Local Church Discussions - View Single Post - Origins of Christian God- Through Cultural, Historical, Anthropology lens

SerenityLives · 11-08-2020, 04:43 PM

So I’ve been doing some reading, and it seems like while the Israelites were attempting to make their religion unique, there were multiple instances listed in the Old Testament where the kings of Israel forbade the people to worship Asherah, Baal and other gods. This started the “divorce” of Asherah from association with El or Yahweh. In fact the symbol of Asherah is interestingly a tree or cross ( like the one Jesus was on) and these cultic symbols were in front of the Temple of Solomon at the time. Biblical character Jezebel wanted people to worship Asherah, but the authors of the Old Testament looked down upon such worship and Jezebel became a villain.

Check out this article for more information: https://www.google.com/amp/s/mytholo...n-of-eden/amp/

This article has some references to Asherah in the Old Testament- https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/arti...Hadley_Asherah

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article...hasherim-bible

What is an Asherah pole? Connection with Garden of Eden-
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bi...erah-pole.html

There’s another theory: “ Perhaps what the question is intended to ask is not why there’s no mention of Asherah in the Bible (which there is), but rather why Asherah in her role of wife of El/Yahweh was edited out of the Bible. The answer is simple: she was never there. It is of course true that the Israelite religion evolved out of Canaanite polytheism through a stage of monolatry into, at least by the post-exilic era, monotheism; it is true that in the older ‘parent’ religion, El/Yahweh was the head of a pantheon with Asherah as his wife and various divine children, like Ba’al. However, the transition from polytheism to monolatry is quite ancient, maybe dating back in origin to about the time Hebrew culture first became distinct from other Canaanite cultures, 1200 BCE or so. Although I’m sure it was never a neat and clear transition, but ran on for centuries with attributes of other gods occasionally merged into Yahweh (such as Ba’al’s nature as a storm god), that’s still much earlier than the Bible: the very oldest biblical text is probably Amos ca. 750 BCE, and the five books of the Torah are much later still, dating to some time around the Babylonian exile (maybe during it, maybe just after) in the 6th century BCE. In other words, although Asherah was originally worshipped as a goddess and wife to Yahweh, by the time the Bible was written, the Hebrews no longer believed that and hadn’t believed it for half a millennium or so. Since they did not believe it, they didn’t write it down in the first place; hence it never had to be edited out.” from Quora.

11-08-2020, 04:43 PM	#4
SerenityLives Member Join Date: Apr 2019 Posts: 524	Re: Origins of Christian God- Through Cultural, Historical, Anthropology le So I’ve been doing some reading, and it seems like while the Israelites were attempting to make their religion unique, there were multiple instances listed in the Old Testament where the kings of Israel forbade the people to worship Asherah, Baal and other gods. This started the “divorce” of Asherah from association with El or Yahweh. In fact the symbol of Asherah is interestingly a tree or cross ( like the one Jesus was on) and these cultic symbols were in front of the Temple of Solomon at the time. Biblical character Jezebel wanted people to worship Asherah, but the authors of the Old Testament looked down upon such worship and Jezebel became a villain. Check out this article for more information: https://www.google.com/amp/s/mytholo...n-of-eden/amp/ This article has some references to Asherah in the Old Testament- https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/arti...Hadley_Asherah https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article...hasherim-bible What is an Asherah pole? Connection with Garden of Eden- https://www.christianity.com/wiki/bi...erah-pole.html There’s another theory: “ Perhaps what the question is intended to ask is not why there’s no mention of Asherah in the Bible (which there is), but rather why Asherah in her role of wife of El/Yahweh was edited out of the Bible. The answer is simple: she was never there. It is of course true that the Israelite religion evolved out of Canaanite polytheism through a stage of monolatry into, at least by the post-exilic era, monotheism; it is true that in the older ‘parent’ religion, El/Yahweh was the head of a pantheon with Asherah as his wife and various divine children, like Ba’al. However, the transition from polytheism to monolatry is quite ancient, maybe dating back in origin to about the time Hebrew culture first became distinct from other Canaanite cultures, 1200 BCE or so. Although I’m sure it was never a neat and clear transition, but ran on for centuries with attributes of other gods occasionally merged into Yahweh (such as Ba’al’s nature as a storm god), that’s still much earlier than the Bible: the very oldest biblical text is probably Amos ca. 750 BCE, and the five books of the Torah are much later still, dating to some time around the Babylonian exile (maybe during it, maybe just after) in the 6th century BCE. In other words, although Asherah was originally worshipped as a goddess and wife to Yahweh, by the time the Bible was written, the Hebrews no longer believed that and hadn’t believed it for half a millennium or so. Since they did not believe it, they didn’t write it down in the first place; hence it never had to be edited out.” from Quora.