Monotheism, Yahweh and his Asherah

You also need to remember that the very basic concept of "god" was also both evolving and in many cases varying. There was the concept of a god being tied to a particular place or territory; or to a particular peoples, even a particular sub-culture; or to a particular function.The gods that were function specific would be the ones most likely to be swapped around and exchanged.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Actually, the word Easter in English derives from an Anglo-Saxon root, varyingly Easter, Eastre and Eostre in Old English and the Germanic Ostern which generaly translate to "east" or "dawn" and an early Christian cleric suggested that a goddess of similar name was worshipped in pagan Britain during the month of April(ish).Outside of countries where Anglo-Saxon/Germanic languages are spoken the word for Easter usually derives from the Hebrew Pesach or has another culturally peculiar derivation (specifically the Eastern European countries). The areas where Ishtar (or even Astarte or Asherah) was worshipped do not have a word for Easter that is anything similar to the English (or to Ishtar).Now, whether or not Ishtar and Easter/Eastre/Eoster/Ostern have an earlier Indo-European connection is up for discussion (I think there may be, but I don't think it matters much in this discussion), but there is no evidence that worship of Ishtar (in her Assyrian/Babylonian form) had anything to do with Easter as celebrated in Christian cultures anywhere in the world.There is also no evidence to suggest that there was ever such a thing as "Ishtar eggs." I've no doubt that most major Christian holidays/mythologies absorbed local "pagan" traditions. Of course, they didn't have any traditions of ther own, being a new religion and all, so they had to incorporate local flavor (and I mean, really, how many converts will you get if you just read the many variations of the resurrection and everyone yells out "He resurrected! Yay for Jesus!" ) into their own festivities and this is shown in nearly every Christian nation (as most countries/cultures have their own peculiar Easter/Christmas traditions).What I find more interesting is the ease in which the early Christian church was able to do this since myths regarding divine/virgin birth, birth/death/resurrection (and the particular seasons that they were represented by) and miracles seem to have been fairly prevalent in many pre-Christian cultures. If I were you, I'd be more worried about pagan influences on the scriptures, since the people who wrote them were of their time and had many influences upon them. How can you be sure that they didn't adopt some of the more popular myths and stories circulating in order to capture the hearts and minds of the people? Edited by Jaderis, : No reason given.

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"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration." -The Iron Heel by Jack London

Arach, if that was the case don't you think that scientist would differentiate all those Asherah figurines found? ...and what about "she spoke through the mouths of her prophets"?Edited by Reding, : No reason given.

No, it's 40, you must be thinking of Ashtoreth Is God female? there are two other possibilities, she and it! the latter would be hilarious though! Yes, thats the whole point of the discussion...Edited by Reding, : No reason given.Edited by Reding, : No reason given.Edited by Reding, : No reason given.

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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Good point. A downgrade in status for all deities (but one) is built into the monotheistic premise.Revered deities in a polytheistic belief system normally move around in male-female pairs. Deities create life, after all, and everyone knows you do that by putting male and female ingredients together.The symbolism often places the father figure in the sky and the mother figure in the earth. This is certainly true of the images we find in the ancient Near East. In an agrarian society the sexual metaphor is there for the taking: the sky fertilizes the earth (in the form of sunshine and rain) and the earth brings forth life. That life, once begun, tends to stay bound to earth, as an infant is bound to its mother.Monotheists were obliged to take an airbrush to this familiar picture. Their premise stated that one deity exists and is eternal; everything else is finite and represents something created by this being. The main adjustment they made was to present earth as an 'it' rather than a 'she.' It was a creation of the Sky Dad, who now had to absorb the role of both parents.In Genesis you can see pointed original images, but you can also see reworked images that show traces of the original symbolism. An example of the first comes when Elohim places "lights in the sky" as you would hang a lamp in your tent. This picture literally puts the widely esteemed deities of sun and moon in their place. Yet in creating humanity we find God supplying the breath (sky element) and the earth supplying the dust. Two 'parents' for our species are still implied.Ultimately no symbol is ever eradicated. Symbols constantly come back--are 'reactivated', as Jung put it--when people seek balance. Even with a 'no goddesses allowed' policy, ancient Hebrew writers couldn't resist pairing their deity with female companions: Lady Wisdom, the promiscuous sisters, the Daughter of Zion and so on. Rabbinical literature presents the Shekinah arach mentions: the sabbath spirit. The female figure typically represents something on earth--a city, a people, a gathering--for which the heavenly male figure has tender feelings.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

...great stuff, i especially liked this part:"The main adjustment they made was to present earth as an 'it' rather than a 'she.' It was a creation of the Sky Dad, who now had to absorb the role of both parents."...because it appears they also needed to define and distinguish the material(female/earth) and spiritual (male/heaven, and it iseven more so the case when obviously what can be touched (material) is also easyer to reject (referring here to the slander) since it is "known", hence there doesn't seem to be a reason to be afraid. There's ofcourse more mystery to what's harder to define, in this case the heavens and beyond, which is perfect if you want to create an almighty male god. The earth didn't seem to be good enough for some and the funny thing is when a earthly natural disaster (earthquake, eruptions,etc..) ocurred certain people often attributed it to the sky god as a retribution.
The fact of the matter remains that there can't be a sky nor life without an earth, now who's the god....

One threat a female deity would pose to monotheism: she would make syncretism a natural option. 'It is not good for Dad to be alone.'Monotheistic Yahwists would find it relatively easy to frame stark either-or choices between their deity and someone else's male sky god (Ba'al, Marduk, Oriris). The conflicting nature of the claims made for the deities would be obvious.With a female deity, though, you'd get a both-and option/ Why not fix up the lonely Yahweh with the pretty goddess next door to form a Divine Couple? The result would be a balanced metaphor, a familiar image, an ecumenical compromise--and a disaster for strict monotheism as a premise.That said, I haven't really bought into the suggestion that 'girl gods' were picked on more than 'boy gods.' I see plenty of disapproval directed at male deities, too. The determining factor in how much bad press a competing deity received seems to have had more to do with that figure's regional popularity. Asherah worship, I understand, tended to take place in areas removed from urban centers. This would make her rites harder to monitor and more difficult to eradicate. Rededicating a public temple in a city square from Ba'al to Yahweh and posting guards around it wouldn't necessarily change what people did in the woods.The patriarchal nature of ancient Hebrew society seems more evident to me in the picture monotheists promoted than the pictures they battled. They made Earth Mom 'it' but left Sky Dad a 'he.' They didn't have to.Questions of chronology and canon formation enter into this, of course. How monotheistic were most pre-exile Yahwists anyway? What we know is how monotheistic later writers thought they should have been. The literature as it has come to us does suggest that syncretism was far more common before the exile than afterwards.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : typo repair.Edited by Archer Opterix, : html.Edited by Archer Opterix, : added detail.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Interesting idea. In a dangerous environment it's easier to protect the nest if the female of the species looks drab.Asherah was a Canaanite deity. She would naturally disappear as an issue in exile literature if the people of Judah were no longer in Canaan--unless many people of Judah were also Asherah devotees at the time of their exile.I wonder if the 'ferocity in maintaining their cultural identity' is partly due to monotheism as an idea having more resilience in an exile environment than polytheism. Just a conjecture.A transcendent deity that requires no housing would survive better in an environment where no housing is permitted. Asherah worship seems to have been tied very closely to her rural locales, as Yahweh and Ba'al worship had been tied to temples until then. Maybe 'monotheistic Yahwism' survived where other religious strains died out under this stress of the changed environment.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : brev.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.