God's Wife Edited Out of the Bible?

God's wife, Asherah, was a powerful fertility goddess, according to a theologian.

By Jennifer Viegas
Fri Mar 18, 2011

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.

In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.

Information presented in Stavrakopoulou's books, lectures and journal papers has become the basis of a three-part documentary series, now airing in Europe, where she discusses the Yahweh-Asherah connection.

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe."

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"After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added.

Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess.

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."

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Also significant, Stavrakopoulou believes, "is the Bible's admission that the goddess Asherah was worshiped in Yahweh's Temple in Jerusalem. In the Book of Kings, we're told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her."

J. Edward Wright, president of both The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News that he agrees several Hebrew inscriptions mention "Yahweh and his Asherah."

"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."

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Asherah -- known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar -- was "an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing," Wright continued.

"Many English translations prefer to translate 'Asherah' as 'Sacred Tree,'" Wright said. "This seems to be in part driven by a modern desire, clearly inspired by the Biblical narratives, to hide Asherah behind a veil once again."

"Mentions of the goddess Asherah in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) are rare and have been heavily edited by the ancient authors who gathered the texts together," Aaron Brody, director of the Bade Museum and an associate professor of Bible and archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion, said.

Asherah as a tree symbol was even said to have been "chopped down and burned outside the Temple in acts of certain rulers who were trying to 'purify' the cult, and focus on the worship of a single male god, Yahweh," he added.

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The ancient Israelites were polytheists, Brody told Discovery News, "with only a small minority worshiping Yahweh alone before the historic events of 586 B.C." In that year, an elite community within Judea was exiled to Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This, Brody said, led to "a more universal vision of strict monotheism: one god not only for Judah, but for all of the nations."

The Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers

The Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers
Secret Mysteries of America's Beginning
Part 4 [IV] of the Series ©2010 Chris Pinto

The first and only documentary to go where no film has ever gone before: into the hidden faith of America's founding fathers. Many founders were involved in secret societies, and yet it is often claimed these men were Christians who were trying to build a Christian nation. But was their faith the true faith of the Bible? And is it possible, as some claim, that the exact opposite is true?

What did the founders believe about the Person of Jesus Christ? Were they fighting for Christianity, or against it? Moreover, is it possible that the events of the American Revolution have a much darker significance in the pages of Bible prophecy than most church leaders are aware?

Charles Thomson was the Secretary of the Continental Congress, and the man responsible for the final design of the Great Seal of the United States. He was said to be more familiar with the events and people surrounding the American Revolution than any other man of his era. He spent years documenting the history of the War for Independence, knowing many details which had escaped others. Though encouraged to publish his remarkable history, he chose to destroy it. He said: "I shall not undeceive future generations." Since we are the 'future generation' of which Thompson referred how have we been deceived about our Founding Fathers? What was Thomson hiding? How has it affected the Church and society in America today?

The Secret Faith & Religious Beliefs of:

1. Thomas Paine - inspired the American Revolution.
2. Thomas Jefferson – Declaration of Independence ~Author.
3. John Adams - the second President of the United States.
4. Benjamin Franklin – Signed all of the founding documents.
5. George Washington - "America’s Father" 1st President.
6. Confronting David Barton's "fabled" view of American history, showing from his own writings the error of his teachings.
7. Secret Societies worked to change the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
8. Patriotic Christianity; Dominionism and building the NOW.
9. Prophetic implications used to build the kingdom of Antichrist.

Timothy Leary: From Mind to SuperMind - Mp3

FROM: The Psychedelic Salon #244: 
 Timothy Leary: From Mind to Supermind

▼ Free Download: MP3 PCs – Right click, save target as. Mac - Ctrl-Click, select option.

Subscribe: FREE Add to: iTunes

Date: January 28, 1985
Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Speaker: Timothy Leary

“More changes have taken place in the last twenty five years, unquestionably, than in any period of human history. Just as I said an hour on the Greenwich map is a century, a decade these days seems to be a century. Can you remember the ancient history of the 1960s?”

“If you change the techniques of child rearing, if you change the very philosophy and techniques in the daily, moment to moment way that children are brought up, hey, listen, never mind university, you’ve changed that culture.“

“The average post-1946 kid by the age of five had experienced a hundred times more realities, more dramas, more history, more geography, more hype, more propaganda, you name it, than the wisest, oldest, most traveled human beings of the past.”

“To a ‘factory philosopher’ a machine to think is a machine to perform many repetitious tasks.”

“Information, information is the air and the water and the bread and the shoes of the future.”

www.PsychedelicSalon.org

Maybe Logic Academy: Gnosis Now in Mp3

Erik Davis of Techgnosis.com is sharing free Mp3 recordings from last springs Maybe Logic Academy course called Gnosis Now! He will post one lecture each week over the next eight weeks, along with the readings for the week. Cant wait for my iPod to arrive so I can hear for myself. I've always wanted to hear some of what goes on @ Maybe Logic Academy. Thanks Erik!

DOWNLOAD: Mp3 #1
LINK: Techgnosis.com

Week 1 readings:

(Unless otherwise mentioned, all readings from W. Barnstone's necessary collection The Other Bible, now known as The Gnostic Bible. 

• Excerpts from “The Gospel of Thomas” (verses 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 13, 19, 24, 28, 29, 37, 39, 42, 49, 50, 51, 55, 56, 61, 62, 70, 777, 89, 91, 108, 113);

• Richard Smoley: “Who Were the Gnostics?”, from his great survey Forbidden Faith.

• Excerpts from “The Gospel of Philip” (“Names,” “Rulers,” “Jesus Tricked Everyone,” “The Lost,” “Seeing,” “God is a Man-Eater,” “Leaving the World,” “Joseph and the Wooden Cross,” “Superiority of Chrism to Baptism,” “Laughing Christ,” “Knowledge of Self,” “Slaves and Freedom,” “Root of Evil,” “The Perfect Light”)

Robert Sapolsky: Evolution, religion, schizophrenia and the schizotypal personality

My friend Paul Vigil recommended this Professor Robert Sapolsky lecture as a follow up to Graham Hancock: Entheogens & Evolution [MP3]. Only this is much more academic and in depth. That's one thing I love about Paul, he always recommends some really advanced and far out literature & video that I probably wouldn't have encountered other wise.

Prof. Robert Sapolsky is an American scientist and author. He is currently professor of Biological Sciences, Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, and Neurosurgery at Stanford University.

Bio 150/250, Spring 2002 Human Behavioral Biology

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I. The Biology of Religion. Some opening caveats, disclaimers and fine print.

II. Religion and belief

1. A return to the final question of the schizophrenia lecture

2. Genes and the advantages of intermediate penetrance: sickle cell anemia, Tay-Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis....and schizophrenia?

3. The Kety schizophrenia adoption studies: their second discovery, and the continuum of traits.

4. Schizotypal personality disorder: social withdrawal, odd perceptual experiences, a tendency towards concreteness, metamagical belief.

5. Who are the traditional schizotypals?

a. Paul Radin, Erwin Ackerknecht and Paul Devereux: hearing voices at the right time

b. Alfred Kroeber’s elaboration: “Psychosis or Social Sanction.” The common roots of ‘sanction’ and ‘sanctuary.’

c. Western cultures and schizotypalism.

III. Religion and ritualistic practices

1. Obsessive compulsive disordera.

a. Obsessive thoughts: intrusions, blasphemies, and so on.

b. Compulsive rituals: self-cleansing, food preparation, leaving and entering, numerology and symmetryc.

c. Genetic, neuroanatomical and neurochemical hints

2. Ritualism of the religious orthodoxy

3. Hindu Brahmans: hours of daily purification rituals involving cleansing, cyclical nostril breathing, defecation, ratios of handfuls of food from the left versus right hand, rules for entering temples....

4. Orthodox Jewry and the magical combination of 365 prohibitions and 248 requirements: cleansing, food preparation, and the importance of numerology over content.

5. Orthodox Islam: rules for numbers of mouthfuls of water, for entering and leaving a lavatory, for hand washing, and, of course, magical numbers.

6. The rituals of Orthodox Christianity: the magical number 3, the multiplicities of Hail Marys and rosary use down to Lutheran organists advised about dotted rhythms in the Lutheran hymnal

7. Freud: “obsessional neurosis as individual religiosity and religion as a universal obsessional neurosis.”

8. Ignatius Loyola and the 15th century concept of “scrupulosity.”

9. The underlying adaptive value of anxiety reduction

10. Making a living as an obsessive compulsive. An example in a 16th century monk named Luder: “The more you cleanse yourself, the dirtier you get.”

11. Why should OCD and religious rituals have such similar patterns?

a. An ecological explanation

b. A historical explanation

IV. Religion and the attribution of causality

1. Superstitious conditioning in animals

2. Hippocampal damage and increased vulnerability to superstitious conditioning.V. Philosophical religiosity

3. Temporal lobe epilepsy: humorlessness; perseveration; neophobia and a "sticky" or "viscous" personality; hypergraphia; concern with religious issues. Some concluding thoughts: What am I not saying

4. You got to be crazy to be religious

5. That most people’s religiousness is biologically suspect

6. That faith is any more biologically accessible or interesting than is loss of faith

Some further readings: Mark Saltzman, Lying Awake (a superb novel about the religious implications of temporal lobe epilepsy). David S Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral. 2002 Univ. Chicago Press. Religious groups as units of selection. Sapolsky. “Circling the blanket for God.” In: The Trouble With Testosterone’ and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament.

Links:

• Stanford School of Medicine
• Stanford Magazine
• Amazon.com

Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis

Biblical Entheogens: a Speculative Hypothesis
Author: Shanon, Benny
Source: Time and Mind, Vol 1, Num 1, March 2008 , pp. 51-74
Publisher: Berg Publishers

Abstract: A speculative hypothesis is presented according to which the ancient Israelite religion was associated with the use of entheogens (mind-altering plants used in sacramental contexts). The hypothesis is based on a new look at texts of the Old Testament pertaining to the life of Moses. The ideas entertained here were primarily based on the fact that in the arid areas of the Sinai peninsula and Southern Israel there grow two plants containing the same psychoactive molecules found in the plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew Ayahuasca is prepared. The two plants are species of Acacia tree and the bush Peganum harmala. The hypothesis is corroborated by comparative experiential-phenomenological observations, linguistic considerations, exegesis of old Jewish texts and other ancient Mideastern traditions, anthropological lore, and ethnobotanical data.

The full text is free: HERE