blackbelt, and joejack2, this is an excerpt from the archeaologist William Dever, who found the inscriptions:

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THE ISRAELITES' MANY GODS

Q: The Bible would have us think that all Israelites embraced monotheism relatively early, from Moses's time on. Is that contrary to what archeology has found?

Dever: The portrait of Israelite religion in the Hebrew Bible is the ideal, the ideal in the minds of those few who wrote the Bible—the elites, the Yahwists, the monotheists. But it's not the ideal for most people. And archeology deals with the ordinary, forgotten folk of ancient Israel who have no voice in the Bible. There is a wonderful phrase in Daniel Chapter 12: "For all those who sleep in the dust." Archeology brings them to light and allows them to speak. And most of them were not orthodox believers.

However, we should have guessed already that polytheism was the norm and not monotheism from the biblical denunciations of it. It was real and a threat as far as those who wrote the Bible were concerned. And today archeology has illuminated what we could call "folk religion" in an astonishing manner.

"The so-called folk religion even penetrated the Temple in Jerusalem."

Q: One of the astonishing things is your discovery of Yahweh's connection to Asherah. Tell us about that.

Dever: In 1968, I discovered an inscription in a cemetery west of Hebron, in the hill country, at the site of Khirbet el-Qôm, a Hebrew inscription of the 8th century B.C.E. It gives the name of the deceased, and it says "blessed may he be by Yahweh"—that's good biblical Hebrew—but it says "by Yahweh and his Asherah."

Asherah is the name of the old Canaanite Mother Goddess, the consort of El, the principal deity of the Canaanite pantheon. So why is a Hebrew inscription mentioning Yahweh in connection with the Canaanite Mother Goddess? Well, in popular religion they were a pair.

The Israelite prophets and reformers denounce the Mother Goddess and all the other gods and goddesses of Canaan. But I think Asherah was widely venerated in ancient Israel. If you look at Second Kings 23, which describes the reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century, he talks about purging the Temple of all the cult paraphernalia of Asherah. So the so-called folk religion even penetrated the Temple in Jerusalem.

Q: Is there other evidence linking Asherah to Yahweh?

Dever: In the 1970s, Israeli archeologists digging in Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai found a little desert fort of the same period, and lo and behold, we have "Yahweh and Asherah" all over the place in the Hebrew inscriptions.

Q: Are there any images of Asherah?

Dever: For a hundred years now we have known of little terracotta female figurines. They show a nude female; the sexual organs are not represented but the breasts are. They are found in tombs, they are found in households, they are found everywhere. There are thousands of them. They date all the way from the 10th century to the early 6th century.

They have long been connected with one goddess or another, but many scholars are still hesitant to come to a conclusion. I think they are representations of Asherah, so I call them Asherah figurines.

Q: There aren't such representations of Yahweh, are there?

Dever: No. Now, why is it that you could model the female deity but not the male deity? Well, I think the First and Second Commandments by now were taken pretty seriously. You just don't portray Yahweh, the male deity, but the Mother Goddess is okay. But his consort is probably a lesser deity.

We found molds for making Asherah figurines, mass-producing them, in village shrines. So probably almost everybody had one of these figurines, and they surely have something to do with fertility. They were no doubt used to pray for conceiving a child and bearing the child safely and nursing it. It's interesting to me that the Israelite and Judean ones are rather more modest than the Canaanite ones, which are right in your face. The Israelite and Judean ones mostly show a nursing mother.

Q: This has been something of a lightning rod, has it not?

Dever: This is awkward for some people, the notion that Israelite religion was not exclusively monotheistic. But we know now that it wasn't. Monotheism was a late development. Not until the Babylonian Exile and beyond does Israelite and Judean religion—Judaism—become monotheistic."

I agree!  

I think that men and women experience spirituality differently, just as we experience life differently on so many other levels.  That really should be no surprise, but it certainly seems to be, especially to men.  However, considering that all the major religions have been dominated exclusively by male figures for some 2000 years, we perhaps just don't know any different any more.

This has left a gaping, unfulfilling spiritual hole for some women.

So now, we are presented with the reality that goddess worship was in full practice for many centuries within the Jewish religion, and Asherah was largely tolerated, even to the point where her items were in some temples, even having royal patrons such as the queen, as described in the bible.

I find it refreshing.

jae wrote:

Arminius wrote:

The omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omnipresent Creator Goddess, of course!

 

That would kind of complicate and confuse things, wouldn't it. I mean, which one would we follow? Which one would we place above the other? Which would be our all in all? Whom would be our judge? I believe God has good reasons for choosing to be a sole single entity. Really, I think the whole idea that God must have a counterpart as most of us do is nothing else than mere human arrogance.

I think we would be free to follow whichever one speaks to us, however, both YHWH and Asherah were followed in the past at the same time, so perhaps that is an option too.

Why does one have to be "placed above the other"?  Spirituality for many is structured more like a bush or tree, rather than a ladder.

No one on this earth really knows who would be our "judge" or even if we will be judged at all.  I think that is a belief that is formed by and is entirely up to the individual.  Anyway, doesn't the Creator of the universe have much better things to do?  

I believe the writers of the biblical texts had a political reason to enforce the worship of a sole single entity God.  The bible is clear that other gods exist, they are mentioned repeatedly, some like Asherah and Baal, specifically by name.  So, God did not choose to be a sole entity.  I think the priests who wrote the texts made that choice.

I think the arrogance was on the part of the writers/enforcers to push their beliefs/agendas onto to the general population, against their will.  The evidence coming out of the ground, for all to plainly see, is that Asherah had a healthy following within the Jewish community for many centuries, which came to an abrupt end.

To me 2 represents balance and a dimensional complexity unavailable to 1.  For example, all digital language is made up of  only the numbers 1 and 0, which can be combined endlessly to form  endless strings of digital information.  This is not possible by using only 1 or 0 alone.

The original topic is not about the origins of monotheism, but rather the implications of the archaeological discoveries of texts directly linking YHWH with "his Asherah", and the thousands of Asherah figurines that have been excavated in ancient Judah and Israel.

I'd be happy to discuss Akhenaten and the beginnings of monotheism if you would like to start a thread about that.

I agree with GR, so let's please keep it civil.  

No one is asking anyone to change their beliefs, just expand on them, or possibly re-examine them, preferably politely and intelligently.  Each one of us has as much equal right to believe what we do as everyone else here.  Respect should be given, to be in turn received.