76 beard, who births Baal a storm deity, Mot the god of the underworld and Yam god of the sea. We see Yams servant Lotan or Leviathan throughout the Bible as an enemy of YHWH, just as Yam and Lotan fought against Baal a weather deity. The figure of Baal a God enthroned, throwing lightning bolts and commanding rain and weather is also similar to YHWH who controls the weather in Noah’s flood and guides them in exodus with a cloud and fire. This image of a weather and fertility god is also very common for the near east.
Ugaritic El is ‘beneficent El, the kindly one’ (‘ḷtpn il dpid’). While Yahweh is ‘a compassionate and gracious god’ (‘ēl raḥûm wĕḥannûn’ – Exodus 34:6).
“Although the Bible, and specifically the Book of Exodus, presents Yahweh as the god of the Israelites, there are many passages which make clear that this deity was also worshipped by other peoples in Canaan. Amzallag notes that the Edomites, Kenites, Moabites, and Midianites all worshipped Yahweh to one degree or another and that there is evidence the Edomites who operated the mines at Timnah converted an earlier Egyptian temple of Hathor to the worship of Yahweh.”
77 time where the Israelites were preforming a faith of monolatria that there supreme god would have had a wife of his own57.
“7 He had an image of Asherah carved and placed it inside the Temple of which Yahweh had said to David and his son Solomon, 'In this Temple and in Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I shall put my Name for ever” (2Kings.21:7).
The aforementioned passage Chronicles the Acts of Manasseh, as to his identity the verse below details his origins. Manasseh was twelve years old when he came to the throne and he reigned for fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. King Manasseh was the 14th king of Judah which later was conquered by the Assyrians as foretold by the prophets for crimes and among them placing the image in the temple. This act however is far from unique to the king. We find mentions of this Ashera be it in the form of an image. Its many euphemisms mentioned as high places the Asherim, sacred groves dedicated to her. Her moniker the queen of heaven and many such allusions are found and at times unfound by subsequent revisions of the bible as to dilute the religions ambiguous and tumultuous past. One might go so far as claim Judaism a monotheistic faith begun which was originally polytheistic and this affront is not without evidence.
Mention of Ashera can also be found in the book of Isaiah 17:8; 27:9 and 2 Chronicles 15:16; 24:18. Although uncertain some would claim Genesis as proof, the second son of Jacob and Zilpah, Asher might take his name from this godess or if no further evidence of polytheism. First we must assert the crime of King Manasseh of idolatry was neither the first nor last of its kind. Chronicles would
57 W.G. Dever, Did God have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel, (Cambridge: B.Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000), 110-269.
78 mention kings allowing high places of worship and idolatry to stand or to remove them and this was accounted as a measure of their worth to reign. Either pleasing God when removed or causing the inhabitants to sin and evoking his wroth. Some kings were ambivalent, ruling justly but tolerating the high places and still others wholly gave in to the worship of different deities other than Yahweh, to the scorn of prophets.
But what is an Ashera? The passage makes it clear it was a statue placed alongside the temple dedicated to Yahweh though it may take upon many forms be it a sacred grove. An ashera pole but what is clear however is her identity as an object of worship. Ashera was a deity from the near east a goddess of fertility. Her name means ‘of the sea’ she is depicted in the Bible more than a few times and never positively. She was called Ashtoreth which meant ‘shame’, though her origins show her undergo many a moniker and form. What is certain was she is a remnant before the installation of Yahweh as monotheistic faith, be that as it may her ties to Yahweh is by far the most peculiar. Yahweh or at the very least an older depiction of him as well as Ashera might have had their origins in the same root faith. The period after the Babylonian exile saw other deities banished thus severing Israels ties to the more polytheistic characteristics of the common nearby Canaanite faith and thus creating a religion somewhat separate all on its own though traces would remain should one delve deeper.
Ashera was placed alongside Yahweh for they viewed her as his consort, his wife. Thus far in line with many of the regions beliefs such as those from the Anatolia region, Canaanite and near east in general. To say the Israeli faith being merely a diluted murky shadow of their neighbours paganistic beliefs fused with
79 their own brand of zealous patriotic religious propaganda would be insinuating the extreme as monotheism was very much an oddity at the time and certain elements distinguish Yahweh from the other deities substantially. However the other extreme juxtaposition also exists. It would be an err to see the Israelites as purely unique, not retaining and immune to all exposure from their own home region (ancient is).
Further evidence for Asherah-worship includes, for example, an Eighth-Century BC combination of iconography and inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the Northern Sinai desert where a storage jar shows three anthropomorphic figures and several inscriptions. The inscriptions found refer not only to Yahweh but to ‘El’ and Baal, and two include the phrases ‘Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah’ and ‘Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah’. The references to Samaria (capital of the kingdom of Israel) and Teman (in Edom) suggest that Yahweh had a temple in Samaria, while raising questions about the relationship between Yahweh and Kaus, the national god of Edom. The ‘Asherah’
in question is most likely a cultic object, although the relationship of this object (a stylised tree perhaps) to Yahweh and to the goddess Asherah, consort of ‘El’ is unclear.
Ashera bears similarities to the goddesses Anat, Athirat and Athtart or Astarte. Firstly, Anat was a godess of war and the hunt. She is called the battle virgin (batulah). Both gentle and at times ruthless, benign and yet cruel. She is a consort to but not formally to Baal. Baal himself is a storm deity who brings forth bountifull harvest rains. This relationship may have attributed her being called the fertility godess and indeed the fertility cults mentioned throughout the old
80 testament eludes to this as she too is a deity of love, but Ugaritic sources do not mention this title substantially and therefore this is still debated.
Athirat is the consort of El58 and mother of gods. Her children deities are then called as the ‘seventy sons of Athirat’. Her other monikers are of great import as well (‘rbt atrt ym’). It means either lady who tramples upon the sea possibly implying her function as a maritime monstrosity slayer or ‘she who measures the day’ connoting her as a solar deity. Her name is the root where a number of other female deities originate ‘rbt’ (great lady – rabitu). Her cult survives in some countries in Israel. According to some estimates of biblical evidence. Her name is mentioned here for her role as the consort of ‘El’ to this day in some Christian circles El is still used to refer to God, as well as the oldest word we have for a
‘god’.
Although far from prominent, Athar appears with Ahat where Baal seduces her. The original text is now lost. However we still retain an Egyptian version which is undoubtedly West Semitic in origin. In the myth the seam demands tributes from the deities consisting of offerings of precious stones, gold and other valuables. This burdens them nonetheless. They comply and Athart where she is called Astarte or Ashera for the purpose of the ease of the reader, is tasked upon delivering the goods accompanied by a solar deity of justice. However once she meets the sea, she openly mocks it. In retaliation the sea now requests her as his bride. Though the complete text ismissing, it is inferred the solar deity slays the
58 Rachel Storm, Myths and Legends of India, Egypt, China and Japan, 32.
81 sea and successfully rescues Ashera. She is often worshiped in the form of cult image idols. 59
These beings were either forgotten or possibly amalgamated into one. Athart is known as Astarte, Ashera, and to the Sumerians and Babylonians as Ishtar and Inana and later demonized as Asthoreth and Astaroth. To the Romano-Greeks her oceanic birth gives further evidence that she was assimilated as Aphrodite and Venus. We also have the enigmatic depiction of ‘wisdom’ in Psalms and sits besides Gods throne and is mentioned as a lady. Some scholars suggest this maybe a remnant of the polytheistic days where a female mother to the deity was an advisor but now is simply degraded into the trait of wisdom itself to accommodate this monotheistic structure.
Initially, the people of Canaan, including the Israelites, practiced a form of ancestor worship in which they venerated the ‘god of the father’ or the ‘god of the house’, in addition to paying homage to their earthly ancestors, in an effort to establish individual tribal and family connections. In time, this practice evolved into worship of deities such as El, Asherah, Baal, Utu-Shamash, and Yahweh among others.
During the Second Temple Period (c.515 BCE-70 CE) Judaism was revised.
The Torah canonized. A new understanding of the divine established which today is known as monotheism – the belief in a single deity. At this time, scholars have established, the older works which eventually became the Hebrew Scriptures were revised to reflect a monotheistic belief system among the Israelites far earlier than was actually practiced.
59 Rachel Storm, Myths and Legends of India, Egypt, China and Japan, 22.
82 Accounting for the two previous candidates for a culturally sound background for Abraham’s faith as possibly Sin or Nanna or a more generalized view of ‘El’ originating from the Canaanite pantheon to further support this theory we have the mention of Pharaoh in the text of Gen.12:12-18 The most likely candidate to be this pharaoh is Senusret II, who ruled Egypt from 1897-1878 BCE. In 1844 AD in the ruins of Soleb in Nubia archaeologist Karl Richard Lepsius found evidence of the tetragramnation The oldest plausible (if true) of the occurrence of his name is in the phrase ‘Shasu of yhw’ in an Egyptian inscription from the time of Amenhotep III (1402–1363 BCE), the Shasu being nomads from Midian and Edom in northern Arabia.
The Tetragramnation itself of YHWH has its meaning lost the biblical account ‘I am who I am’ (Exodus 3:14) is not possible since this was created at a much later date a fabricated anachronistic etymology, the original meaning has been lost to time. The current consensus is therefore that Yahweh was a ‘divine warrior from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman and mount Sinai’.
The lands of Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman and mount Sinai are well attested for in the bible.
(1) Seir (Deut.33:2; Judg.5:4; Num.24;18) (2) Edom (Judg.5:4; Num 24:18)
(3) Paran (Deut.33:2, Hab.3:3) (4) Teman (Hab.3:3)
83 (5) Mount Sinai (Ps.68:18; Deut.32:2; Gal.4:25; Judg.5:4; Ps.68:8)60
The Shashu are listed as enemies by the Egyptians and were Canaanites however the link to them and the Hebrews have yet proven tenous at best such as the Shashu people eventually becoming the Hebrews or the Hebrews adopting the faith while in Egypt before the exodus period have been challenged. There is also the possible theory as Abraham is mentioned passing Egypt and meeting pharaoh who took his wife, if Abraham himself is not a particular individual but a personification of a nomadic tribe and the episode of the pharaoh marks the interaction between the Hebrews and Egyptians then the possibility of a cultural syncretism among which we also have evidence of the Hebrew Seraphim angels possibly inspired by the Egyptian Uraeus a sort of stylized cobra crown of the Egyptian Pharaoes, Senusret II also possessed these Uraeus imagery and The Cherubim half animal and human hybrids were also possibly inspired by the sphinx although animal, human hybrids with wings such as the Sumerian Lamassu were also very popular in works of art.
“The discovery of Amenhotep III’s mention of the Shasu of Yahweh placed the god much earlier in history than had been accepted previously but also suggested that Yahweh was perhaps not native to Canaan. This fit with the theory that Yahweh was a desert god whom the Hebrews adopted in their exodus from Egypt to Canaan. The descriptions of Yahweh appearing as a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day as well as the other fire-imagery from the Book of Exodus was interpreted by some scholars as suggesting a storm god or weather-deity and, particularly, a desert god since Yahweh is
60 Mark S. Smith, “God in Israel’s Bible: Divinity between the World and Israel, between the Old and New,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol.74, No.1, 2012, 1.
84 able to direct Moses to water sources (Exodus 17:6 and Numbers 20). It is generally accepted in the modern day, however, that Yahweh originated in southern Canaan as a lesser god in the Canaanite pantheon and the Shasu, as nomads, most likely acquired their worship of him during their time in the Levant.”61
61 “Yahweh” World history enycyclopedia, accessed July 10,2021 https://www.worldhistory.org/Yahweh/