Monotheism, Yahweh and his Asherah

ba'al is a semitic word, across many cultures, that means "lord." not sure what the cognate in hebrew would be -- but ba'al is used something like elohim in hebrew, used in association with a god's actual name: ba'al hadad like yahweh elohim. also like elohim, in some cultures, it became interchangable with the name of the local deity it represented.asherot might be a general term the bible uses for the consorts of ba'alim.

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when god introduces himself to moses, he says

quote:

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ahayah asher ahayah

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i am that i am

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i find it mildly amusing that the word asher is used -- the same spelling as the feminine asherah.it's somewhat clear for ugarit that asherah was el's wife, and in israel seems to have been important enough that we keep digging up relics related to her, and that the prophets had to continually speak out against her.it's an important reminder that the bible doesn't actually present history as it was, but as the authors wanted it to be. after all, much of it is sermon. how would historians react to your average church sermon today? we obviously didn't do stem cell research, or let gays get married, or allowed abortions. well -- no. what the people did and what the prophets railed against were often the same things.

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simply put, ancient hebrews were patriarchal. the male ran everything, women got jack. women were property of the men. a female deity would be a challenge to the sovereignty of the male yahweh -- and the religious leaders were strictly and violently monotheistic.curiously, the idea of a female consort (or feminine qualities) of god shows up again in the shekinah. well, that's simply guess work. we don't know that mariam of migdal even existed, let alone had a relationship with christ, who we also don't know anything about. but from archaeology, we know what some ancient hebrews and most of the surrounding cultures thought about asherah.but mariam of migdal would seem to have been written out for a different reason. asherah was a polytheism concern (jews are much more accepting of marriage and sexuality but NOT plural gods), whereas mariam was removed due to concerns about chastity, and influence from greece. there's a story about a missionary trip to an african tribe. after hearing the stories the christians told, they decided they had best worship satan. afterall, god will forgive you, but satan isn't as kind. well, no, they were written afterwards, and by people from a very specific ideological standpoint who were seeking to push a particular point.

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which passage would that be?anyways, female goddesses are typically fertility icons. wouldn't be especially surprising. the references i see in judges are still very ambiguous. the one you provide above (3:7) says:

quote:

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‘-— - ‘ , - —; ‘ -‘—, -

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v'y'asu beni-yisrael et-ha-ra b'eyni yahueh v'y'shekechu et-yahueh elohihem, v'y'abedu et-ha-bealim v'et-ha-asherot

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and-did sons-isreal (d.o.)-the-evil in-sight yahweh, and-forgot (d.o.)-yahweh god(their), and-served (d.o.)-the-{baal}s and-(d.o.)-the-{asherah}s

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and the children of israel commited evil in the eyes of THE LORD, and forget THE LORD their god, and served {foreign gods}.

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i'm not sure of a good way to render "ba'alim and asherot." they're plural, and thus quite clearly general -- had they been singular, they'd be individual gods by name. but they're not. there seems to be more than one "asherah" and more than one "ba'al"Edited by arachnophilia, : broken tag

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asherah is apparently related (in ugarit) the canaanite goddess astarte, which is the sumerian ishtar. even more curiously...ishtar is a cognate of esther in hebrew -- another queen, a wife of a king who has great power over the fate of the hebrew people. it's possible that the asherah tradition surfaces, thought quite veiled, in the book of esther. just a thought.Edited by arachnophilia, : minor typo. too many foreign words, bound to mess one up.

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because monotheism means "one god." don't over-think it -- religion isn't motivated by illectual concerns. monotheism, specifically the jewish brand, requires the removal of ALL over gods, including the ones associated with the one you adopt as your only god.asherah appears to be specifically railed against because worship of her was so common. and ba'al because he was mixed up with el a lot. indeed. especially since the victories of the levantine alliances of phoenicia, israel, and a few other countries, over assyria, thanks the marriage of jezeba'al and ahab, remains unmentioned in the bible. and the defeat of his god-fearing decendant jehu, who removed ba'al, likewise goes unmentioned. talk about intellectual dishonesty.

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yes, i suppose that's true -- all that matters is the perception. also, a slight correction. we're talking about the authorship of the text, and at the time, mariam of migdal was not considered "unchaste and sinful." this is a later invention, mixing her up with a prostitute -- something the catholic church just recently retracted. the text itself says very little about her. she wasn't slandered so much as written out.

ah! a good question.i don't want to go too into it here, as it's slightly off topic, but i will explain why: babylon. around the 6th century bce, israel was carried off into assyria. babylon conquered assyria, and judah. israel was lost.judah stayed together with the help of the prophets -- religious leaders who preached messages that were often heavy-handed diatribes against their oppressors. xenophobia and extreme monotheism became the only way to protect their cultural identity from being absorbed into other nations and their god from being lost in a pantheon. none that i am aware of at that time, and probably not because most places lacked the cultural history of the jews. most places were absorbed quite efficiently into assyria and then babylon (and then persia and then greece and then rome). the rulers were fair, and allowed people to keep most of their own traditions (as long as they bowed down to the king), but the cultural melting-pot phenominon was insidious.the only other somewhat similar example i'm aware of amenhotep iv of egypt. but that only lasted for the reign of one (two?) king(s?).

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no, standard run of the mill hebreew dualism. you could successfully translate baalim v'asherot as "foreign gods" but i prefer slightly more literal renderings. well, that's kind of an ambiguous definition, actually. "pagan god" means one not accepted by the jews -- ie, not yahweh. i would say "one accepted by pagans" but many tribes called "pagan" actually accepted yahweh in their pantheon.what i really mean is that asherah seems to be the generic term for "pagan goddess." any pagan goddess.

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women hold a strange status in judaism. from a western perspective, they're not treated so well -- but there are a number of woman-centric traditions, and things in place to protect women, and so forth. asherah might be one of female traditions that ran afoul with the male ones. her absence is too pervasive to be an edit, and her presencse would disrupt the point of most of the prophets: other gods = bad. no, i think it was written that way.

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that's about what i had gathered, yes. i'm not by any means well versed in this area (brian? someone? help!) but as i understand it. asherah is a hebrew rendering of astarte (in ugarit) who is probably ishtar.astarte is also know as something like qodesh, and there's a goddess of a similar name in egypt. it's all the same region. they all traded -- tradition got around. i can't say for certain, but it seems reasonable.judging from the hebrew and ugaritic traditions, el and asherah seem to have BOTH become generalized words for "god" and "goddess" respectively.

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well, i was speaking more in the linguistics of the bible, in that particular verse. it might be a specific goddess elsewhere:

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