The belief and cult to the divine couple Asherah and YHWH in Israel and Judah: Archaeological evidence and the redaction of the texts of the Hebrew Bible
Keywords:
Divine couple, Asherah and YHWH, Belief and cult, Archaeological evidence, Hebrew BibleAbstract
The belief and cult to Asherah in the religion of Israel and Judah developed in an autochthonous way, as it was not a foreign deity, but a Goddess who had been present since the organization of the city-states throughout the Levant. In this development, the Goddess came to be worshipped beside YHWH in Israel and Judah. For this reason, this article aims to present and discuss the epigraphic and iconographic evidence of the belief and culto to the divine couple, Asherah and YHWH, found in Israel and Judah, contrasting it with the biblical redaction, which intentionally neglects this belief and cult to the divine couple, since the texts of the Hebrew Bible are the result of a long period of redaction, between the 8th and 1st centuries B.C.E., influenced by the ideologies of the groups that wrote them. Finally, based on the results obtained, the article proposes a reconstruction of the memory of the belief and cult to the divine couple.
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