Here she comes… Miss-susss Gah…hah…hahd…
Did you know that Jehovah once had a wife?
Well, it’s true. You might then ask “well…what was her name?”
Her name was (drum roll………………….) Asherah the fertility goddess, first lady of the ancient Hebrew-niverse.
Thousands of statues of Asherah have been found in ancient Israeli households. These statues were apparently worshipped for centuries up until the time of the Babylonian exile (586 BCE). There were so many statues of her that some molds were also found that mass manufactured some of the statues. She was also heavily worshipped as totem-poles called “Asherah poles.”
You might also say “That sounds pretty cool, but where did she come from and where did she go? Why don’t modern Christians and Jews still worship her?”
Like many of ancient Israel’s other gods, Asherah was borrowed from the Canaanites who in turn had borrowed them from the older Ugarit culture (along with the usual cups of sugar and flour). Asherah was a fertility goddess and consort of Yahweh (Jehovah) as described in different ancient Israeli inscriptions found carved in stone.
Asherah/Elat was also the consort of another borrowed god from the Canaanites/Ugarits named El. El (singular) and Elohim (plural – El’s pantheon of gods) were often used in the Old Testament as the name of a supreme god (and his gang of lesser gods). Modern day Bible versions commonly translate one of their gods “Yahweh” as “Lord” and the other god “El” as “God” hiding the fact that they were worshipped as separate gods by the early Israelites. Sometimes they are combined into Yahweh/Elohim (Lord God). Even the name “Isra-el” contains the name “El,” borrowed from the Canaanites/Ugarits.
Other Canaanite/Ugarit gods such as Ba’al and Asherah were heavily railed against in the Old Testament because for centuries the vast majority of Israelites continued to worship them. And some Canaanite gods such as Yam (god of the sea), Shachar (god of dawn, morning star), and Shalem (god of dusk, evening star) became Hebrew words or were incorporated into Jewish names (i.e. the Ugarit/Canaanite god Shalem became Jeru-SALEM, SOLOM-on, AbSALOM, etc…)
But wait a minute, didn’t the Israelites invade and conquer Canaan? Why would the Israelites start heavily worshipping gods of a foreign country they just invaded and conquered? That would be like the United States conquering and occupying India and then all of the Americans there suddently becoming Hinduists and Hare Krishnas (dancing in airports and banging tamborines). Invading armies did not start worshipping the gods of the people they vanquished.
There has to be a more logical explanation for why the Israelites were worshipping Asherah as the wife of Jehovah as well as other Canaanite/Ugarit gods over hundreds of years.
The answer appears to start with the fact that the stories in the Bible about Abraham, Moses, and the Joshua conquests from outside of Canaan are almost certainly Biblical fairy tales. There is simply no archaeological evidence that any of them existed much less had anything to do with the origins of Israel.
What archaeology does tell us is that the city-states of Canaan were not conquered from the outside in a blitzkrieg wave in a short period of time as the Bible claims, but instead were in decline and fell over a period of a thousand years and for various reasons.
The Bible claims the Israelites conquered Canaan and occupied it within a short time, but archaeology instead says that the Israelites slowly began to occupy the highlands in great numbers over a period of a couple of centuries.
Where did these Israelites come from then? The best answer appears to be that they themselves were native Canaanites. Most were probably Canaanite commoners who came from the city-states to occupy the highlands. Although the Israelites created stories about coming from the outside and conquering the evil Canaanite foreign culture, they instead appeared in many respects to have had a very similar culture to the Canaanites. They worshipped many of the same gods, spoke a similar language, and made similar pottery.
If they were so similar to the Canaanites, how do we know they were Israelites? In part because they lived in a distinctively different kind of dwelling from the Canaanites, some worshipped a different god (Yahweh) in addition to the Canaanite gods and they were recognized by name (Israel) on an Egyptian victory Stele (The Merneptah Stele) in 1207 BCE.
As for the Abraham, Moses and Joshua tales, here is a possible explanation for their creation. Throughout the existence of ancient Israel, they were constantly harassed and more or less dominated by foreign powers. By the 7th century BCE all of northern Israel and most of Judah had been conquered and controlled by the Assyrians. Over the next few centuries there would be a whole series of complete dominations of their land and people by various foreign powers (Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans).
Old heroic tales of Israel coming out of domination and conquering the land of Canaan must have been very appealing concepts to the Israelites who were under the thumb of foreign powers and had lost their land. Also prominent in these tales were warnings against worshipping Canaanite gods and portrayal of adverse consequences when these warnings were ignored because these particular authors tried to blame the problems the Israelites had with foreign powers as being due to their worship of those gods.
Of course, even after finally purging their religion of all worship of the Canaanite gods, the ancient Israelites were still dominated by foreign powers for centuries afterwards and for the rest of their existence.
Further reading:
Nova: Bible’s buried secrets
Professor MTH’s thoughts on The Bible’s Buried Secrets program (Youtube)
Wikapedia: Israel Finkelstein’s The Bible Unearthed
Off the subject, here is a pretty cool youtube site that debunks the apologetics and is very entertaining:
Professor MTH Youtube videos