Yahweh's wife, Asherah, edited out of original Old Testament? also platypodes

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Morm

ITT we blaspheme strongly (though the true blasphemers have yet to be determined).

Christian scholars have uncovered a bit of a potential cover-up in the Old Testament

Who this should impact or at least stir the pot for: Jews, Muslims, Mormons, Christians (all the Abrahamic faiths, basically). Since all of those faiths use the Old Testament and the ideas in the Old Testament influenced the New Testament, Quran and Book of Mormon, it should be profound that people at least ponder this.

This is not a new idea:

In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah.
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It seems that aside from missed references in the bible itself, and some artifacts, it has been determined that God has a wife...but the Old Testament has been editted, since. The censoring of the Christian bible, for the record, is ALSO not a new idea, since the determination of what Gospels would make it into the bible was met by a committee of men, rather than by God himself. Where there are people there most certainly are motives that are less than Holy, true or even moral.

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.
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There is also record of the most archaic (Ie. closest to God's original word) Judaic tribes being duotheistic, in that they worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah, though Asherah was more of a fertility thing deal. Apparently at some point in history the Bible was edited to the preference of a Judaic tribe that was solely monotheistic and considered a cult (in the EXACT same way that Christianity was originally a cult of monotheistic Judaism). This cult allegedly violently overthrew the Duotheists in power:

The ancient Israelites were polytheists, Brody told Discovery News, "with only a small minority worshiping Yahweh alone before the historic events of 586 B.C." In that year, an elite community within Judea was exiled to Babylon and the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. This, Brody said, led to "a more universal vision of strict monotheism: one god not only for Judah, but for all of the nations."
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I was talking to DK about this while I was away and he basically had two key rebuttles: This was a female researcher out to balance the scales for the Vagina-party and (more reasonably) that these people were simply blasphemers.

This raised an interesting question in my mind and is perhaps the most profound question the faithful should be asking with this potential revelation:

If the word of God has been altered in any way, it should be the duty of the believers to discover it and believe in that true word. To do any less is an act of blasphemy or even worshiping false Gods, as the one being worshiped is not 100% true. For a book that is considered the word of the almighty, I would honestly hope that people would seek out the purest form of it rather than an abridged politically infiltrated one.

I personally won't hold my breath that any indoctrinated people will change. I'm sure God himself could come down and say "Look, idiots, you are incorrect- HERE is the truth" and they would tell him to fuck off or call him a blasphemer. I mean, really, when the first line of Genesis was retranslated from its actual origin, it seems like God created shit all- He separated the heavens and Earth. Sure, secular academics blaspheming is one thing, but when the word of their own religious academics is ignored? There is little hope for this world, after all.

What do you think? Is it more blasphemous to ignore potential discoveries like this or is it worse to look for them?
 
Muslims' (at least most of orthodoxy) opinion of older texts from the other Abrahamic faiths is that we acknowledge that there is some truth in them, but we don't confirm or deny anything that isn't given through our sources.

They were true sources at one point, and then they were edited in some way (by addition, deletion, etc.) So yeah, this kinda stuff is what I learned in elementary school. The inconsistencies with prior texts and the like.
 
Can you expand on that idea more, Xaqwais? Of all the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is perhaps my weakest point.
 
I'm Mormon, and we believe that God (Yahweh) has a wife. This falls in line with the fact that we think the purpose of being on earth is so that we can become like Him and have the bodily experience, and marriage is one of the necessary steps to becoming like Him.

edit:

Another key tenet of my religion is: We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

So essentially we believe that the Bible isn't 100% accurate.
 
That really depends on how you define worship. We acknowledge her and have reverence for her. But we don't pray to her, but we also don't pray to Jesus/Holy Ghost, so then you could argue that we don't worship them either. Its kind of a gray area
 
Apparently Jesus isn't even the top "prayed to figure" in Catholocism, there are several saints that people seem to prefer over the J-man.
 
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Here's the context you need to understand all of this.

1) The Israelites have a history of worshiping other gods (just read any chapter in Judges).
2) Ashera is known and discussed in the Bible, but never once called God's wife. Her name is never "hidden" or "obfuscated" either. Anyone with a Briggs and Driver, or anotated Bible will see Ashera either translated plainly in the text, or in the footnotes as a "could also be translated as".
3) Were there offshoots of Judaism that worshiped both Yhwh and Asheroth together? Probably with extrabiblical backstory? Most likely. Were there offshoots of Judaism that woshiped Yhwh and other God's together? Yup.

I don't see where the conspiracy arises when some chick finds a handful of coins and pots that tell a different story than what's told in the 66 books of the Bible. There are all kinds of extrabiblical texts that tell all kinds of different stories, oftentimes mixing the stories of the Bible with stories from other faiths. Sounds like some chick just trying to sell her book.
 
What they are arguing her is that she was deliberately played down, made into some tree or something. The researcher wasn't the only one to reach this conclusion- not to mention, Judaism was the first of the mainstream monotheistic faiths. It therefore might have had a gap to bridge, but we knew that already what with the stealing of Horus's story from Egyptian faiths among others. It'd be a pretty neat coincidence, considering this, that a monotheistic sect of Judaism overthrew the original Duotheistic jews. It's not like this is conjured magic, mattj, that event (the revolt/battle) and the concerned parties are well documented.

It may well be some sensationalist bitch, but the actual question still stands about what is more blasphemous- to get as close to gods word as you can, with a reasonably open mind, or to stay the course in utter modern dogma.

Then again, the dead sea scrolls (as written by one of the few people allowed to research them directly) indicate that their writings are from a cult and that many of the more dramatic aspects, such as Lazarus's resurrection, were more societal and metaphorical than they were real events. You wouldn't consider that to be true, though, right?

I find it incredible when peoples faith is stronger than evidence, but when someone of faith finds evidence to show them something new that is still in line with their faith they all deny it! Dogma is an ugly, ugly thing (and yes, it's present in science).

You know, Jesus valued being humble and Dogma is the exact opposite. To admit you may be mistaken is a hard thing, I wonder how many people actually consider this information a possibility?
 
Imo, you want to be as close to God's word as you can. What I'm saying though, is that God's word (the 66 books of the Bible) are pclear about the relationship between Asherah and Yhwh (that there wasn't one). There are many other instances of mixing Judaism with other faiths. I just don't see how this is news, other than some chick having a book that needs selling.

Oh, and the tree part. Ashera was represented either by a carving on a living tree, or an idol made of wood. That's why some translators call it a tree sometimes in the Bible (with an anotation at the bottom in most cases). It's not like the translators were like "OGOB! THIS CHANGES EVERTHIN!! MUSS COVER UP! QUICK CALL IT A TREE!!"

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lol, sorry Dead Sea Scrolls concern the Old Testament (as well as menial day to day data recording). Lazarus's resurrection is from the New Testament. As a whole, the Dead Sea Scrolls do a pretty good job of showing us that the vast majority of OT Texts were faithfully passed down.
 
Morm said:
Can you expand on that idea more, Xaqwais? Of all the Abrahamic faiths, Islam is perhaps my weakest point.
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Looking at how extraneous this post was, I apologize in advance. I think I might have answered more than just your question. It's more pertinent to what the thread is about towards the end.

As a background, I'm Sunni more towards the orthodox side. My immediate female family members wear the hijab while some of my cousins and aunts don't. I can't speak for everyone who calls themselves Muslim, but probably a good portion that calls themselves Sunni.

As for how we think of previous faiths (mainly Judaism and Christianity, o' course): We believe that prophets were sent down to every nation throughout the course of time. Moses was a prophet and our story of what he did (thrown down the river, leading the Jews to the "promised land" all have similar plot elements if you'd like to call them that. Generally the details are differing factors.

The same goes with Jesus, but we don't associate any partners/sons with God/Allah. We think he was a prophet, nothing else. We have similar stories of him curing blindness, lepracy, but not of his power of but God's. We don't believe that he died for our sins, or anything of the like.

We believe the reason more prophets were sent is that the previous prophet's message was being corrupted. Changes made by Paul/others caused Christianity/the Bible to be too far from the original. Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the last prophet, and God/Allah promised that the Qur'an will never be altered, which is the difference in the long run.

Which is where the whole subject of the thread comes in. We believe that parts of previous books are true and parts are false due to human editing. We can't confirm any of it is truly the word of God and can only confirm the validity of it if it matches our sources completely.

For example: Joseph/Yusuf fought off seduction from his master's wife in both the Old Testament (I think) and the Qur'an. The old testament has a name for her (When translated to Arabic, it's Zulaykha), and while some Muslims will use it to mention her, most scholars say that it might be true, but we can't be for sure and therefore shouldn't use it.
 
Mattj they are saying that his word was purged of mention of her by the invading monotheists in the edit as a method of conversion. The other method, used by christian romans, was to hybridize holidays (ie Jesus's birthday) with the solstace festivals, even though Jesus was explicitly born in the spring.

Xaquis: did you HAVE to say "peace be upon him"? Can you demonstrate that the Qur'an is unaltered? There is so much wrong with him being a pedestal and not the other prophets, but lets save that for IM or something- I am genuinely curious.

From what it sounds like, Islam (in all their dogmatic car bombing) is more reasonable about faith that neochristians.
 
Oh, I read that. But unfortunately, she gives no evidence for this beyond her word, at least in the article. Why should anyone believe her?
 
Why would anyone believe them at their word...

are you seriously saying that compared to a book with no references

Edit: And in the face of ACTUAL events that are well documented as supporting evidence for this claim? I mean given the date, yeah, it's not as much of an impact on christianity proper but it most certainly comes from the same roots

According to this the researcher is actually pretty damn hot too....

biblesburiedsecrets-stavrakopoulou.jpg

Doing actual work in the name of the lord. :D
 
As already mentioned it wouldn't change anything for Mormons really. We still wouldn't outright worship her. When i was younger in a very unofficial conversation i was told that God wouldn't want people to know about his wife to keep her from being defaced like him or something along those lines.

The only thing i vaguely know about the dead sea scrolls was more talking about giants. Which is pretty sweet.
 
If this is true, how does this change books like Genesis? If God had a wife, then would that mean that she was made from one of his ribs as well? If not, then why would Eve need to be molded from one of Adam's? If Asherah, was the supposed goddess of fertility, that would mean that women were made from her image by she, correct? Since women are capable of creating life within them, etc. However, if this were true, which it might very well be, then some parts of the bible like the commandment condemning adultery, for instance, may have much more symbolism than otherwise believed. Maintaining the god-like pair that emulates the love between Yahweh and Asherah, maybe? This is actually very interesting; if they censored this, then what else has been censored/altered in the Old Testament?
 
iDunno said:
If this is true, how does this change books like Genesis? If God had a wife, then would that mean that she was made from one of his ribs as well? If not, then why would Eve need to be molded from one of Adam's? If Asherah, was the supposed goddess of fertility, that would mean that women were made from her image by she, correct? ?
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I'm not quite sure where you are getting that leap in logic from. Adam and Eve were being given physical bodies. God's wife would be a goddess. And Eve would be molded in the same form as Adam as man made in god's image largely refers to humans and not humans gender. So it wouldn't really be any difference between God and his wife and it wouldn't change anything about the creation.
 
SoD: No, the genesis reference was me pointing out that even more precise translations gets swept under the rug, so this might as well.

Potentially, lots has been censored or changed. How would anyone know? I mean how much potential "purple monkey dishwasher" effect has gone on? Like I've said, I find it baffling that faithful people aren't more open to evidence about their own faith being not 100% the word of God. I'd think that even if they weren't right, he'd give credit for TRYING.

It would make a tremendous amount of sense to acknowledge that, because we are made in God's image, he would need a she to make things in his image. Then again, I don't subscribe to the story of women coming from a rib, which is a cheap cut of meat anyways.
 
Son of Disaster said:
I'm not quite sure where you are getting that leap in logic from. Adam and Eve were being given physical bodies. God's wife would be a goddess. And Eve would be molded in the same form as Adam as man made in god's image largely refers to humans and not humans gender. So it wouldn't really be any difference between God and his wife and it wouldn't change anything about the creation.
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If man is created in god's image, then why is it that god is asexual and man is not? It just doesn't make sense lol. Man, in essence, is supposed to be a miniature version of god, so that means that they have the same limitations of god. If I recall, there is no real "rhyme and reason" given by the bible that explains why women are so vital to the reproductive process, nor is there a reference to why it is possible that they can reproduce. The "rib" story also seems a bit misogynistic to me. It pretty much lowers the status of women to be "incomplete men". I guess it can also be interpreted to be that they are the "guardians of the heart" but that also seems a bit out of place when compared to the Old Testament in its entirety.
 
iDunno said:
If man is created in god's image, then why is it that god is asexual and man is not? It just doesn't make sense lol. Man, in essence, is supposed to be a miniature version of god, so that means that they have the same limitations of god. If I recall, there is no real "rhyme and reason" given by the bible that explains why women are so vital to the reproductive process, nor is there a reference to why it is possible that they can reproduce. The "rib" story also seems a bit misogynistic to me. It pretty much lowers the status of women to be "incomplete men". I guess it can also be interpreted to be that they are the "guardians of the heart" but that also seems a bit out of place when compared to the Old Testament in its entirety.
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That isn't what i was trying to say. I'm saying that even though Eve would have easily been molded after god's wife that doesn't mean she made eve. I wasn't really very clear sorry. anyway i'm still confused by what you are trying to say.

@ morm I don't disagree that the bible hasn't been translated completely correctly. It's passed through a few different languages and something is liable to be lost in translation.
 
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