Asherah

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs to be revised. Details should be given on the talk page. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

Aschera (also Ascherah, Ašerā) is a Syrian - Canaanite sea ​​goddess .

Surname

Your name ( Ugaritic ATRT , probably as Atirat vocalize, Old Hebrew asera ) is derived by Albright and others from the Semitic ATR (holy) place from. She was worshiped, among other things, in the form of a cult stake.

history

The goddess is already documented from the Ebla texts, but apparently played no important role here. As Day points out, none of these texts have yet been published. Day and Hadley want, following the Ugaritic list of gods, to equate the goddess Ašratum with Ašerā in ancient Babylonian texts. In a letter from Guli-Adad to Rewassa, the ruler of Taanach near Megiddo , Guli-Adad asks him for a fortune teller from the d A-si-rat, who should urgently interpret omens for him. The letter dates from the 15th century BC. An Amurite king named Abdi-Aširta ("servant of the Asirat") wrote two Amarna letters .

Ugarit

The Ugaritic ʿAṯiraṯ, wife of the creator god El , is often equated with the biblical Asherah.

According to the Keret epic , Aṯirat also had temples in Sidon and Tire .

Punic

In Carthage , Asherah continued to be venerated, but was supplanted in popularity by Tanit . An inscription from Sarepta , tnt ašrt , could prove the equation of both deities.

Egypt

Aschera has been identified iconographically with the goddess of the Qudschu type (qdš). She holds snakes and papyrus or lotus flowers in her bent arms as symbols of fertility. Her shoulder-length hair is reminiscent of the curls of the Egyptian Hathor . She is shown standing on an animal, often a lion, occasionally a horse. However, the identification of Asherah and Quju has not proven to be tenable.

Asherah in the Bible and in Israel

The term “Asherah” appears around 40 times in the Bible , as the name of the goddess and as a name for her cult stake.

In Judge 6.25  EU you can read how the angel of the Lord commands Gideon to cut down the asherah of his father Joasch and to build a new altar for the living God YHWH . Only then is Gideon called by YHWH to free the people of Israel from the burden of the Midianites . 1 Kings 15:13  EU mentions that Queen Mother Maacha of Asherah erected a statue. King Manasse ( 2 Kings 21.7  EU ) also set up a cult image of the Asherah. 400 prophets of Asheras ate from Jezebel's table ( 1 Kings 18.19  EU ). King Joschiah removed objects from the temple ( 2 Kings 23.4  EU ) "which had been made for Baal , Asherah and the whole host of heaven ." In ( Jeremiah 17  EU ), YHWH's prophet Jeremiah directs YHWH's words to the people Israel continues. YHWH is angry about the worship of Ashera and therefore announces war, destruction and exile to the people.

“People of Judah, your sin is written deep in your heart and on the corners of your altars. It is indelibly engraved, like an iron pen with a diamond point. Even your children are already thinking of the sacrificial altars and the stakes dedicated to the goddess Asherah. Under the leafy trees, on the hills and on the mountains - you have set them up everywhere. That is why I give up your possessions and your treasures to the enemies for plunder, as well as all your places of sacrifice, because in the whole land you sinned against me there. I had given you this land forever; but you will lose it again, and it is your own fault! In a country you do not know, you will have to serve your enemies. "

- ( Jeremiah 17  EU )

2 Kings 23  EU describes the elimination of the cult of Asher.

Archaeological findings suggest that Asherah was worshiped by Israelites as the wife of YHWH. A storage jug (jug A) from the 8th to 7th centuries BC was found in the Kuntillet 'Adschrud caravan station . With the following inscription:

“… I have blessed you through YHWH and his Asherah.
Amaryo said to his Lord:…
I have blessed you through YHWH and his Asherah.
May he bless you,
and he may keep you,
and may he be with my Lord. "

On another pithos (B) JHWH of Teman is mentioned his Asherah.

The following inscription was found on a wall in Chirbet el Kom (near Hebron ):

“Uriyahu, the rich one, wrote this:
A blessed one is Uriyahu through YHWH -
through Asherah he saved him from his afflictions.
Through Onyahu. "

In an Aramaic inscription she is referred to as the goddess of Teman . This is interesting because in Hab 3,3  EU it says: “God comes from Teman.” If one follows Jer 49,7.20  EU , Teman means the city of the same name in Edom .

To date, besides around 1000 female clay figures, there are also inscriptions in graves and private houses from the period between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. In which Aschera is venerated in addition to YHWH. In the northern and southern kingdoms, YHWH presumably had a divine partner and it is likely that the images of these two gods even stood together in the Jerusalem temple - until his destruction by Nebuchadnezzar . Only in the time of the Babylonian exile is the worship of the people of Israel reduced to one God again: YHWH. The Israelites attribute their suffering - the war, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and their exile - to their unfaithfulness to YHWH. Accordingly, they remember their original God and his 10 commandments , ( Ex 20  EU ) (or Exodus, 20). The commandments contain the prohibition of the pictorial representation of God as well as the prohibition of the worship of other gods like Asherah. Only the returnees from Babylon bring this monotheism and the strict ban on images from Babylon back to Jerusalem, which was destroyed in 70 AD .

reception

The asteroid (214) Aschera is named after Aschera.

In the science fiction novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson Ashera is a meta virus responsible, in Sumer people back into mindless creatures that remotely by Me function transforms. Your opponent is the Sumerian god En-Ki , in Neal Stephenson a neurolinguistics - Hacker . Modern speaking in tongues is associated there with a resurrected "cult of the Asherah".

Furthermore, the novel Maria Magdalena by Margaret George was published in 2002 , in which the young Maria Magdala finds an idol by the wayside and secretly kept it. In the course of her life, this deity reveals himself to be Asherah, speaks to her, gives a child to the seemingly sterile Maria, demands her loyalty and almost drives Maria mad.

See also

literature

  • Susan Ackerman: Asherah, the West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving? In: Journal of Near Eastern Studies . Volume 67/1, 2008, pp. 1-30.
  • KH Bernhardt: Aschera in Ugarit and in the Old Testament. In: Communications from the Institute for Orient Research. Volume 13, 1967.
  • MJ Dahood: Ancient Semitic deities in Syria and Palestine. In: Sabatino Moscati (ed.): Le antiche divinité semitiche. Centro di Studi Semitici, Rome 1985, pp. 65-94.
  • John Day: Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature. In: Journal of Biblical Literature. Volume 105/3, 1986, pp. 385-408.
  • William G. Dever: Did God have a wife? Archeology and folk religion in ancient Israel. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids (Michigan) 2005, ISBN 0-8028-2852-3 .
  • Manfried Dietrich , Oswald Loretz : Jahwe and his Aschera. Anthropomorphic cult image in Mesopotamia, Ugarit and Israel; the biblical ban on images. Münster 1992, ISBN 3-927120-08-1
  • Israel Finkelstein , Neil A. Silberman : No Trumpets Before Jericho. The Archaeological Truth About the Bible. CH Beck, Munich 2002
  • Christian Frevel : Aschera and YHWH's claim to exclusivity: Contributions to literary, religious-historical and iconographic aspects of the ash-ash discussion. Bonn Biblical Contributions 94, Weinheim 1995. ISBN 3-89547-061-9
  • Judith M. Hadley: The Cult of the Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess . University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 57, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2000.
  • Saul M. Olyan: Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (= Society of Biblical Literature, Monograph Series . Volume 34). Scholars Press, Atlanta 1988.
  • JB Pritchard: Palestinian Figurines in relation to certain goddesses known through literature. American Oriental Society, New Haven 1943.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Day: Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature. In: Journal of Biblical Literature. Volume 105/3, 1986, p. 387
  2. ^ WF Albright: The Evolution of the West-Semitic Divinity 'An-' Anat- 'Atta. In: American Journal of Semitic Languages. Volume 41, 1925, pp. 99-100; H. Gese, in: H. Gese, M. Hofner, K. Rudolph (eds.): The religions of Old Syria, Altarabia and the Mandier. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1970
  3. ^ P. Matthiae: Ebla: An Empire rediscovered. Hodder & Stoughton, London 1980, p. 187
  4. ^ A b c d John Day: Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature. In: Journal of Biblical Literature. Volume 105/3, 1986, p. 386
  5. ↑ Ugaritica V.18 RS = 20:24, 19
  6. ^ WF Albright: A Prince of Taanach in the Fifteenth Century BC In: Bulletin American Society Oriental Research. Volume 94, 1944, p. 18
  7. ↑ also abdi-a-si-ir-ta, abdi-asi-ir-ti / te, abdi-as-ra-tum, abdi-asa-ra-tum, abdi-as-ra-ti, abdi-as- ra-ti, abdi-as-ra-ta
  8. ↑ CTA 14.198-99, 201-2
  9. ↑ John Day: Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature. In: Journal of Biblical Literature. Volume 105/3, 1986, p. 388
  10. ^ GW Ahlström: Review of: Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel by Saul M. Olyan. In: Journal of the American Oriental Society. Volume 110/3, 1990, p. 578
  11. ↑ Othmar Keel, Christoph Uehlinger: Goddesses, gods, god symbols. New insights into the religious history of Canaan and Israel based on previously untapped iconographic sources. QD 134. Herder Verlag, Freiburg 1990. 5th edition 2001, pp. 74-76.
  12. ^ Israel Finkelstein / Neil A. Silberman : No Trumpets before Jericho , 2002, p. 262
  13. ↑ so also Saul M. Olyan: Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel. Society of Biblical Literature, Monograph Series 34. Scholars Press, Atlanta 1988, p. 34
  14. ↑ Matthias Köckert: The Ten Commandments , Beck, Munich 2007, pp. 52 ff., 62 ff.