God the Father / God the Mother
Across the Ancient Near East, God the Father was venerated and worshipped with his companion God the Mother.
Experts now conclude that the religious expression of Ancient Palestine (home of Yahweh, Asherah and the Bible) “does not differ in form or content from practices known throughout Syria.
It cannot be claimed that the religion of either Israel or Judah was in a substantive way different [from its neighbors].”
-Biblical Archaeology Review in History’s Vanquished Goddess Asherah
Double-Throne Shrine of Asherah/God the Mother & God the Father?
Dating to the Iron Age, ~1000-850 BCE, experts believe this model temple shrine may have come from biblical Moab.
Embellished with epiphanies of the Mother Goddess Asherah - the frontal tree-like asherah pillars, the guardian lions and the dove at the shrine’s apex - this temple model shrine is consecrated to the worship of Asherah/God the Mother.
Depicted within the inner sanctuary of this temple shrine, the double-throne attests to the worship of another deity at Asherah’s side.
The companion deity may likely have been God the Father.
This being the case, what happened to God the Mother?
According to Biblical Archaeology Review, there is no longer any doubt of a Goddess worshipped alongside God: “Indeed, worship of the Mother God in conjunction with the Father God can be demonstrated to have occurred within ancient Israel. Both the Bible and archaeology confirm this.”
Further explaining the loss of the divine feminine, the Biblical Archaeology Review continues: “So it isn’t that the Mother God was absent from their worship. Rather she was consciously eradicated from worship by the religious authorities.”
-History’s Vanquished Goddess Asherah
Canaanite -> Israelite: God the Mother & God the Father
Although Israel claimed to be distinct from the Canaanites, in actuality the archaeological and textual record reveals that, “in its formative centuries . . . Israel was a lot what it claimed not to be . . .
In other words, Israel was essentially Canaanite . . . [and] we not know the religious landscape of Israel included one or more Canaanite goddesses.” -Biblical Archaeology Review
The Canaanite god/God the Father and goddess/God the Mother depicted at left, subsequently assimilated into Israelite theology.
-History’s Vanquished Goddess Asherah
Asherah Systemically Eliminated by Yahwistic Priests
Yahweh's Wife: Sex in the Evolution of Monotheism : A Study of Yahweh, Asherah, Ritual Sodomy and Temple Prostitution by Dr. Arthur Ide
Referencing biblical texts, Dr. Arthur Ide describes how Asherah, the last of the goddesses to survive in Judah/Ancient Israel, was systematically eliminated by Yahwistic priests intent upon a monotheistic religion.
King Before Queen of Heaven
Dating to ~720-600 BCE, and discovered in ancient Israel, this ancient cylinder seal depicts an Assyrian king making an oath before an astral goddess.
Framed within a celestial nimbus, this is a personification of a Queen of Heaven - likely Asherah/Ishtar or one of her sister goddesses.
-History’s Vanquished Goddess Asherah
Kuntillet Ajrud’s Yahweh and his Asherah "was part of Israelite Mythology"
Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at American Jewish University, Ziony Zevit states that the Kuntillet Ajrud “data affirm that the
link between YHWH and Asherah was part of Israelite mythology.”
-The Religions of Ancient Israel:A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches
