Before Christianity... before Judaism..

[RichardP]

Christianity did not always exist and there are probably parts of the world where it is still unknown. I suppose that the Christians would argue that being a Christian is a bit like being an American -- or a member of a wealthy nation -- you are "lucky" to be born in that country. You are lucky if you were taught Christianity and have a chance at eternal life. People born in the wrong part of the world are unlucky.

I should not make fun of God because "he" has been trying to get it right for a long time now. And he has learned from his early mistakes -- made changes -- and "his" religion has improved. Christianity is sort of the new and improved version of the old Judaism. Old Judaism taught those archaic boring tiresome Ten Commandments that modern day Christians are loathe to learn...

But what came before Judaism? Because god forbid there was even a time when Judaism did not exist. Here's a little thing from Wikipedia that I thought was interesting.

The ancient roots of Judaism lie in the Bronze Age polytheistic Ancient Semitic religions, specifically Canaanite religion, a syncretization with elements of Babylonian religion and of the worship of Yahweh reflected in the early prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible. During the Babylonian captivity of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, certain circles within the exiled Judahites in Babylon redefined pre-existing ideas about monotheism, election, divine law and Covenant into a theology which came to dominate the former Judah in the following centuries.

From the 5th century BCE until 70 CE, Israelite religion developed into the various theological schools of Second Temple Judaism, besides Hellenistic Judaism in the diaspora. The text of the Hebrew Bible was redacted into its extant form in this period and possibly also canonized as well. The Rabbinic form of Judaism developed during Late Antiquity, during the 3rd to 6th centuries CE; the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible (the addition of vowels to the consonant text) and the Talmud were compiled in this period. The oldest manuscripts of the Masoretic Biblical tradition however come from the 10th and 11th centuries CE; in the form of the Aleppo Codex of the later portions of the 10th century CE and the Leningrad Codex dated to either 1008 CE or 1009 CE. Regarding Rabbinical works, due largely to censoring and burning of manuscripts in medieval Europe, the oldest manuscripts in existence of various Rabbinical works are quite late. For example the oldest complete manuscript copy of the Babylonian Talmud to survive is dated to 1342 CE.[1]

[KichigaiNeko]

Yes dear...we know.

[John V]

A wikipedia entry on religion (or any controversial issue) is usually little more than propaganda from the side which perseveres in editing the entry.

[Confused Ape]

A wikipedia entry on religion (or any controversial issue) is usually little more than propaganda from the side which perseveres in editing the entry.

Wikipedia is a good place to start for anything because the articles provide lists of notes and sources. Any article which fails to do this is littered with bracketed comments of 'citation needed'.

Here's an example of one of the resources used in an article about Asherah. It's a book published by the Cambridge University Press which belongs to Cambridge University.

The Cult Of Asherah In Ancient Israel and Judah

Recent archaeological discoveries have encouraged scholars to reinvestigate the Israelite religion. In this book, Judith Hadley uses these discoveries, alongside biblical material and non-biblical inscriptions, to examine the evidence for the worship of Asherah as the partner of God in the Bible. By investigating the Khirbet al-Qom and Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions, for example, where the phrase 'Yahweh and his Asherah' is frequently in evidence, the author asks what the ancient Israelites meant by this, how they construed the relationship between Yahweh and Asherah, and whether in fact the term actually referred to an object of worship rather than to a goddess. The author also evaluates more recent scholarship to substantiate her conclusions. This is a detailed and brilliant study which promises to make a significant contribution to the ongoing debate about the exact nature of Asherah and her significance in pre-exilic Israel and Judah.

[John V]

Yes, it can be a starting point, hence "little more than" rather than "nothing more than." The references themselves are frequently of low caliber, but sometimes there's something worthwhile as well. Wiki is better suited for issues that require little or no interpretation.

[Minimalist]

By investigating the Khirbet al-Qom and Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions,

William Dever's "Did God Have A Wife" covers the same ground. It is a compelling study and he seems to have convinced noted Israeli archaeologist, Amihai Mazar, that a progression is obvious from the Canaanite pantheon through henotheism with yahweh as the chief god in Judah to full-blown monotheism after the region was exposed to Persian thinking about Ahura-Mazada.

Of course the bottom line is that all of it is simply the lunatic ravings of primitive tribesmen and has no relevance at all in the 21st fucking century!

[Confused Ape]

Yes, it can be a starting point, hence "little more than" rather than "nothing more than." The references themselves are frequently of low caliber, but sometimes there's something worthwhile as well. Wiki is better suited for issues that require little or no interpretation.

How are you defining low calibre? What about sources which are books and papers by well respected academics, scientists and archaeologists?

Wiki articles can also have sections pointing out opposing views and controversies and these are given sources as well. People can then read original material for both sides of an argument and make their own minds up.

The Asherah article has a list of See Also articles, one of which is the Asherah pole. From there I went to an article about Israel Finkelstein who is an Israeli archaeologist and academic and then went to see what the book he co-authored with Neil Asher Silberman is about.

The Bible Unearthed - Origins Of The Israelites

The book remarks that, despite modern archaeological investigations and the meticulous ancient Egyptian records from the period of Ramesses II, there is an obvious lack of any archaeological evidence for the migration of a band of semitic people across the Sinai Peninsula,[12] except for the Hyksos. Although the Hyksos are in some ways a good match, their main centre being at Avaris (later renamed 'Pi-Ramesses'), in the heart of the region corresponding to the 'land of Goshen', and Manetho later writing that the Hyksos eventually founded the Temple in Jerusalem,[13] it throws up other problems, as the Hyksos became not slaves but rulers, and they were chased away rather than chased to bring them back.[13] Nevertheless, the book posits that the exodus narrative perhaps evolved from vague memories of the Hyksos expulsion, spun to encourage resistance to the 7th century domination of Judah by Egypt.[14]

Finkelstein and Silberman argue that instead of the Israelites conquering Canaan after the Exodus (as suggested by the book of Joshua), most of them had in fact always been there; the Israelites were simply Canaanites who developed into a distinct culture.[15] Recent surveys of long-term settlement patterns in the Israelite heartlands show no sign of violent invasion or even peaceful infiltration, but rather a sudden demographic transformation about 1200 BCE in which villages appear in the previously unpopulated highlands;[16] these settlements have a similar appearance to modern Bedouin camps, suggesting that the inhabitants were once pastoral nomads, driven to take up farming by the Late Bronze Age collapse of the Canaanite city-culture.[17]
The authors take issue with the book of Joshua's depiction of the Israelites conquering Canaan in only a few years—far less than the lifetime of one individual—in which cities such as Hazor, Ai, and Jericho, are destroyed. Finkelstein and Silberman view this account as the result of the telescoping effect of the vagaries of folk memory about destruction caused by other events;[18] modern archaeological examination of these cities shows that their destruction spanned a period of many centuries, with Hazor being destroyed 100 to 300 years after Jericho,[19] while Ai (whose name actually means 'heap of ruins') was completely abandoned for roughly a millennium before Jericho was destroyed, and not being re-occupied until 200 years afterwards.[20]

It doesn't look as if the authors are regarded as crackpots.

The Bible Unearthed was well received by biblical scholars and archaeologists. Baruch Halpern, professor of Jewish Studies at Pennsylvania State University and leader of the archaeological digs at Megiddo for many years, praised it as "the boldest and most exhilarating synthesis of Bible and archaeology in fifty years",[66] and biblical scholar Jonathan Kirsch, writing in the Los Angeles Times, called it "a brutally honest assessment of what archeology can and cannot tell us about the historical accuracy of the Bible", which embraces the spirit of modern archaeology by approaching the Bible "as an artifact to be studied and evaluated rather than a work of divine inspiration that must be embraced as a matter of true belief".[67]

It seems that Finkelstein got into a heated argument with William G. Dever, another archaeologist, but this kind of thing is hardly unusual between scientists, academics and archaeologists

[John V]

Here's the wiki section on Asherah in Israel and Judah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah#In_..._and_Judah

Between the 10th century BC and the beginning of their exile in 586 polytheism was normal throughout Israel[citation needed]; it was only after the exile that worship of Yahweh alone became established, and possibly only as late as the time of the Maccabees (2nd century BC) that monotheism became universal among Jews.[8][9] Some biblical scholars believe that Asherah at one time was worshiped as the consort of Yahweh, the national god of Israel.[8] There are references to the worship of numerous gods throughout Kings, Solomon builds temples to many gods during his reign and Josiah is reported as cutting down the statues of Asherah in the temple Solomon built for Yahweh. Further evidence includes, for example, an 8th century combination of iconography and inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northern Sinai desert[10] where a storage jar shows three anthropomorphic figures and an inscription that refers to "Yahweh … and his Asherah".[11][12] Further evidence includes the many female figurines unearthed in ancient Israel, supporting the view that Asherah functioned as a goddess and consort of Yahweh and was worshiped as the Queen of Heaven.[11]

The references given are:

8.^ a b "BBC Two - Bible's Buried Secrets, Did God Have a Wife?". BBC. 2011-12-21. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zw3fl. Retrieved 2012-07-04.
9.^ Quote from the BBC documentary: "Between the 10th century and the beginning of their exile in 586 there was polytheism as normal religion all throughout Israel; only afterwards things begin to change and very slowly they begin to change. I would say it [the sentence "Jews were monotheists" - n.n.] is only correct for the last centuries, maybe only from the period of the Maccabees, that means the second century BC, so in the time of Jesus of Nazareth it is true, but for the time before it, it is not true."
10.^ Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud: An Israelite Religious Center in Northern Sinai, Expedition 20 (Summer 1978), pp. 50–55
11.^ a b Dever 2005
12.^ Hadley 2000, pp. 122–136

1. Note that most of it has no reference or only references a TV show. I call this low caliber.

Then, when we get down to serious sources, there is interesting omission:

Further evidence includes, for example, an 8th century combination of iconography and inscriptions discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in the northern Sinai desert[10] where a storage jar shows three anthropomorphic figures and an inscription that refers to "Yahweh … and his Asherah".[11][12]

The wiki entry specific to Kuntillet Ajrad says:

The "Asherah" is most likely a cultic object, although the relationship of this object (a stylised tree perhaps) to Yahweh and to the goddess Asherah, consort of El, is unclear.[7]

[Minimalist]

How are you defining low calibre?

To a nut like him, low-calibre is anything which says his bullshit is wrong.

[Confused Ape]

The references given are:

John V' pid='398338' dateline='1360340533']10.^ Ze’ev Meshel, Kuntillet ‘Ajrud: An Israelite Religious Center in Northern Sinai, Expedition 20 (Summer 1978), pp. 50–55

This is a document published by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

11.^ a b Dever 2005

This is a book by an American archaeologist, specialising in the history of Israel and the Near East in Biblical times.

12.^ Hadley 2000, pp. 122–136

This is a book published by the Cambridge University Press.

The list of references for the full article is -

Binger, Tilde (1997), Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament, Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 9781850756378
Dever, William G. (2005), Did God Have A Wife?: Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, ISBN 9780802828521
Hadley, Judith M (2000), The cult of Asherah in ancient Israel and Judah : the evidence for a Hebrew goddess, University of Cambridge Oriental publications, 57, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521662352
Kien, Jenny (2000), Reinstating the divine woman in Judaism, Universal Publishers, ISBN 9781581127638
Long, Asphodel P. (1993), In a chariot drawn by lions: the search for the female in deity, Crossing Press, ISBN 9780895945754
Myer, Allen C. (2000), "Asherah", Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, Amsterdam University Press
Patai, Raphael (1990), The Hebrew goddess, Jewish folklore and anthropology., Wayne State University Press, ISBN 9780814322710
Reed, William Laforest (1949), The Asherah in the Old testament, Texas christian university press, OCLC 491761457
Taylor, Joan E (1995), The Asherah, the Menorah and the Sacred Tree, Journal for the study of the Old Testament. no. 66: University of Sheffield, Dept. of Biblical Studies, p. 29–54, ISSN 03090892, OCLC 88542166
Wiggins, Steve A (1993), A reassessment of 'Asherah' : a study according to the textual sources of the first two millennia B.C.E, Alter Orient und Altes Testament, Bd. 235., Verlag Butzon & Bercker, ISBN 9783788714796

Anyone who is interested can check out the authors of these books and see what their qualifications are.