Goddess worship isn't really all that 'pagan' considering that much of what the Bible poses as 'history' was evidently revised by priests and scribes in the period leading up to and following the Babylonian exile. Consider the goddess Asherah. From the Wikipedia (Asherah):
"The goddess, the Queen of heaven whose worship Jeremiah so vehemently opposed, may have been Asherah or possibly Astarte. Asherah was worshipped in ancient Israel as the consort of El and in Judah as the consort of Yahweh and Queen of Heaven (the Hebrews baked small cakes for her festival)"
The patriarchs such as Abraham almost certainly were polytheistic, and indications of that fact still survive in the scriptures today. The problem is that 'professional' translators continue to uphold the later monotheistic tradition that dominated post exilic worship.
For example, at Genesis 21:33 it says, "After that he [Abraham] planted a tamarisk tree at Be'er-she'ba and called there upon the name of Jehovah the indefinitely lasting God." (NWT) In the Hebrew, the word for "tamarisk' is ashl, which is similar to the word that is most often translated as 'grove.' Why is that significant? Consider this passage from Is It God's Word?
'Principal among the idols or images of their Yahveh (YHWH or Jehovah) were, throughout Hebrew history, the phallic objects of worship mentioned a thousand times in the sacred pages under the euphemistic and misleading terms "Pillar" and "grove." These so popular and venerated emblems were nothing more or less than the phallic reproductions of the erect male organ of procreation, the symbolic "staff of life, and the receptive and fecund female "door of life," to euphemize them ourselves.
'In the English translations the term "pillar" is used for the representation called in Hebrew "mazzebah," of the male organ; and "grove" for the "asherah" or female organ of reproduction. For public and outdoor worship these images were of large size and bold design, often actual, sometimes conventional or symbolic, representations of the sex-organs. Smaller idols of the same nature, more for household worship, were images of Yahveh, the peculiarly sacred alias of the Hebraic El, with an enormous phallus, or male organ, erect in situ. The names given to these household images were "ephods" and "teraphim," words constantly occurring together throughout the Hebrew Bible to as late as Hosea iii, 4.
'These phallic idols were used for worship, and for the purposes of divination or oracular consultation with the God Yahveh, in seeking his advice and receiving his awful decrees. Thus the religion and worship of the Hebrews and their Semitic neighbors were frankly and purely phallic. I shall illustrate this fact by a few instances from among hundreds in the Hebrew Scriptures. And first of the "pillars" and "groves" of almost universal worship.'
So much for 'pure worship'! The Patriarchs and pre-exile Israelites were fertility worshippers, and sex was very much a part of their worship. On one occasion when Rachel took her father's teraphim idol, she sat on it to hide it from him while he searched the tent. Her excuse for not rising in respect for her father? "The customary thing with women is upon me." So, Rachel may have been using the teraphim with its carved erection to deal with her menstruation in some primitive medicinal way. Or, it could have simply been a way for the storyteller to insert some sexual humor into the passage: "Girl won't get up for her father because she's getting it on with a dildo."
Anyway, back to Abraham and his 'grove' or 'tamarind tree.' The book quoted above continues,
'The "grove" (asherah) or graven representation of the female "door of life" also makes a very early scriptural appearance, and runs hand in hand or, in phallic parlance, "linga in yoni" with the mazzebah, through the whole Hebrew Bible. In Genesis xxi, 33 it is recorded: 'And Abraham planted a grove [asherah] in Beersheba, and called there on the name of Yahveh [YHWH], the everlasting God [El]." To use the deceptive euphemism "planted a grove," as if it meant the commendable horticultural work of setting out trees, instead of the actual "erected an asherah," or visual phallic image of the female "door of life" penetrated by the male "staff of life," is another instance of "pious fraud" on the part of the Bible translators.
'The idea of planting a grove of trees, besides being actually false, is negatived by so many expressions in sundry passages even in the English version of the Bible that the attempt to hide it becomes absurd. A few instances suffice to illustrate this: "And Ahab served Baal, and made a grove" (1 Kings xvi, 33); under Jehoahaz "there remained a grove in Samaria" (2 Kings xiii, 6); the children of Israel "set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree" (2 Kings, xvii, 10); the Prophet Ahijah had already declared: "Yahveh shall smite Israel ... because they have made their groves, provoking Yahveh to anger" (1 Kings xiv, 15).
'A grove of trees could not be planted under a tree, nor would such innocent and useful work of forestation provoke the Lord Yahveh to anger to the extent of smiting his chosen Israel. In every one of the passages cited, and in scores of others, the word used in the Hebrew Scriptures is asherah or the plural asherim, which was the name in Hebrew for the Semitic object of phallic idol-worship representing the conjunction of male and female sex- organs.'
This was all fine and good until the professional priesthoods of Israel figured out that they could make a pretty good living by demanding sacrifices for forgiveness of 'sins' against their angry god YHWH. Religion is the process or business of making a living (or a killing) off of people's guilt, real or imagined.
Dave
