Fertility Goddess Asherah: Was 'God's Wife' Edited Out of the Bible?

I'm an atheist and even I said, "Holy pomegranate".

Some scholars say early versions of the Bible featured Asherah, a powerful fertility goddess who may have been God's wife.

Research by Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter, unearthed clues to her identity, but good luck finding mention of her in the Bible. If Stavrakopoulou is right, heavy-handed male editors of the text all but removed her from the sacred book.

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What remains of God's purported other half are clues in ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in an ancient Canaanite coastal city, now in modern-day Syria. Inscriptions on pottery found in the Sinai desert also show Yahweh and Asherah were worshipped as a pair, and a passage in the Book of Kings mentions the goddess as being housed in the temple of Yahweh.

J. Edward Wright, president of The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, backs Stavrakopoulou's findings, saying several Hebrew inscriptions mention “Yahweh and his Asherah." He adds Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors.

"Traces of her remain, and based on those traces... we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant," he told Discovery News.

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Asherah, he says, was an important deity in the Ancient Near East, known for her might and nurturing qualities. She was also known by several other names, including Astarte and Istar. But in English translations Ashereh was translated as "sacred tree."

"This seems to be in part driven by a modern desire, clearly inspired by the Biblical narratives, to hide Asherah behind a veil once again," Wright says.

Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, says the ancient Israelites were polytheists, with only a “small majority” worshipping God alone. He says it was the exiling of an elite community within Judea and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C that lead to a more "universal vision of strict monotheism." (via Discovery News)

(More on TIME.com: See the history of TIME's reporting on religion)

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/03/22/fert...z1HOrUaTt0

So Christianity is now Polytheistic?

This is sacrilege, like suggesting how Jesus wasn't actually born 2011 years ago.

Christianity is not polytheistic for the simple reason that, even going by this article, by the time Christ was born, the "universal vision of strict monotheism" had already been in place for hundreds of years (and presumably the Old Testament had already been edited to reflect this).

You might ask whether Judaism is, or was originally, polytheistic. The answer depends on your faith. If you believe the Bible as it stands today is the Word of God as given to Moses at Mount Sinai, not a letter changed, then of course you'll dismiss these archeological findings out of hand. Or, at best, consider them proof of the various passages of in the Bible, especially the Book of Judges, that describe the Israelites as going astray and worshipping Ba'al and Ashera (the gods of the various Canaanite peoples).
If you are an unbeliever like me, you'll just shrug your shoulders and say, "so?"

So Christianity is now Polytheistic?

With the way Jesus gets hyped, I'd say they already were. *rimshot*

This is sacrilege, like suggesting how Jesus wasn't actually born 2011 years ago.

In all the timings ive heard from both Anthropology classes and History classes, he was born around 4000 years ago.


Really, this isnt too surprising to me, but its interesting nonetheless.