Asherah

Asherah (from Hebrew אשרה) was a major northwest Semitic mother goddess, appearing occasionally also in Akkadian sources as Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu(s) or Ashertu(s) or Aserdu(s) or Asertu(s). She is also taken as identical with the Ugaritic goddess Athirat.

Early history

In the Ugaritic texts (before 1200 B.C.E.) Asheara is sometimes called Athirat yammi, 'Athirat of the Sea'. The sacred sea (or lake) upon which the Ugaritic Asherah stood was known as Yam Kinneret and is now called Lake Galilee. In those texts, Asheara is the consort of the god [El]]. One source refers to the "70 sons of Athirat," presumably the same as the "70 sons of El." She is not clearly distinguished from Ashtart (better known in English as Astarte). Ashtart, however, is clearly linked to the Mesopotamian Goddess Ishtar. The Ugaritic Ashera, in her roles as consort of the chief God, mother of the major lesser deities, and goddess of the sea, is clearly a differing deity that Ishtar. She is also called Elat (the feminine form of El) and Qodesh or 'Holiness'.

Among the Hittites Ashera goddess appears as Asherdu(s) or Asertu(s). She is the consort of Elkunirsa and mother of either 77 or 88 sons. In Egypt, beginning in the 18th dynasty, a Semitic goddess named Qudshu ('Holiness') begins to appear prominently, equated with the native Egyptian goddess Hathor. A number of scholars believe this is Ashera under her Ugaritic name Qodesh. She is pictured standing on a lion and holding two serpents, and one of her names gives her a special quality of mercy. (Cross, 1973)

In Israel and Judah

Asherah is particularly important in biblical literature, where she is portrayed as a pagan deity whose images and sacred pillars must be rejected and destroyed. However, there is evidence that in the early history of Israel and Judah, she may have been seen as the wife of the Israelite God Yahweh, as well as the consort of El, who was recognized by the Canaanites as the supreme deity and by the Israelites as synonynous with Yahweh. However, scholars are divided over how significant Asherah was in Canaanite and Israelite culture. Although she clearly had her own ancient identity, just as did El, she seems to have been gradually eclipsed, just as El was eclipsed by Yahweh in Israelite culture and by Baal in Canaanite culture. Goddesses such as Astarte and Anat, the Canaanite equivalents of Aprophodite and Diana eventually overshadowed Asherah, as time went on.

Biblical passages normally use the word Asherah to refer to the sacred pillar or tree that was often erected next to altars belonging to El or Yahweh. While this seems to have been common practice at one time, it was denounced by later prophets and historians. Thus we find references such as:

• "You shall not plant for yourself an Asherah of any kind of tree beside the altar of the Lord your God."—Deuteronomy 16:21

• "Take your father's bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it."—Judges 6:25

• "For they also built for themselves high places and sacred pillars and Asherim on every high hill and beneath every luxuriant tree."—1 Kings 14:23

• "He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother, because she had made a horrid image as an Asherah; and Asa cut down her horrid image and burned it at the brook Kidron."—1 Kings 15:13

• He broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down the Asherim and filled their places with human bones."—2 Kings 23:14

• "I will root out your Asherim from among youAnd destroy your cities."—Micah 5:14

On the other hand, the prophet Elijah fought not only against prophets of Baal, but also against prophets of Ashera, indicating that the term could also be applied to an actual goddess as well as to a generic object of worship:

• Now summon the people from all over Israel to meet me on Mount Carmel. And bring the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table."—1 Kings 18:19

Moreover, the Bible reports that during the days of King Josiah (sixth century B.C.E.), "He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the Lord and where women did weaving for Asherah." (2 Kings 23:7)

In any case it is clear that a feminine goddess was widely worshipped in both Israel and Judah. Achaelogical digs commonly uncover statuettes of a goddess, not only in temples and public buildings, but in many private homes. Whether she was called Asherah or Astarte or some other name, she was conceived of as both a mother goddess and as a goddess of fertility. (Dever wife)

The prophet Jeremiah Jeremiah so vehemently opposed the worship of the goddess he called the "Queen of Heaven":

The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger. But am I the one they are provoking? declares the Lord. Are they not rather harming themselves, to their own shame?—Jeremiah 7:18-19

Asherah pole

The word asherah also refers to a standing pole of some kind, pluralized as a masculine noun when it has that meaning. Among the Hebrews' Phoenician neighbors, tall standing stone pillars signified the numinous presence of a deity, and the asherahs may have been a rustic reflection of these. Or asherah may mean a living tree or grove of trees and therefore in some contexts mean a shrine. These uses have confused Biblical translators. Many older translations render Asherah as 'grove'. There is still disagreement among scholars as to the extent to which Asherah (or various goddesses classed as Asherahs) was/were worshipped in Israel and Judah and whether such a goddess or class of goddesses is necessarily identical to the goddess Athirat/Ashratu.

Most of the forty references to Asherah in the Hebrew Bible derive from sources edited by the Deuteronomist. Tilde Binger notes in her study, Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament (1997, p. 141), that there is warrant for seeing an Asherah as, variously, "a wooden-aniconic-stela or column of some kind; a living tree; or a more regular statue." For Asherah often a wooden-made rudely carved statue planted on the ground of the house was her symbol, and sometimes a clay statue without legs and stood in the same way. Her cult images— "idols"— were found also in forests, carved on living trees, or in the form of poles beside altars that were placed at the side of some roads.

When the young reformer Hezekiah came to the throne of Judah (possibly some time around the 7th century B.C.E.) "He removed the high places, and broke the pillars (massebahs), and cut down the Asherah." (2 Kings 18.4). In the Authorized Version of the Bible, the name Asherah is always mistranslated "grove". That error caused a theory that "the Hebrews cut down all the sacred groves, whereupon the land soon stopped flowing with milk and honey" (see deforestation).

Asherah and other gods

At Kuntillet 'Ajrud (in Hebrew Horvat Teman) in the Sinai Desert in the 1975 excavation, a pottery ostracon was inscribed "Berakhti et’khem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato" ("I have blessed you by YHVH of Samaria and His Asherah"). This inscription would appear to show northern Israelite influence but others have suggested that "Shomron" should be read “shomrenu,” "our Guardian." There may also be another reference to YHVH and His Asherah in an inscription on the building wall.

Scholars have argued that Kuntillet 'Ajrud was a sacred site but others suggest it was a resting place, of a religious nature, for travellers following trade routes through the Sinai of the eighth century B.C.E.

An additional reference to YHVH and His Asherah, has been found at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron, where an inscription reads "Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and by his Asherah; from his enemies he saved him!" (Berlinerblau).

These inscriptions have raised great speculation. At Kuntillet there are accompanying drawings (not a later Hebrew custom) and more fundamentalist scholars argue that the oasis was a center of the religious cross-fertilization called syncretism.

Ashira in Arabia

A stele, now at the Louvre, discovered by Charles Huber in 1883 in the ancient oasis of Tema (modern Tayma), southwestern Arabia, and believed to date to the time of Nabonidus's retirement there in 549 B.C.E., bears an inscription in Aramaic which mentions Ṣalm of Maḥram and Shingala and Ashira as the gods of Tema. This Ashira might be Athirat/Asherah. Since Aramaic has no way to indicate Arabic th, corresponding to the Ugaritic th (more pedantically written as ṯ), if this is the same deity, it is not clear whether the name would be an Arabian reflex of the Ugaritic Athirat or a later borrowing of the Hebrew/Canaanite Asherah.

Asherah and `Ashurah

In the ancient lunar calendar that became the Islamic calendar, the Day of ʿAshurah, transliterated also as Aashurah, Ashura or Aashoorah, falls on the 10th day of Muharram. On that day, in the year of the Hejira 61 (AD 680), Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of Muhammad was killed by Umayyad forces at the Battle of Karbala (now in Iraq). Still called by its ancient name, the Day of Ashurah, it has been observed ever since as a day of mourning by Shī`ites.

The name `Ashurah is interpreted as meaning "ten" in Arabic. (The normal Arabic word for ten is `asharah cognate to the Hebrew root `śr = "ten", the differing forms of s being the normal correspondence found in cognate roots between Arabic and Hebrew.)

Some try to connect the Arabic :Ashurah instead to the goddess Athirath/Asherah through the Ashira of Tema. But :Ashurah with initial letter :ain (ﻉ) is difficult to equate with 'Asherah; with beginning 'alef (here indicated by an apostrophe but normally omitted initially in popular transliterations from Semitic languages).

The connection is controversial. It is as though in English one were to say that the word juice refers to the god Zeus. The sound difference is very distinctive to Arabic ears. Yet cognate Semitic roots display this switching between ain and alif, and some Arabian accents pronounced, and indeed still do pronounce `ain as a glottal stop (like the tribe of Tamim whose name is given to this way of pronunciation).

Asherah in fiction

In the science fiction book Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, Asherah is portrayed as a meta-virus brought to earth naturally or by alien broadcast. The Sumerian figure Enki is a proto-hacker or as Stephenson puts it "a neurolinguistic hacker" who uses his ability to manipulate people through language to introducing sentience to mankind and save them from the restrictive dogma of Asherah. Modern day glossolalia is attributed to a resurgence of the "cult of Asherah" and the meta-virus in humanity.

The worship of 'Asherat of the Sea' plays a large part in the plot of Jacqueline Carey's novel Kushiel's Chosen, placed in a fantasy version of Venice.

In the video game, Fire Emblem 'Path of Radiance', Ashera is a goddess, worshipped by the entire world. Armor blessed by the goddess can only be penetrated by weapons that are also blessed.

See also

• Asherah pole
• El in Ugarit El (god)
• Elohim (God [plural], the pantheon of gods or divine beings in general)
• The Hebrew Goddess

Related publications

• William G. Dever: Did God Have A Wife? Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2005)
• Judith M.Hadley: The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah (U of Cambridge 2000)
• Jenny Kien: Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism (Universal 2000)
• Asphodel P. Long: In a Chariot Drawn by Lions (Crossing Press 1993).
• Raphael Patai: The Hebrew Goddess (Wayne State University Press 1990 and earlier editions)
• Steve A. Wiggins: A Reassessment of "Asherah": A Study According to the Textual Sources of the First Two Millennia B.C.E. (Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993).

External links

• Asherah
  • Asphodel P. Long, "The Goddess in Judaism - An Historical Perspective"
  • "Asherah, the Tree of Life and the Menorah"
  • Jewish Encyclopedia: Asherah
  • University of Birmingham: Deryn Guest: Asherah
  • El (god) in Ugarit.
  • Lilinah biti-Anat, Qadash Kinahnu Deity Temple "Room One, Major Canaanite Deities"
• Kuntillet inscriptions
  • Jacques Berlinerblau, "Official religion and popular religion in pre-Exilic ancient Israel" (Commentary on Yahweh's Asherah.)
  • ANE: Kuntillet bibliography
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, "A Second Temple Parallel to the Blessings from Kuntillet Ajrud" (University of Pennsylvania) (This equates Asherah with an asherah.)
• Israelite Religion
  • David Steinberg, "Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel"

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

• Asherah  ^history

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

• History of "Asherah"

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.