Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
"Speak of the Devil"  I just got my notice from the library that this book is now available and I just checked it out!  |
From
The Evolution of God by Robert Wright:
... It's true that there's no biblical ode to Yahweh that compares with the Ugaritic boast that Baal copulated with a heifer "77 times," even "88 times," or that El's penis "extends like the sea." And it seems puzzling: If Yahweh eventually merged with El, and El had a sex life, why didn't the postmerger Yahweh have one? Why, more specifically, didn't Yahweh inherit El's consort, the goddess Athirat? Maybe he did. There are references in the Bible to a goddess named Asherah, and scholars have long believed that Asherah is just the Hebrew version of Athirat. Of course, the biblical writers don't depict Asherah as God's wife—this isn't the sort of theological theme they generally championed—but rather heap disdain on her, and on the Israelites who worshipped her. However, in the late twentieth century, archaeologists discovered intriguing inscriptions, dating to around 800 BCE, at two different Middle Eastern sites. The inscriptions were blessings in the name not just of Yahweh but of "his Asherah." The word "his" puts an intriguing spin on a passage in 2 Kings reporting that, near the end of the seventh century, Asherah was spending time in Yahweh's temple. A priest who didn't favor polytheism "brought out the image of Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the Wadi Kidron, burned it at the Wadi Kidron, beat it to dust and threw the dust of it upon the graves of the common people."
Kenny,
I think you're going to like this book!