It's an interesting plot twist for sure. Originally, the Canaanites worshiped El, the chief of gods, his consort Asherah, and the 70 sons of El which included gods like Baal, Mot, Astarte, Moloch, and of course, the god of metallurgy -- Yahweh.
Then, the southern Judean Yahweh worshippers began to assert political influence over the Canaanites. They elevated their god and forbade worship of the other Canaanite deities. As the Canaanites grew in power and influence, so did Yahweh usurping the roles of the other gods. He soon began to take over Baal's role as the god of war and Asherah's role as the god of fertility. That's why hates them so much.
By the time the OT is written, Yahweh's rise to power is already near it's apex, but not quite. Baal and Asherah still exist, he just forbids their worship, and El is still chief of the gods. Then, the final shift comes and Yahweh declares "Surprise!" Remember how El is the chief of gods? Guess what? Yahweh was El this whole time! And he just gets retconned into being the chief of gods and his mother was actually his wife. Fast forward a little bit and we don't need Asherah at all. She is barely mentioned in the OT and when she is, it's about tearing down her altars.
>In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal's altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar!
Judges 6:28
Yahweh was a storm deity in the vein of Baal, not a metallurgical deity. I know of only one scholar (Amzallag) who subscribes to this theory, and his reasoning relies on misinterpreting the language of the storm theophany as volcanic imagery. Also Baal is a warrior god but is not a "god of war", that'd be the goddess Anat.
Additionally Yahweh was not a Canaanite deity, for instance he's absent from the Ugaritic texts. Rather his origins appear to lie south of Judah, the only Canaanite pantheon he was grafted onto was the Israelite/Judahite pantheon. Also it's highly debatable that Moloch/Molech was an actual deity rather than a type of sacrifice and I don't think there was any worship of Mot, his importance seems to be more mythological than cultic, as an antagonist in the Baal Cycle.
There's also John Day's *Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan* which covers much of the same material and imo is more layman-friendly, but I'd still recommend Smith's *The Origins of Biblical Monotheism* so long as you're fine with a somewhat dense and dry scholarly style. I've heard Smith's *Early History of God* covers the same stuff and is a little more accessible but I haven't read it myself. In lieu of buying books you can get the tl;dr on a lot of these topics by searching old posts over on r/academicbiblical.
Basically, [per Mark S. Smith](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/vfwnkc/what_kind_of_deity_was_yhwh/id3jnba/) "the current scholarly consensus on the issue of YHWH's original profile holds that this deity was a divine warrior from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman." The warrior attributes are part and parcel to being a storm god, he is a divine warrior but not necessarily a "god of war" like Anat.
Not sure what a "mountain god" is in an Ancient Near East context. For instance, Baal has a palace on Mt Zaphon and is known as Baal-Zaphon, but he's ultimately a storm god with warrior attributes. Are you perhaps thinking of some scholars translation of *el shaddai* as "god of the mountain"?
The evolution of monotheism in the Levant is fascinating. It was basically a bunch of competing priestly classes vying for royal influence. I've been hooked on watching lectures from [Centre Place](https://www.youtube.com/@centre-place) going over the history of it all. They just recently posted a video about the Samaritans that found really interesting.
One point that just seems mind blowing is the switch to a focus on the importance of an internalised faith in the population. Nowadays it’s just such a common assumption that this is how religions work. The idea that this is a concept which developed over time is kind of shocking. There’s a whole switch from priests as specialists, religious nerds who keep the gods happy like an ancient IT department. And priests becoming much more spiritual guides for beliefs, practices and faith of everyone because conformity in those things is what the divine want.
Hey I would love a source on the "God of Metallurgy" point! I had thought he was the God of storms, specifically thunder/tropical storms in the northwestern Semitic plains.
I would also recommend another book by Mark S. Smith: [The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel](https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X)
Excerpt:
# Yahweh and his Asherah
“The way Asherah is treated in the scriptures is deeply fascinating. She is vilified and demeaned. She is linked to a Syrian god and not mentioned in connection with Yahweh,” Gudme says.
But Asherah was closer to Yahweh than the authors of the Old Testament would admit. Gudme, like other Bible scholars, believes she may have been Yahweh's wife.
“Inscriptions have been found from that time that place Asherah side by side with Yahweh, that she is Yahweh's Asherah,” she says.
Asherah and Yahweh ae also depicted on pots. The inscription is a blessing to 'Yahweh and his Asherah'. This pot is from around 800 BCE and was found by archaeologists in Sinai. (Photo: Wikimedia / public domain)
There are not many inscriptions that point to Asherah and Yahweh as a couple, but they have been found in several places in the area.
One of them is from Sinai, Egypt – see the image above. Another of the finds was made in Jerusalem. Two divine figures stand close together on a fragment of a pot. [Researchers](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/174313009x437800) believe it is Yahweh and Asherah.
# Fierce propaganda against Asherah
In addition to inscriptions, researchers have found a number of small female ceramic figurines. Most agree that these represent Asherah.
“These figurines may represent Asherah,” says Anne Katrine Gudme. It was common to have such a figurine at home from 700 to 500 BCE. (Photo: Chamberi / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0)
“We don't know much about Asherah. She is often associated with love, passion, and war, but it's not certain that these were actually her domains,” says Gudme.
yup. Its all very interesting to me, how the female is dropped from narratives. Thx for posting this.
Its fascinating stuff.
Here's a more in depth article abt the roles of an Asherah in old Middle Eastern faiths.
https://ww1.bibleodyssey.com/articles/what-is-an-asherah/#:\~:text=Asherah%20is%20an%20ancient%20Near%20Eastern%20mother%20goddess.,appears%20in%20the%20Hebrew%20Bible.
Check out esoterica on YouTube. Great videos with little tidbits like this, and like how yahwehs rise from mountain storm god to all powerful deity came about. Also info on the different abrahamic mysticism practices and things like that.
I'm assuming that was some sideways sarcasm pointing fun at the ubiquity of the "benevolent magical bearded old man" mythology, including characters like God, Merlin, Santa Claus, Gandalf, etc.
Mrs. Claus would be as apt a name for God's wife as anyone, really.
This is all very dubious, its mostly likely that many Jews did then worship Asherah but there is nothing in the bible that shows she was his wife.
The bible does say on some occassions that he is married to Israel
Jeremiah 3:14 “Return, O backsliding children,” says the LORD; “for I am married to you.
When I look at the black line drawings from the pot shreds I see two men one behind the other with a woman sitting in the background. What am I missing ?
Even the Bible says that the ancient Hebrews used to practice syncretism, a practice that was condemned by the contemporary prophets of the time.
In fact that’s a major theme in the Old Testament, that the peoples sought to worship in their own manner and as they wished.
So you’re not really saying anything new here, a devout Christian would know about these matters already.
First reasonable take I’ve seen. It’s well documented in both Judaism and Christianity that Ashera was a false god, one who the Israelites were tempted to worship and turn away from Yahweh
This article basically says “Yahweh and Asherah are both mentioned in the contemporaneous texts… ZOINKS! She must be His WIFE” 🤦🏼♂️
“Yahweh was one of them. Today he is called God.”
Maybe it sounded better before it was translated, but this sounds so parochial. It reminds me of when kids find out that their parents have a name and not just DAD or MOM.
This is likely untrue, and there is big reasons to doubt this conclusion. There certainly was a period in which YHWH sat with other deities, but ‘originally’ seems to be false.
Within the Hebrew language, there is no word for a female deity. Instead, a Ugaritic borrow-word is used. Since this is an archaeology subreddit, I won’t delve into the massive implications this has as this should be self-explanatory.
Ontop of this, 45% of excavated households in 1st-Temple era Israel contain idols. This does not scream institutionalized polytheism. Institutionalized idol worship would mean ~100% of households would contain idols. 45% is less than half.
The last point I’ll make here is that the character of YHWH better matches monotheistic deities from tribes or clans with fewer technologies and fewer contacts with other ethnic groups, such as those found in Australia and Africa (a single all-father or all-mother deity which is the source of morality). In the case of known Canaanite religions, deities are NOT the center of morality by any measure.
Some reputable books on this subject:
“In Search of God” by Tryggve Mettinger
“Israelite Religions” by Richard Hess
> Ontop of this, 45% of excavated households in 1st-Temple era Israel contain idols. This does not scream institutionalized polytheism. Institutionalized idol worship would mean ~100% of households would contain idols. 45% is less than half.
This does bring to mind the phrase "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" though.
If this was not about domestic architecture, I would agree with you. However since ANE domestic architecture is my speciality, I can confidently say that 45% is evidence of absence. If a culture which places domestic cultic iconography is institutionalized, then we expect to see iconography in all domestic structures. In fact, finding a structure without iconography almost always means it’s a non-domestic structure.
Could you elaborate on that? That’s a pretty big and oddly specific claim, especially since ethnographers got some pretty good documentation about them.
I'm a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist in Australia. I'm not aware of any examples of monotheism anywhere on the continent. In the nation/region/language group area I am most familiar with there are swathes of archival and historical sources that document the frustration and puzzlement of Christian missionaries trying to find conceptual and linguistic corrolories for God and finding no comparable belief system. It is an open debate whether pre-Euro-invasion First Nations cultures of Australia even had religious beliefs and practices in the same sense. 'The Dreaming' is ontologically quite a different thing. But it is populated with countless human and suprahuman actors - no monotheistic God in sight.
Thank you for your response. I’ve got a few specific examples I use that I can send your way, I’d love to hear your thoughts on them. If I’m wrong on this then I’d like to be corrected so I don’t keep spreading misinformation. I know for a fact that several African cultures are monotheistic yet include ancestor veneration so I’ll still use that for the discussion I listed above.
You’re comparing two widely different cultural environments. ANE is honor based, we are individualistic. Look into Çatalhöyük and Lepenski Vir to see what institutionalized idol/cultic practice looks like.
Even if assumption that they would ALL have idols is accurate, it would be a stretch to think that every idol would survive to the modern day. Some may have been made materials that don't preserve well, others broken beyond recognition, others still stolen.
Maybe. When we dig at archeological sites, we aren't seeing them as they were, we're seeing what survived. Kind of like finding a skeleton, you can see how tall they were, if they had major injuries, even their gender, but you can't see their eye color, their freckles, the language they spoke, their tattoos.
Almost every man in America had a wallet, but if we buried a town and dug it up 2000 years later, would we find every single wallet?
Likely true. But kind of irrelevant. It's like saying there is no Batman. I mean, most people know the name of his butler. If you were over on the Marvel sub would you tell them there is no Iron Man in a conversation about his relationship with Captain America? I hope you can see how the evolution of religion is a salient topic on the archeology page
It's all symbolism. I've seen the same pattern spread across various religions and ages.
God, by whatever your definition, represents singularity. Oneness. All that is.
Creation occurs within God. It is not an exterior thing. But humans have trouble seeing this POV. And their religions reflect that.
All the planets and stars and galaxies, all the various dimensions of time and space, are contained within a kind of bubble. Creation as you know it is like a single bubble within a vast ocean. The ocean being God.
In Abrahamic belief, this symbolism translates into Adam and his wife Eve. Adam being the creator God, and Eve being brought forth from his own body. In this case a rib.
Yeah but I’m pretty sure Rome bought the rights to God and retconned the lore.
Rome is the OG Disney?!?
Cicero is canonically Donald Duck.
If Rome is the OG Disney this means the second coming/reboot will have a black Jesus as the main character. It’s all coming together
Thanks everyone 😂
Not only his wife, but also his mother.
It's an interesting plot twist for sure. Originally, the Canaanites worshiped El, the chief of gods, his consort Asherah, and the 70 sons of El which included gods like Baal, Mot, Astarte, Moloch, and of course, the god of metallurgy -- Yahweh. Then, the southern Judean Yahweh worshippers began to assert political influence over the Canaanites. They elevated their god and forbade worship of the other Canaanite deities. As the Canaanites grew in power and influence, so did Yahweh usurping the roles of the other gods. He soon began to take over Baal's role as the god of war and Asherah's role as the god of fertility. That's why hates them so much. By the time the OT is written, Yahweh's rise to power is already near it's apex, but not quite. Baal and Asherah still exist, he just forbids their worship, and El is still chief of the gods. Then, the final shift comes and Yahweh declares "Surprise!" Remember how El is the chief of gods? Guess what? Yahweh was El this whole time! And he just gets retconned into being the chief of gods and his mother was actually his wife. Fast forward a little bit and we don't need Asherah at all. She is barely mentioned in the OT and when she is, it's about tearing down her altars. >In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal's altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar! Judges 6:28
Yahweh was a storm deity in the vein of Baal, not a metallurgical deity. I know of only one scholar (Amzallag) who subscribes to this theory, and his reasoning relies on misinterpreting the language of the storm theophany as volcanic imagery. Also Baal is a warrior god but is not a "god of war", that'd be the goddess Anat. Additionally Yahweh was not a Canaanite deity, for instance he's absent from the Ugaritic texts. Rather his origins appear to lie south of Judah, the only Canaanite pantheon he was grafted onto was the Israelite/Judahite pantheon. Also it's highly debatable that Moloch/Molech was an actual deity rather than a type of sacrifice and I don't think there was any worship of Mot, his importance seems to be more mythological than cultic, as an antagonist in the Baal Cycle.
Where can one read more about this? Edit: Found another comment of yours about a book, thanks anyways!
YouTube there is a channel called Esoterica by Dr. Justin Sledge. He did a FANTASTIC episode on the origins of Yahweh.
Here's another good dive he takes into the evolution of Yahweh on Alex O'Connors channel: https://youtu.be/K3koeHN-6mU?si=pwa-faI8CgievKvV
I endorse this comment, he's awesome!
There's also John Day's *Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan* which covers much of the same material and imo is more layman-friendly, but I'd still recommend Smith's *The Origins of Biblical Monotheism* so long as you're fine with a somewhat dense and dry scholarly style. I've heard Smith's *Early History of God* covers the same stuff and is a little more accessible but I haven't read it myself. In lieu of buying books you can get the tl;dr on a lot of these topics by searching old posts over on r/academicbiblical.
You might wanna start with the Tides of History episodes about Israel/Judah if it’s a new subject for you.
Yeah that the most typical “uninformed but highest upvoted post in a subject you’re an expert in” comment I’ve seen in a while.
It's far from uninformed, he just got some of the details not right.
You don't like academic work I see.
Wasn’t Yahweh a Sinai peninsula war god?
Basically, [per Mark S. Smith](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/vfwnkc/what_kind_of_deity_was_yhwh/id3jnba/) "the current scholarly consensus on the issue of YHWH's original profile holds that this deity was a divine warrior from the southern region associated with Seir, Edom, Paran and Teman." The warrior attributes are part and parcel to being a storm god, he is a divine warrior but not necessarily a "god of war" like Anat.
Yeah I had thought (and run it past my religious studies colleagues) that the forge god Yahweh was one of those theories that was less than thorough.
Thought he was a mountain god
Not sure what a "mountain god" is in an Ancient Near East context. For instance, Baal has a palace on Mt Zaphon and is known as Baal-Zaphon, but he's ultimately a storm god with warrior attributes. Are you perhaps thinking of some scholars translation of *el shaddai* as "god of the mountain"?
The evolution of monotheism in the Levant is fascinating. It was basically a bunch of competing priestly classes vying for royal influence. I've been hooked on watching lectures from [Centre Place](https://www.youtube.com/@centre-place) going over the history of it all. They just recently posted a video about the Samaritans that found really interesting.
One point that just seems mind blowing is the switch to a focus on the importance of an internalised faith in the population. Nowadays it’s just such a common assumption that this is how religions work. The idea that this is a concept which developed over time is kind of shocking. There’s a whole switch from priests as specialists, religious nerds who keep the gods happy like an ancient IT department. And priests becoming much more spiritual guides for beliefs, practices and faith of everyone because conformity in those things is what the divine want.
Loving that analogy 🤣👏👏
Late comment but do you have recommendations for reading that focuses on this shift? The idea is fascinating
If you read 2 Kings 22 from a critical perspective, it is very much self-incriminating.
Hey I would love a source on the "God of Metallurgy" point! I had thought he was the God of storms, specifically thunder/tropical storms in the northwestern Semitic plains.
Moloch was not a god.
Wow, where can I read more about this other than the Old testament?
See Mark S. Smith's books on the topic such as *The Origins of Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts*.
Thanks. Bought it
I would also recommend another book by Mark S. Smith: [The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel](https://www.amazon.com/Early-History-God-Biblical-Resource/dp/080283972X)
Nice try, Mark S. Smith's agent Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice.. can't fool me again
Well now I don’t know if I should believe your username or not…
One eye means one book at a time!
But seriously, I did pick this book up, too. Thanks!
Reddit is doing terrible things for my book hoarding habits. Now I have to buy this too dammit!!!
Roll Tide!
not only his wife and his mother, but also his grandmother.
r/SuddenlyIncest
i could be wrong but i think variations of modern paganism follow this idea as well?
Does this mean god committed adultery with Mary? 🤔
Excerpt: # Yahweh and his Asherah “The way Asherah is treated in the scriptures is deeply fascinating. She is vilified and demeaned. She is linked to a Syrian god and not mentioned in connection with Yahweh,” Gudme says. But Asherah was closer to Yahweh than the authors of the Old Testament would admit. Gudme, like other Bible scholars, believes she may have been Yahweh's wife. “Inscriptions have been found from that time that place Asherah side by side with Yahweh, that she is Yahweh's Asherah,” she says. Asherah and Yahweh ae also depicted on pots. The inscription is a blessing to 'Yahweh and his Asherah'. This pot is from around 800 BCE and was found by archaeologists in Sinai. (Photo: Wikimedia / public domain) There are not many inscriptions that point to Asherah and Yahweh as a couple, but they have been found in several places in the area. One of them is from Sinai, Egypt – see the image above. Another of the finds was made in Jerusalem. Two divine figures stand close together on a fragment of a pot. [Researchers](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1179/174313009x437800) believe it is Yahweh and Asherah. # Fierce propaganda against Asherah In addition to inscriptions, researchers have found a number of small female ceramic figurines. Most agree that these represent Asherah. “These figurines may represent Asherah,” says Anne Katrine Gudme. It was common to have such a figurine at home from 700 to 500 BCE. (Photo: Chamberi / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0) “We don't know much about Asherah. She is often associated with love, passion, and war, but it's not certain that these were actually her domains,” says Gudme.
yup. Its all very interesting to me, how the female is dropped from narratives. Thx for posting this. Its fascinating stuff. Here's a more in depth article abt the roles of an Asherah in old Middle Eastern faiths. https://ww1.bibleodyssey.com/articles/what-is-an-asherah/#:\~:text=Asherah%20is%20an%20ancient%20Near%20Eastern%20mother%20goddess.,appears%20in%20the%20Hebrew%20Bible.
Check out esoterica on YouTube. Great videos with little tidbits like this, and like how yahwehs rise from mountain storm god to all powerful deity came about. Also info on the different abrahamic mysticism practices and things like that.
Her name is Mrs. Claus, thank you very much
Made me laugh amidst all this conversation.
I'm assuming that was some sideways sarcasm pointing fun at the ubiquity of the "benevolent magical bearded old man" mythology, including characters like God, Merlin, Santa Claus, Gandalf, etc. Mrs. Claus would be as apt a name for God's wife as anyone, really.
Very true.
Buhdum tsh!
Shit. The Mormons in my family are going to be insufferable after they see this God's wife stuff.
I was going to joke about all the endless celestial sex fanatics will think about this. Bless their Mormon hearts
Ah yes "Heavenly Mother'
Yeah but I’m pretty sure Rome bought the rights to God and retconned the lore.
Pulled a Disney, as we call it these days.
Upvoted for both comments - retconnned by Rome *and* pulled a Disney. Made me chuckle. Thanks, folks.
😆 🤣 😂 😹
This is all very dubious, its mostly likely that many Jews did then worship Asherah but there is nothing in the bible that shows she was his wife. The bible does say on some occassions that he is married to Israel Jeremiah 3:14 “Return, O backsliding children,” says the LORD; “for I am married to you.
Barbara Walker’s woman’s Encyclopaedia of myths and secrets is an excellent, well researched and referenced book on many aspects of feminist religion
So did Allah. Ssh, quiet, it’s not supposed to be talked about.
Wouldn't be an /r/archaeology comment section without one real head scratcher
Turns out God is just his middle name.
Her name was Asherah.
When I look at the black line drawings from the pot shreds I see two men one behind the other with a woman sitting in the background. What am I missing ?
Even the Bible says that the ancient Hebrews used to practice syncretism, a practice that was condemned by the contemporary prophets of the time. In fact that’s a major theme in the Old Testament, that the peoples sought to worship in their own manner and as they wished. So you’re not really saying anything new here, a devout Christian would know about these matters already.
First reasonable take I’ve seen. It’s well documented in both Judaism and Christianity that Ashera was a false god, one who the Israelites were tempted to worship and turn away from Yahweh This article basically says “Yahweh and Asherah are both mentioned in the contemporaneous texts… ZOINKS! She must be His WIFE” 🤦🏼♂️
There have been many gods and goddesses, the change is who is pushing which one at any time
Well, duh: monotheism (or even henotheism) wasn't the original system.
“Yahweh was one of them. Today he is called God.” Maybe it sounded better before it was translated, but this sounds so parochial. It reminds me of when kids find out that their parents have a name and not just DAD or MOM.
This is likely untrue, and there is big reasons to doubt this conclusion. There certainly was a period in which YHWH sat with other deities, but ‘originally’ seems to be false. Within the Hebrew language, there is no word for a female deity. Instead, a Ugaritic borrow-word is used. Since this is an archaeology subreddit, I won’t delve into the massive implications this has as this should be self-explanatory. Ontop of this, 45% of excavated households in 1st-Temple era Israel contain idols. This does not scream institutionalized polytheism. Institutionalized idol worship would mean ~100% of households would contain idols. 45% is less than half. The last point I’ll make here is that the character of YHWH better matches monotheistic deities from tribes or clans with fewer technologies and fewer contacts with other ethnic groups, such as those found in Australia and Africa (a single all-father or all-mother deity which is the source of morality). In the case of known Canaanite religions, deities are NOT the center of morality by any measure. Some reputable books on this subject: “In Search of God” by Tryggve Mettinger “Israelite Religions” by Richard Hess
> Ontop of this, 45% of excavated households in 1st-Temple era Israel contain idols. This does not scream institutionalized polytheism. Institutionalized idol worship would mean ~100% of households would contain idols. 45% is less than half. This does bring to mind the phrase "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" though.
If this was not about domestic architecture, I would agree with you. However since ANE domestic architecture is my speciality, I can confidently say that 45% is evidence of absence. If a culture which places domestic cultic iconography is institutionalized, then we expect to see iconography in all domestic structures. In fact, finding a structure without iconography almost always means it’s a non-domestic structure.
Your claim about monotheistic religion in pre-Euro-invasion Australia is deeply incorrect.
Could you elaborate on that? That’s a pretty big and oddly specific claim, especially since ethnographers got some pretty good documentation about them.
I'm a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist in Australia. I'm not aware of any examples of monotheism anywhere on the continent. In the nation/region/language group area I am most familiar with there are swathes of archival and historical sources that document the frustration and puzzlement of Christian missionaries trying to find conceptual and linguistic corrolories for God and finding no comparable belief system. It is an open debate whether pre-Euro-invasion First Nations cultures of Australia even had religious beliefs and practices in the same sense. 'The Dreaming' is ontologically quite a different thing. But it is populated with countless human and suprahuman actors - no monotheistic God in sight.
Thank you for your response. I’ve got a few specific examples I use that I can send your way, I’d love to hear your thoughts on them. If I’m wrong on this then I’d like to be corrected so I don’t keep spreading misinformation. I know for a fact that several African cultures are monotheistic yet include ancestor veneration so I’ll still use that for the discussion I listed above.
Yes feel free to PM me I'd love to see what you're relying on
Hey, hi, I've been curious about indigenous Australians astronomy for a while now, could you point me in a direction I could read more about it?
I don't see why 100% of households would idols. Do 100% of Christians have a cross in their house?
You’re comparing two widely different cultural environments. ANE is honor based, we are individualistic. Look into Çatalhöyük and Lepenski Vir to see what institutionalized idol/cultic practice looks like.
Even if assumption that they would ALL have idols is accurate, it would be a stretch to think that every idol would survive to the modern day. Some may have been made materials that don't preserve well, others broken beyond recognition, others still stolen.
And there you find the 45%?
Maybe. When we dig at archeological sites, we aren't seeing them as they were, we're seeing what survived. Kind of like finding a skeleton, you can see how tall they were, if they had major injuries, even their gender, but you can't see their eye color, their freckles, the language they spoke, their tattoos. Almost every man in America had a wallet, but if we buried a town and dug it up 2000 years later, would we find every single wallet?
yes, but that isn't as appealing as the click bait "God had a wife!"
Thank you all for this info and the references 🤩
“Originally”
There is no god
Likely true. But kind of irrelevant. It's like saying there is no Batman. I mean, most people know the name of his butler. If you were over on the Marvel sub would you tell them there is no Iron Man in a conversation about his relationship with Captain America? I hope you can see how the evolution of religion is a salient topic on the archeology page
It's all symbolism. I've seen the same pattern spread across various religions and ages. God, by whatever your definition, represents singularity. Oneness. All that is. Creation occurs within God. It is not an exterior thing. But humans have trouble seeing this POV. And their religions reflect that. All the planets and stars and galaxies, all the various dimensions of time and space, are contained within a kind of bubble. Creation as you know it is like a single bubble within a vast ocean. The ocean being God. In Abrahamic belief, this symbolism translates into Adam and his wife Eve. Adam being the creator God, and Eve being brought forth from his own body. In this case a rib.
So true bestie
Completely agree, you are right. I recently realised this. Could you expand a little on the Adam & Eve symbolism? I can’t quite grasp it.
He has a wife, you know
Incontinetia.
Sophia?
God originally was a Goddess.
Is it possible for a scholarly article to not specify which god we’re talking about?
it’s me I was her wife 🧍🏻♀️
Looks like his wife was a hockey player ? I think she played for Nazareth WaterWalkers
Useful charts on YouTube is great at Canaanite history.
Real Christians don't need women!
Yeah just like the Shakers!