Who Was Asherah? (and was she God's wife?)

This video explores the fascinating historical and archaeological evidence surrounding Asherah, a prominent ancient Near Eastern goddess who may have been worshiped by ancient Israelites as the wife of the God of Israel (Yahweh). By examining ancient Canaanite texts, biblical condemnations, and striking physical artifacts, we uncover a complex picture of everyday Israelite religion that challenges traditional biblical narratives. Ultimately, the evidence reveals how early blended religious practices were gradually erased by later theological reforms and translations.

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1. The Startling Discovery at Kuntillet Ajrud 🏺

The video begins by introducing one of the most controversial images in all of biblical archaeology. Discovered at an ancient Israelite site called Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai Peninsula, an ancient storage jar features a scratched drawing of two squat figures standing side by side.

Above them, written in ancient Hebrew, is an inscription that sent shockwaves through the historical community:

"I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah."

Wait a minute—his Asherah? Asherah was one of the most important goddesses in the ancient Near East. In traditional Canaanite mythology, she was the wife (consort) of the high god El, the mother of the gods, and a figure linked with fertility, motherhood, and sacred trees.

The Hebrew Bible constantly criticizes ancient Israelites for worshiping Asherah and setting up sacred poles in her honor. However, these criticisms always came from her enemies. The Kuntillet Ajrud inscription is groundbreaking because it gives us a glimpse into her actual Israelite followers speaking for themselves, suggesting that many ancient Israelites believed their God had a divine wife.

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2. Athirat in Canaanite Mythology: The Queen of the Gods 👑

To understand Asherah, we have to look outside the Bible to a collection of clay tablets discovered at Ugarit, an ancient Canaanite city in modern-day Syria. Dating back to the 13th and 12th centuries BCE, these texts include a mythological drama called the Baal Cycle, which features the goddess under her Ugaritic name: Athirat.

In Canaanite religion, the pantheon of gods is led by a patriarch named El. Athirat is his queen. Together, they generated the gods.

"Multiple times in these texts, she's called the creatress of the gods and the mother of the 70 divine sons. In one Ugaritic epic, she's called the wet nurse of the gods."

She wasn't just a generic fertility figure; her motherhood was deeply tied to royalty and divine power. In the Baal Cycle, when the storm god Baal wants to build a royal palace to solidify his kingship, he fails to get El's permission. Baal has to bribe Athirat with gold and silver gifts so she will petition El on his behalf. She succeeds, proving her immense political power among the gods.

"Asherah in Ugaritic mythology is a queen, a kingmaker, the wife of the high god El, and the mother of his divine sons... She is functionally the one who decides who sits on the divine throne."

Furthermore, Asherah's roots run incredibly deep. Forms of her were worshiped centuries earlier in Babylon (as Ashratum) and by the Hittites. She was a well-established, powerful deity long before she ever appeared in Israel.

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3. Asherah in the Hebrew Bible: Goddess or Sacred Tree? 🌳

Let's return to the ancient Israelites. The Hebrew word Asherah appears 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, but the term is often ambiguous.

Sometimes, it clearly refers to a goddess. For example, in 1 Kings, there is a mention of 400 prophets of Asherah who eat at Queen Jezebel's table. But at other times, biblical authors describe something that sounds like a cultic object, specifically a sacred wooden pole or tree. Deuteronomy 16 forbids planting "any tree as an Asherah" next to an altar.

Most references to Asherah come from the Deuteronomistic history—the editorial framework shaping books like Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. This framework is overwhelmingly hostile toward her, judging every Israelite king based on whether they destroyed the Asherahs or tolerated them. But as the host points out:

"You don't repeatedly forbid what nobody is doing. Asherah, or at least Asherah objects, apparently were a persistent, deeply embedded presence in Israelite religion."

This hostility reached its peak under the reign of King Josiah around 622 BCE. After allegedly discovering a "book of the law" (likely an early version of Deuteronomy), Josiah launched a massive religious purge. According to 2 Kings, he dragged an image of Asherah right out of the central temple in Jerusalem, burned it, beat it to dust, and even dismantled guilds of women who wove hangings for the goddess inside the temple.

If we take the Bible at its word, organized worship of Asherah was happening inside God's temple for generations before Josiah tore it all down.

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4. Finding Asherah in the Dirt: The Archaeological Clues 🕵️‍♂️

Since Josiah's demolition project targeted Asherah objects, archaeologists have spent years trying to figure out what those objects actually were. The Bible describes wooden poles planted in the ground at outdoor shrines known as "high places" (bamot). Just as an uncarved standing stone marked the presence of a male god, a planted wooden pole likely marked the presence of Asherah.

Throughout the region, archaeologists have found a deep tradition linking a mother goddess with stylized, sacred trees:

• The Lachish Jug (1200 BCE): A clay jug featuring animals flanking a stylized tree, with an inscription scratched right above it reading "A gift, an offering to my lady (Elat)." Elat is a known title for Asherah.
• The Taanach Cult Stand (10th Century BCE): A hollow clay box decorated with a nude female figure on the bottom tier and a highly stylized tree on another tier. Many scholars believe this represents Asherah in both her human and tree forms.

Another major piece of the puzzle is the Judean Pillar Figurines. Archaeologists have unearthed over a thousand of these small, clay female figurines with prominent breasts and a tree-trunk-like lower body in ancient Judahite homes from the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.

Scholars aggressively debate what these figurines were used for:

1. Miniature Asherahs: Scholar William Dever argues their tree-like bodies and prominent breasts identify them as Asherah, the wet nurse of the gods, representing the "folk religion" of everyday Israelites.
2. Magical Amulets: Archaeologist Erin Darby argues they weren't high goddesses at all, but low-level magical objects used for household protection during illness or childbirth.
3. Hybrid Creatures: Dr. Lauren McCormick used modern digital imaging to discover that the figurines' eyes (not their breasts) were their most detailed feature. She suggests they were supernatural, seeing hybrid creatures—like cherubim—rather than portraits of a specific goddess.

Whatever they were, they prove that the religious lives of ordinary Israelites were far more complex and magically diverse than the strict "Yahweh alone" theology pushed by later biblical authors.

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5. Was Asherah Truly the Wife of God? 💍

This brings us back to the Kuntillet Ajrud inscription: "I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah."

Was the drawing of the two figures on the jar actually a portrait of God and his wife? The debate is fierce. Some scholars think the figures are just generic doodles of the Egyptian protection god Bes, entirely unrelated to the text.

However, scholar Ryan Thomas has presented a compelling counter-argument. He notes that the figures have distinct genders—one male, one female. Furthermore, they are drawn overlapping, with the male slightly in front and the female behind him on a higher ground line.

"He argues this is the standard convention for depicting a husband and wife: the dominant male foregrounded, his consort behind him... both facing forward as a single unit."

Thomas also points out that the figures have bovine (cow-like) features, such as snouts and hooves. This aligns perfectly with biblical accounts condemning Israelites for worshiping Yahweh in the form of a golden calf (e.g., the "calf of Samaria").

But how did Yahweh end up with El's wife? As Israelite religion evolved, Yahweh slowly absorbed the titles, roles, and attributes of the Canaanite high god El. The Hebrew Bible even calls the God of Israel "El" in many places and places Him at the head of a divine council. It makes sense that He would inherit El's powerful wife, too.

"These appeals suggest that most Yahweh worshippers did not share the biblical writer's derogatory view of Asherah. Rather, they considered her to be the traditional partner of their high god Yahweh, and they worshiped her as a protective, life-giving goddess."

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6. The Erasure of a Goddess 📜

If Asherah was so deeply embedded in mainstream Israelite religion for centuries, where did she go?

The first blow was King Josiah's violent, top-down reforms in the late 600s BCE, which actively suppressed her worship. But the true erasure happened slowly over centuries through translation.

When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek around the 3rd century BCE, the translators didn't know what to do with the word "Asherah." They translated it as alsos, meaning "grove" (a sacred grouping of trees).

"The Latin translation of the Bible inherited that translation with the Latin word lucus, also meaning a grove. And when the King James Bible was produced in 1611, English readers opened their Bibles and read about King Josiah cutting down 'the grove' in the house of the Lord."

Because of this mistranslation, Asherah completely disappeared from English Bibles for hundreds of years. It wasn't until the late 1800s and early 1900s, when archaeologists began digging up ancient Akkadian and Ugaritic texts, that scholars rediscovered the goddess and began restoring her actual name to modern Bible translations.

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Final Thoughts

The biblical outrage against Asherah was likely a late, retroactive attempt by scribes to redefine what Israelite religion was "supposed" to be, rather than what it actually was. The archaeological dirt tells a different story: for hundreds of years, ordinary Israelites worshipped at local shrines, kept protective household figurines, and honored multiple divine figures. For a great many of them, the God of Israel was not alone—He had a powerful Queen, and her name was Asherah.