{"id":389,"date":"2005-03-05T21:31:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-05T21:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=389"},"modified":"2005-03-05T21:31:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-05T21:31:00","slug":"389","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=389","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

YVWH’s Wife<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not news to religion scholars, but it’s interesting that Archaeology<\/em> magazine’s March\/April magazine carries an article on Hebrew polytheism, “The Lost Goddess of Israel.”<\/a><\/p>\n

“Biblical scholars were at first reluctant to accept the pairing of Yahweh and Asherah. Those who were wont to take the biblical narrative at face value [as most Christian preachers do] were slow to accept artifacts as a refutation.”<\/p>\n

In other words, all the monotheistic “Lord God of Israel” stuff is a rewrite of Israelite history by later monotheistic Jews after the 7th century BCE, particularly during the reign of King Josiah (639-609), who was severely anti-goddess-worship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YVWH’s Wife This is not news to religion scholars, but it’s interesting that Archaeology magazine’s March\/April magazine carries an article on Hebrew polytheism, “The Lost Goddess of Israel.” “Biblical scholars were at first reluctant to accept the pairing of Yahweh and Asherah. Those who were wont to take the biblical narrative at face value [as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-389","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1272,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1272","url_meta":{"origin":389,"position":0},"title":"Creeping Pantheism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 22, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Highbrow journalist Ross Douthat is bothered by creeping pantheism.In a recent New York Times piece, he calls pantheism \"Hollywood's religion of choice.\"The \"news hook\" for his column is the new movie Avatar, which repeats the Pocahantas story once again. Some critic called it \"Dancing with Smurfs.\"To Douthat, \"Avatar is Cameron\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1035,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1035","url_meta":{"origin":389,"position":1},"title":"On the Road in Virginia: Looking for Gleb Botkin","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Gleb Botkin's Church of Aphrodite lasted from the 1930s to 1969. (He formally incorporated it in 1939, but I don't know just when it started.) The church was more Goddess-monotheistic than polytheistic: Aphrodite, the flower-faced, the sweetly smiling, the laughter-loving Goddess of Love and Beauty, is the self-existent, eternal and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Home of Gleb Botkin in the late 1960s. Photo by Chas S. Clifton","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chasclifton.com\/graphics\/botkinhouse_sm.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6519,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6519","url_meta":{"origin":389,"position":2},"title":"Around the Blogosphere: A Pagan Cat, Multiple Souls, and Idolatry","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 \"I don't want to be rude, but what religion are you?\" A Pagan pet's name produces confusion at the veterinary clinic. \u00b6\u00a0\u00a0 \"The Three\/Four Souls and Their Afterlives.\" Heather at Eaarth Animist\u00a0looks at different traditional accounts to learn what might explain her own experiences: \"It has baffled many Western\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"animals\"","block_context":{"text":"animals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=animals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":228,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=228","url_meta":{"origin":389,"position":3},"title":"Is Starhawk (still) Jewish? Terry\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 25, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Is Starhawk (still) Jewish? Terry Mattingly of the religion-and-journalism blog GetReligion has posted recently on the difficulties of determining Jewish identity, both for Jews and for journalists. His post is based on the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001; the link is to a longer article that he wrote. What\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11444,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11444","url_meta":{"origin":389,"position":4},"title":"Catholics in Trouble over ‘Idols’ Again","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 15, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Maybe you missed it, but there was a minor scandal at the Vatican last year over the liturgical use of an image of Pachamana, one name given to the indigenous Mother Goddess of the Andean region of South America. Some traditional Catholics were deeply offended: The statues, which were identical\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Catholicism\"","block_context":{"text":"Catholicism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=catholicism"},"img":{"alt_text":"Idols on the Catholic altar","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.churchmilitant.com\/images\/social_images\/2020-05-14-Hornchurch.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.churchmilitant.com\/images\/social_images\/2020-05-14-Hornchurch.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.churchmilitant.com\/images\/social_images\/2020-05-14-Hornchurch.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.churchmilitant.com\/images\/social_images\/2020-05-14-Hornchurch.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":401,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=401","url_meta":{"origin":389,"position":5},"title":"Thunder, Perfect Prada","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 4, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Via PaleoJudaica (scroll to Feb. 24), this fascinating snippet about the most enigmatic of all the Nag Hammadi texts used as a perfume ad. Some Pagan scholars see in the \"I\" of the text, \"Thunder, Perfect Mind,\" a goddess figure, perhaps Sophia, the divine personification of Wisdom, perhaps the goddess\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}