Asherah
Asherah (Hebrew אשרה), also spelled Ashera, was a major northwest Semitic mother goddess, appearing occasionally also in Akkadian sources as Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu and in Ugaritic as Athirat. She was the consort of the chief deity El and in some sources the mother of 70 other gods.
Although El was also recognized as the sumpreme God by the Hebrews, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Ashera is often portrayed as the consort of Baal and a major source of temptation to the Israelites, who were commanded by God not to be attracted to Canaanite dieties. In the Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah reportedly challenged 400 prophets of Ashera at the same time that he battled 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. However, in most biblical references, "Asherah" actually refers to a type of sacred pillar or tree that was erected next to Israelite altars in many places.
Archaelogical evidence suggest that a Canaanite goddess was indeed worshiped by many Israelites, but it is not clear wether this deity was Asherah herself, or similar deity, such as Astarte, who may once have been identified or confused with Asherah. Evidence suggests that Asherah may once have been thought of as the female counterpart to the Hebrew God Yahweh, as well as the consort of El.
Early history
In the Ugaritic texts (before 1200 B.C.E.) Ashera 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, Ashera 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 Hittite version of Ashera is named Asherdu(s) or Asertu(s). She is the consort of Elkunirsa and mother of either 77 or 88 divine sons. In Egypt, beginning in the eighteenth dynasty, a Semitic goddess named Qudshu ('Holiness') begins to appear prominently, equated with the native Egyptian goddess Hathor. A number of scholars believe Qudshu is an Egyptian version of the Ugaritic Ashera-Qodesh. She is pictured standing on a lion and holding two serpents, and one of her names gives her a special quality of mercy. An additional epithath calls her "The Compassionate One." (Cross, 1973)
In Israel and Judah
Asherah is particularly important in the Judeo-Chrstian tradition, 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. (Dever 2005)
At Kuntillet 'Ajrud (Horvat Teman) in the Sinai Desert in a 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"). A second reference to YHVH and His Asherah has been identified in an inscription on a building wall. 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).
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.
Asherah as sacred pillar
The issue is complicated by the fact that in Hebrew, the word Asherah is masculine, and biblical passages normally use Asherah to refer to the sacred pillar or tree that was often erected next to altars belonging to El, Baal, or even Yahweh. An asherah of this type stood for many years in the Temple of Jerusalem itself, and sacred pillars were also erected in earlier times by the greatest Hebrew partriarchs and prophets, including Jacob (at Bethel) and Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai. 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"—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
On the other hand, the prophet Elijah fought not only against prophets of Baal, but also against "prophets of Asherah," 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.), the king "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)
This has led many to conclude that the worship of Asherah involved licentious rites. While this may result in part from the polemics of Israelite priests and prophets against rival religious sects, it is also true that sacred prostitution was a well established tradition in ancient Mesopotamia. The goddess Ishtar was particularly well known for this practice. The story of the tribal patriarch Judah, who engaged in sex with his daughter-in-lawTamar while she was disguised as a sacred prostitute, indicates that such practices were known in Canaan as well. These priestesses were beieved to bring blessing and fertility to the land as they reenacted the hieros gamos: the sacred marriage of heaven and earth. The function of sacred male prostitutes in less certain. They may have played the role of the male diety in a similar drama.
Whether or not Israelite Asherah worship involved sacred prostitution, it is clear that one or more female goddesses 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, 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 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).
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.
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
- 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
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