God's wife: a case of deliberate obfuscation?

It's true: not only did God have a wife, but she just loves gay men

A colleague asked me whether it is true that God used to have a wife, and I'm afraid he started me off because she is one of my pet subjects. Anyone with any idea of the background to the Hebrew Bible (remember it is not the old testament to the Jews) knows that the whole Judaeo-Christian tradition gestated in a melting pot of various competing divinities, of whom Yah ultimately became the single deity.

His wife was called Asherah, and if you know what to look for her presence is everywhere in the bible. The translation in which it is least apparent to us us the 'Authorised'/King James Bible where you really have to look hard for it. This is part of the account of King Josiah's setting up of the worship of Yah over Asherah in 2 Kings 23:

³ And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.

⁴ And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Bethel.

⁵ And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.

⁶ And he brought out the grove from the house of the LORD, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.

⁷ And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.

Yup, these are definitely poles

This seems so casual but unless you know what you're looking for, all is not being told. For a start he doesn't just stand by a pole, just casual like, because the pole was the ritual object in the temple for the worship of Asherah. He is taking this oath in the temple because he is consecrating himself, the people, and the temple to the worship of the one God. He then commands the people to remove from the temple the paraphernalia and personnel of the worship of other divinities. But hold on, what can 'the vessels...for the grove' mean? After he tells them to bring out the priests who burned incense in high places (high places occur so frequently in the Hebrew Bible that the people can not have been wholeheartedly monotheistic, because they are a sure sign of the worship of other Gods) he then has the grove actually brought out from the temple. A grove is a small wood without dense undergrowth. I know, I had to look it up. I suppose you could conceivably have a small wood growing in a temple, but the actual Hebrew words translated here indicates what is actually  happening. You've got it, thte word is Asherah. It was actually the Asherah pole that was being removed. This is the development of monotheism in action: while the victors' record defines it as a commitment to pure and correct worship of only one divinity, it can also be phrased as the total extirpation of others' divinities.

I particularly like the next bit, where he breaks down the houses of the sodomites. A dictionary definition of sodomite is 'one who engages in sodomy', and we all know what that is. But once again all is not being told. It wasn't by chance that an absolute busload of Mary-Anns were camping (literally) in the temple. Once again the Hebrew word shows the real situation: the word is kedeshim and its root meaning is 'consecrated ones'. They were ritual male prostitutes, and this was the worship of Asherah. Bear in mind, though, that at most periods of time the word prostitute has not had the relatively low-life meaning it has now, the kedeshims' prostitution was a sacred thing.

What makes me mad about the King James Bible is that although the words are translated using perfectly possible translations, it has succeeded in completely hiding what is actually happening! Modern versions of the Bible tend to be better, but this is an example of the victors rewriting history to write out the vanquished. A story of the imposition of monotheism on a people who weren't really interested becomes the triumph of the worship of the one, true, only revealed God.

Incidentally I love the Vulgate's version of the bit about the kedeshim:

Destruxit quoque aediculas effeminatorum quae erant in domo Domini

The Douai Bible (always screamingly  funny) has translated this way too literally and come out with the wonderful:

He destroyed also the pavilions of the effeminate, which were in the house of the Lord

In the interests of fairness, perhaps I'd better show how a modern version reveals more of what is actually happening: this is the New Revised Standard Version:

The king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees, and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. All the people joined in the covenant.  The king commanded the high priest Hilkiah, the priests of the second order, and the guardians of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. He deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who made offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the host of the heavens. He brought out the image of Asherah from the house of the Lord, outside Jerusalem, to the Wadi Kidron, burned it at the Wadi Kidron, beat it to dust and threw the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. He broke down the houses of the male temple prostitutes that were in the house of the Lord, where the women did weaving for Asherah.