The Goddess of the Israelites

[PsychoDad]

The Goddess of the Israelites

Colin Bower
20 September 2005 11:00
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=251463&area=/insight/insight__international/

The discovery that the deities of ancient Palestine were female ought to be good news for all of humanity, not just women. Even the increasingly beleaguered monotheistic religions might find reason to be pleased, for it gives them opportunity to reinvent a deity that will represent the yin and the yang, the yoni as well as the lingam, the mother as well as the father, the wife as well as the husband.

In his newly published book, Did God Have a Wife?, archaeologist William G Dever brings the record of matriarchy worship up to date. His findings will not be new to the world of scholarship, but they will be to the general public -- and their significance should reverb-erate in church councils and congregations for they thoroughly subvert conventional Christian and Judaic beliefs
...
Their principal goddess was Asherah, consort of the most senior of the ancient deities of the area. Also in the pantheon of goddesses was Shapsh (Sun), Yarih (Moon), Astarte (androgynous) and Anat (warrior), some of whom were also sometimes identified with Asherah.
...
Dever finds evidence of folk religion in cultic shrines all over Palestine, and of goddess worship in unmistakable terracotta figurines, in graphic art depicting stylised emblems of female worship and in the many disguised biblical references to Asherah.

[aquart]

1. Hamentashen, the triangle cookie.

Take a good look at one sometime.

[opihimoimoi]

2. Brings to mind an old book WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN by

Merlin Stone

[manic expression]

8. Was?

What about the many female deities that are being worshipped today by many, many people?

http://www.hindunet.org/god/Goddesses/index.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=Hindu%20Goddesses&svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&sa=N&tab=iw

[xchrom]

3. does that mean there was a mother in law?

[Big Kahuna]

4. The monotheistic religions will not be pleased.

It sounds like a great book, but the vast majority of people are not interested in truth. They need their fairy tales to keep a tenous grip on reality. Sad, but true.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

6. I don't see any real impact here

The fact that ancient folks, even ancient Israelites, once worshipped female deities has been known for millennia -- heck, it's even in the Jewish scriptures. It's far too easy to simply say, they were heathen and wrong, and we know the truth now.

[eyl]

9. As far as Jewish scriptures (and Judaism in general) are concerned

God is neither male or female - the use of the male form (and AFAIR you never se the word hu ("He") used to refer to God in the OT) is just a convenience, since Hebrew has no gender-nuetral form.

[jcldragon]

5. Shekinah

You won't discover Truth, before you are willing to embrace all of it.

[Igel]

7. Great, he's learned to read his Bible.

Go to http://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearch/?quicksearch=asherah&qs_version=31 and paste in "Asherah" (using New International Version).

Here's a rule used by those trying to investigate colloquial and cutting-edge Russian linguistic features in the '80s: The more handbooks there are condemning something, the more widespread it is. Sentences preceded by "Don't say this!" are probably nearly as common, or more common, than those preceded by "Say it this way."

Read any Bible dictionary/encyclopedia from the 19th century. Or Bible handbook from the 20th--they include archeological info.

He's updating something that's been known and in public-oriented sources for a long time. By "general public", the writer of the article doesn't mean "devout, Bible-studying Christians." Lukewarm churchgoers may be ignorant of it, though.

But I'd say that the first line is also wrong: "The discovery that the deities of ancient Palestine were female ..." They were both. Baal was, it seems, the dominant male deity.

And the article doesn't say that Dever addresses the biggest problem: if the Israelites didn't exterminate everybody there before them, presumably those folks would have kept up their gods; and immigrants would have brought in new ones.