Book: Did God Have a Wife?

By: Ronan - September 21, 2005

William Dever, a superstar of “biblical” archaeology, has a new book out: Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel.

Dever’s archaeology is not the search for the Ark of the Covenant or other Indiana Jones-esque relics, but is rather a reconstruction of everyday life in ancient Israel. Dever searches for pagan “folk religion” in Israel, unearthing the worship of Asherah, the consort of Yahweh. None of this is new, but until now it had escaped Dever’s popularizing touch (he has written other books with similarly alluring titles such as, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, and What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel).

Did God have a wife? Does God have a wife? For now, I shall point you away from Mother-in-Heaven theology (IMO quite separate ontologically from Asherah and other dusty relics of the ancient Near East) and towards FARMS’ own treatment of Asherah by Daniel Peterson.

8 Comments

  1. Dan Peterson said on an mailing list that the FARMS version of this article is only a summary of the version found in here:

    “Nephi and His Asherah: A Note on 1 Nephi 11:8-23,” in Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World: Studies in Honor of John L. Sorenson, edited by Davis Bitton (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1998), 191-243.

    Very interesting stuff (I’ve only read the FARMS version)

    Comment by Geoff J — September 21, 2005 @ 4:47 pm

  2. Peterson’s primary premise isnt that God had a wife, but that the Tree of Life was a symbol that Nephi understood as Mary, mother of Jesus, because of his alleged familiarity with the contemporary Israelite usage of pagan influenced Ashera symbols. Peterson discusses the “Ashera as wife of God” thing only in the context of establishing it to further his particular interpretation of the Tree of Life. That ancient Israelite religion was pulluted with Canaanite fertility symbols is well established and commented on repeatedly in the OT. The jump Peterson makes to a divine vision incorporating that imagery so as to instruct Nephi is contrived, to say the least. I invited Peterson to discuss the relative merits of this paper on a recent flame war on M*, and he declined, choosing rather to argue the relative merits of Nibley’s scholarship with DKL.

    Comment by Kurt — September 22, 2005 @ 7:30 am

  3. Pagan symbols in the service of divine revelation? Now that’s a discussion we need to have!

    Comment by Ronan — September 22, 2005 @ 7:49 am

  4. Kurt,

    As I read the article, I thought one of the major points Peterson had was to call into question the assumption that Asherah references were simply pagan pollutions in the Hebrew religion. He implied that they may in fact have been accepted doctrine by the prophets at the time.

    Comment by Geoff J — September 22, 2005 @ 11:24 am

  5. It seems to me that other FARMS’ authors have recently argued that the Asherah symbol is not entirely pagan. For example, Kevin Christensen (in Paradigms Regained) quotes (favorably) the following passage from Maragaret Barker’s book the Great Angel:

    The reform of Josiah/the Deuteronomists then, reconstructed as best we can from both biblical and non-biblical sources, seems to have been a time when more than pagan accretions were removed from the Jerusalem cult. Wisdom was eliminated, even though her presence was never forgotten, the heavenly ascent and the vision of God were abandoned, the hosts of heaven, the angels, we declared to be unfit for the chosen people, the ark (and the presence of Yahweh which it represented) was removed, and the role of the high priest was altered in that he was no longer the anointed. All of these features of the older cult were to appear in Christianity.

    I wonder if Daniel Petereson would argue, today, that the Asherah was just a pagan symbol that Nephi was familiar with?

    Note: Personally, I find Barker’s hypotheses intriguing, but by their very nature highly speculative. I do think her reconstruction (of the Israelite religion) is worth considering in this context.

    Comment by Karl D — September 22, 2005 @ 11:44 am

  6. GeoffJ

    Yes, Peterson did suggest that, and there isnt much to suggest that is the case, and there is a lot of hostile material in the Scriptures arguing against it. Isaiah’s attitude towards Ashera, groves, and any form of adulteration of Israelite worship of the Lord was pretty plain, and its obvious that Nephi was quite devoted to Isaiah’s writings. I dont find Peterson’s ideas compelling, and the manner in which he places numerous caveats in the text of the article itself should give the reader pause.

    Karl D,

    My impression of the LDS proclivity towards Ashera being the wife of God is to fill in the whole “God has a Wife” thing so as to conveniently fit the LDS theology of eternal progeny and all that. While I can accept that God has a wife, its pointless to concoct kooky explanations in an effort to fill a void. Speculative nonsense is speculative nonsense, no matter how bad you would like it to fill a void.

    I suggest someone flat out ask Peterson to come and respond to some of the questions and issues. He is probably reading this now anyway.

    Comment by Kurt — September 22, 2005 @ 12:11 pm

  7. Kurt, are there other times that Isaiah mentions Asherah besides Isaiah 17.7-8?

    (7) In that day men will look to their Maker
    and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.

    (8) They will not look to the altars,
    the work of their hands,
    and they will have no regard for the Asherah poles
    and the incense altars their fingers have made.

    These verses seems to condemn only man-made Asherah images.
    ———
    Kurt said:

    My impression of the LDS proclivity towards Ashera being the wife of God is to fill in the whole “God has a Wife” thing so as to conveniently fit the LDS theology of eternal progeny and all that.

    I agree with you on this point.

    Comment by Karl D — September 22, 2005 @ 3:33 pm

  8. Karl,

    How would any Ashera images not be man-made? Because its allegedly part of a heavenly vision? Isaiah’s rejection of these idolatrous symbols derived from Canaanite fertility rites is universal. Given Nephi’s clear interest in Isaiah’s writings it is discordant to assume Nephi would recognize a heavely representation of ashera as something intuitively obvious, as Peterson submits. Peterson suggests Nephi’s alleged familiarity with Israelite acculturation of Ashera would have lent itself to the use of the Ashera symbol in a divine vision. I suggest that is not the case given the consistent anti-Canaanite views of the Law of Moses and the various extant OT Prophets available to Nephi, whom he was clearly devoted to.

    Comment by Kurt — September 26, 2005 @ 6:02 am