Yahweh was a Cannanite god Ashtoreth his wife...before the Jews!! Unreal!

by Witness 007 79 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  mP

  Joe Grundy

  Just as an aside, I first joined this board a long time ago to seek more info about my JW neighbour. His name was 'Stavros'. The lady presenter of the youtube series incorporates 'stavra'. I often wondered about my JW neighbour, as he climbed the greasy pole of 'privileges' whether the name '

  mP -> JG

  Your thinking about Francesca Stavrapolou (sp). She is a scholar based in Bath i think. You can watch here entire series if you search Youtube for BBC Did God have a Wife etc. She easy to spot and always wears "green", anyway thats how i remember her.
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  mP

  Apognophos

  Try reading about Job 38:32 in NWT and other Bibles that actually translates the Hebrew terms so you grasp the meaning of the text.
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  GromitSK

  Wasn't Stavros, Kojak's dumb assistant?
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  Phizzy

  Francesca Staviwotsit's programmes were excellent, I watch them again sometimes, mainly because she is bloody gorgeous !

  The programmes prompted me to look back at several of Leolaia's posts on this very subject, they are excellant too !

  It is important as Satanus rightly says above, as YHWH is an upstart new boy to the God Business all faiths based on him are of no merit.

  It can be linked too to the bad archaeology and false history that underpin Israel's territorial claims, Israel's right to Statehood is on a non-existent foundation.
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  Leolaia

  Just want to quickly point out that Heb. `Ashtoreth Ug. `Athtart should not be confused with Heb. 'Asherah Ug. 'Athirat. It was the latter who was the consort of El and (as many scholars believe) Yahweh. Asherah had a cult in the Jerusalem Temple during the reign of Manasseh.
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  Phizzy

  This was going on elsewhere too, the jewish community on the island of Elephantine in Egypt at this time had a Temple where they worshipped Yahweh and his wife Anath.

  This is contemporaneous with Jeremiah's writing in condemnation of the Queen of Heaven worship as being blasphemous, as such worship was widespread and popular, no wonder he struggled as a Prophet.
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  mP

  Jeremiah only complained because his business being a holy man meant he got sacrifices aka food , money from the locals. He and others in his company must have been angry to share the freebies from the locals. Naturaly they want ed to eliminate the competition, so they teamed up with the King. I supose eventually they destroyed some other gods and priests and shared the $$$. We can see the Bible, i cant think of a situation where a non priest condemns his fellow israelites for worshipping pagan gods. The condenation and motive can always be traced to a priest who wants and will get an advanage from the locals converting to Jehovah, sorry his temple of worship.
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  tornapart

  There was too many 'could be', 'maybe' 'possibly' 'I think' and 'what ifs' in it. All the way through. Nothing really concrete.
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  metatron

  A critical point about the "monotheism" of the OT: initially, it wasn't the belief that Yahweh was the Supreme God of the Universe, it was the belief that each nation properly had its own assigned God and Yahweh owned the land of Israel.

  You can see this 'local' theology in accounts such as the origin of the Samaritans, who needed to know the 'god of the land'. It was also evident in the Exodus - as Egypt had their gods but Yahweh owned the Israelites, so let 'em go !

  metatron
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  Leolaia

  Anat-Yahu at Elephantine was an Israelite syncretism under Aramaean influence. What happened was that after the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, the Assyrians imported Aramaeans from Hamath, Hadrach, Arpad, Ivvah, and other areas to repopulate the northern kingdom of Israel, and they mixed with the Israelites who remained. This brought the cult of Bethel (a god native to the Aleppo area) into seventh century BC Israel, which included the gods Ashima-Bethel (cf. 2 Kings 17:31) and Anat-Bethel. It is also possible that there was already an imported Aramaean cult prior to the fall of Samaria. The prophet Jeremiah claimed that the "house of Israel" placed its trust in Bethel as Moab did in Chemosh (Jeremiah 48:13). Under syncretism, Bethel became identified with Yahweh and the two deities merged. There may have also been a reference to the "Ashima of Samaria" in Amos 8:14. At some point Anat-Bethel became Anat-Yahu. The colony of Elephantine was originally Israelite and only secondarily became Jewish (following the fall of Jerusalem). It was a place where the seventh-century BC Israelite cult survived into the fifth century BC, and the names Anat-Bethel and Anat-Yahu both appear. There was no native cult of Anat in Judah where Anat had long before assimilated to Yahweh (who had the same role as divine warrior), but the emigration of Israelite refugees into Judah in the seventh century BC reasserted the worship of Anat as the "Queen of Heaven" in Judah itself (Jeremiah 44:15-18), producing a newer alternative consort for Yahweh, implicitly pairing Yahweh and Anat together as they would be at Elephantine in the fifth century BC. The pairing of Yahweh and Asherah owes from the identification of Yahweh with the older Canaanite god El, and the pairing of Yahweh and Asherah can be found in texts found at ninth or eighth century BC Kuntillet Ajrud.