Asherah pole

Asheroth redirects here.

Ashteroth.

Not to be confused with The Hebrew Bible suggests that the poles were made of
wood. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Judges, God is
recorded as instructing the Israelite judge Gideon to cut
An Asherah pole is a sacred tree or pole that stood down an Asherah pole that was next to an altar to Baal.
The wood was to be used for a burnt oering.
near Canaanite religious locations to honor the Ugaritic
[1]
mother-goddess Asherah, consort of El. The relation of Deuteronomy 16:21 states that YHWH (rendered as the
the literary references to an asherah and archaeological LORD) hated Asherim whether rendered as poles: Do
nds of Judaean pillar-gurines has engendered a litera- not set up any [wooden] Asherah [pole][9] beside the altar
ture of debate.[2]
you build to the LORD your God or as living trees: You
the altar of
The asherim were also cult objects related to the wor- shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside
[10]
the
Lord
your
God
which
you
shall
make.
That
Ashership of the fertility goddess Asherah, the consort of either
ahs
were
not
always
living
trees
is
shown
in
1
Kings
14:23:
Ba'al or, as inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet
[11]
their
asherim,
beside
every
luxuriant
tree.
However,
[3]
el-Qom attest, Yahweh, and thus objects of contention
among competing cults. The insertion of "pole" begs the the record indicates that the Jewish people often departed
question by setting up unwarranted expectations for such from this ideal. For example, King Manasseh placed an
a wooden object: we are never told exactly what it was, Asherah pole in the Holy Temple (2 Kings 21:7). King
observes John Day.[4] Though there was certainly a move- Josiahs reforms in the late 7th century BC included the
ment against goddess-worship at the Jerusalem Temple in destruction of many Asherah poles (2 Kings 23).
the time of King Josiah, it did not long survive his reign, as
the following four kings did what was evil in the eyes of
Yahweh (2 Kings 23:32, 37; 24:9, 19). Further exhortations came from Jeremiah. The traditional interpretation
of the Biblical text is that the Israelites imported pagan
elements such as the Asherah poles from the surrounding Canaanites. In light of archeological nds, however,
modern scholars now theorize that the Israelite folk religion was Canaanite in its inception and always polytheistic, and it was the prophets and priests who denounced the
Asherah poles who were the innovators;[5] such theories
inspire ongoing debate.[6]

Exodus 34:13 states: Break down their altars, smash

their sacred stones and cut down their Asherah poles.

2 Asherah poles in biblical archaeology

Some biblical archaeologists have suggested that until
the 6th century BC the Israelite peoples had household
shrines, or at least gurines, of Asherah,[12] which are
strikingly common in the archaeological remains.[13]
Raphael Patai identied the pillar gurines with
Asherah[14] in The Hebrew Goddess.

References from the Hebrew

Bible
3 See also

Asherim are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible in the books

of Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, the Books of Kings,
the second Book of Chronicles, and the books of Isaiah,
Jeremiah, and Micah. The term often appears as merely
, (Asherah) referred to as groves in the King
James Version, which follows the Septuagint rendering as
, pl. , and the Vulgate lucus,[7] and poles
in the New Revised Standard Version; no word that may
be translated as poles appears in the text. Scholars have
indicated, however, that the plural use of the term (English Asherahs, translating Hebrew Asherim or Asherot)
provides ample evidence that reference is being made to
objects of worship rather than a transcendent gure.[8]

Baal
Pole worship

4 Notes
[1] Sarah Iles Johnston, ed. Religions of the Ancient World,
(Belnap Press, Harvard) 2004, p. 418; the book-length
scholarly treatment is W.L. Reed, The Asherah in the Old
Testament (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press)
1949; the connection of the pillar gurines with Asherah
was made by Raphael Patai in The Hebrew Goddess (1967)

[2] Summarized and sharply criticized in Raz Kletters The

Judean Pillar-Figurines and the Archaeology of Asherah
(Oxford: Tempus Reparatum), 1996; Kletter gives a catalogue of material remains but his conclusions were not
well received in the scholarly press
[3] W.G. Dever, Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet Ajrd Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research,1984; D.N. Freedman,
Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah, The Biblical Archaeologist, 1987; Morton Smith, God Male and Female
in the Old Testament: Yahweh and his Asherah Theological Studies, 1987; J.M. Hadley The Khirbet el-Qom
Inscription, Vetus Testamentum, 1987
[4] John Day, Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest
Semitic Literature Journal of Biblical Literature 105.3
(September 1986:385-408) p 401; asherim are discussed
pp 401-04.
[5] William G. Dever, Did God have a wife?: Archaeology
and folk religion in ancient Israel, 2005, esp. pp
[6] Shmuel Ahituv (2006), Did God have a wife?, Biblical Archaeology Review, Book Review
[7] Day 1986, p. 401.
[8] van der Toorn, Becking, van der Horst (1999), Dictionary
of Deities and Demons in The Bible, Second Extensively
Revised Edition, pp. 99-105, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 0-8028-2491-9
[9] Wooden and pole are translators interpolations in the text,
which makes no such characterisation of Asherah.
[10] Various translations of Deuteronomy 16.21 compared.
[11] Which would be odd if the Asherim were themselves
trees (Day 1986, p. 402, noting that there is general
agreement that the asherim were man-made objects).
[12] Neill, James (2008). The origins and role of same-sex
relations in human societies. McFarland. p. 96. ISBN
978-0-7864-3513-5. In fact, the worship of Baal and
Asherah persisted among the Israelites for over seven centuries, from the period after the conquest and settlement
of Canaan- which most biblical scholars place at around
1400 B.C., to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar and the exile of the Israelites in Babylon
in the 6th century B.C.
[13] Finkelstein, Israel, and Silberman, Neil Asher, The Bible
Unearthed: Archaeologys New Vision of Ancient Israel
and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, ISBN 0-684-86912-8
[14] Thomas L. Thompson, Salma Khadra Jayyusi, eds.,
Jerusalem in ancient history and tradition T.& T.Clark
Ltd; illustrated edition (1 April 2004) ISBN 978-0-56708360-9 p. 139 THE+HEBREW+GODDESS

4 NOTES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

5.1

Text

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5.2

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5.3

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