Pottery indicates some Israelites worshiped multiple deities

Exodus 33:12-34:26

By Irv Jacobs, MD

Irv Jacobs

LA JOLLA, California — Moses, ‘following G-d’s orders,’ carves a second pair of tablets following which he receives additional orders regarding entrance to the promised land: Ch. 34: vv. 12-13 “Beware of making a covenant with the inhabitants…No, you must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, and cut down their sacred asherim).”

 

According to Nahum Sarna, who wrote the Jewish Publication Society’s Commentary on the Book of Exodus (1991), “ashram are pagan cultic objects… They derive their name from the (Babylon) goddess…Ashrat…She bears the titles, “bride of the king of heaven” and “mistress of sexual vigor and rejoicing.”  In Ugarit, she is “…Athirat, consort of …the head of the pantheon,…termed “the progenitrix of the gods, mother of the gods…”  In 2 Kings 23:7 she is associated with sacred prostitution (p.217), up to the time of King Josiah (622 BC), who destroyed all those symbols.

 

October 19, 2019, Shabbat Hol Hamo’ed

What this suggests is that some of the Israelite population, even after such a late date post-Moses, had assimilated Canaanite culture.

 

In 1975-76, a small site in the northeastern Sinai desert, Kuntillet Ajrud (under Israeli occupation after the 1967 war with Egypt) was excavated by Tel Aviv University archaeologists.  It was fortress-like, and contained paintings and inscriptions on its walls and on two large water-jars. The inscriptions are mostly in early Northern Kingdom Hebrew, invoking ‘Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah”  and “Yahweh of Temen (Judea) and his Asherah.”  On a fragment of one of the water-jars  there is an image, which is accompanied by the inscription, “I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria and (his) Asherah.” Samaria then (late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE) was the capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which was later destroyed by Assyria in 722 BCE.  This find suggests that the Northern Kingdom contained strong elements of paganism. [1] 
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 Found at site:

The small site [2] is a single-layer site, believed likely to have been occupied for no more than 25 years. It is too small to have been an inn or a trade station.

 

Analysis of the clay in the jars indicated that it came from far-away Jerusalem.  The inscriptions suggest religious motifs, written by a literate elite scribe and a scribal student.

 

At the time of its occupation, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was more powerful than the Southern Kingdom of Judah, which likely was treated as a vassal to Israel. “The Bible says that war broke out between the king of Judah (Amatzia) and Yoash, king of Israel, which led to the North’s control of Judah at that time.

It would have been convenient for King Yoash to provision this site, clearly nearer to Judah, with supplies from Judah.

 

Of the various images at the site, one shows a male and a female, with crowned heads and holding hands.  The male has ‘either a tail or a large penis, and above him is the blessing “Yahweh and his Asherah.”
The above references to ‘Yahweh of Temen…’ and ‘Yahweh of Samaria’ suggest that the God of the North Kingdom (Shomron) was different from God of the South (Yemen, or Teman in today’s Hebrew.

To add to the controversy, the hint here is that the god of Israel, early on, had a wife!  In support of this, it has long been known that households with Jewish hallmarks, in the First Temple era and later too, also contained images of other gods in the form of figurines.

Though all of this is controversial with scholarly voices in dispute, this data suggest that as late as the early 8th century BE, the idea of a single deity had not yet consolidated for the Jewish nation.
This argument will continue.  Unfortunately further access to the site is no longer possible.  In its peace deal, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt, and all the archaeological findings were returned to Cairo in 1993.  Egypt  has not shown them since to the public. [2]
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[2] A Strange Drawing Found in Sinai  Could Undermine Our Entire Idea of Judaism, by correspondent Nir Hasson, Haaretz, April 4, 2018.

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Irv Jacobs is a retired medical doctor who delights in Torah analysis.  He often delivers a drosh at Congregation Beth El in La Jolla, and at his chavurah.