Israelite Religion on the Ground

Dever, William G.  Beyond the Texts:  An Archaeological Portrait of Ancient Israel and Judah.  SBL Press.  2017.  A synthesis of Iron Age archaeology in Israel and Judah by a leading American archaeologist of the region.  Dever treats the archaeology as the primary source and the Bible as a secondary one, and holds that Israel's popular religion was always polytheistic.

1. 1a.

   Page 504:  “The Arad tripartite temple with its outer altar and bowl inscribed “sacred for the priests,” an inner sanctum with two (three?) larger maṣṣēbôt, and ostraca mentioning the “temple [bêt] of Yahweh” and priestly families is a full-fledged temple, although apparently not public but used largely by the garrison stationed there.” ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 596:  “All things considered, both symbolism and common sense suggest that the female figurines of the eighth-seventh century represent Asherah and illustrate cult practices connected with her, especially those having to do with conception, childbirth, and lactation—all stressful and risky in antiquity.”  Page 595:  “Finally, would a Judahite woman present a votive of herself as naked before the goddess?” ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 580:  “Kletter has created distribution maps locating all the occurrences of two distinctive classes of material culture object that are clearly ethnic Judahite: the sheqel weights of the late eighth-seventh century and the pillar-base figurines of the same date. In both cases, these artifacts occur only in the hill country and the Shephelah, not in the Philistine plain”. ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 593:  “Among the contents were more than seventy female and zoomorphic figurines (mostly broken)”.  Page 594:  “only a few hundred yards south of the Temple Mount— and precisely during the era of the presumed Josianic reforms.”  Kathleen Kenyon's Cave I, which Dever dates to the late seventh century. ↩ ↩

5. 1e.

   Page 542, note 110:  “Rainey (1984), like Herzog an Arad staff member, agrees in seeing the dismantling of the Stratum IX temple as part of Hezekiah’s reforms. This is not old-fashioned biblical archaeology, only common sense.” ↩

6. 1f.

   Page 596:  “Grammatical objections have been raised, but the general consensus seems to have been moving toward reading the term ʾăšērâ not as a pole or tree-like symbol but rather as the personal name of the deity.” ↩

7. 1g.

   Page 497:  “From Iron IIB at Dan on the northern border there is a “high place” (or bāmâ) that features a raised platform 60 by 60 feet, with steps leading up to it and remains of a large four-horned altar in the forecourt.”  “A much smaller bama with five standing stones (maṣṣēbôt) was found in the outer plaza of the city gate.” ↩

8. 1h.

   Page 591:  “the composite work that we know as the Deuteronomistic History—the book of Deuteronomy, plus Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings—was probably extant in its first version in the late seventh century.” ↩

9. 1i.

   Page 614:  “It is now understood that the target was rather the native Israelite and Judean nonconformist religions, which had always been polytheistic. It is that reality that archaeology has now brilliantly illuminated. Whether Josiah’s supposed reform actually succeeded is not the issue here, although the archaeological evidence suggests that it did not.” ↩ ↩

10. 1j.

    Page 543, note 115:  “Some biblicists (McCarter 1987) see the figurines, as well as the ‘Ajrud and el-Qom texts, as depicting Asherah as a “hypostasis of Yahweh,” i.e., simply a cult image.” ↩

11. 1k.

    Page 596:  “The personal names on the seals that are demonstrably Hebrew (1,978 out of 2,922) are overwhelmingly Yahwistic.” ↩

12. 1l.

    Page 596:  “By the seventh century, in contrast to the eighth century, nearly all iconographic and other symbols have disappeared.”  Page 597:  “Nevertheless, the argument is essentially one from silence; the only evidence is circumstantial.” ↩

13. 1m.

    Page 594:  “The other pillar-base figurines, with mold-made heads or simply pinched-nose faces, began in the late eighth century, but they become much more common in the seventh century.” ↩ ↩

14. 1n.

    Page 498:  “In addition to these monumental remains, we have a number of household shrines of the ninth-eighth century at Beersheba III, Tel Halif VIB, Hazor IX, Kinrot III, Lachish III, Tell en-Nasbeh 3A, and Tel Rehov IV. They feature various combinations of small stone altars, cult stands, kernoi and other libation vessels, rattles, censers, both zoomorphic and female figurines, miniature furniture and vessels, pots for cooking and feasting, seals, and amulets.” ↩

15. 1o.

    Page 614:  “This was an attempted revolution, a reactionary movement against specific practices considered abuses in the minds of the reformers, all of which can be shown by the archaeological record to have been realities. The Deuteronomists and their allies in Josiah’s reform party were not setting up a straw man. They knew what we now know about the realities of life in seventh-century Judah.” ↩ ↩

16. 1p.

    Page 616:  “It may be worth noting here that in our survey of correspondences between our two sources (fig. 6.18), the biblical texts are proven wrong in no cases, but they also provide relatively little independent, reliable data. They are secondary sources at best.” ↩

World English Bible.  2020.  A public-domain modern English translation of the Bible, quoted here for every verse cited.  It renders "host of heaven" as "army of the sky" and "Queen of Heaven" as "queen of the sky." ↩

1. 2a.

   Verse 1 Kings 12:29:  “He set the one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan.” ↩

2. 2b.

   Verse 1 Kings 15:13:  “He also removed Maacah his mother from being queen, because she had made an abominable image for an Asherah. Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron.” ↩

3. 2c.

   Verse 1 Kings 16:33:  “Ahab made the Asherah; and Ahab did more yet to provoke Yahweh, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.” ↩

4. 2d.

   Verse 2 Kings 10:27:  “They broke down the pillar of Baal, and broke down the house of Baal, and made it a latrine, to this day.” ↩

5. 2e.

   Verse 2 Kings 13:6:  “Nevertheless they didn’t depart from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, with which he made Israel to sin, but walked in them; and the Asherah also remained in Samaria.)” ↩ ↩

6. 2f.

   Verse 2 Kings 18:22:  “But if you tell me, ‘We trust in Yahweh our God,’ isn’t that he whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah has taken away, and has said to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem’?” ↩

7. 2g.

   Verse 2 Kings 18:4:  “He removed the high places, broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, because in those days the children of Israel burned incense to it; and he called it Nehushtan.” ↩

8. 2h.

   Verse 2 Kings 21:3:  “For he built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he raised up altars for Baal, and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel did, and worshiped all the army of the sky, and served them.” ↩

9. 2i.

   Verse 2 Kings 21:7:  “He set the engraved image of Asherah that he had made in the house of which Yahweh said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever;”. ↩

10. 2j.

    Verse 2 Kings 22:3:  “In the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan, the son of Azaliah the son of Meshullam, the scribe, to Yahweh’s house, saying,”. ↩

11. 2k.

    Verse 2 Kings 23:24:  “Moreover, Josiah removed those who had familiar spirits, the wizards, and the teraphim, and the idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in Yahweh’s house.” ↩

12. 2l.

    Verse 2 Kings 23:26:  “Notwithstanding, Yahweh didn’t turn from the fierceness of his great wrath, with which his anger burned against Judah, because of all the provocation with which Manasseh had provoked him.” ↩

13. 2m.

    Verse 2 Kings 23:7:  “He broke down the houses of the male shrine prostitutes that were in Yahweh’s house, where the women wove hangings for the Asherah.” ↩

14. 2n.

    Verse 2 Kings 23:8:  “He brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba; and he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man’s left hand at the gate of the city.” ↩ ↩

15. 2o.

    Verse Deuteronomy 16:21:  “You shall not plant for yourselves an Asherah of any kind of tree beside Yahweh your God’s altar, which you shall make for yourselves.” ↩

16. 2p.

    Verse Jeremiah 11:13:  “For according to the number of your cities are your gods, Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem you have set up altars to the shameful thing, even altars to burn incense to Baal.’” ↩

17. 2q.

    Verse Jeremiah 1:2–3:  “Yahweh’s word came to him in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, to the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, to the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.” ↩

18. 2r.

    Verse Jeremiah 44:17:  “But we will certainly perform every word that has gone out of our mouth, to burn incense to the queen of the sky and to pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food, and were well, and saw no evil.” ↩ ↩ ↩

19. 2s.

    Verse Jeremiah 44:19:  “The women said, “When we burned incense to the queen of the sky and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings to her, without our husbands?”” ↩

20. 2t.

    Verse Jeremiah 7:18:  “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of the sky, and to pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.” ↩

21. 2u.

    Verse Nehemiah 12:23:  “The sons of Levi, heads of fathers’ households, were written in the book of the chronicles, even until the days of Johanan the son of Eliashib.” ↩

22. 2v.

    Verse Nehemiah 13:28:  “One of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite; therefore I chased him from me.” ↩

23. 2w.

    Verse Numbers 6:24–25:  “‘Yahweh bless you, and keep you. Yahweh make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you.” ↩

24. 2x.

    Verse 1 Kings 22:43:  “He walked in all the way of Asa his father. He didn’t turn away from it, doing that which was right in Yahweh’s eyes. However, the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places.”  Verse 2 Kings 12:3:  “However, the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.”  Verse 2 Kings 14:4:  “However the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.”  Verse 2 Kings 15:4:  “However, the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.”  Verse 2 Kings 15:35:  “However the high places were not taken away. The people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places. He built the upper gate of Yahweh’s house.”  Jehoshaphat, Joash, Amaziah, Azariah and Jotham. ↩

25. 2y.

    Verse Ezekiel 8:1:  “In the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, the Lord Yahweh’s hand fell on me there.”  Verse Ezekiel 8:11–12:  “Seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel stood before them. In the middle of them Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan stood, every man with his censer in his hand; and the smell of the cloud of incense went up. Then he said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in his rooms of imagery? For they say, ‘Yahweh doesn’t see us. Yahweh has forsaken the land.’””  Verse Ezekiel 8:14:  “Then he brought me to the door of the gate of Yahweh’s house which was toward the north; and I saw the women sit there weeping for Tammuz.” ↩

26. 2z.

    Verse Habakkuk 3:3:  “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and his praise filled the earth.” ↩

Day, John.  “Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan.”  Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 265.  Sheffield Academic Press.  2000.  A survey, by an Oxford Old Testament scholar, of every Canaanite deity the Hebrew Bible mentions and what Israel took from each.  Chapter 2 treats the Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom blessings and reads "his asherah" as the goddess's cult symbol.

1. 3a.

   Page 49:  “First, I shall discuss the inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, whose name means ‘the solitary hill of the water-wells’, and which is located in north-east Sinai about fifty miles south of ‘Ain el-Qudeirat (sometimes identified with Kadesh-Barnea).”  “Teman being a region in Edom (cf. Hab. 3.3)”. ↩ ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 49:  “It is generally agreed that Yahweh’s Asherah is also mentioned in inscription 3 from grave II at Khirbet el-Qom, which is situated about 12 km. West of Hebron. It has been dated to about 750 BCE by Dever and Lemaire and to about 700 BCE by Cross.” ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 51:  “The big obstacle that this view has to overcome is that in ancient Hebrew idiom personal names do not take pronominal suffixes; accordingly, Asherah could appropriately be ‘the Asherah’ but not simply the goddess ‘Asherah’.” ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 52:  “However, both of these minority suggestions are improbable, as they are never attested in the Hebrew Bible.”  The two suggestions are "Ashirta" and "Asherata." ↩

5. 3e.

   Page 52:  “in Neo-Assyrian letters we sometimes find the salutation ‘May (the city) Uruk and (the temple) Eanna bless my lord’ … Similarly, at Elephantine we read of a Jew swearing ‘by the temple and by Anat-Yahu’ (AP 44.3)”. ↩

6. 3f.

   Page 52:  “pithos A from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud actually depicts a stylized tree flanked by two ibexes, and this probably illustrates the Asherah”. ↩

Na'aman, Nadav.  “The Inscriptions of Kuntillet ʿAjrud Through the Lens of Historical Research.”  Ugarit-Forschungen 43.  2011.  A historian's reading of the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions after their full publication, covering the site, its date, who built it and what the blessings mean.  Na'aman reads Asherah as the goddess and the site as an Israelite royal station of Jeroboam II's reign.

1. 4a.

   Page 299:  “In 1975–1976 Zeʾev Meshel conducted three short excavation seasons at the site”. ↩

2. 4b.

   Page 300:  “Excavations revealed a large collection of pottery vessels, which according to chemical and petrographic analysis originated mostly from Judah, with a few from the kingdom of Israel and the Phoenician coast”.  “Approximately 120 pieces of cloth – mostly linen, a few made of wool – were uncovered at the site”. ↩

3. 4c.

   Page 313:  “Radiometric data dates the site between the beginning of the eighth century and the Assyrian conquest”.  “Ceramic comparisons suggest the site dates to approximately the first half of the eighth century BCE”.  “suggest that the site was established by a king of Israel – most likely Jeroboam II – who was involved both in its construction and in its maintenance.”  Page 313, note 6:  “Finkelstein and Piasetzky (2008, 180–184) suggested that the site was in operation between ca. 795 and 730 / 720 BCE. But three quarters of a century seems too long for a single phase site”. ↩ ↩

4. 4d.

   Page 309:  “in earthquake. And when God shone forth in the sum[mit of ....] … and the mountains melted”.  “Lines 2–3 describe the revelation of YHWH in a language similar to that of various biblical texts (e. g., Deut 33 :2; Judg 5:4–5; Mic 1:3–4; Hab 3:3–6; Ps 97:2–5).”  Page 310:  “Whether Baʿal should be interpreted as the god’s name, or is an honorific title for YHWH (‘Lord’), remains uncertain.” ↩

5. 4e.

   Page 305:  “Ahituv (2008, 221–224), followed by Ahituv, Eshel and Meshel (2012, 130–132), interpreted ʾšrt as a cultic object – a view still held by a minority of researchers but which, to my mind, is obsolete. The great majority of scholars agree that ʾšrt is the name of a goddess, and the consort of YHWH.” ↩

6. 4f.

   Page 305:  “The statue of Asherat/Asherah that Ahab (1 Kings 16:33a) and Jehoahaz (2 Kings 13:7b) placed in Samaria represented the goddess in the major temple of the city.” ↩

Hess, Richard S.  “New Evidence for Asherata/Asherah.”  Religions 16(4):397.  2025.  A review of every published West Semitic spelling of the goddess's name, from Old Babylonian Amorite texts to the full edition of the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions, by an evangelical scholar at Denver Seminary.  Hess argues that the final letter in the inscriptions is part of the name Asherata, not "his," so that the texts name the goddess.

1. 5a.

   Page 4:  “3.1 line 2, wlʾšrth “I have blessed you to YHWH of Shômrôn (Samaria) and to His asherah””.  “3.6 line 7, wlʾšrth “I have blessed you to YHWH of Têmān and His asherah””.  “3.9 line 1, wlʾšrth “[. . .] to YHWH of Têmān and His asherah””.  Hess quotes the editors' translations, Aḥituv, Eshel and Meshel 2012. ↩

2. 5b.

   Page 4:  “Aḥituv translates “Uriyahu the governor wrote it: ‘Blessed by Uriyahu of YHWH of His Asherah. And from his enemies grant him deliverance, to Daniyahu. . .and of his Asherah [and of] His [Ashe]rah.’””  “Alternatively, Ziony Zevit renders it “Uryahu, the prosperous, his inscription ([or] an inscription). I blessed Uryahu to Yahweh, to wit, from his enemies. . .for the sake of Asheratah save him”. ↩

3. 5c.

   Page 5:  “Thus, female deities may be linked to male deities (who are themselves qualified by specifications of geography, for example) with the use of “his”, as in the parallels at Ebla: “Rashap of Adani and his Adamma”.” ↩

4. 5d.

   Page 5:  “The structure “brk + l + noun” always identifies the noun as a divine name of a god or goddess.” ↩

5. 5e.

   Page 6:  “In conclusion, both the addition of the Amorite bilingual texts at the beginning of the appearance of the name Asherata and the full publication of the Kuntillet Ajrud texts in the Iron Age period that attest to all the ʾšrth names there affirm that the goddess known as Asherah in the Bible was consistently and best rendered as Asherata. There is no third person singular suffix attached to this divine name, no “his” here. The divine names do not take the pronominal suffixes at Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom. These attestations are best understood as the goddess, known in the Bible as Asherah, and secondarily as a cult object.” ↩ ↩

Olyan, Saul M.  “Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel.”  Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 34.  Scholars Press.  1988.  A study arguing that the asherah was a legitimate part of Yahweh's cult in Israel before the Deuteronomistic reformers condemned it.  Olyan reads the inscriptions as naming Yahweh's cult symbol, not the goddess, on grammatical grounds.

1. 6a.

   Page 31:  “The cult symbol interpretation suggested by Emerton for this inscription and by Lemaire for el-Qôm 3 is certainly the most convincing, as they have shown. Dever has not considered the suffix problem sufficiently. “His asherah” suggests strongly that the goddess’s proper name is excluded unless we are to argue for a hitherto unattested use of a pronominal suffix on a proper noun in Hebrew.” ↩

2. 6b.

   Page 33:  “Zevit’s suggestion that we read the -h not as a suffix but as a part of a hitherto unattested form of the goddess’s name both in el-Qôm and ʿAjrûd has little to commend it.” ↩

3. 6c.

   Page 33:  “Thus, we could read ʾaširatuh, “his asherah,” or ʾaširatah, “its asherah,” referring to Samaria. Since we know of the famous asherah of Samaria from biblical sources, the latter reading is appealing.” ↩

Tigay, Jeffrey H.  “You Shall Have No Other Gods:  Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions.”  Harvard Semitic Studies 31.  Scholars Press.  1986.  A count and analysis of the divine names in Israelite personal names and inscriptions, by a University of Pennsylvania scholar.  On the Kuntillet Ajrud blessings Tigay argues that grammar and Ugaritic usage rule out the goddess's name.

1. 7a.

   Page 27:  “This view construes ʾšrth as a proper noun ʾšrt followed by a pronominal suffix -h, meaning “his Asherah.” However, in Biblical Hebrew pronominal suffixes are never affixed to proper nouns.”  “Stylistically, too, such a construction of the passage is anomalous. In the Ugaritic myths, where Asherah is El’s consort, she is never termed “El’s Asherah.”” ↩

Hadley, Judith M.  “The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah:  Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess.”  University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 57.  Cambridge University Press.  2000.  The fullest study in English of the Asherah evidence:  the Ugaritic texts, the Bible, the inscriptions, the drawings and the figurines.  Hadley examined the Khirbet el-Qom inscription herself and reads "his asherah" as Yahweh's cult object, while allowing a link to the goddess.

1. 8a.

   Page 208:  “Indeed, Asherah is represented on Pithos A, not by the lyre player as Dever believes, but by the tree flanked by two caprids above a striding lion. The finds from this site therefore agree with the general picture shown by the el-Qom inscription; that in the ninth/eighth centuries BCE, Yahweh was worshipped with his special cultic object, known as asherah, which may still have some connection to the goddess of the same name”. ↩

Binger, Tilde.  “Asherah:  Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament.”  Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 232.  Sheffield Academic Press.  1997.  A study of Asherah across the Ugaritic texts, the Hebrew inscriptions and the Bible.  Binger reads the inscriptions as naming the goddess and argues that the grammatical rule against "his" on a name can bend in religious formulas.

1. 9a.

   Page 105:  “The recurrent objection to seeing Asherah in the Israelite inscriptions as a goddess is the observation that in classical Hebrew personal names do not take a possessive suffix.”  Page 106:  “if one accepts the Ugaritic texts as relevant evidence in connection with Israelite or Old Testament texts, one notes that the name of the goddess Anat occurs with a possessive suffix for the third person masculine singular.”  Page 107:  “Thus there is plenty of circumstantial evidence in favor of not being too rigidly adherent to classical Hebrew grammar.” ↩ ↩

Smith, Mark S.  The Early History of God:  Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel.  Harper & Row.  1990.  A widely used critical history of how Israel's God took on the traits of El, Baal and Asherah and then shed the other deities.  On the inscriptions Smith separates what they say from what the goddess was.

1. 10a.

   Page 89:  “The inscriptional evidence points to a cult symbol, the asherah. Demonstrating whether the symbol represented a goddess who was Yahweh’s consort requires an appeal to the biblical evidence, since the inscriptional data does not resolve this issue.” ↩

Hess, Richard S.  Israelite Religions:  An Archaeological and Biblical Survey.  Baker Academic.  2007.  A survey of Israelite religion from the patriarchs to the exile by an evangelical Old Testament scholar, combining the texts with the archaeology.  Hess accepts that the Kuntillet Ajrud and el-Qom texts name the goddess.

1. 11a.

   Page 288:  “The view that this is the personal name of the goddess Asherah implies that Yahweh had a consort. Most scholars conclude that this is the correct analysis. Most accept the addition of an -h suffix in the inscription as a third personal pronominal suffix, “his Asherah.” However, no personal name ever has a pronominal suffix attached to it in Classical Hebrew. Nevertheless, other West Semitic languages do provide occasional examples of this phenomenon.” ↩

Smith, Mark S.  “God Male and Female in the Old Testament:  Yahweh and His 'Asherah'.”  Theological Studies 48:333–336.  1987.  A short note by a Yale scholar on the Asherah inscriptions in a debate over feminine language for God.  It leaves open whether the inscriptions mean the goddess or her symbol.

1. 12a.

   Page 334:  “The religious symbol of the goddess, the asherah, was in Israel a wooden pole, or perhaps a tree, representing the “tree of life.”” ↩

Kletter, Raz.  “Between Archaeology and Theology:  The Pillar Figurines from Judah and the Asherah.”  Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan, 179–216.  Sheffield Academic Press.  Edited by Amihai Mazar.  2001.  A summary of Kletter's 1996 catalogue of the Judean pillar figurines, the only complete corpus, with their distribution, dates, find spots and the arguments over what they meant.  Kletter thinks the Asherah identification likely but unproven.

1. 13a.

   Page 181:  “I have defined 854 JPFs, excluding at least 100 more figurines of unknown origin.” ↩

2. 13b.

   Page 185:  “Of 854 JPFs, 822 (c. 96 per cent) were found in the area defined (above) as the heartland of Judah.” ↩

3. 13c.

   Page 185:  “It would be safe to conclude that the JPFs went out of use before the Persian period, most likely around 586 BCE.” ↩ ↩

4. 13d.

   Page 185:  “Can we separate the eighth and the seventh centuries BCE? It is not an easy task, since only 90 JPFs can be clearly dated to one specific century, mostly to the eighth century BCE.”  “Only 20 JPFs were dated to the seventh century BCE.”  “The small number of well-dated JPFs from the seventh century BCE should not be taken as evidence for a substantial change, nor related in a naive way with biblical ‘cult reforms’.” ↩

5. 13e.

   Page 194:  “Domestic context are by far the most prominent (70 cases, with another 42 in doubt), but JPFs were also found in public places (9, with another 11 in doubt) and burials (20, with another 17 in doubt). Very few fragments are related to religious sites (5 at most), that is, the Arad temple and a room defined as a house shrine at Tel Lahav”. ↩ ↩

6. 13f.

   Page 205:  “It is important to stress that the identification of the JPFs with Asherah seems very probable, but is not proven and should not be taken for granted.”  Page 201:  “The date and the distribution may fit a magical explanation of the JPFs.” ↩

7. 13g.

   Page 200:  “Asherah was certainly part of the official cult of Judah—she was introduced into the Jerusalem temple by Judaean kings (1 Kgs 15.13, 33; 21.7). It seems that it was not a forbidden cult, nor a foreign one.”  Kletter's evidence for Asherah in the official cult is the book of Kings. ↩ ↩

Darby, Erin Danielle.  “Interpreting Judean Pillar Figurines:  Gender and Empire in Judean Apotropaic Ritual.”  PhD dissertation, Duke University.  2011.  A study of the pillar figurines from the Jerusalem excavations, with clay analysis and comparison with Assyrian ritual texts.  Darby argues they were used in household rites of protection and healing rather than as images of a goddess.  A revised version appeared as a book in 2014.

1. 14a.

   Page 59:  “Jerusalem has produced the highest number of figurines in Judah, ca. 50% or more of the known corpus.” ↩

2. 14b.

   Page 50:  “from Kletter’s corpus of 854 figurines, only 255, or roughly thirty percent, have general site context.”  “even if the larger number of 112 is accepted (secure plus doubtful domestic specimens), this only accounts for thirteen percent of the total corpus (854 fragments).” ↩

3. 14c.

   Page 580:  “The first of these positions, that the figurines are major goddesses, is difficult to support in light of the evidence.”  Page v:  “The chapter argues that the figurines were probably associated with protection and healing.”  Page 590:  “Finally, far from being relegated to heterodoxy or base instinct, apotropaic figurine rituals were probably an important aspect of the Iron II ritual complex.” ↩

Kletter's counts with recorded context, certain plus doubtful:  houses and their surroundings 70 + 42 = 112;  tombs 20 + 17 = 37;  public places 9 + 11 = 20;  shrines at most 5.  Total 174.  Shares:  112/174 = 64 per cent, 37/174 = 21 per cent, 20/174 = 11 per cent, 5/174 = 3 per cent.¹³ ↩

Albertz, Rainer, and Rüdiger Schmitt.  Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant.  Eisenbrauns.  2012.  A survey of the excavated houses, domestic cult objects, personal names and texts of Israel and its neighbours, with site-by-site tables.  The authors argue for "internal religious pluralism":  family, local and state religion as linked but distinct levels.

1. 16a.

   Page 44:  “As will be described in chap. 3, hundreds of ritual objects have been found in private urban dwelling houses, providing a wealth of evidence for domestic rituals that were performed by single nuclear families.” ↩

2. 16b.

   Page 55:  “Compared with the changing theological concepts and ongoing disputes over the levels of official religion, family religion was the permanent and conformist basis of Israelite religion for most of the monarchic period.”  “One example of this sort of state influence on family religion is the process through which the national god YHWH became the most prominent family god in Israel and Judah after the 8th century B.C.E. Further possible influences from local cult places, where cultic stones and trees seem to have symbolized the presence of gods and goddesses, may have led to the goddess Asherah (and later, Ishtar) gaining an important position in family religion.” ↩

3. 16c.

   Page 495:  “Up to the 7th century B.C.E., the Israelite family and household religion manifested almost no unique features but was quite similar to other family and household religions of the Levant. Thus, for the preexilic era, it should be characterized as a mere variant of a common Levantine religious phenomenon. Only from the 6th century onward did the family religion of Israel acquire a distinctive, Israelite shape.” ↩

Albertz, Rainer.  “Personal Piety.”  Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, 135–146.  T&T Clark.  Edited by Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton.  2010.  A chapter by a leading historian of Israelite religion on private prayer, names and family devotion, arguing that personal piety ran largely independent of the state and temple cult.

1. 17a.

   Page 141:  “Asherah were invoked for private needs. In personal names, however, Asherah is not mentioned at all, and other goddesses are only rarely attested (including, perhaps, Isis).”  The sentence begins on the previous line, which was not available. ↩

Ackerman, Susan.  “Under Every Green Tree:  Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah.”  Harvard Semitic Monographs 46.  Scholars Press.  1992.  The standard monograph on the popular cults the prophets condemned in late Judah, built from the biblical texts read against Near Eastern parallels.  Ackerman argues that the Queen of Heaven cult was an established Judahite practice before the exile, not a refugee innovation.

1. 18a.

   Page 7:  “That the cult of the Queen of Heaven is a problem for Jeremiah in early sixth-century Egypt suggests that the Deuteronomistic editors of Jeremiah 7 are correct in identifying the worship of the Queen as a problem in late seventh-century Jerusalem. Jeremiah 44 in fact indicates that the worship of the Queen of Heaven has its origins in the pre-exilic period.” ↩

Smoak, Jeremy D.  “From Temple to Text:  Text as Ritual Space and the Composition of Numbers 6:24-26.”  Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 17(2).  2017.  A study of how the priestly blessing was written on objects and in tombs, by the author of a monograph on the Ketef Hinnom amulets.  Smoak reads the amulets as protective objects for the dead and compares them with the el-Qom blessing.

1. 19a.

   Page 14:  “At Ketef Hinnom, a blessing formula with very close parallels to the priestly blessing of Num 6:24–26 appears on two silver amulets dating to the eighth-seventh centuries BCE. The amulets were discovered in a tomb complex just outside of the Old City of Jerusalem”. ↩ ↩

2. 19b.

   Page 1, note 1:  “N. Na’aman, “A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom,” IEJ 61 (2012), 184–95; S. Aḥituv, Echoes from the Past: Hebrew and Cognate Inscriptions from the Biblical Period (Jerusalem: Carta, 2008), 127–29; idem, “A Rejoinder to Nadav Na’aman’s ‘A New Appraisal of the Silver Amulets from Ketef Hinnom’,” IEJ 62 (2012), 223–32”. ↩

3. 19c.

   Page 15:  “In this way, the use of the blessing at Ketef Hinnom would appear to stand close to the use of the blessing formula in the late Iron Age tomb at Khirbet el-Qom.” ↩

Kavanagh, Preston.  “The Jehoiachin Code in Scripture's Priestly Benediction.”  Biblica 88:234–244.  2007.  An article arguing for a hidden name pattern in Numbers 6:24-26, a thesis this article does not rely on.  It is cited only for its opening survey of how specialists have dated the Ketef Hinnom amulets, which quotes the 2004 edition.

1. 20a.

   Page 237:  “Then, twelve years later he and three coauthors concluded, “We can reaffirm with confidence that the late pre-exilic period is the proper chronological context for the artifacts” (12).”  “Ada Yardeni, by analyzing writing styles, dates the plaques at the dawn of the sixth century, which is close to the Barkay group’s estimate (14). J. Renz, however, places the work in the Hellenistic period (15). Finally, John Rogerson and Philip R. Davies conclude that paleography by itself does not allow certainty in such dating (16).”  The numbers in brackets are Kavanagh's notes. ↩

Kisilevitz, Shua.  “The Iron IIA Judahite Temple at Tel Moẓa.”  Tel Aviv 42:147–164.  2015.  The first report on a temple complex excavated at Tel Motza near Jerusalem, by one of its excavators, with its altar, cult stands and figurines.  It dates the temple by pottery to the tenth and ninth centuries BC and treats it as part of Judah's official religion.

1. 21a.

   Page 147:  “Tel Moẓa is located approximately 7 km northwest of ancient Jerusalem (the City of David)”.  Page 149, note 8:  “indicates a construction date no later than the first half of the 9th century BCE.”  Page 156:  “The end of this phase is marked by the intentional covering of the fragmented cult artefacts with a thick layer of earth and clusters of plaster.”  Page 162:  “Both its proximity to Jerusalem and its considerable architectural scale strongly suggest that the Tel Moẓa temple was a legitimate part of the official religious system that prevailed in Judah during the Iron IIA.” ↩ ↩

Arie, Eran et al.  “Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Arad.”  Tel Aviv 47(1):5–28.  2020.  A residue study of the two stone altars from the Arad shrine, analysed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry in two unrelated laboratories.  It identified burnt cannabis on the smaller altar and frankincense on the larger.

1. 22a.

   Abstract:  “On the smaller altar, residues of cannabinoids such as Δ9-teterahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN) were detected, along with an assortment of terpenes and terpenoids, suggesting that cannabis inflorescences had been burnt on it. Organic residues attributed to animal dung were also found … The larger altar contained an assemblage of indicative triterpenes such as boswellic acid and norursatriene, which derives from frankincense. The additional presence of animal fat … suggests that resin was mixed with it to facilitate evaporation. These well-preserved residues shed new light on the use of 8th century Arad altars and on incense offerings in Judah during the Iron Age.”  "teterahydrocannabinol" is the publisher's spelling. ↩

Aharoni, Yohanan.  “Arad:  Its Inscriptions and Temple.”  The Biblical Archaeologist 31(1):1–32.  1968.  The excavator's first full report on the Arad fortress and its temple.  Aharoni dated the first temple to Solomon's time and read two reform stages in its later history.  Both datings were later revised by members of his own team.

1. 23a.

   Page 26:  “Arad seems to elucidate the two stages in the centralization of worship carried out by Hezekiah and Josiah, respectively. Its first stage, in the days of Hezekiah, was the prohibition of sacrifice, while only its second stage, in the days of Josiah, brought about the complete abolition of worship outside Jerusalem.” ↩

Herzog, Ze'ev.  “The Date of the Temple at Arad:  Reassessment of the Stratigraphy and the Implications for the History of Religion in Judah.”  Studies in the Archaeology of the Iron Age in Israel and Jordan, 156–178.  Sheffield Academic Press.  Edited by Amihai Mazar.  2001.  A re-examination of the Arad temple's layers by a member of the original excavation team.  Herzog shortens the temple's life to two strata and dates its burial to Hezekiah's reign.

1. 24a.

   Page 169:  “Instead of four or five strata the temple was utilized in only two of the strata, namely Strata 10 and 9.”  Page 170:  “The temple at Arad was not destroyed by conflagration. No signs of fire were noticed in the debir or in any other part of the temple. The dismantling of the temple and the complete burial of its holiest parts (the stelae, incense altars and the sacrificial altar) must be considered as an act of religious reform.” ↩

2. 24b.

   Page 174:  “The abandonment of the temple seems to corroborate the biblical account on Hezekiah’s cultic reform, and thus should be dated to 715 BCE.” ↩

3. 24c.

   Page 174:  “If indeed this fortress was constructed shortly after the destruction of Stratum 11, the erection of the temple may be dated to about 900 BCE. But, if the second option of an occupational gap were favoured, then the temple would have been built only around 800 BCE.”  “Accordingly, the temple would have been utilized for about 185 years in”. ↩

4. 24d.

   Page 176:  “The only correlation that appears to remain valid is the intended dismantling of the temple by King Hezekiah.” ↩

Ussishkin, David.  “The Date of the Judaean Shrine at Arad.”  Israel Exploration Journal 38(3):142–157.  1988.  A re-dating of the Arad shrine by an Israeli archaeologist, based on the fortress walls and the burning of the shrine.  Ussishkin puts the shrine in the seventh century and so outside both reforms.

1. 25a.

   Page 155:  “Summing up, it seems that the shrine is later than Stratum X, and was constructed as part of basic changes which took place in the fort after Stratum X, probably in the seventh century B.C.E.”  Page 156:  “The dating of the shrine as suggested above means that its construction and destruction can hardly be related in any way to the religious reforms conducted in Judah by Hezekiah and Josiah.” ↩

Na'aman, Nadav.  “The Debated Historicity of Hezekiah's Reform in Light of Historical and Archaeological Research.”  Ancient Israel's History and Historiography:  The First Temple Period, 274–289.  Eisenbrauns.  2006.  A critical review of the evidence for Hezekiah's reform by a leading Israeli historian of the period, who finds no clear archaeological proof of any reform.  First published in Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 107 (1995):  179–195, before the Lachish gate shrine was found;  page numbers here are those of this reprint in his collected essays.

1. 26a.

   Page 279:  “In light of the many controversies and ambiguities concerning the dating of both the foundation and the end of the sanctuary, the empirical data uncovered at the shrine of Arad do not establish the claim of a reform conducted at the site by the kings of Judah.” ↩

2. 26b.

   Page 280:  “This highly hypothetical reconstruction suffers from many flaws. First, it is questionable whether Tel Beer-sheba should be identified with biblical Beer-sheba”. ↩

3. 26c.

   Page 282:  “In conclusion, there is, as yet, no clear archaeological evidence for any of the cultic reforms mentioned in the Bible. Although lack of positive evidence does not indicate that reforms did not take place, we must remember that the Bible is our only source for both Hezekiah's and Josiah's reforms”. ↩

Faust, Avraham.  “Hezekiah's Reform?  A View from Tel 'Eton on the Religious Development in Judah.”  Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 9:31–60.  2026.  An excavation report on a standing stone laid down and covered inside a large eighth-century house at Tel 'Eton, by the site's excavator, with a review of every excavated eighth-century Judahite cult site.  Faust argues the pattern supports a historical reform under Hezekiah.

1. 27a.

   Page 47:  “The altar’s ashlar stones and horns were found embedded in a Stratum II building, indicating that the dismantling occurred before this stratum was established (Herzog 2002; 2010, and references). Stratum II was probably destroyed by Sennacherib during his 701 BCE campaign”. ↩

2. 27b.

   Page 49:  “Factually, the finds from Beersheba present an unequivocal case of intentional dismantling unrelated to military destruction, and it was carried out long before the Assyrian destruction.” ↩

3. 27c.

   Page 31, abstract:  “During the building’s first phase, a large standing stone was erected in the largest and one of the innermost rooms of the building. It was positioned so that it was visible to anyone standing at the entrance to the structure and in most of the courtyard. At some point before the end of the 8th century BCE, the standing stone was laid down and “concealed” within a stone platform that was built around it.” ↩

4. 27d.

   Page 47:  “They noted that a toilet seat was placed on top of the remains, and although soil analyses indicate that the toilet was never used, the operation apparently sought to desecrate the place, which was later destroyed by Sennacherib in 701 BCE.”  “Kleiman (2020: 47) argued (like Liraz) that there were two cultic rooms in the gate complex but insisted that rather than being desecrated, they were destroyed by the Assyrians. Lastly, Ussishkin (2021: 385) maintained that the parallel chambers were used for secular purposes and were therefore never desecrated.” ↩

5. 27e.

   Page 49:  “This view accepts that there were religious changes but argues that they were not the result of a planned reform. Rather, they were the consequences of the military destruction brought about by Sennacherib, who destroyed most of Judah, leaving only the Jerusalem cult intact (e.g., Edelman 2008; Fried 2002; see also Handy 1988).” ↩

6. 27f.

   Page 48:  “Thus, the Lachish gate cult joins Arad and Beersheba as broadly accepted material evidence of the historicity of Hezekiah’s reform.”  “all 8th-century cultic sites offer evidence for cult cancellation or, at least, alteration.”  Page 49:  “there is not a single known (excavated) temple or cultic building that continued uninterruptedly from the 8th to the 7th century BCE.” ↩

Herzog, Ze'ev et al.  “The Stratigraphy at Beer-sheba and the Location of the Sanctuary.”  Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 225:49–58.  1977.  The Beersheba excavation team's answer to Yigael Yadin on where the town's sanctuary stood.  They argue the horned altar stood in a cult building razed when Stratum II was built, and tie the razing to Hezekiah.

1. 28a.

   Page 57:  “It is our contention that when King Hezekiah built Stratum II he executed the reforms mentioned in 2 Kgs 18:22. The altar was broken up, its stones cast aside, and the structure that had been the cult center of Beer-sheba was razed to its foundations.” ↩

Ganor, Saar, and Igor Kreimerman.  “An Eighth-Century B.C.E. Gate Shrine at Tel Lachish, Israel.”  Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 381:211–236.  2019.  The excavators' report of a two-room shrine in the gate of Lachish Level III, with a horned altar and a toilet seat, which they read as deliberately defiled before Sennacherib's attack.  Other archaeologists dispute parts of the reconstruction.

1. 29a.

   Abstract:  “At some point, evidently prior to the destruction of Level III by Sennacherib in 701 b.c.e., the shrine was desecrated and sealed. This act was evident in the breakage of the altar’s horns and the placement of a latrine in the holy of holies. The available data suggests that the desecration of the shrine should be associated with Hezekiah’s cultic reform (2 Kgs 18:4).” ↩

Biran, Avraham.  Biblical Dan.  Israel Exploration Society and Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.  1994.  The excavator's account of twenty-five years of digging at Tel Dan, including the sacred precinct with its raised platform and altar.

1. 30a.

   Page 189:  “As this pottery is from the first half of the 9th century B.C.E., the construction of Bamah B with its yellow floor must have occurred around the mid— 9th century — roughly 860-850 B.C.E.”  Page 260:  “Stratum II of Dan came to an end at the time of the Assyrian conquest of northern Israel by Tiglath Pileser III in 733-732 B.C.E.” ↩

Lemański, Janusz.  “Hezekiah and the Centralization of Worship (2 Kgs 18:4.22).”  Collectanea Theologica 92(1):29–62.  2022.  A review of the textual and archaeological case for Hezekiah's reform by a Polish Old Testament scholar.  He concludes the archaeology cannot tell a reform from the effects of war.

1. 31a.

   Page 53:  “Nevertheless, the interpretation of archaeological (Lachish, Arad, Beersheba, Beth Shemesh, etc.) and historical (Assyrian annals) data does not make it possible to state unequivocally whether the destruction of places and cult objects in Judah was related to some reforms or rather to military operations.” ↩

Cowley, A.  Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C.  Clarendon Press.  1923.  The standard English edition of the Elephantine papyri for half a century, with Aramaic text, translation and notes on each document.  Cowley read the colony's religion as the pre-exilic popular religion of Judah carried into Egypt.  His numbers are used here:  No. 21 is the Passover letter, No. 22 the temple collection, No. 30 the petition to the governor of Judah, Nos. 32 and 33 the reply and the offer, No. 44 the oath by Anat-Yahu.  Cowley prints the papyrus line numbers inside his translation;  they are left out of the quotations here.

1. 32a.

   Page xviii:  “He is generally called, between Jews, simply ' Ya'u the God' … in dealings with Persians, ' the God of heaven ' or ' Ya'u the God of heaven '”. ↩

2. 32b.

   Page 113, No. 30, lines 13-14:  “Already in the days of the kings of Egypt our fathers had built that temple in the fortress of Yeb, and when Cambyses came into Egypt he found that temple built, and the temples of the gods of Egypt all of them they overthrew, but no one did any harm to that temple.” ↩

3. 32c.

   Page 113, No. 30, lines 4-6:  “In the month of Tammuz in the 14th year of Darius the king, when Arsames departed and went to the king, the priests of the god Khnub, who is in the fortress of Yeb, (were) in league with Waidrang who was governor here, saying : The temple of Ya'u the God, which is in the fortress of Yeb let them remove from there.”  Cowley's line numbers are omitted from the quotation. ↩

4. 32d.

   Page 114, No. 30, lines 17-19 and 29:  “we sent a letter to your lordship and to Johanan the high priest and his colleagues the priests who are in Jerusalem, and to Ostanes the brother of 'Anani, and the nobles of the Jews. They have not sent any letter to us. … Also the whole matter we have set forth in a letter in our name to Delaiah and Shelemiah the sons of Sanballat governor of Samaria.” ↩

5. 32e.

   Page 123, No. 32:  “Memorandum from Bigvai and Delaiah. They said to me : Let it be an instruction to you in Egypt to say to Arsames about the altar-house of the God of Heaven, which was built in the fortress of Yeb formerly, before Cambyses, which Waidrang, that reprobate, destroyed in the 14th year of Darius the king, to rebuild it in its place as it was before, and they may offer the meal-offering and incense upon that altar as formerly was done.” ↩

6. 32f.

   Page 125, No. 33, lines 10-11:  “and sheep, oxen (and) goats are not offered as burnt-sacrifice there, but incense, meal-offering and drink-offering only”. ↩

7. 32g.

   Page 126:  “Animal sacrifice was not to be offered, whether out of consideration for Persian or Egyptian feeling, but incense and meal-offerings were unobjectionable.” ↩

8. 32h.

   Page 72, No. 22, lines 120-125:  “The money which was paid on that day into the hand of Yedoniah b. Gemariah in the month of Phamenoth, (was) the sum of 31 kerashin 8 shekels, of which 12 k 6 sh. for Ya'u, 7 kerashin for Ishumbethel, the sum of 12 kerashin for 'Anathbethel.”  A karsh, plural kerashin, was ten shekels. ↩

9. 32i.

   Page 148, No. 44:  “Oath of Menahem b. Shallum b. Hodaviah which he swore to Meshullam b. Nathan by Ya'u the God, by the temple and by 'Anathya'u”.  Page 148, note on line 3:  “The man evidently did swear by 'Anathya'u, whatever be restored before it, and this was therefore the name of a god, presumably a sort of consort of Ya'u.” ↩

10. 32j.

    Page xxiv:  “No. 21 is an edict of Darius ordering an observance of the feast of Unleavened Bread, and, if the proposed restoration is right, the Passover.” ↩

11. 32k.

    Page xix:  “It was not a case of falling away from a monotheistic ideal, but a continuation of the pre-exilic popular beliefs.” ↩

12. 32l.

    Page xxiii:  “So far as we learn from these texts Moses might never have existed, there might have been no bondage in Egypt, no exodus, no monarchy, no prophets. … the Sabbath, is nowhere noticed.” ↩

13. 32m.

    Page xix:  “It is thus evident that the description in Jeremiah … of the religious practices of the Jews in Egypt in his time is in the main corroborated by what we find in these texts a century later”. ↩

Porten, Bezalel et al.  The Elephantine Papyri in English:  Three Millennia of Cross-Cultural Continuity and Change.  Brill.  1996.  Fresh translations, with commentary, of 175 documents from Elephantine across three thousand years, including the Aramaic papyri of the Jewish garrison.  Porten's restorations here sometimes differ from Cowley's, as in the oath by Anat-Yahu.

1. 33a.

   Document B52 (TAD B7.3), lines 1-3:  “… swore/will-swear to Meshullam son of Nathan by H[erem] the [god] in/by the place of prostration and by AnathYHW.”  Porten's note on the name compares Anathbethel and offers two readings:  Anat as the wife of Bethel or of YHW, or Anat as the "name" or "face" of Bethel and YHW. ↩

2. 33b.

   Introduction to the Jedaniah archive:  “the Temple had been built under native pharaonic rule and was untouched by the Persian conqueror Cambyses (525 BCE), who overturned local Egyptian shrines”.  General introduction:  “in the last decades of the century it found itself in conflict with the Khnum priests to the point where they bribed the local Persian Chief (frataraka) to allow them to destroy it in 410”. ↩ ↩

Porten, Bezalel.  Archives from Elephantine:  The Life of an Ancient Jewish Military Colony.  University of California Press.  1968.  The standard study of the Elephantine community, by the scholar who later edited all its Aramaic texts.  Porten reads the Jews as devoted to YHW as a community, keeping Sabbath and Passover, and argues that the other deities in the papyri belonged to their Aramean neighbours, while conceding that the temple collection points the other way.

1. 34a.

   Page 160:  “A papyrus roll of seven columns begins “On 3 Phamenoth, year 5, this is (the list of) names of the Jewish garrison who gave silver to YHW the God, each [o]ne [2 shekels of] silver” (C 22:1).” ↩

2. 34b.

   Page 162:  “This collection for YHW is usually dated to the fifth year of Darius II (419) but palaeographic and onomastic considerations argue for the fifth year of Amyrtaeus (400).” ↩

3. 34c.

   Page 163:  “Moreover, out of this total of 318 shekels only 126 were earmarked for YHW. Seventy shekels were designated for Eshembethel and 120 for Anathbethel.”  Page 164:  “The fact still remains, however, that over 100 persons with Jewish names gave money to YHW, yet the total assigned to Him was only 126 shekels, the equivalent of sixty-three two-shekel contributions.” ↩

4. 34d.

   Page 164:  “Extensive evidence, however, shows that the three deities, Eshembethel, Anathbethel, and Herembethel were Aramean, not Jewish, deities.”  Page 175:  “Even if it is assumed that he diverted money collected for YHW to the other deities, such an act may have been no more than a goodwill gesture on the part of the Jews to their Aramean neighbors.” ↩

5. 34e.

   Page 174:  “Quite different is the collection by the Jewish leader Jedaniah of a two-shekel contribution for YHW from over one hundred Jews and the apparent distribution of these funds to YHW and two other deities. This seems to imply communal worship of Anathbethel and Eshembethel by the Jews. But even this is not certain.” ↩

6. 34f.

   Page 174:  “Mibtahiah took a judicial oath by the goddess of Elephantine, Sati, probably revered by her former husband Pia (C 13). Malchiah appealed to the (our?) god Herembethel against an unknown opponent”.  “salutations in letters from Jews to Jews which invoked the “gods” may have been written by non-Jewish scribes”. ↩

7. 34g.

   Page 162:  “At Elephantine reference to the Sabbath is absent from the private contracts and public letters written on papyri but is to be found in the ostraca, letters about personal affairs.”  “Meet the boat tomorrow on Sabbath lest they get lost/spoiled”. ↩

8. 34h.

   Page 167:  “the Passover, like the Sabbath, was taken for granted as a regular feature of religious life.” ↩

9. 34i.

   Page 177:  “As mentioned earlier, the “Queen of Heaven” had a temple at Syene (BK 4:1) and it is likely that this epithet applied to Anath.”  “YHW was still God, but Anath was added assurance. Anathyahu was that aspect of YHW which assured man’s well-being.” ↩

10. 34j.

    Page 175:  “Furthermore, according to this view, the colonists of Elephantine derived in whole or in part from the northern kingdom of Israel, particularly from the region of Bethel.”  “All these assumptions, however, are most unlikely.” ↩

Viegas, Jennifer.  “Did God have a wife?  Scholar says that he did.”  Discovery News, reposted by NBC News.  Mar 18, 2011.  A news report on Francesca Stavrakopoulou's BBC series The Bible's Buried Secrets, quoting her public statement and interview with comments from two other scholars.  It is cited for the critical position in its holders' own words.

1. 35a.

   “He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe.”  “Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife.” ↩

2. 35b.

   “is the Bible's admission that the goddess Asherah was worshiped in Yahweh's Temple in Jerusalem. In the Book of Kings, we're told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her.”  Stavrakopoulou, as quoted. ↩

3. 35c.

   “The ancient Israelites were polytheists, Brody told Discovery News, "with only a small minority worshiping Yahweh alone before the historic events of 586 B.C."”  Aaron Brody, director of the Badè Museum, Pacific School of Religion. ↩

4. 35d.

   “Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors”.  J. Edward Wright, president of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies. ↩

Stavrakopoulou, Francesca.  “'Popular' Religion and 'Official' Religion:  Practice, Perception, Portrayal.”  Religious Diversity in Ancient Israel and Judah, 37–59.  T&T Clark.  Edited by Francesca Stavrakopoulou and John Barton.  2010.  An essay by a University of Exeter scholar arguing that the scholarly split between "official" and "popular" Israelite religion takes over the biblical writers' biases and wrongly treats the majority's religion as deviant.

1. 36a.

   Page 38:  “biblical writers, so that the forms of Yhwh worship represented by the prophets, priesthoods and temple cults approved by the biblical writers have been broadly cast as 'formal', 'state', 'orthodox' or 'official' religion”.  “This chapter will explore some of the ways in which assumptions about religious norms in ancient Israel and Judah have contributed to the scholarly imaging of certain religious diversities as 'deviant' forms of practice”. ↩

2. 36b.

   Page 42:  “Asherah worship and weaving cults are located in the Jerusalem temple (e.g. 2 Kgs 21.7; 23.4, 6-7), and some women are portrayed as high status worshippers of Asherah (1 Kgs 15.13; 18.19).” ↩

3. 36c.

   Page 49:  “biblical writers, whose representations of certain socio-religious groups may intentionally or unintentionally misrepresent the religious beliefs and practices of those groups (Berlinerblau 1993; cf. Ackerman 1992: 213-17)”. ↩

Counted in the World English Bible:  the word Asherah, or its plural, appears in 40 verses, in Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, 1 and 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah.  Most uses name a wooden cult object;  a few, such as 1 Kings 18:19 and 2 Kings 23:4, name the goddess.² ↩