1. In Ancient Israelite Religion, I read P. Kyle McCarter’s “Aspects of the Religion of the Israelite Monarchy: Biblical and Epigraphic Data.”
Kuntillet ‘Arjud is located in the Sinai region and was under the control of Judah during the eighth century B.C.E. An inscription found there refers to “Yahweh and his Asherah,” and there is also a picture of a bull-man and a bull-woman. Because the Hebrew Bible seems to acknowledge the existence of bull- imagery for YHWH (see Hosea 8:6), many scholars assert that the picture illustrates “Yahweh and his Asherah,” and that the Asherah is the female consort of YHWH.
McCarter wrestles with the definition of “his Asherah” in the inscription, for the biblical and the archaeological evidence say different things. Asherah was a high-ranking goddess in the ancient Near East, and there are places where the Bible recognizes that (e.g., I Kings 11:5). But the Hebrew Bible also portrays the Asherah as a cultic device that is built and can be destroyed (Judges 6:25; I Kings 16:33). When the Kuntillet ‘Arjud inscription mentions “his Asherah,” some scholars believe that it’s referring to a cultic object, not the goddess, for the Hebrew didn’t make a proper name into an object of possession, as we sometimes do (i.e., “my Mary”). Some argue that YHWH’s Asherah is his wife, while others say it’s a cultic object.
In my search on Bibleworks, I found references to an image to or of the Asherah (I Kings 15:13; II Kings 21:7; 23:5). Could the Asherah cultic device be an image of the goddess Asherah?
McCarter mentions this possibility. But he goes on a slightly different track in his attempt to offer an explanation. He refers to examples in Northwest Semitic religion in which a goddess is a hypostasis or manifestation of a god. For McCarter, YHWH’s Asherah was his visible manifestation, which appeared in the cult. And that manifestation was marked with a wooden pole, which is called an Asherah. YHWH’s Asherah is somewhat like YHWH’s consort, but it’s also like YHWH’s Shekinah—his manifestation, which conveys the transcendent God to humans. And the pole is a symbol of that visible presence.
2. In Reading Between Texts, I read Ilona Rashow’s “Intertextuality, Transference, and the Reader in/of Genesis 12 and 20.” On pages 61-62, Rashow discusses a question: Where do texts get their meaning? Is it in the text itself? Is it imposed by the reader? Rashow says it’s a little of both.
In her interaction with Genesis 12 and 20, she tends to read the text in a certain way: Abraham was a scum-bag to say his wife was his sister to Pharaoh and Abimelech. And, in a sense, she bases her interpretation on the text itself. Abraham thought that Abimelech was godless, for example, when actually Abimelech turned out to be quite God-fearing.
But are there other ways to read the text? I find it interesting that the biblical text doesn’t explicitly criticize Abraham for lying to protect his own skin. Why didn’t God rebuke Abraham the first time that he did it? Genesis 20:13 says Abraham did this “in every place,” meaning that, if he was supposed to learn not to do this practice, the lesson apparently didn’t take!
Is the lesson of these stories that Abraham was wrong, or rather than God will uphold his people before the mighty of the earth? I guess that, in interpreting this text, we bring ourselves and our buttons that can be pushed, even as we’re guided by the text itself.
3. I found this item of information interesting in Theodore Mullen’s Ethnic Myths and Pentateuchal Foundations, on page 44:
With respect to the priesthood, the Samaritans constructed a priestly genealogy that was descended directly from Phinehas and Eleazar, descendants of Aaron, but that did not form a collateral line with the Zadokite line of Jerusalem.