God Had a Wife

[Frodo]

GOD'S WIFE EDITED OUT OF THE BIBLE -- ALMOST

By Jennifer Viegas
Fri Mar 18, 2011 07:00 AM ET

God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar.

In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.

Information presented in Stavrakopoulou's books, lectures and journal papers has become the basis of a three-part documentary series, now airing in Europe, where she discusses the Yahweh-Asherah connection.

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe."

"After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Not a particularly new theory, and it is hardly a surprise that some would try to place YHWH in the context of the polytheism that surrounded the ancient Hebrews.  Indeed, the Old Testament contains several accounts of that happening and then reformers restoring the true religion.

Still, it seems like a leap of prejudice to assume that polytheism was the one true Hebrew religion and that a power-hungry fanatic tried on his own to purge all but his favored deity from receiving worship.

[The Mikado]

Is...is this a surprise...to anyone?  It's right there in the Bible, along with all the other gods the backsliding Israelites and Judahites followed.

I Kings Chapter 11:

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No one really has ever seriously claimed that the people of Judah and Israel were monotheistic at first.  The priests and prophets had to engage in hundreds and hundreds of years of systematic campaigning to stamp out the worship of other deities.  Look at Josiah, 400 years after Solomon, still tearing down the high places etc.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, but someone has a TV series to promote!