Chapter 10 - GOD has a wife

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Asherah

I’ll make it easy for everyone by showing an excerpt from NBC. Everyone loves NBC right?

God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.

In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah.

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed:

In the Book of Kings, we're told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her."

"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."

Asherah -- known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar (Ishtar) -- was "an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing," Wright continued. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42147912

In the Ugaritic (Syrian/Amorite language) sources she is also called ʾElat,^[d] "goddess", the feminine form of ʾEl (compare Allāt); she is also called Qodeš, "holiness",^[e] in these sources.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah   

Cutting down of an Asherah Pole/Tree

The Mormons

A program on BBC2 has made news for presenting scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou's theory that "God had a wife". The reactions from the religious and academic world were varied, but for Mormons, it can best be summed up as, "Yeah. We know." 

The doctrine of Heavenly Mother was introduced by Joseph Smith in the early days of the church and affirmed by prophet after prophet in the years since, but without much elaboration. 

Much of the discussion about Heavenly Mother consists of references to the logic of the relationship – if God is the father of our spirits, as Mormons believe, then there would need to be a mother. The best known of these arguments is found in a favorite Mormon hymn written by Eliza Snow. In "O My Father" she writes:

• "In the heavens are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare!
• Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I've a mother there."

Heavenly Mother also fits into the unique and complicated Mormon cosmology, where the family unit is often referred to as the "building block of eternity". We have families here on Earth that we can carry on in the next life, in the same model as the God we worship.  

The Guardian: God's wife, the mysterious mother of Mormons | Tresa Edmunds | The Guardian

 

 Bible Verses

1 Kings 14:15 And the Lord will strike Israel, so that it will be like a reed swaying in the water. He will uproot Israel from this good land that he gave to their ancestors and scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, because they aroused the Lord’s anger by making Asherah poles.

1 Kings 16:33 Ahab also made an Asherah pole and did more to arouse the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than did all the kings of Israel before him.

2 Kings 23:15 Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin—even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder and burned the Asherah pole also.

Judges 6:25 That same night the Lord said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.

Judges 6:28 In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar!

Jewish Women’s Archive: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/asherahasherim-bible#:~:text=In%20Judges%206%2C%20a%20sacred,the%20Canaanite%20storm%20god%2C%20Baal.

The Bible versus prove that Asherah exists and Asherah was indeed worshiped.  But the Bible was chastising the Jews who worshipped Asherah.

 

 

 Who is Asherah the wife of?

Asherah, ancient West Semitic goddess, consort of the supreme god. Her principal epithet was probably “She Who Walks on the Sea.”

She was occasionally called Elath (Elat), “the Goddess,” and may have also been called Qudshu, “Holiness.” According to texts from Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria),

Asherah’s consort was El (Jewish GOD), and by him she was the mother of 70 gods.

As mother goddess she was widely worshiped throughout Syria and Palestine, although she was frequently paired with Baal, who often took the place of El; as Baal’s consort, Asherah was usually given the name Baalat. Inscriptions from two locations in southern Palestine seem to indicate that she was also worshiped as the consort of Yahweh (Jewish GOD).

Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/myth

 

 

Who is Baal?

So we see that Asherah is the wife/Consort of Baal. But Baal is also El and Yahweh. (Jewish GOD).

With the population’s relative lack of education in mind, one can conclude that El/Anu/An/Thoru-el was not just any old god. People saw him as the highest god in the universe, no matter the name and no matter how poorly they understood him.

Those speaking Semitic languages knew him as El, but the Sumerians of lower Mesopotamia had revered him as An, the sky-god of heaven. Akkadians and Assyrians, who also lived in Mesopotamia, referred to him as Anu.

Bahai Teachings: https://bahaiteachings.org/ancient-religion-of-baal-and-gods-multiple-names/

 

 

Keyword:               

• El, Elohim, Eloah is GOD in Hebrew.
• El is also Allah in Islam.
• El is GOD in Syrian/Amorite.
• El = An is GOD in lower Mesopotamia/Sumer.
• El = Anu is GOD for the Akkadians/Assyrians
• And Asherah is Elat (for goddess or female GOD)

 

El was also used in combination with another word or two as a way to more clearly express a growing appreciation for all of the different aspects of god, as in Elohim-Yahweh, Elohim-Yahweh-Adonai, and ElohimAdonai.

• The Greeks would eventually adopt El under the name of Zeus,
• and the Romans would accept him as Jupiter.
• In Arabia, the name would begin as El-Ilah and then morph into Allah.

Bahai Teachings: https://bahaiteachings.org/ancient-religion-of-baal-and-gods-multiple-names/ 

 

Summary

So we learned in this Chapter that the Goddess Asherah was worshiped by the Jews both inside the temple and beside the temple. The Bible portrayed Asherah as Idol worship and had Asherah symbols destroyed.

Asherah was actually the consort/wife of Baal.

But Baal in Babylon is Bel in Akkadian. Baal was a more general description of a main GOD and not describing any one particular GOD.

Baal was known as El or Yahweh by the Jews. (Jews don’t realize they are still praying to Baal in a different name.)

The Greeks adopted Baal/El/Yahweh as Zeus. (Greeks don’t realize they are worshipping Baal.)

Zeus is Enlil in Sumerian.

So the Christians are yet again praying to El/Yahweh, which is Enlil the Sumerian GOD!!!

*** All Roads Lead to the Sumerians Yet Again ***