The Banishment Of Yahweh's Lover
Here is an
excerpt from the
PBS docudrama, Empires:
Kingdom of David:
The Saga of the Israelites, with quotes from several
biblical scholars. For more about the Hebrew Goddess (Asherah/Astarte) read: Official Religion and Popular Religion in Pre-Exilic Ancient Israel, by Jacques Berlinerblau; The Hebrew Goddess, by Raphael Patai; and my own commentary on the Song of Songs.
"...in 720 BC the Assyrians
conquered the northern 10 tribes of the Israelites and deported them to
the far flung regions of their empire.
Soon after, the Assyrians
began to threaten the last tribe of the Israelites: Judah. The account
of what happened is one of the most important in the bible, for hidden
within it is the surprising story of how monotheism actually took root
in Judah.
In 640 BC, the land of
Judah was ruled by king Josiah. Josiah was desperately afraid that his
people were unprepared to face the threat---not
just from Assyria---but
from Egypt and Babylon. Most Judaeans were still rural people, who
cared nothing about Jerusalem and its king. They also knew little about
Israel's covenant with the One God. In fact, many Judaeans appear to
have worshipped a goddess named Asherah, who they believed was the god
of Israel's wife.
From a superficial reading
of the bible, you would suppose that all of the Israelites were
monotheists. Most archaelogists and most biblical scholars now believe
however that monotheism was a very late development, and perhaps did
not emerge full blown until after the fall of Jerusalem in the early
6th century. So, most of the early Israelites were polytheist. They
worshipped a new god... Yahweh perhaps... but alongside them they
worshipped Baal, the old male deity of the Canaanite pantheon. And
above all they worshipped Asherah, the mother goddess. We now know
that. This is very disturbing to many people. But God had a
ladyfriend.
But king Josiah and his
allies among the temple priests in Jerusalem decided to rally the
nation around the belief in one all-powerful God. And so, in 622 BC,
they claimed that deep within the temple they had found an unknown book
written by Moses, called Deuteronomy.
While they were cleaning
out the temple, suddenly someone comes running up to the high priest,
"Look! We found a book in the temple!" Now, from the language in which
this book is quoted we know that we are dealing with the book of
Deuteronomy. Contemporary scholars believe that the book of Deuteronomy
was actually written around that time, and placed in the temple to be
discovered in order to motivate the reform.
The book of Deuteronomy
banned the worship of Asherah, and other pagan gods. Even more
important it said that Yaweh himself could only be worshipped at the
temple in Jersusalem. And so, according to the bible, Josiah sent his
troops to the mountaintops, where Israelites had been making sacrifices
for centuries.
Josiah destroyed all the
shrines on the high places which the kings of Israel had built, to
provoke Yahweh's anger. All the priests of the high places who were
there, he slaughtered by the alters, and on those alters burned the
human bones.
The Archaeological record,
and the biblical record itself, attest to the fact that monotheism
didn't catch on overnight. And people didn't just run out and say, "Oh,
I see, there's only one God. Well I'll just get rid of all these
statues I have in the house that belonged to my great grandfather and
everyone before him. And I'll stop worshipping all these gods I've
always worshipped. It was an extraordinary new thought for
people.
It was one of the major religious revolutions of Ancient
Israel because now you couldn't just go anyplace you wanted to
sacrifice the animal. You could only do it at one place. This was the
beginning of monotheism in Israel.
With the nation now
governed by the laws of Deuteronomy, king Josia believed he would have
God on his side, in his battle to save Judah. He decided to launch a
surprise attack on the Egyptian / Assyrian alliance that he judged to
be the greatest danger to his people. In 609 BC, Josia and his men
ambushed an Egyptian army. But in the battle that followed, the
Judaeans were routed and king Josia was killed. After Josiah's death,
the kings that followed him re-established the worship of Asherah, and
all of the other gods."
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Read more about the Song of
Solomon,
listen to music, tour the art gallery...
The
Hidden Meaning of the Song of
Solomon
The
Song of Solomon as Erotic
Poetry
Deep
Ecology and the Song of Songs
Christian
Mysticism /
Bridal Mysticism
Was
Jesus Married?
Illustrations
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Solomon
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Solomon
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Solomon
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