Her name was Asherah and she was the wife of Yahweh.

Archaeology (2005) reports on the works of biblical scholar William H. Dever, which include a book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802828523/qid=1110223124/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-2769849-5763120?v=glance&s=books&n=507846)as) well as examinations of artifacts discovered in sites such as Khirbet El-Kom, Ta'anach, and Kuntilet Ajrud.

Asherah has long been recognized as the one of the most important (if not the most important) goddesses in the Canaanite pantheon. CritiquingChrist (http://www.sciforums.com/member.php?u=18143) spoke of her in another thread (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=747794&highlight=asherah#post747794)this) year, but I thought it would be interesting to devote an entire thread to discuss the implications that such knowledge has in biblical scholarship.

Dever argues that "Asherah was buried long ago by the establishment" as Jewish religion turned from a polytheistic worldview to a monotheistic one. The origin of "Yahweh" as the god of Israel has long be speculated on by archaeologists and biblical scholars and some basic culture changes are present in the archaeological record in the Early Iron Age period of the Palestinian hill country. At that time, numerous small rural settlements appear, consisting of simply houses of sheep and goat herders, who seem to reject the raising of pigs. Pigs, it should be noted, are direct competitors with humans for food: they eat basically what we eat, making their non-viability in economic terms a possible progenitor for the pork taboo.

Looking through the books of I & II Samuel and I & II Kings, it's easy to see that Asherah was still prominent on the minds of the Israelis and that Yahweh's wife continued to be a part of ritual and cult practices until the conquest of Judah (ca. 1000 to 586 BCE). Biblical writers, however, lived primarily after the period of exile and were in the midst of a period of religious reform that included the creation of a monotheistic religion in place of a well-established polytheistic one.

The Artifacts

Yahweh and Asherah are directly associated on artifacts found in the sites I mentioned above, both in text as well as illustration (Dever, 2005). It was in Ajrud that plaster walls with the inscriptions of blessings "Yahweh by his Asherah," as well as blessings by the gos Ba'al and El. El is the obviously the singular form of Elohim, the latter, in itself, suggestive of a Jewish pantheon of gods.

Dever notes that biblical scholars were skeptical and reluctant to accept these inscriptions at face value when they were discovered (in the 1970s I believe), but the newest discoveries are causing some people to re-think their positions.

Two large storage jars were discovered at the same site that bear not only similar inscriptions, but depict both Yawheh and Asherah, side-by-side. One of the inscriptions on the jars reads, "Yahweh and his Asherah." This site (http://www.matrifocus.com/LAM04/spotlight.htm) has a depiction of the pot sherd that has the inscription and images, which I'll offer a last comment on at the end of this post.

Polytheism in the Holy Land seems to be the norm in the archaeological record, even among Jewish peoples, until around 586 BCE, which, in my mind, makes Christianity a very young religion indeed. Navajo religion has endured longer.

Why did monotheism replace polytheism? Was it a matter of the establishment of priestly power, status and wealth? This might also explain the shift from a more androgynous, perhaps even matriarchal, religious mindset to a patriarchal one. Dever considers the bible "revisionist history" and I'd have to agree. The evidence is there that the "one god" concept is a contrived one. Even the bible alludes to this in passages like thou shalt have no other god before me. If there were no other gods, why mention them. Indeed, in that sentence, Yawheh doesn't state that there aren't any, only that they cannot be placed before him. Perhaps this refers to a group of figurines on an alter table: Yawheh goes up from, the rest behind him.

The exile itself was probably a catalyst for the shift to monotheism. The priests, who didn't want to be unemployed, may have used the excuse that Yawheh was pissed and was punishing them. Yawheh becomes the main god for a large portion of the Israelites, El/Elohim for another (both of these gods exist in Genesis).

So why did polytheism replace monotheism?
Was Asherah pushed aside by the new patriarchal establishment of priests? If so, perhaps there were female priests until the exile (or maybe this is already established)?
Could the sherds Dever mentions be out of context? I read a rebuttal somewhere (I'll have to dig a bit if anyone is interested) that indicated that "the asherah" referred to the cow. This is a possibility, but the inscription is just above the heads of the two figures and the smaller, more diminutive figure with the smaller headdress is obviously female (note the two breast circles that she shares with the lyre player).

References

Dever, William H. (2005) Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802828523/qid=1110223124/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-2769849-5763120?v=glance&s=books&n=507846), Eerdmans Press,

Scham Sandra 2005 The Lost Goddess of Israel Archeology Vol. 58, No. 2

Whoa, that's some nifty discovery. :cool:

I suppose it's logical that that the worship of this goddess Asherah declined as male dominance of the priesthood increased, since males didn't particularly fancy the notion of worshiping a female religious figure.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah) also states:

Although forbidden by Hebrews, the cult of goddesses lasted during the Roman occupation in Israel in the hidden form of temple prostitution, until emperor Constantine closed those houses after converting to Christianity.

I guess it would make sense for primitive cultures to create ideas of god that were familiar to them. THey probably wouldn't have evolved philosophically to deal with ideas of omnipotence that are associated with an eternal "one being".

So you would expect that earlier civilisations would have gods based on either the world around them (sun, moon, storms, water etc..), he creatures they saw (lion, cat, dog, eagle etc as in egyptian etc..) or themselves (roughly human gods).

And if they were going to base their gods on themselves, it would make sense for their gods to be both male and female and also to be married, as this would be what they would see. (although there is a lot of evidence that marriage was purely secular in jewish society up until just before christianity appeared, when it became religious).

Most other early polytheistic humanoid god religions had gods who acted much like humans. Love, betrayal, kids, friends, enemies.. religions like the greek or roman religions had gods that were much like the world around them (or even like a soap opera).

Old news. I remember reading about this critical theory (complete with artifacts) back in my sophomore year of college (1998). Haven't read any new books on it lately though.

Incidentally Feminist theories of religion often claim that "everyone" was originally a monotheist, worshipping a female deity, until the big bad patriarchal men came along and took it away from them, replacing it with their male god. The "husband and wife" pair of gods is popular among traditional Wiccans (as opposed to Feminist Wiccans who favor the single female god theory). So there's some debate over this, at least in scholarly circles. Compare the controversy over God's "daughters" in Islam.