Robert Wright, he of the provocative new book “The Evolution of God,” poses the question in this excerpt. (He says “wife.” I think he’s pushing too fast, too soon.)
Anyhoo, Wright says Israel’s “Yahweh” merged with the Canaanites “El” somewhere along the evolutionary line. El had himself a girlfriend, the goddess Athirat, known in Hebrew as Asherah. So what happened to her after the merger? I mean, I’ve heard of a woman losing a husband to his buddies, but cutting her loose completely?
Wright admits the the Bible’s writers “don’t depict Asherah as God’s wife – this isn’t the sort of theological theme they generally championed – but rather heap disdain on her, and on the Israelites who worshipped her.”
But, he says, in the late 20th century archaeologists discovered inscriptions, dating to around 800 BCE, at two different Middle Eastern sites. The inscriptions were blessings in the name not just of Yahweh but of “his Asherah.”
So, does it matter if God does/doesn’t have a ladyfriend?
It does.
As Wright explains, many scholars, Jews, and Christians believe the singularity of their God set the Israelite religion apart from all forms of paganism, especially those whose pantheons who filled with deities who liked to knock boots. In that way, Yahweh, they say, is a clean break from pagan myth.
But Wright says, ” There are signs that the break wasn’t so clean-that, like so much else in the history of religion, it was more evolutionary than revolutionary.”