In today's blog entry I am offering my take on latest offering from the non-believing community's efforts to enlighten the rest of us regarding the Bible's true content.
The headline at the Discovery channel website can be found at
http://news.discovery.com/history/god-wife-yahweh-asherah-110318.html#view-comments
This is where we learn that contrary to the clear biblical witness, according to Francesca Stavrakopoulou, “God's wife, Asherah, was a powerful fertility goddess.”
As you might suspect, when I read this it was news to me. Why would this be news to those of us with at least passing familiarity with the biblical narrative? Well, that is simple. It turns out that good old Asherah has been edited out of the Bible by the male writers of the text.
So, if this is true, we are left with two possible scenarios: 1. There is no God and the Bible is not the inspired Word of God and is instead truly a work of men and thus editing out this important tidbit regarding God's wife is just part of the long march to uber-male domination in the ancient world or 2. There is a God and the Bible is inspired and He did have a wife and He doesn't seem to have had a problem with her being excised from the Scriptures. That is no way to treat a wife.
On the other hand (option 3) this might just be a giant bunch of hooey. I vote for option 3.
The basis of the theory about God's “wife” is that there is evidence that Hebrews worshiped Asherah. No kidding. Anyone remotely familiar with what the Bible says would not find it surprising at all. Since the worshiping of Baal and Asherah were two of the big idolatrous sins that kept getting the Hebrews in trouble with God. Of course if you have a predetermined agenda you can easily reconfigure this reality and make a claim like: “The ancient Israelites were polytheists, Brody told Discovery News, "with only a small minority worshiping Yahweh alone before the historic events of 586 B.C." In that year, an elite community within Judea was exiled to Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This, Brody said, led to "a more universal vision of strict monotheism: one god not only for Judah, but for all of the nations."
Now Brody is actually partly right. The Babylonian captivity in 586 B.C. did lead to a stricter practice of monotheism. That was the whole point of God allowing the Babylonian Captivity! To create a repentant people. Good grief.
The other argument offered in support of God having a wife? The answer Stavrakopoulou gives: Asherah is mentioned in Kings. Well Asherah is also mentioned in Deuteronomy, Judges, in addition to 1 and 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, and Micah. Not to mention, since Asherah is an idol, being mentioned by God to Moses in a less than favorable light when God said: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. "You shall have no other gods before me. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (Exodus 20:2-4 ESV).
Furthermore, everyplace Asherah is mentioned, in Kings and elsewhere, it is part of a condemnation or warning to the people. If the “writers” of the Bible just wanted to get rid of any mention of Asherah, why did they leave her in at all? The underlying argument of the article is “well someone set up an idol in the temple so it must have been part of the normal practice of worship since that what some did” is a really perverse use of the “is-ought” ethic that pervades much of modern culture. The take in the line of thinking offered in this article seems to be like this: “Well the idols were there so it must have been o.k.” That is like saying, well there is sin in the Church so this a normative and therefore acceptable practice in the Church. No, it is not. And no, it was not and is not o.k. to engage in idolatry now. Idolatry, which in this case, takes the form of making a claim that “God had a wife.”
Now, I understand that the writer of the Discovery Channel article and the folks whose opinons on this subject that she is writing about probably don't believe that God did say... well... anything since I doubt that they believe in God. But the thing I wonder is this, if they don't believe He is, how can they believe He was, and if He wasn't, why do they care if He was married?
"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths." (2Ti 4:3-4 ESV)
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