Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism

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Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism
Jenny Kien
Universal Publishers, 2000

Kien wants to return the feminine to Judaism, not by celebrating Shekinah, but by returning Judaism to its original polytheistic roots. Kien examines traces of the Goddess found in the Hebrew scripture, part of which forms the Christian Old Testament, and describes process by which the Goddess may have been lost to Judaism.

Tanach = Acronym name for the Jewish Bible which consists of Torah, Neviim and Ketubim, respectively, the five books of Moses, Prophets, and Writings.

Horizontal Rule

   1.     "In this book, I show that there were goddesses in the old Israelite religion, that this religion was generally polytheistic throughout both Temple Periods, and that it was this polytheistic religion which gave rise to many parts of the Jewish Bible or Tanach, which forms the Christian Old Testament. That is, goddesses are buried within Judaism and can still be found hidden in Biblical texts. Revealing them in these texts means finding a goddess in a living religion, in current ritual practice and within our own culture.

   2.     Revealing goddesses in the Tanach also strengthens the idea of the Divine Woman in Christianity, and is one step in returning the female to the spiritual imagery that has molded Western society. Finding goddesses in the bible will enable women to reclaim these central texts and to start re-forming their influence on our society. Reclaiming the texts will also counteract the oppression of women that is reinforced with each conventional reading of the Bible the world over.

          Because of this, I feel it is necessary to search for Jewish goddesses in the Tanach and to reinstate them in the mainstream religions based on this Book, rather than moving with them to the modern feminist spiritually movement and neo-Paganism. It is clear that such goddesses would be much more welcome there but, although neo-Paganism is the most rapidly growing religion in North American, it does not yet reach into the core of mainstream society. And this is where I feel that deep change must be effected for our society truly to transform itself into one that respects women." pp. i - ii

   3.     "The first and most apparent effect of reinstating a Divine Woman at the center of our society would be that women are honored in all their physical, mental, and emotional and spiritual aspects. The Divine Woman serves to remind women and men alike that women share in divinity, and that not only are women's souls and aspirations, thoughts and feelings to be honored, but women's bodies are also holy. The lack of a divine female figure in the monotheistic religions has persuaded men and women, worshipping a male and sexless God, to regard women as a "negative other," and their bodies and sexuality as "unclean" or "impure." As long as Divinity is only male, women's sexuality will remain a dark and frightening domain that needs to be bound and limited or harnessed to men's convenience." p. 2

   4.     "Men's oppression of women is frequently justified, in the Western world, by the canons of the monotheistic religions, the Jewish Tanach, (which forms the Christian Old Testament) and the Christian Bible, which contain the patriarchal imagery and ideas that have helped mold Western culture over the last two millennia. However, I shall show that the Tanach was written and compiled over centuries when religion in the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel was anything but monotheistic and when clearly female goddesses stood as consorts beside the male God. Laying bare the goddess underpinnings releases these goddesses from hiding and disguise, and frees them from misuse in texts that have been formative for all aspects of Western culture.

          Reclaiming Biblical texts by cleansing them of misogyny frees Jewish and Christian women all over the world of the shackles put on them with each conventional reading of the Bible." p. 3

   5.     Regarding one god replacing another god in ancient times: "Divine struggles generally tend to echo earthly kingship struggles. A relatively sudden change in precedence of one god over the others usually accompanies and signals a change of dynasty When a usurper from outside the previous royal family takes the throne, he is liable to avoid using the gods of the old dynasty, instead choosing a new god as his dynastic god, who now dominates the local pantheon as a sign of the king's power." p. 59

   6.     "It was these conservative priestly groups who followed the Egyptian inspired solar cults against which the prophet Ezekhiel preached:

          . . . and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of Jahweh and their faces towards the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east. (Ezek. 8:10-12, 16)." p. 70

   7.     "As all religions in the region tended towards monotheism, Ba'alshamen and Jahweh became much more prominent and took on more and more attributes of other gods. Booth took on El's attributes, to become victor over chaos and creator or possessor heaven and earth. As highest god, each now had power over the forces of nature and became the maintainer of order, previously an attribute of sun deities. Due to the Egyptian association of the sun with supreme kingship, the contenders for the position of supreme god also began to take on the other solar attributes. Thus, Ba'al and Jahweh both began to supersede the sun deity. In addition, Jahweh began to take on Ba'al's attributes, carrying out the conquests that had belonged to Ba'al (Isa. 51:9-10).

          Because authority was not vested in the supreme male kingship, the goddesses were no longer involved in authority and were gradually moved onto the sidelines, first weakened by being relegated to "women's matters" or "family matters," and finally excluded. No goddess was present during the later battles for exclusive supremacy between the male gods.

          This struggle for dominance between Ba'al and Jahweh expressed itself in two ways. Firstly, there was a struggle for dominance of Jahweh within the polytheistic Judahite and Israelite religions. Secondly, there was a struggle in Jerusalem for an exclusively monotheistic Jahweh worship. A small party of Jahweh-worshippers arose in the ninth century BCE, who took the general trend towards monotheism to its extreme, insisting that only Jahweh be worshipped, and that theirs was the only god and the only truth. Historian Morton Smith has called this group the "Jahweh-alone" party, for their struggle was not to strengthen Jahweh vs. the other gods but the worship of Jahweh alone vs. Jahweh with the rest of the pantheon.

          The prophet Elijah belonged to this party, and his competitions with the Ba'al priests may have been motivated by Ba'al becoming more popular than Jahweh in the ninth century BCE. Elijah's incitement of the mob to murder the Ba'al priests (I Kgs. 18:40) shows how embittered the battle against Ba'al was. Indeed, priests of the Jahweh Temple in Judah later organized a revolt to destroy the Ba'al temple. However, Elijah's famous magic competition with the Ba'al priests shows that both cults used the same methods (I Kgs. 18)." pp. 71-72

   8. Regarding the Exile:

          "In order to preserve their religion while away from Jerusalem, they and others especially devoted to the Jerusalem sacrificial cult made teaching and study the backbone of their religious practice. The Sabbath, an abstention from work every seventh day and a Jahwistic specialty, began to be used for meeting, praying, and studying in private homes. This was the beginning of the synagogue. The Jahweh-aloners now massively rejected the usual cult images because, they reasoned, Jahweh manifested himself at Mt. Sinai and communicated his law through the Word. Their rejection of the usual form of religious practice, i.e., temple and sacrificial cult, and the development of an abstract text study, not only dramatically distinguished their form of Jahweh worship from all other religions at the time but also changed the nature of Jahweh himself." pp. 73-74

   9.     "Dietrich and Loretz summarize the stages of Jahweh's rise to dominance, supremacy and exclusivity using Ps. 82 and Deut. 32: 8-9 as examples. First El and Asherah were the major god and goddess, then Jahweh entered the pantheon. He became a son of Asherah and El who was given the people of Israel as his dominion. In the next development stage, Jahweh was set equal to El. The sons of Asherah and El now become Jahweh's sons, and Asherah was no longer mentioned. Finally, monotheistic corrections were made, and the 70 bene elohim (sons or children of the goddess and god) became the 70 sons of Israel." p. 75

  10.     "Hellenization bought a number of changes in polytheistic Jahweh worship and, as these changes paralleled the practices of the Jahweh-aloners, they eventually came to support their position. Firstly, polytheistic Jahweh worship, like other religions in the eastern Mediterranean, was tending towards monotheism, either as worship of one supreme Deity who included all other goddesses and gods, or as worship of goddesses and gods as different aspects of one supreme deity. Secondly, Hellenistic philosophy began to move from sacrifice towards spiritual worship. Influenced by this philosophy, and by the important fact for a war-ravaged country that prayer and praise were cheaper than sacrifice, the polytheistic Jahwists also began to substitute synagogue worship for sacrifice. The spread of village synagogues killed off the bamot in Judah and probably in Israel. Thus, although the polytheists were dominant, their practices and beliefs had come to resemble those of the Jahweh-aloners." pp. 78-79

  11.     "Thus, it was under the Maccabeans and the Hasmonean dynasty that the Jahweh-aloner position became permanently established as the official religion in Israel and Judah." p. 81

  12.     "Polytheistic Jahweh worship still continued until Roman times in Samaria, Ammon, Mt. Tabor, Mt. Carmel and Hebron. Sects like the Essenes and the Coventers of the Judean Desert (the Qumraners) followed the pre-exilic tradition and clearly equated Jahweh with the sun, treating him either as the sun god or as a god so powerful that he created the sun. The dominance of the Jahweh-alone position became absolute only with the emergence of rabbinic Judaism and Christian suppression of polytheism in the fourth century CE.

  13.     When the Jahweh-aloners gained dominance, they had the last word on selecting texts for the canon and editing them. What we read today are the texts which they approved, even though these texts contain parts written by opposing parties. Morton Smith suggests that the first Jahweh-alone compilation of the older texts in the Torah was made in the time of Amos and Hosea (eighth century BCE), followed by massive redaction during the Exile. In the fourth century BCE, the Jahweh-alone Levites, and the priests, who were not necessarily Jahweh-aloners, were forced to reach a compromise, as they had to live together in the Temple. Morton Smith regards the Torah as the great document of this compromise because this new and official edition of sacred laws and legends included material from both parties. The rest of the Tanach also bears signs of later priestly editing, whereas the Levites produced Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, compilations where were edited and re-edited over long periods." pp. 81-82

  14.     "Judaism, like all other social or cultural phenomena, is not static but has undergone development and change throughout its long history. This change has not been a spiritual evolution to ever higher states of knowledge or awareness, but an historical and political evolution." p. 84

  15.     "The centuries-long struggle of the Jahweh-aloners for supremacy, and their final editing of the canon, explains the emphasis even within modern Judaism on distancing itself from any form of polytheism. It is important to remember that this devotion to one God to the exclusion of all others -- a fanaticism in times of polytheism -- was coupled not only with the exclusion of the goddess, but also with the exclusion of women from the cult, and that this was possibly a driving motive. " p. 85

  16.     "The goddess Anath was worshipped in north Canaan mainly in the second millennium BCE. Her worship spread from there to Egypt and possibly eastwards towards the Euphrates. By the beginning of the first millennium BCE, she had either disappeared in Phoenicia or merged completely with Astarte, who had become prominent in the Phoenician city-states. " p. 88

  17.     "Astarte, originally a version of the Mesopotamian Ishtar, became goddess of the cities of Sidon and Tyre in the second millennium BCE, and her worship spread throughout Phoenicia and Philistia in the first millennium BCE. Phoenician and Philistine traders and sailors carried her to their settlements throughout the whole Mediterranean. Astarte was transformed into the Greek Aphrodite in Cyprus, and she may have also become the Artemis of Ephesus. Through this heritage, her influence has long outlived the Phoenician culture in which she rose to prominence. In south Canaan, however, her major centers remained on the coastal plains, and her worship did not penetrate deeply into the hill country. Although there were shrines to her in Judah and Israel, there is little evidence that Astarte worship ever achieved prominence there. Therefore, like Anath, Astarte is a great Canaanite goddess but not a Jewish one.

          This leaves the goddess Asherah, one of the Great Mother Goddesses of the Mediterranean, who was worshipped for close to 2,000 years. She is a goddess older, worshipped longer and in a greater territory than any of the Greek goddesses, yet she has disappeared almost without a trace. Few now even know her name even though the Tanach frequently refers to her, its thundering against "foreign gods" often directed against her. It is this thunder which tells us how important Asherah worship was in Judah and Israel and that it is in her that we can discover the Jewish goddess par excellence.

  18.     The Tanach reveals nothing about who Asherah was, so we must turn to extra-biblical evidence, particularly to texts found in the old city of Ugarit, dating predominantly from the 13th century BCE." pp. 89-90

  19.     Here Kien relates the history and various transformations of Asherah, remarking, "She was sufficiently important for the Roman Emperor Severus, himself a North African, to dedicate a temple to Tannit on the Capitoline Hill in Rome at the end of the second century CE." pp. 95-96

  20.     "As Goddess and Creatress of the Gods, as the embodiment of the self-renewing Life Force in the universe, Asherah peopled the universe together with her partner, the chief god of the Ugaric pantheon, El. "Creator of Creatures." He children, the gods, were 70 in number, and she was also the mother of the Stars, mother of Yam (the Sea) and Mot (Death), mother of Shalim and Shachar (Dawn and Dusk). As the Ewe or mother sheep, she suckled the gods and even mortal kings. As Mother of the Gods, Asherah was considered equivalent to the Greek and Cretan Rhea and later to Cybele, the Great Mother in Rome." p. 97

  21.     "The story of Abraham and Issac and the tale of Jephthah's daughter suggest that there were times when child sacrifice was not only condoned but also performed by Jahweh worshippers." p. 99

  22.     "Her [Asherah's] major symbol was the sacred Tree of Life." p. 101

  23.     "The second major symbol associated with Asherah is the snake or serpent." p. 102

  24.     "Although I delve more deeply into the significance of the snake as a symbol for the goddess in the next chapter, be it said here that the serpent accompanying a goddess symbolizes her role as goddess of Immortality, as Life-Giver and Destroyer, as Goddess of Fertility for animals and the earth, as Protectress of Spiritual and Bodily Health, and as Giver of Wisdom and Knowledge. Having the serpent as an attribute means that Asherah was a very great goddess.

         Another animal which accompanied Asherah and became one of her symbols is the lion or lioness. Scholars write that Asherah always had a strong connection with "the lion," consistently failing to differentiate between lion and lioness. Sometimes these scholars show lions in their illustrations, sometimes lionesses. The sex of a symbol animal is usually quite important, and this is especially true in the case of the lion and lioness. Both symbolize power, strength and hunting prowess. The strong lion became a favorite of kings and came to stand for power, authority and dominance. In contrast, the lioness, like all cats, was most famous for her many offspring and her tender maternal care. Thus, the lioness is a symbol both for power and strength and for fertility and motherhood. In other words, she is a symbol for life itself, while the lion stands for authority." pp. 103-104

  25.    "In the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE), the goddess was represented as life-giving and sexual; the pairs of animals shown with her were female/male pairs, and she holds plants to symbolize fruitfulness of vegetation. The goddess is vibrantly female, and sexuality is seen as the source of fruitfulness in vegetation and in animal and human life.

          There was a great change in the public religion of the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BCE). This period included Egyptian domination and ravaging of Canaan, continual warfare between Canaanite city-states, Hittite pressure from the north, and, finally, the inflow and conquests of the Peoples of the Sea. In keeping with this reality, public religion began to be dominated by more warlike themes legitimizing power, battle and domination. Warriors, horses and chariots were now depicted, and the male gods became warlike and political. The supreme Egyptian male gods, Ptah and Amun, began to dominate in Egyptianizing representations in Canaan.

          Concepts of the fruitfulness of sexual congress and the holiness of sexuality were pushed aside. Goddesses were depicted less frequently than the powerful gods, apparently becoming secondary." PP. 111-112

  26.     "Following Dietrich's and Loret'z interpretations, as Jahweh gained dominance, he won Asherah from El as his partner. Winning the great Asherah was probably a sign of prestige for the new god and served to emphasize his position as chief god. Goddess and god were worshipped together and their images placed side by side in the First Temple. However, by the eighth century BCE, Asherah had become subservient to Jahweh, just as Tannit Phaneba'al had moved behind her partner in Phoenicia. Asherah was now seen, in typical demotion, as a benign mediating influence between the Great God and mortals. In this sense, she may have been integrated into a protective symbol in the kingship ideology, the sphinxes flanking her tree indicating that she now served to protect the king. The Great Goddess, Queen of the Universe, had become a sexless protective spirit, helping and protecting her master." p. 115

  27.     "The sudden and almost complete absence of evidence for goddess worship in the Jahweh cult in Judah at a time when goddess worship was still prevalent all around, coupled with the few tantalizing clues that she still existed, can only mean that goddess worship was forcibly suppressed and its traces removed.

          This is not surprising, considering what we know of the Jahweh-aloners and their attempts to gain power after the return from exile (Chap. 2). Their new form of religion, developed in Babylon, had turned Jahweh into a transcendent god with neither consort nor image -- a religion from which Asherah had been eliminated. On regaining control of the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, the Jahweh-aloners set about changing the public cult to fit their new religious concepts. They were not particularly gentle about doing this; the Book of Nehemiah records how Nehemiah used arms to enforce the Sabbath. it would be most surprising if he had been more restrained when eliminating goddess worship. And only a violent suppression could explain the abrupt disappearance of the goddess from private as well as from public worship.

          The goddess was also eliminated from the Jahweh-aloners' texts. Their post-exilic texts thunder against her but, more importantly, the Torah was revised so as to move her into the far distant Canaanite past. This revised Torah became the constitution of the province of Judah in approximately 450 BCE. Chronicles, written in the fourth century BCE, was the next step. Here, the goddess was written out of history altogether. Jahweh took on Asherah's creations and her 70 godly children became the 70 sons of Israel. Her children, the stars, became the children of Jahweh, and he was called Jahweh Tsabaot or Jahweh of the Hosts of Heaven. The world to whom she gave birth - the sea, the morning and evening stars, her son Death - all became creations or servants of Jahweh.

          The elimination of the female from the Divine was inextricably linked with the exclusion of women fro active participation in cult, as there was no place for women in the new form of Jahweh worship. The Divine Woman - goddess as woman and woman as goddess - was no more." pp. 119-120

  28.     "The complex symbology of the serpent derives from its biological habitus. Firstly, its ability to shed its skin and emerge renewed is a clear cause of its symbolizing immortality in Mesopotamia. Secondly, the serpent shows mastery over life and death in that it survives its own production of poison, which is deadly to others. Thirdly, a serpent biting its tail forms the never-ending circle, and this was a common symbol of immortality in Egypt." p. 122

  29.     "Finally, the snake must still have been important in biblical times as a life- and wisdom- giving attribute of the goddess, otherwise it would have needed no cursing in the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Gen. 3. And it would not have been cursed for exactly those attributes that had always contributed to its divinity in all the religions of the Syria-Palestine area, such as its rapid movement without limbs." p. 125

  30.     "More than a millennium later, rabbinical tradition also associated life and immortality with the almond tree, perhaps because the almond is the first tree to blossom in spring, sometimes starting even in December, and it is the last to lose its leaves in autumn." p. 127

  31.     "It is the menorah that commonly represents the Tree of Life, even in modern Judaism. . . . The menorah's floral motives are clearly formulated in Exod. 37:

          Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms were on one branch, three on the next branch, and the same for all six branches extending from the lampstand. And on the lampstand were four cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms. One bud was under the first pair of branches extending from the lampstand, a second bud under the second pair and a third bud under the third pair, six branches in all. (Exod. 37:19-21)" pp. 127 -128

  32.     "Combining what we have learned about Asherah being symbolized as the Tree of Life with the menorah as the Tree of Life, the inescapable conclusions are that the menorah symbolized Asherah, and that it was her presence in the tabernacle that was responsible for life-giving and nourishment." p. 128

  33.     "In the early history of Judaism, the chief gods, Ba'alshamen and Jahweh, competed for complete supremacy, while the goddess watched from the sidelines. At this point, Judaism diverged from the other Ancient Near Eastern religions, for the goddess was driven out of the cult altogether, leaving a purely male religion. The competition between the two supreme gods continued until Jahweh drove out Ba'al, becoming an abstract God requiring no partner and therefore losing all sexuality.

          There is little place in this type of male religion for women's participation, just as there is no place for a goddess. Women were excluded from the cult and, without their active participation, women's concerns and women's lives were no longer themes of interest. The religion centered on men's studies, men's needs and men's worship. The universe had became [sic] entirely male, and the Divine Woman had disappeared. As the goddess was removed, and all knowledge and memories of her suppressed, women's bodies were now anything but holy.

          What can we find about women's disappearance from the Jewish cult? We need to be obstinate, since looking at our history is a way of honoring our foremothers, rather than writing them off or tossing them into oblivion. Searching for our history moves us away from passive acquiescence with patriarchal strategies of disinformation, and into active opposition. As active participants within Judaism, looking for women's history will make it clear to us that women were active in religion for a long time and that women's situation in this millennium, even in this century, is worse than in earlier millennia. Realizing this, and realizing that achieving women's rights in Judaism is nothing new, but rather a return, may encourage us to set out sights high and to be thankful for nothing less.

          Looking to women's history also makes us comprehend more acutely what is missing form the historical books of the Tanach. We find that they tell about men's history but not women's. And this awareness is one step toward women achieving a critical distance necessary for formulating what we want and need in religion, what we want in religious teaching and interpretation of the Tanach, and even how much we want to use the Tanach. Looking at women's history is one means for women to find their way to creating what they want in their religion, instead of it being dictated to them by men who tell them they speak in women's name, but who speak at them and not for them

          The urgency of this search becomes clear when we try to formulate what we mean by the active participation of women in cult. We can talk about "priestesses" in English, although for the last 1,000 years have seen no priestess in England. In Hebrew, not even the word has survived!" pp. 131-132

  34.     "Although excluded from active participation in Jahweh's temple ritual, women certainly participated actively in the synagogues of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. They are documents as being leaders of the synagogue and versed in religious knowledge. There are inscriptions to women as "head of the Synagogue," "Leader," "Mother of the Synagogue" or "Venerable Woman," which are comparable to titles given to men, and revel women's active roles, not only as financial donors but also in the spiritual direction of a congregation. As well as praying together with the men, women are known to have publicly read the megillot (scrolls, e.g. of Ester). In other words, they should be regarded as Jewish priestesses outside the state cult, differing little in the social and civic responsibilities from some of the Hellenistic counterparts -- the priestesses documented in Greco-Roman and other cults in the Hellenized Ancient Near East. These Jewish priestesses also disappeared, as women's participation was ignored in contemporary rabbinic sources." pp. 138-138

  35.     "Looking at Jewish history from the point of view of the Divine Woman, i.e. the existence of goddesses and the honoring of women, sensitizes us to a play of forces in Judaism that is not directly obvious from the Tanach. This view reveals our pluralistic beginnings and the struggles for dominance of the opposing groups within Judaism itself. We learn something about the religion at the time many of the biblical texts were first written and about the political battles setting priorities when the texts were edited.

          For many Jews today, this background is not important, for they regard the Tanach as timeless. What counts for them is not what the Tanach was taken to mean at the time of writing, but what it means today. I do not deny the richness of this approach and its immense value to those who use it, but understanding the biblical texts is only possible when we know their background. Only if we know what the writings meant at the time can we ever attempt to understand, why certain emphases were set. Without this understanding, any interpretation must be to some extent fanciful, especially when a text is written in an archaic language and derives from a culture and religion that we really know quite little about. By not trying to understand the text within its context and by not insisting on taking it at face value, we run the risk of turning the text into something that cannot be questioned whether parts could be wrong for us, or written from a perspective with which we do not agree, or even why they were written, our veneration of the text approaches idolatry of the word, and Judaism adamantly condemns all forms of idolatry." pp. 143-144

  36.     "The divine name Shaddai or El-Shaddai is also used in the tales of the Matriarchs. It is the primary divine name used in the post-exilic priestly traditions but derives from much older poetic sources. . . . Indeed, it has recently bee suggested that El-Shaddai means the "God (!) who suckles: and that this title originally derived from the "Divine Breasts of Asherah," that is, that Shaddai was originally one of Asherah's epithets. " pp. 152-153

  37.     Kein on the creation story in Genesis:

          "Another place in the Torah that cries out to reveal the goddess underneath is Genesis 3, the story of the expulsion of Adam and Hawah (Eve) from the Garden of Eden. This text has already received much attention from feminist theologians, whose work mostly falls into two categories: those who regard the text as patriarchal, repressive of women and irredeemable, and those who attempt through thorough text work to show that the text is really not as patriarchal as it seems. These latter theologians purpose that the text contains challenges to patriarchy or that only the reception of the text, not the text itself, is patriarchal and misogynous. Probably due to the enormous social, professional and religious pressures within faculties of theology, none of them has made a serious attempt to gain an historical understanding of the text or to place it within the religious symbolism of its time. Any serious attempt to do so runs the risk of imparting a radical new meaning to the text that would take it well out of the framework of normative Judaism and Christianity. But this is exactly what I shall do now.

          The text of Gen. 3 has been reworked in many versions. It probably derives from 13th century BCE sources and was finalized in its present form in the fifth century BCE. Let us put this text into the context of the Israelite and the First Temple Periods.

          Adam names his wife Hawah or Mother of All Living Things (Gen. 3:20). Considering what we now know about Asherah, it should be clear that at any time in the second or early first millennium BCE, when a woman is called "Mother of All Living Things," the text must have something to do with the great goddess Asherah. Indeed, even though biblical scholars are extremely cautious, Hawah's connection with Asherah still shimmers through their analysis. In a careful examination of the speeches in which Hawah named Cain (Gen. 4:1), biblical scholar Ilana Pardes writes:

          [Hawah] is endowed with traits which in pagan works characterize the creatress. . . [Hawah] presents herself not only as Cain's mother but also as the bearer of Adam and perhaps even as the ex-consort of Jahweh. . . These are traces from an earlier mythological age in which mother goddesses were very much involved in creation.

          The mother goddess, creatress and "possible ex-consort" of Jahweh can only be Asherah, and the "earlier mythological ages" present or very recent history.

      The causation of biblical scholars is all the harder to accept, as there is direct evidence for a connection between Hawah and Asherah. Hawah's title, "Mother of All Living Things," is documented as one of Asherah's titles in Ugarit, contemporary with the oldest sources of the Genesis text. Furthermore, Hawah was an attested epithet of Tannit/Asherah in the first millennium BCE; Phoenician sources call her "the Lady Hawah, Goddess." Thus, the name Hawah was known throughout the Mediterranean and used as an epithet for Asherah during the whole period in which the text was written and revised. This alone must be sufficient proof that the stories in Genesis 3 deal with Asherah under her epithet Hawah.

          The Garden of Eden contains tress for nourishment, but amongst them, and of special importance, are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Tree of Life was Asherah's major symbol, so not only is Asherah herself in the story, but her major attribute stands at the center of the garden.

          In addition, the story includes another of her major attribute animals, the serpent, who persuades the woman to eat of the fruits of the tree. We remember that Asherah's serpent, Nehustan, was worshipped in the First Temple for many centuries and that Asherah was known throughout the Mediterranean world as Tannit or Serpent Lady. This connections between goddess and the snake is further emphasized in the story by the name Hawah, which actually derives from the old Semitic word for snake, although now meaning the Mother of All Living Things. Using the name Hawah in this story is one way of emphasizing the serpent as an animal of life and, as we saw in Chap. 4, associating the serpent with the goddess emphasizes her life-creating and wisdom aspects.

          Not only must we accept that the text deals with the goddess Asherah, we must also realize that all contemporary readers of the text would have known this. It must have been impossible for anyone in Judah up to the time of Nehemiah in the fifth century BCE not to have thought of Asherah when reading this text.

          One could argue here that I have used supporting material from Ugarit and Phoenicia to prove Asherah's presence in the Garden of Eden, and that this symbolism may have been lost or forgotten within Judah and Israel. But there is no evidence to support this. Firstly, there was much interchange between the various cities and states and travelers and merchants brought their goddesses and gods with them to worship on their journeys. Assuming general knowledge about the names or attributes of the deities of other countries is not unreasonable, and indeed, the writers of Kings and Chronicles appear to know quite well who was worshipped where and how.

          Secondly, and more importantly, as I showed in Chap. 3, Asherah was part of the Israelite and Judahite pantheon. There is absolutely no reason to expect a radical divergence of her worship in these regions from that in Phoenicia. Asherah was worshipped in the major shrines of Judah and Israel, and her cult symbol or image, the Asherah, was to be found in every bamah on every high hill and under every green tree. An image of Asherah stood in the First Temple in Jerusalem for more than two thirds of its existence, and worshippers in the Temple also burned incense before her bronze serpent, Nehustan. King Hezekiah removed both Nehustan and the Asherah from the Temple in the late eighth century BCE, but the Nehustan remained so popular that even the Deuteronomists of the late seventh century BCE could not abolish the practice. Instead, the attributed the snake to Moses.

          As Asherah and her snake had been worshipped in the midst of the people for hundreds of years, it is impossible to imagine that readers contemporary with the writing and editing of the text did not know that Hawah, Snake Mother of all Living Things, was Asherah. Because this seems so obvious, I am both impressed and puzzled by the success of Deuteronomic polemics against Asherah, even after thousands of years. While researching this book, I found only one mention of Hawah as an epithet of Asherah, (by S. M. Olyan, 1988) although (or perhaps because) its revolutionary import for the interpretation of Genesis 3 must be quite clear.

          Once we have accepted that the serpent in Gen. 3 was one of Asherah's holy animals, and that Hawah is a demoted Asherah, we have a dramatically new starting point from which to interpret the Creation story. Taking the story at face value, as it is now interpreted and translated, in Gen. 1, Jahweh is not the Creator of a gynandric primeval being named Adam (the one made from earth), who contains both male and female. In Gen. 2, Jahweh first creates Adam and then later creates woman from Adam's side. In both versions of the story, as they are now compiled, the male deity (either elohim or Jahweh elohim) is the Creator of the woman, who is later named Hawah. That is, the story tells of the demotion of Asherah from her role as Creatress of the universe to a human woman, herself created by and out of a male.

          Some feminist discussion of the creation of Hawah from Adam has centered on the mistranslation of tsel'a as "rib," rather than its true meaning of "side." Even considering the correct translation, so that the side or, in fact, half of the man/earthling becomes woman and understanding the Hebrew term for helpmate, ezer, as a divine helper, a superior to whom one turns for help, will not rescue the point this text is making. It was clearly saying to its contemporary readers that Asherah should be considered only as the Mother of Living Things on Earth, and that she no longer is a goddess, but merely a human ancestress.

          The rest of the story shows just as clearly that the purpose of the present text was to negate her divine attributes. The story in Gen. 3 is about the evil consequences of eating the fruit of the Tree, which can now be understood as synonymous with worshipping Asherah. One could object that the tree under discussion is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, rather than Asherah's Tree of Life. But no god could forbid humans to eat of the Tree of Life and still expect to find worshippers, so the only plausible alternative was to forbid the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was just as effective in the story, as knowledge of Good and Evil, or Wisdom, has always been a fruit of the goddess and has always been associated with a female figure.

          The snake, speaking for Asherah (or as one aspect of Asherah herself), questions that her worship be forbidden and, indicating what her worship has to offer, proffers its gifts to the woman. The woman takes them. If worshipping the goddess is evil in the story, why does the woman accept? This is the perfidious part. The story can only make its point about the dangers of goddess worship by showing its negative consequences, in spite of its attractions. The woman must accept so that this choice can be shown to be wrong.

          And, indeed, Hawah's eating of the fruit leads to a display of superior power by Jahweh, when he discovers the transgression. He curses the snake to crawl on its belly and eat dust (Gen. 3:14-15). This was a specially significant curse as it was also this ability of the snake to move rapidly without hands or feet that had elevated it to a divine attribute of the goddess. Now to the holiness negated by the expression 'eating dust." If the attributes of a goddess lose their holiness, so does the goddess herself. Furthermore, the enmity that Jahweh ordains between women and the snake is a clear warning that women should turn away from the goddess because of Jahweh's superior power. She is deposed.

          A counter argument to my interpretation, and a frequently used explanation of the serpent, is that contemporary versions of Mesopotamian myths viewed the snake as a crafty and cunning thief. Scholars have suggested that the serpent in Genesis derives directly from these sources. Yet, the long history of serpent symbolism shows that viewing the snake as a crafty thief is a late and patriarchal degradation (see Chap. 4), a change which could occur only in a society where the goddesses played a small role and where there was little snake worship. As there was still active goddess and snake worship in Canaan from the period of the oldest sources of t he story, and in Judah for at the least the next four centuries afterwards, it seems unlikely that this version of the snake served as the basis for a creation story. However, the Mesopotamian myths may have influenced later revisions of the story and may have proven extremely useful for the goddess' opponents.

          Continuing on with the consequences of woman's worship of the goddess. We see these are just as dramatic for humans as for the goddess herself. Jahweh elohim says to Hawah:

          I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to your children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you, (Gen. 3:16)

      To Adam he says:

          Cursed is the ground because of you; though painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat of your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return. (Gen. 3: 17-19)

          It is only upon the conclusion of these verses (Gen. 3:20) that Adam, now ruling over his wife, names her Hawah. Only now, when woman is humbled, is her true nature revealed -- a clear sign of defeat for Asherah. Her great universal epithet, Mother of All Life, is now bestowed in a purely human context and the universal holiness of female creation is devalued.

          In summary, I interpret this story as showing that, firstly, women who followed the Goddess Asherah would bring ruin upon themselves and their families (expulsion form paradise). The gifts of the Goddess are a curse. Secondly, Jahweh's daring to curse Hawah and the snake publicly (in the text) shows that he has attained power over them both, that he has deposed Asherah and that she is no longer a goddess. This interpretation suggests that the expulsion story is really about a competition between deities, a divine version of a competition like that between Elijah and the priests of Ba'al (I Kgs. 18)

          This finding alone could satisfy our search for Asherah in the Tanach but, where the texts deal with Asherah, it is worth looking in detail at the original text. Now that we know that the story is about a goddess, we may find there is even more to this story than we dared imagine.

          To understand how it is possible to find a quite new reading for this well studied text, it is necessary to understand how the present reading was developed. It is tempting to think that there is an unbroken and unchanged tradition of Torah reading, but this is not the case. In the third century BCE, Greek was the language of the upper class, and Aramaic was the language of the ordinary people throughout the Levant. Hebrew was no longer a spoken language, and Torah interpreters were always working with an archaic language no longer in everyday use. This, and the copyists' ignorance of Hebrew, resulted in considerable corruption of the Hebrew texts during this period.

          In Alexandria, the Torah was translated from Hebrew into Greek, resulting in the version known as the Septuaginta. Many of the talmudic and later interpretations of the Hebrew text are based on the meanings of the Hebrew words as understood and fixed in Greek by these translators. However, the ambiguity of unvocalized, written hebrew, particularly when it was interpreted in an entirely different cultural context many centuries after the language has disappeared from general use, would certainly have caused these translators grave problems. They would have needed considerable imagination or guessing ability, for they were writing in a period and in a state where religion had Hellenized, and the old Canaanite goddesses, their epithets, attributes and symbols had faded far into the background, even in their homelands. The translators' guesses, which fixed the meaning of the Hebrew text, were most likely the obvious solutions in the context of the misogynist Greek culture of their times.

          Similar problems are posed by rabbinic interpretations. Many words may have changed their meanings in the centuries between the first writing of the text and its finalization or the commentaries on it. A typical example of such a change in meaning between biblical and talmudic Hebrew is the word shamash, which means sun (god) in biblical Hebrew, when the texts are full of astralizations and remnants of sun worship. Centuries later, when the Jahweh-alone movement had long become the sole position of Judaism and when all polytheism had disappeared, a description of Jahweh in terms of the sun god was unthinkable. Instead, out of the old solar attribute comes the idea of the light serving the world and the word gained a new meaning in talmudic Hebrew, "to serve." This example illustrates the difficulties in interpreting texts from past cultural periods in a language no longer in general use.

          Leafing through standard dictionaries of biblical Hebrew reveals how frequently a word was assigned a meaning based purely on the translator's general understanding of a sentence. Some words are used differently in different biblical passages and seen to have many meanings. These are mostly variations on a theme, and the etymology of the word is straightforward, as is its translation in the Septuaginta. But there are also many cases where a word requires quite different meaning to fit each biblical passage in which it appears. In other cases, a word may have no known etymology and is not used in later Hebrew. If such a word is used only once or twice in the whole Tanach, its meaning is often derived from the context in which it occurs and from how the sentence was originally translated into Greek. It becomes clear that these differing meanings and the non-etymologically justified one-off meanings may just be the guesses of the translators and interpreters, based on the sort of word thaw people of their culture would expect in that sentence.

          When such guesses have been made in texts obviously concerning Asherah, it is time to see again what the original text yields, and it is just as allowable to guess differently. Because of this, I feel free to attempt a retranslation of the story of the Garden of Eden, based on my interpretation that the story is about Asherah.

          Looking at the text of Gen. 3:16

          To the woman, he said, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to your children. You [sic] desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you.

          The first word for pain, etsabon, is usually translated here as "the difficulties of your pregnancy." This word is used only three other times in the Tanach and is translated as "bitter work" (Gen. 3:17, 5:29). However, the word may derive from the verb, itsab, which can also mean "creation" or "forming," and is also used for "divine creation". It is therefore possible to read "creation" here, rather than "pain."

          Similarly, the second word for the pain of childbearing, esteb, is translated by Gesenius, one of the classic dictionaries for biblical Hebrew, as "a slight or offense," "tiring work," or "something won with difficulty." It means "pain of birth" only in this one place in Gen. 3:16. There is no need to invent an exceptional meaning here since we can use the usual meaning of the word. Finally, the word, yimshal, interpreted as meaning that husband shall rule over wife, comes form the verb to rule or govern (limshol), but Gesenius also translates it as "to mock" or even "to be made the same." Taking the liberty of ourselves inserting these alternative meanings in the text, we arrive at a quite different verse:

          To the woman, he said, I will greatly increase your creativity and you bearing of children will be a hard-won achievement. You will desire your husband and he will (be made the same, i. e. will) desire you.

      We can proceed similarly with Gen. 3: 17-19, the punishment of Adam:

          Cursed is the ground because of you; though painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat of your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

          The word "cursed," arurah, is obviously negative and seems absolutely unambiguous. It is this word that makes it quite clear that the text is about punishment. And yet, scholars with Kabbalistic background have informed me that arur may mean "to charge with energy," that is, "charge" as the positive version of "curse," an old-fashioned word that is disappearing from the English language. Replacing the curse with a charge allows us to examine the other negative aspects of the "punishment," and we find that these may not be so negative after all.

          Take "painful toil, the same word is used here as in Gen. 3:16, and here too it can mean creativity. This leaves only "thorns and thistles" as clearly negative. This seems unambiguous, as thorns and thistles are greatly disliked by farmers because they multiply in corn fields, which must be specially plowed to get rid of them. Hosea also uses overgrowth with thorns and thistles to express the abandonment and desolation of the altars in the bamot (Hos. 10:. But because these are the only negatives remaining in the text, we can speculate that they are a replacement for something else. The sort of substitution in Isaiah 55:13 is suggestive -- "instead of thorn bush will grown the pine tree and instead of briers the myrtle will grow."

          Retranslanted, and speculating with the substitution from Isaiah 55: 13, Gen. 3:17-19 could read:

          The earth is charged with creative force for your yield. You will be able to eat of it all the days of your life. She will sprout pines and myrtles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. With the sweat of your brow you will eat this food until you return to the earth since you were taken from the earth, for you are earth and to earth you will return.

          What does this text tell us now? The woman is promised the creativeness of bearing children, which is a hard-won but great achievement. She is promised the gift of desiring her husband. Many of us immediately assume the desire must be obsessive or unrequited and, therefore, a curse. Instead, it seems more of a curse for a woman to have a man whom she does not desire, or to live a life lacking the joy of desire. In the text, the desire is not unrequited, her husband will desire her. Mutual desire is the gift of life.

          What is the man promised? The promise to the man is a beautiful analogy with the promise to the woman. As the man cannot bear, he cannot be promised the life-giving of the woman. Instead, the earth is charged to carry out this role for him and to be fruitful. The charge for the man is to use his creative powers in transforming the Earth's products into food, to maintain the life that the woman has created. The woman creates life with hard work, and the man creates food with hard work. That these creative processes are hard work is not a curse. All creative processes or transformations are hard work, but we usually regard them as well-won achievements. The final verse is also no curse, for, of course, the earthling Adam must return to the earth for he is of the earth (adamah). The final return to one's source is a promise and not a curse.

          I am suggesting, with this reading of the text, that what is put negatively in Jahweh's mouth as a curse or punishment was originally a very positive charge. However, rather than trying to redeem the text as it now stands, I m suggesting that this passage was originally spoken by Asherah, listing all the things she would do for her worshippers, just as we find in the wisdom texts. That is I claim that this passage derives from an original Charge of the Goddess. paraphrasing it for modern use, it becomes

      The Lady Asherah speaks;

      Eat of the fruits of my tree
      For the eyes of those who follow me will be opened
      And they will know good from evil
      And become godly.

      Women I will give the gift of desire.
      You will desire you lover and be desired in return.
      You shall be life-givers
      And your creation shall be great,
      Your bearing of children hard work
      For new life is a well-won a achievement.

      Men, I charge the Earth
      To provide for you all the days of your life.
      So great shall be Her life-giving,
      The pines and the myrtles will sprout for you
      And She will give you plants of the field to eat.
      Your making of bread hard work
      The food that you eat a well-won achievement.

      And this all the days of your life
      Until you return to the Earth whence you came
      For you are of the Earth
      And so to Her you will return.

          The biblical version of the text is a masterpiece of political propaganda. The original Asherah text must of necessity have been known to readers as a cultic text in which the goddess extolled her gifts to humankind. These gifts of goddess worship are not denied in the current text, but the goddess' charge is spoken by Jahweh instead, and he makes her gifts negative and unattractive, e. g., turning the gifts of bearing life into a painful burden. The propaganda value of this is obvious, for the goddess now has nothing to offer. Her very holiness is weakened, while Jahweh has demonstrated his superior strength and power. Asherah worshippers could probably never again approach the text innocently, nor banish its misuse and Asherah's weakness from their minds. This would have further weakened the goddess and while she disappeared, so did the old meaning and only the new, perverted one remained.

          Whichever way modern exegsis chooses to interpret this text -- feminist or otherwise -- it must also be interpreted historically as a polemic setting Jahweh against Asherah, as a clear attempt to show Jahweh's supremacy, and as a warning against all the gifts of the goddess which could empower women. The message for women about what Jahweh wants for them is clear. Because of this, I find it hard to condone feminist religious exegsis aimed at finding positive aspects in the present text, a text historically designed to desecrate the goddess and thereby to subdue women." pp. 164-178

          "The major work of the written Kabbalah, the Sefer Zohar or Book of splendor was written in the 13th century CE in Spain by Moses de Leon." p. 181

          "The history of Judaism, which I have presented here, tells us that women have a past in Judaism, that women were involved in the religion and that they had a goddess, that Asherah was one goddess in Judah and Israel and that, in the First Temple Period, she was as Jewish as Jahweh." p. 201

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/kien.html

http://library.ciis.edu/resources/regenesis/asherah.pdf