Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel

361 Pages·2005·13.31 MB·English

by  William G. Dever

Did God Have a Wife?

Did God Have a Wife?
ARCHAEOLOGY AND FOLK RELIGION
IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
William G. Dever
WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN / CAMBRIDGE, U.K.
For my Lady, P.
© 2005 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
All rights reserved
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503 /
P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.
Printed in the United States of America
09 08 07 06 05 7 6 5 4 3 21
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Did God have a wife? archaeology and folk religion in ancient Israel /
William G. Dever.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8028-2852-3
1. Israel — Religion. 2. Asherah (Semitic deity) 3. Jews — Folklore.
4. Israel — Antiquities. 5. Excavation (Archaeology) - Israel. I. Title.
BL1650.D48 2005
299'.2 — dc22
2005040503
www.eerdmans.com
Contents
Introduction ix
I. Defining and Contextualizing Religion ι
The Phenomenon of Religion ι
Religion as "Ultimate Concern" 2
The "Care and Feeding of the Gods" 4
On "Folk Religion" 5
"Folk Religion": Toward a Methodology 8
"Phenomenology of Religion" 9
The "Context" of Folk Religion 12
Religion and the "Good Life" 29
II. The History of the History:
In Search of Ancient Israel's Religions 32
The "History of Religions" School 32
The "Myth and Ritual" School 33
Old Testament Theology 35
Sociological Approaches 39
A Revival of Interest in Israelite Religion 40
An Overall Critique of Previous Scholarship 59
III. Sources and Methods for the Study
of Ancient Israel's Religions 63
The Biblical Texts and Their Limitations 64
Some Caveats 68
Non-biblical Texts 73
Archaeology as a "Primary Source"
for History and Religion 74
Depreciating Archaeology: Who and Why 76
Setting the (Archaeological) Record Straight 79
What Archaeology Can and Cannot Do 81
Why Another History? 87
IV. The Hebrew Bible: Religious Reality or Theological Ideal? 90
Part I. Cultic Terminology in the Hebrew Bible 92
Bâmôt, or "High Places" 92
Family and Household Shrines 95
Temples 96
Cult Paraphernalia in the Hebrew Bible 98
Part II. Cultic Activities in the Hebrew Bible 103
The Sacrificial System 103
Some Caveats Regarding Sacrifice 104
Prayers and Vows 106
Festivals 107
V. Archaeological Evidence for Folk Religions in Ancient Israel xxo
Local Shrines and Family Religion 111
An Excursus on "Magic" 125
Public Open-Air Sanctuaries 135
Monumental Temples 167
VI. The Goddess Asherah and Her Cult 176
The Figurines: Who Is She? 176
Votives, Vows, and Folk Religion 195
Characterizing Asherah and Her Cult 196
VII. Asherah, Women's Cults, and "Official Yahwism" 209
Asherah in Canaan 209
Asherah in the Hebrew Bible 211
Asherah, Yahweh, and "Syncretism" 212
Iconographie Evidence of the Goddess 219
Asherah and Women's Cults 236
Archaeological Correlates of Women's Cults 239
Other Ethnographic Parallels 247
VIII. From Polytheism to Monotheism 252
"Patriarchal" Religion in Canaan:
El and "the God of the Fathers" 252
"Holy Places" in Pre-Israelite Times 264
The Israelite Sacrificial System as "Canaanite" 266
The Calendar 267
The Question of "Syncretism" 269
Changes with the Monarchy: Religion in Crisis 271
Rebellion: "To Your Tents, Ο Israel" 280
Civil War: The "State Cult" in the North 281
Judah and the "Yahweh Alone" Movement 285
The Fall of Judah and Religious Crisis 291
The Empty Land 293
Out of the Ashes 294
Toward One God 294
Why Monotheism? and Whither? 297
Archaeological Evidence for Reforms 299
The Afterglow 300
Magic Bowls and the Goddess Lilith 300
"Ashera Abscondita" and Jewish Mysticism 301
IX. What Does the Goddess Do to Help? 304
Afterword (and Foreword Again) 314
Some Basic Sources 318
Index of Authors 334
Index of Subjects and Places 337
Index of Scripture References 341
Introduction
This is a book about ordinary people in ancient Israel and their everyday
religious lives, not about the extraordinary few who wrote and edited the
Hebrew Bible. It is also a book for ordinary people today who know in-
stinctively that "religion" is about experience, not about the doctrines of
scholars, theologians, and clerics who study religion dispassionately and
claim authority. My concern in this book is popular religion, or, better,
"folk religion" in all its variety and vitality.
This is a book that, although it hopes to be true to the facts we
know, does not attempt objectivity; for that is impossible and perhaps
even undesirable. One can understand religion only from within, or at
least from a sympathetic viewpoint. As an archaeologist, I shall try to de-
scribe the religions of ancient Israel — not theoretically, from the top
down, as it were, but practically, "from the bottom up," from the evidence
on the ground.
This is a book mostly about the practice of religion, not about belief,
much less theology. It is concerned with what religion actually does, not
with what religionists past or present think that it should do. Beliefs mat-
ter, for they are the wellspring of action; and theological formulations may
be helpful or even necessary for some. But archaeologists are more at
home with the things that past peoples made, used, and discarded or re-
used, and what these artifacts reveal about their behavior, than they are
with speculations about what these people thought that they were doing.
As Lewis Binford reminds us, "archaeologists are poorly equipped to be
paleo-psychologists."