Divine Feminine

Why Asherah matters

Asherah is one of the clearest cases where archaeology changed the conversation about the divine feminine. Inscriptions found in the 1960s and 1970s place her name, or a word spelled the same way, right next to the name of Israel's God. Scholars have argued about those lines ever since.

This page lays out what was found, what the Bible says, and where scholars disagree.

1. Asherah before Israel: Athirat at Ugarit

Column A: Documented

Column B: Interpretation

2. The inscriptions

Column A: Documented

Kuntillet Ajrud (Horvat Teman)

Khirbet el-Qom

Column B: Interpretation

The central question is what "his asherah" means. There are three main views:

  1. A goddess. Asherah was worshipped alongside Yahweh as his consort by at least some people in ancient Israel and Judah. William G. Dever argues this in Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (2005), and writes that "the only goddess whose name is well attested in the Hebrew Bible... is Asherah."
  2. A cult object. "His asherah" refers to a wooden pole or stylized tree that stood in Yahweh's worship, which may once have symbolized the goddess. Saul M. Olyan (Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, 1988) describes the object as "a stylized, non-living palm or pole."
  3. A shrine or sacred place. Some scholars read asherah as a common noun for a shrine or sanctuary.

Part of the debate is grammatical. In Hebrew, a possessive ending ("his") is not normally attached to a personal name. Scholars who favor the cult-object view point to this. Others answer that the name and the object may not have been fully separate in people's minds. Judith M. Hadley (The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah, 2000) gives a careful survey of all positions.

The drawings. Two standing figures and a seated lyre player are painted on one of the Kuntillet Ajrud jars, near the inscription. In the 1970s Mordechai Gilula proposed that they show Yahweh and Asherah. Most scholars have since set this aside. Pirhiya Beck, Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Judith Hadley, and others identify the standing figures as Bes, an Egyptian protective god. The drawing and the writing may not belong together.

What the site was. Ze'ev Meshel read Kuntillet Ajrud as a religious site. Other scholars, including William Schniedewind, see it as a way station or fortress where the inscriptions may be writing exercises. This does not change what the inscriptions say, but it changes how official or popular the religion behind them was.

3. Asherah in the Hebrew Bible

Column A: Documented

Column B: Interpretation

Column C: Spiritual reading

This section is a symbolic and contemplative reading. It is offered as meaning, not as historical proof.

Asherah is often linked with trees and living wood. For many people today, she stands for the sacred in growing things, in the household, and in the hands of women weaving for the temple. Reading the inscriptions, some feel they are hearing ordinary people's prayers from almost three thousand years ago: a traveler, a man buried with a blessing, a family asking for protection. Whatever "his asherah" meant to them, it was something they held close to God. Remembering her does not require taking anything away from anyone else's faith. It invites us to listen to the whole record.

Sources