Note: This post is meant to be read after reading part 1 of this series, where I lay some groundwork and introduce some important concepts. I would also advise reading the other preceding parts, but this is not completely necessary.
Today I'd like to talk about another feminine deity that shows up in the Bible. But before I do, I need to introduce a connection to this deity.
Baal and YHWH
If you are familiar with the Bible, you are probably familiar with the fact that it contains pejoratives against Baal worship. For example, Judges 2:13 mentions the Israelites abandoning YHWH to worship Baal, 1 Kings 18:20-36 is about YHWH triumphing over the priests of Baal (through Elijah) and proving he is the true god of Israel, and Jeremiah 19:5 has Jeremiah prophesying in the valley of Hinnom (or Gehenna, which eventually becomes a word that is mis-translated as "hell") regarding child-sacrifice to Baal.
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| A stele with Baal holding a thunderbolt, from Ugarit |
But what you may not have known is that scholars believe that Baal and YHWH are historically connected - or in other words, YHWH used to be Baal. The smoking gun, in all this, are the texts of the Ugaritic tablets, dated to the 13th and 12th centuries BCE. These texts give us a few interesting connections between Baal and YHWH.
In the beginning of the Baal cycle, Baal fights against Yam, the god of the sea (which often represents chaos in the Near East religions), and defeats him. Later in the epic, we learn that Baal defeated the Leviathan. This directly parallels Psalm 74:13-14.
Baal is also referred to in these texts as the "rider on the clouds" who brings rain and storms, and controls the thunder. YHWH is mentioned as the "rider on the clouds" in Psalm 68:4 and verse 33, as well as in Psalm 104:3. In these same Psalms, YHWH is said to bring rain and storms (see Psalm 68:8-9, Psalm 104:7, and Psalm 104:27). We also see Daniel 7:13 turning the enigmatic "one like a son of man" into the rider on the clouds. Consider also how YHWH is shown as a storm god in the story of Noah, and in the end of the story he hangs his bow (the bow he uses to release the storms) in the sky. And we see Psalm 18:13, Psalm 78:48, and Isaiah 28:2 depicting YHWH as a storm god as well.
In Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, author John Day also draws a connection between a passage in the Ugaritic texts with a sevenfold manifestation of Baal in the thunder, and the sevenfold manifestation of the voice of YHWH in Psalm 29, writing:
...the parallel to Psalm 29 [is] even closer when it is noted that in KTU2 1.101.1-3a, immediately before the reference to Baal's seven thunders and lightnings, we read of Baal's enthronement like the flood: 'Baal sits enthroned, like the sitting of a mountain, Hadad like the flood, in the midst of his mountain, the god of Zaphon in the [midst of] the mountain of victory', just as Ps. 29.10 states, 'The Lord sits enthroned over the flood, the Lord sits enthroned as king for ever'. The fact that the seven thunders of Psalm 29 go back to Baal mythology means that they are an integral part of the original psalm....
Note also that Psalm 29 mentions three locations, but that these three locations were Baal's territory. Lebanon is mentioned in verses 5 and 6, and while Lebanon is mentioned frequently in the Bible as land God gave Israel, it was never fully conquered by them but was occupied by Sidonians and Phoenicians. And Sirion, mentioned in verse 6, was also in Sidonian territory. And Kadesh, mentioned in verse 8, was part of the wilderness that the Hebrews wandered with Moses, and is also territory for Baal.
But there is another curious connection between Baal and YHWH. As I mentioned in part 3 of this series, scholars believe that the Canaanite deity El was originally the god of Israel (whose name contains the name El), and that eventually YHWH and El are conflated. I also demonstrated how the Bible contains references to El Elyon as the head of the pantheon who gives Israel to YHWH as an inheritance in part 2 of this series. Interestingly, the Ugaritic texts show El as the head of the Canaanite pantheon of gods, and Baal is his son. And El has a wife named Asherah.
YHWH's wife Asherah
At the site of Kuntillet Ajrud, in the Sinai Peninsula, archaeologists discovered inscriptions on stone, plaster, and pottery. On a pithos - a large stone jar - was a drawing of two gods, with the inscription in Hebrew: "I bless you by YHWH of Samariah and his Asherah". This has become a source of debate amongst scholars, with some believing that this indicates that Asherah was believed to be YHWH's consort, and some arguing that this does not necessarily make that connection. One scholar who believes this inscription demonstrates that connection - Dan McClellan - sells t-shirts with the drawing of YHWH and his Asherah.
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| The pithos drawing with the inscription "YHWH of Samaria and his Asherah" |
Similarly, at the archaological site of Khirbet el-Qom, an inscription on a tomb was discovered that partially reads:
Blessed is/be Uriyahu by Yahweh
And [because?] from his oppressors by his Asherah he has saved him
English Bible readers will likely only know of Asherah as a god whose worship was condemned. But there are a couple interesting references that demonstrate that at one point, her worship was considered part of their service to YHWH.
In Jeremiah 44:15-17, it says that "all the people who lived in Pathros in the land of Egypt, answered Jeremiah", and part of their answer in verse 17 says:
[W]e will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.
Who is this queen of heaven that, apparently, people in Judah and Jerusalem used to worship? Likely, it is Asherah.
I remember another reference to Asherah that I learned about in Sunday School, and was very confused about. In Numbers 21:4-9, there is a story where the Israelites "spoke against God and against Moses", complaining that they were brought out of Egypt just to die in the wilderness. As a response, YHWH sends venomous serpents to attack them. When the people return to Moses, begging him to have YHWH remove the serpents, YHWH instructs Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, and anyone who was bitten by a serpent could look at this and live.
And this story never made any sense to me, until I realized - this is an idol to Asherah, YHWH's wife. Asherah is associated with serpentine imagery, as well as being a goddess of fertility, healing, and immortality. So YHWH is saying here: "if you want to be healed from the venomous snake bites, worship my wife - the goddess of serpents and healing - and she will heal you." And in 2 Kings 18:4, it says that King Hezekiah cut down the Asherah and "broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it." And often, apologists will try to argue that when Moses erected this bronze serpent, it was not an idol, but a symbol of Jesus on the cross - and I really have never been able to make any sense out of how a serpent becomes a symbol of Jesus. But what if, rather, it was always an idol to Asherah, and in the beginning this was accepted but later on became condemned?
I've demonstrated repeatedly thus far in this series that the Hebrew people worshiped other gods at different points in their history. And scholars believe that the path from polytheism to monolatrism (and eventually to henotheism) begins when King Josiah "discovers" the "book of the law" (thought by scholars to be Deuteronomy) in 2 Kings 22:8-20. And it is believed that Josiah realized that he could increase his tax revenue if he centralized all temple worship in Jerusalem, so he outlawed the worship of the other gods (who had temples scattered around the land), and began the work of commissioning writings that condemn these practices as well as destroying the temples and alters to these other gods, whose worship had previously been accepted. At the very least, one must admit that the many passages demonstrating idol-worship by the Israelites - including the reference to an Asherah pole that had been erected in the temple of Solomon in 2 Kings 21:7 - demonstrate that this was part of Israel's culture, as much as other parts of their culture fought against it.
And part of this eventual condemnation of Asherah involved writing negative things about her (which eventually became recorded in the Bible). And one writing that is thought by some scholars to be a pejorative against Asherah worship is the story of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis 3. Because the combination of serpent/tree/woman is a common motif in other myths surrounding Israel. For example, the Mesopotamian Inanna and the Huluppu tree has Inanna being prevented from building her throne from the sacred tree by a crafty serpent, and is thought by scholars to be a way that a goddess was demoted in a male-dominated society and demonstrates how this society co-opted her power and worship in that society. Also, while not containing a woman, the Epic of Gilgamesh has a serpent preventing Gilgamesh from obtaining eternal life by stealing the fruit of immortality. Considering these myths alongside the fact that Asherah was at one time worshiped by Israelites, and is symbolized by a serpent, it is logical to conclude that this story of the Garden of Eden was used as part of an effort to abolish Asherah worship. And it is interesting to note that there is a twofold interpretation within Judaism that says that: 1) idolatry was the original sin, and 2) the story of the exile from the Garden of Eden is symbolic of Israel's exile to foreign lands because of their own sin of idol-worship, when they lose access to their "Eden" (the temple).
It should also be noted that a connection can be made between the story of the Garden of Eden and the bronze serpent of Moses. To make this connection, you need to first understand that in the original Hebrew in which this story was written, there were no vowels. And when you understand this, you should understahd that in the original Hebrew, the word for serpent - nachash (נָחָשׁ) - and the Hebrew word for bronze - nechash (נְחָשׁ) - look like the same word. Also, the story makes a connection between man and the serpent when the man is described as arumim (plural for naked), and the serpent as arum (for crafty). And it has been suggested by some scholars that the writer wants us to see the connection of man having been made from dust and serpent from bronze. This draws a parallel to Moses' bronze serpent in the desert.
Note: for an alternative take in the interpretation of the story of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you can read an older post of mine where I explore this story.
But I am going to stop here, and next time we will begin exploring the development of YHWH in the Biblical literature.
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