The Bible says Israel worshipped one God, alone, from the beginning — and that every altar to anyone else was a rebellion. Then archaeologists started digging in the Sinai desert at a place called Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, a waystation where travelers stopped around 800 BC, and they pulled up storage jars covered in inscriptions. The jars bless their readers by “Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah.” Another, from a tomb in Judah, says the same: blessed by Yahweh — and by his Asherah.

Asherah was the great goddess of the Canaanite world. In Israel, apparently, she was God’s wife.

One inscription could be an oddity. It isn’t one. Hundreds of small clay figurines of a goddess turn up in ordinary Judahite homes from the 8th to the 6th centuries BC — the very centuries when, on paper, the kingdom worshipped Yahweh alone. The Bible’s own prophets spend a remarkable amount of ink raging against Asherah poles and household gods, which raises an obvious question: if nobody was doing it, why did the shouting never stop?

The honest scholarly picture is that Israelite religion changed over time, the way religions do. For most of its history it looks like monolatry — one God for Israel, worshipped alongside others who were very real to the people praying — and strict monotheism, one God and no others at all, only hardens into place around the Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC. Scholars like William Dever and Francesca Stavrakopoulou argue the goddess was written out later, demoted by editors from God’s consort to an idol — which is why a drawing of her ended up as the era’s most argued-over pottery.

There is a fair argument about the famous jar. Its drawing shows two figures, and some scholars say they’re not the divine couple at all but the Egyptian god Bes, and that the inscription above them isn’t a caption. That argument may even be right. It doesn’t touch the words themselves, cut into tombs and jars by Yahweh’s own worshippers: his Asherah. The Bible says one thing about what Israel believed. Israel, in its own handwriting, says another.

Read more

• For the goddess in the ground: William G. Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel.
• For the full anatomy of Israel’s God: Francesca Stavrakopoulou, God: An Anatomy.
• For a clear video walk-through of the inscriptions and the debate: Dan McClellan’s Asherah and monotheism videos (YouTube).