Okay, all you Old Testament scholars out there: is there at least one other possible explanation for this? I mean, besides the ridiculously impossible one suggested here?
God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar…. “After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel… I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife.”
…
Asherah’s connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.
“The inscription is a petition for a blessing,” she shares. “Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from ‘Yahweh and his Asherah.’ 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.”
[From God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible -- Almost : Discovery News]
Am I being overly cynical to wonder whether the key word here might be “colorful,” meaning, “likely to attract publicity?”
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wow. just wow.
as for alternative explanations, perhaps asherah is the rebellious teenage daughter of an estranged family friend…
Here’s one take.
Media business as usual.
Repeatedly throughout the major and minor prophets God condemns His people for forgetting Him. While they continued using the name Yahweh it had a different meaning. It is no different than a local church drifting from Christ and becoming mormon. They still believe in Jesus and Jehovah but they now have different meanings.
Right. What this discovery demonstrates is that someone thought it made sense to mix YHWH-worship with idol-worship. How surprising is that, to anyone who has read the Old Testament? The prophets and the writers of history saw it, acknowledged it, recorded it—and pronounced God’s judgment upon it.
Wait till they discover His mother-in-law!