wisdom. Lady Wisdom is a striking female figure that appears prominently in the first nine chapters of the book of Proverbs, where she is portrayed as a teacher of humankind and revealer of heavenly knowledge (1:20-33; 8:1-11), the intimate partner of God and co-creator of the earth (8:22-36). Because of the symbolic nature of her name, some scholars have interpreted her as a personification of the quality of wisdom, suggesting that she is more a product of literary artifice than Israelite mythology. However, it is increasingly recognized that the literary motifs and characteristics associated with her do not comport well with the notion of creative literary personification and that her strong mythological persona likely stems from an indigenous Israelite goddess tradition.
For clarifying the identity of this goddess, Proverbs 3:13-18 provides an important clue. This passage begins and ends with a term cognate (related by language) to the name Asherah (ashre, traditionally translated as “blessed”) and compares Lady Wisdom to the tree of life. An important symbol of Asherah in earlier monarchic times was the fruit bearing tree.
Another biblical tradition that reflects belief in a female divinity is found in Gen. 1:2. In this passage (which derives from the Priestly source), a ruach elohim (traditionally translated “the Spirit of God”) is said to hover over the waters at the beginning of the creation. Significantly, the ruach is described as an active and independent divine entity since it is modified by the feminine participle merahephet (“hovering”).
There has been much discussion among scholars about how to translate the phrase ruach elohim. Because a common meaning of ruach is “wind”, and because this understanding of the term would seem to be reflected in Gen 8:1 (a Priestly passage closely parallel to Gen 1:2), some scholars have argued that the text refers to a wind sent from God (against tehom, “the deep”) as a preliminary step in the creation. But this translation fails to account for various syntactical elements of the Hebrew, including the fact that ruach is found in a construct relationship to elohim (“spirit of God”; the construct relationship is often indicated in English by the word “of”), suggesting that it is understood to be a specific and definite ruach (“the spirit”) and not some indeterminate “wind” that God caused to sweep over the waters. Furthermore, the use of the active feminine participle merahephet mentioned above suggests that it is the ruach itself that is engaged in the activity of “hovering”, not a tool used by God.
A more likely interpretation is that the ruach elohim is a subtle allusion to a traditional Israelite belief that a female divinity had participated in the creation process. Various factors support this conclusion. First, the Hebrew term ruach had multiple nuances in the religious world of the biblical writers, one of which was to function as an epithet or title of the female partner of God (see below). Second, the feminine ending on merahephet shows that ruach was understood to be a feminine entity. Third, the word merahephet stems from a Semitic root that seems to have been typically used to describe the hovering and low-flying activity of birds (cf. Deut 32:11). Bird imagery was frequently employed in ancient Near Eastern myth to symbolize goddesses, most often goddesses with protective and motherly characters. Fourth, understanding ruach as a female deity who participated in the creation fits the broader literary context. In Gen. 1:26 elohim says, “Let us make ‘adam (humankind) in our own image, according to our likeness…“ and then elohim creates ha’adam (humankind) in the image of elohim, male and female (v. 27). The implication of this language is that the term elohim (plural in form) refers to a male and female dyad, who together constitute the pattern for human sex differentiation. In this context elohim is implied to be a male and female pair, just as ‘adam is male and female. Finally, the belief that a female deity had collaborated with God in the creation of the earth is reflected in Proverbs, where Lady Wisdom is portrayed as a divine architect who partnered with Yahweh in establishing a habitable space for people to dwell in (Proverbs 8:27-31).
A much less well known goddess tradition is found in the sections of Isaiah known as Second and Third Isaiah (these names stem from scholarly belief that they were written later than the first part of Isaiah). Here a female deity is referred to several times as Yahweh’s ruach (“spirit/breath”) or the ruach Yahweh, similar to the title ruach elohim found in Gen 1:2. These include Isaiah 48:16; 57:16; 63:8-14.
Isaiah 48:16 literally reads, “And now, the Lord Yahweh has sent me and his ruach.” This passage has puzzled biblical commentators, because grammatically it does not make sense to understand the ruach as something sent by Yahweh (the verb “sent” already has an attached object suffix). Some scholars recognize that the ruach seems to be associated with Yahweh in the sending of the speaker, but this interpretation is rejected on account of the implication that the ruach is an independent divine entity. As a result, scholars disagree about how to translate the line and some have even suggested that ruach here is a scribal addition or mistake. However, the syntax (grammatical arrangement) of the construction Yahweh and “his spirit” is closely parallel to the inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom, where Yahweh is paired with a female partner designated “his asherah”. This suggests that Yahweh and “his ruach” are treated as a compound entity (broken up for stylistic and poetic reasons) who together send the speaking voice. The Hebrew should therefore be translated: “And now, the Lord Yahweh and his Spirit have sent me.”
Isaiah 57:16 is another passage that is generally garbled in English translations (probably because biblical scribes at some point edited and partially rewrote the line to try to make sense of it or to remove parts they found objectionable), but that most likely refers to the same ruach goddess. God promises his people that he will not accuse and be angry at them forever, for otherwise the ruach (“spirit”) who is with him would faint in anguish. The divine nature of the ruach is indicated by the preposition millphanay, which requires that she be located immediately next to God in heaven, and the identification of her in the parallel line as neshamot. Neshamot is probably a plural of majesty (the singular is neshamah, “breath”, a term almost synonymous to ruach). Some scholars have interpreted neshamot as human souls because of the following relative clause (“that I have made”), but this understanding of the verse presents problems. Ruach is singular in the first line, suggesting that the parallel neshamot refers to a singular entity. In addition, mortals do not dwell directly in God’s presence in heaven, which is what the preposition millphanay suggests about the ruach. (From various indicators, I think it likely that the verb “I have made” at the end of the verse is an interpretive addition that replaced something else, perhaps a verb describing Yahweh’s close relationship to the ruach). In this verse the goddess’s intercessory role and compassionate character are highlighted.
Perhaps the most significant passage is Isaiah 63:8-14. This text cannot be discussed in detail here, but again the ruach is described as the female companion of Yahweh. The people are said to have rebelled and grieved the ruach of Yahweh’s holiness (perhaps alluding to significant changes in the Judahite cult), which caused him to become their enemy and to fight against them (v. 10). Later in v. 14 the ruach of Yahweh is said to have been the one who gave Israel “rest,” a term that points to her central place in the traditional Israelite cult (cf. Ex. 33:14). The independent divinity of the ruach is implied by 1) her unique identification (“Spirit of his Holiness”), which distinguishes her from Yahweh; 2) the fact that she is portrayed as something separate from Yahweh: an offense against the ruach leads Yahweh to take up arms against his own people; and 3) the feminine singular conjugation of the verb nwh, “to give rest,” in v. 14, which suggests that the ruach is female.
One final question that remains to be explored is why the goddess in the above passages is referred to as ruach (“spirit/breath”). This designation may seem like a strange way to speak about a female deity, since not only does it clearly function as something other than a proper name (it is technically an epithet/title), but there is nothing obvious about the word’s basic lexical meanings that would justify using it as a title of a major Israelite goddess. Most often in the Bible ruach appears in literary contexts that suggest it should be translated as “wind”, “breath”, or “spirit.”
In order to understand how a term with this semantic range could come to be used as a divine title, several pieces of evidence provide important clues. The first is that goddesses elsewhere in the Syro-Palestinian/Canaanite world were often given epithets or titles based on words that describe aspects of a deity’s nature. For example, Phoenician Astarte is called the Name of Baal and Punic Tinnit is called the Face of Baal. These epithets seem to have been intended to symbolize the close relationship that existed between a goddess and her male partner (the female deity is so closely identified with the male that she is attributed an aspect of his nature). The second is that ruach was a basic element of ancient Near Eastern divinity. All deities were seen as fundamentally spiritual beings that could be coaxed to inhabit material icons in temples if the correct rituals were performed. Calling an Israelite goddess the ruach of Elohim/Yahweh was therefore conceptually not that different from calling Tinnit the Face of Baal. Third, Hebrew ruach was a polyvalent term that could be used symbolically to allude to the life-giving qualities of a person. For example, Lamentations 4:20 refers to the king as “the breath [ruach] of our nostrils” when describing his vital role in ensuring the prosperity of the kingdom.
Taken together, all this evidence suggests that the title ruach Elohim/Yahweh is a symbolic name that underscores the goddess’ indissoluble relationship to the Israelite chief male deity and her life-giving qualities. She is, as it were, God’s breath, something he could not live without.
For more information on how the Israelite belief in Asherah as the Holy Spirit developed down to New Testament times, see the piece that I wrote for Exponent II called, “My Search for the Divine Feminine,” 25-28.
A fascinating read. It really sheds a new light on some of these passages.
Thanks Elina!
Ryan,
On your last post we discussed briefly is Mormons are polytheists, monotheists, or monolatrous. I learned a new word today: henotheist. Would you mind commenting on that last word?
Regarding Lady Wisdom. Will you go into that a little more? I like the idea, but still am having a hard time grasping why it isn’t just metaphorical.
Regarding the Isaiah passages. I see that she is attached to Yaweh, not El. Do you see that relationship is because of redaction?
Ruach – isn’t that a feminine word? I glanced through the post again, and didn’t see that you said that explicitly. From what I understand, in the Greek N.T. the word for spirit/breath of masculine (Pneumo-something or other). The latter would fit easier with Mormonism’s idea that the Holy Ghost is masculine, but the Hebrew “ruach” throws a wrench into the whole thing. Will you comment on that? Are we reading Mormonism back into the Old Testament if we insist that ruach is the Holy Ghost?
One last thing. Are we to interpret the first commandment in Moses’ 10 commandments as we should only worship Yaweh? If so, do you see that as a redaction by the late reformers?
OK, that’s it.
Thanks
Michael:
Henotheism is closely related to monolatry as both refer to the worship of a single deity (while acknowledging the existence of other deities), only that henotheism is somewhat less exclusive in that someone could theoretically worship multiple deities in sequence.
As a technical category, I’m not sure how helpful it is. Many of the examples typically cited as reflecting henotheistic worship actually fit well within a polytheistic conceptual and religious framework.
With regard to Lady Wisdom, I would suggest reading Michael Coogan’s “The Goddess Wisdom, Where Can She Be Found? Literary Reflexes of Popular Religion” in Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine. As he points out, in various wisdom literary sources Lady Wisdom is depicted as a goddess, with all the trappings and motifs associated with goddesshood.
“In these texts, the goddess Wisdom is described as more beautiful than the sun or any constellation (Wisdom 7:29). She is Yahweh’s partner in creation (Prov 8:22-30; Wisd 8:4; 9:9) and as such has primary responsibility for maintaining cosmic order (Prov 8:15-16; Wisd 8:1). She is a member of the divine council (Sir 24:2) and, as befits a deity of her status, has built herself a temple (bayit, Prv 9:1, cf 7:6). She is Yahweh’s sexual partner as well–his lover (Wisd 8:3), his wife (Philo 14:49), his delight (Prov 7:6). Like other goddesses in the ancient Mediterranean, from Ishtar to Venus, she looks down from the window of her “house” (Prov 7:6)…”
I could compile a long list of motifs and language found in Proverbs that only make sense if Wisdom is understood as a female deity (for example, the motif of laughing in Prov 1:26 and the hymn of self praise in chap 8). Thus despite her name, Wisdom’s mythological status is clear. What looks like a duck, acts like a duck, and talks like a duck, is likely a duck.
You’re right that understanding Wisdom as a goddess does raise important questions, such as, why her identity is communicated so subtly and indirectly in Proverbs and why she sometimes seems to be described in more abstract terms. It’s little wonder that some scholars have focused on these aspects and in light of the common assumption that Israelite religion during the Persian period was monotheistic concluded that she is simply a metaphor.
I think this relatively common scholarly opinion is inadequate and so have constructed an alternative theory that the book of Proverbs is a fairly complex piece of literature whose purpose was to defend the theological value of the traditional Israelite goddess even while it hides or obscures her overt mythological identity. I mention in my other linked piece from Exponent II that the author of Proverbs was probably writing to counter Deuteronomism and Deuteronomy, with its emphasis on a singular male God, and that Wisdom was a cipher for Asherah.
“Regarding the Isaiah passages. I see that she is attached to Yaweh, not El. Do you see that relationship is because of redaction?”
Very perceptive observation. Yes, I believe that that was a result of redactional updating of the Isaiah passages. I think that at some point during the Persian period El was replaced by Yahweh as the chief of the pantheon (earlier Yahweh had been the son of El). Traces of El are still plentiful within the present canonical text, but at one point I think there would have been even more references to El or Elohim.
Ruach is a feminine word; Greek pneuma is neuter. I discuss briefly how the Spirit transitioned from a female deity in Hebrew to a neuter in Greek and finally masculine entity in Latin in my linked article from Exponent II.
“The latter would fit easier with Mormonism’s idea that the Holy Ghost is masculine, but the Hebrew “ruach” throws a wrench into the whole thing. Will you comment on that? Are we reading Mormonism back into the Old Testament if we insist that ruach is the Holy Ghost?”
So this is the real problem that I have stumbled across. On the one hand, the sexual status of the Holy Spirit in Mormonism and in Christianity more broadly has always been fairly ambiguous. Mormons often speak of the Spirit as male and with masculine pronouns (he and him), but just as often refer to the Spirit with the neuter “it”. Our language suggests that we just aren’t very sure. If you were to go back into earlier Christian sources, you would find historically a wealth of material that gives feminine qualities and associations to the Holy Spirit and that those associations only increase the further back into Christianity you go (such as a close association of Mary mother of Jesus with the Holy Spirit). On the other hand, our only references to the Holy Spirit or the Spirit in the Old Testament, that is, references that speak of the Spirit as an identifiable divine personage, seem to have in mind a female deity, the partner of the chief male deity.
So the “wrench” is actually the fact that the ultimate source behind the concept of the Holy Spirit found in the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and ultimately the Doctrine and Covenants was an Israelite goddess! In my article for Exponent, I briefly describe how this understanding persisted even into New Testament times. By the way, I’m not totally unique in holding to this reconstruction. A well known New Testament scholar recently came to similar conclusions about the female identity of the Holy Spirit in early Christianity (see April DeConick, Holy Misogyny: Why the Sex and Gender Conflicts
in the Early Church Still Matter).
So in my view, the scholarship described above holds out an opportunity to Latter-day Saints. By following the OT evidence and identifying the Holy Spirit as Heavenly Mother, we could simultaneously clear up the identity and nature of the most ambiguous member of the traditional Mormon godhead, while at the same time solve the problem in our theology of an all male godhead with no room for Heavenly Mother’s substantive participation.
Ryan, thank you so much for this wonderful post!
The unearthing of Asherah from the scriptures (and elsewhere) is so vital to the project of bringing Heavenly Mother into our lives because Mormons are so intent on the Hebrew scriptures and their world view.
Can you comment on how Asherah would have been worshipped, either in private devotional or group settings?
For a very different perspective: I have been reading a book by the feminist process theologian Catherine Keller called The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming, which posits a ‘tehomic’ theology. (As you point out, tehom is the deep over which ruach hovered during creation.)
As described by another scholar, Keller’s theology “affirms rather than rejects oceanic properties. For her, these are moral as well as aesthetic values, gathered up into a ‘true’
description of the divine. Marine qualities become metaphysical
dimensions as well as moral imperatives: watery chaos, void and abyss, indeterminacy, mutability, inchoate expression, ‘leakiness,’ nondifferentiation, teeming multiplicity, and above all, continual ‘becoming.'”
http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780203451731/
Sorry for the tangent, but I love this stuff!
Thanks EdwardJ!
Aside from what I wrote above, there is little that I can say about how Asherah was worshiped. No hymns or prayers have survived from that time period, though there can be little doubt that they existed. She was probably very much conceived as an immanent and nourishing deity; people naturally directed prayers to her because of a belief that she would be more understanding and compassionate, in addition to the fact that she could sway her husband El’s feelings. The figurines were most likely used in relation to her worship. It is not clear how they were used, though. Some evidence suggests that they may have been used in rituals relating to divination, ie the process of determining the divine will through lots. A very interesting description of a ritual relating to Asherah’s worship is found in Jer 7:16-20 and chap 44.
Thank you so much for the quote from Catherine Keller! I really resonate with that positive appraisal of the potential theological meaning arising out of chaotic indeterminacy. Something to chew on…
I’m going to try the quote about Catherine Keller again. (It’s from Kimberley Patton’s The Sea Can Wash Away All Evils.)
“From this ‘starting point,’ as she calls the sea, feminist biblical theologian Catherine Keller passionately advocates for a ‘tehomic theology’ (from the Hebrew tehom of Genesis, ‘the deep’ over whose face the darkness is spread). Such a theology, in Keller’s view, affirms rather than rejects oceanic properties. For her, these are moral as well as aesthetic values, gathered up into a ‘true’ description of the divine. Marine qualities become metaphysical dimensions as well as moral imperatives: watery chaos, void and abyss, indeterminacy, mutability, inchoate expression, ‘leakiness,’ nondifferentiation, teeming multiplicity, and above all, continual ‘becoming.’ This, Keller says, is our maternal experience of the divine, suppressed in patriarchal theologies that have sought to disarticulate religious experience through the countering control of hyperarticulation. This, she implies, is older: our forgotten marine birthright.”
Hopefully that makes more sense.
The concept of the existence of an “Heavenly Mother” or a “Goddess” was introduced to me for the first time when I joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was never hard to accept this new truth… it made sense. Faith in the Restored Gospel and my own feelings about it have always been the only things that supported my belief. It’s very nice to find out that there are scriptural backings to this notion and that the source is not some strange pagan book, but The Book that we already revere and consider sacred. Thanks for this article. Very enlightening.
Thanks Nilla. Yes, that is what is so significant about these passages, that they are already found in our scriptures. So potentially, the key to reinstating Heavenly Mother and clarifying her roles and identity may have been with us all along.
As someone who has felt a personal connection to Asherah/Heavenly Mother/Feminine Divine. Whatever the name, I don’t think there has been a time where “God” has only been male, even if the structure of organized religion officially doesn’t recognize her.
I love seeing how that tension between male and female God/Godess worship plays out in other places and times.
I love that I get the chance to read scholarly work in areas that aren’t my expertise. I can’t wait for the next post!
Julia
Founder
Finding Heavenly Mother Project
Thanks Julia! I agree that the names aren’t really important; it’s what they symbolize.
I’m curious, what do you think about the specific theory/argument raised in this post, that the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was a title of the goddess Asherah?
You’ll find that most of us are attracted to things that resonates with who we are at our very core. Being born & raised in an African society that tends to recognize the existence (allbeit, subtly!) of a female deity, i think this post strikes a cord.
I whole-heartedly look forward to part 3.
Thanks Francise!
Hello Ryan. I hope you don’t mind a differing viewpoint and maybe you can answer this. You decided that those who placed Jeremiah in the OT purposefully were trying to discredit a female diety, and in Isaiah you interpret words in several places to mean this female diety. My question is how, or when can we decide which scripture placed in the bible had ulterior motives and wasn’t the inspired word of God, without being in danger of trying to conform the word to what we want it to say?
Then there is the archeology. In 1 Kings it talks about Solomon’s wives pulling Solomon away from the Lord to worship other Gods. This could have been evidenced of this during the period of monarchies. While archeological evidence does give us ideas, they can still just be theories because we do not know all the circumstances surrounding relics past. If they unearthed the area around where Rachel was buried and found those idols she stole from her father’s house would they say that she and Jacob and all his people worshiped these other gods?
Regardless of whether we have the same viewpoint your post definitely made me think and look deep into the bible and it’s meaning, so thank you.
Thanks Scott. Glad to have a different perspective on the interpretation of these biblical texts offered.
If I could just try to respond to several of your comments:
“You decided that those who placed Jeremiah in the OT purposefully were trying to discredit a female diety”
I didn’t actually mention Jeremiah. I was for the most part referring to the books connected to Deuteronomy and Deuteronomistic literature, which includes the “historical books” such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings.
“My question is how, or when can we decide which scripture placed in the bible had ulterior motives and wasn’t the inspired word of God, without being in danger of trying to conform the word to what we want it to say?”
Very good question. In my view, there is no one legitimate way by which to decide that some passages in scripture are inspired and others are not. Some people rely on their religious traditions, church leaders, or theologians to tell them which scriptures are crucially important for the life of faith, and others rely on personal study and inspiration. Though I think everyone does this to some extent, that is, practically speaking, we treat certain passages in the Bible as more inspired than others. If you are LDS, you know that we regard the Bible as containing God’s word in part, but that it has been mediated through human hands and so is imperfect. To a great extent, this allows LDS readers of the Bible the personal autonomy to use their own spiritual intuition to tell which passages connect them more directly to God and LDS doctrine as revealed in other parts of the scriptural canon.
I should note, however, that what I was doing in this post was not necessarily trying to determine which passages in the Bible are inspired. Rather, this post is really just an academic and historically oriented interpretation of possible references to Asherah in the Bible. That is to say, this post could conceivably stand on its own even if I were writing for an academic secular audience. I merely try and lay out the historical evidence in summary fashion for seeing some parts of the Bible as being anti-Asherah and anti-polytheism and other parts as being not only somewhat less anti-Asherah and anti-polytheistic, but in some cases actually pro-goddess and pro-traditional Israelite polytheism.
What I’m trying to say is that while I believe you are correct that personal bias can have a distorting effect on how we read the Bible, I think I have been methodologically careful and consistent in this two part post to show how there is compelling historical evidence to assume that goddess worship played a much larger role in Israelite culture and religion than people have traditionally thought.
For me personally, I find the fact that a female deity is referenced in scripture to resonate with my personal Mormon beliefs, so I would naturally want to know about those references. That doesn’t mean that I simply adopt the biblical perspective wholesale, but it does have an impact and provides a way for me to look at the scriptures differently–as a spiritual resource that can help rectify some of the patriarchal conceptions that are really endemic in modern Judeo-Christian religious traditions.
“they can still just be theories because we do not know all the circumstances surrounding relics past.”
That is precisely the nature of historical and archaeological inquiry, to try and get to know the “circumstances” surrounding ancient texts and artifacts well enough that we can make reasonably informed statements about the past. When we do that we find that the biblical texts were not always trying to describe real and factual history but were trying to tell a story to support their ideological agendas. For example, the story about Solomon and his wives is not historically plausible on multiple grounds. Scholars have even doubted that there could have been a Solomon with a large united Israelite empire as portrayed in Kings based on archaeological evidence.
If you would like to read further about the relation of the biblical text to history, I would suggest Marc Brettler, How to read the Bible.
http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-Marc-Brettler/dp/082760775X
Thanks for commenting (and disagreeing) so respectfully!
Ryan:
Thanks for the response. One quick note. You did mention Jeremiah: “or the Queen of Heaven (…probably just another way of referring to Asherah) from their polemics against her (Jer. 7:18; 44:17-25),…”
Aside from that, I myself am a big believer in praying when I am uncertain about certain scriptures in the bible. The Holy Spirit does often guides me to see more clearly, what originally confused me.
I do appreciate that although the two of us are from different belief systems, that we can have a civil and intelligent discussion. That is not always possible. God Bless.
Sorry about that. Yes I did refer to Jeremiah. I guess I was trying to say that I had the major body of Deuteronomistic literature in view.
Thanks!
I think a better approach to the female Holy Spirit is to have Father El and Mother Asherah, the Elohim as corporial Heavenly parents. The have a divine son Yahweh, who becomes Christ, and a divine daughter who bears various names and who becomes the Holy Spirit. This divine tetrad shows up a lot in ancient Middle Eastern religion. Mormon theology requires that Mother, like Father, be corporeal. Not so the Son and daughter. The Son came to Nephi as a spirit before his birth–indeed, marking his future birth. He disappears in the vision, then reappears as the baby Jesus. A corresponding spiritual divine daughter is what logic and ancient texts lead us to expect.
Would it be possible to receive a pdf of your article on asherah in Semitica 59