A revised version of my article “The Meaning of asherah in Hebrew Inscriptions” was published in Semitica 59
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Revised version of A New Analysis of YHWH’s asherah
I’ve uploaded a fully revised version of my paper on YHWH’s asherah here.
Chaoskampf, the Garden of Eden, and the Mountains of Lebanon
I have a new paper up on the Garden of Eden that explores its mythological background in Canaanite-Israelite mythological tradition. Among other things, I argue that the mysterious ʾēd that comes up to water the ground in Gen 2:6 is correctly translated “flood” and that the motif hearkens back to an ancient Canaanite myth in which El created the world through defeating the primordial Sea monster. This discovery then leads me to reconstruct how the biblical Garden of Eden story has evolved over time, with particular emphasis on the identity of YHWH-Elohim and the original mountain location of Eden in Canaan. I show how at an earlier stage in the narrative the divine protagonist was likely El rather than YHWH-Elohim and that the site of Eden has been adapted from Mount Lebanon to a non-defined place somewhere on the eastern horizon.
The god Gad
The cult of the god Gad in ancient Israel is at first glance obscure. As a god identified with good fortune (the word gad means “fortune, happiness”), the divine name is attested sporadically in the Bible as well as in personal names and inscriptions from the larger Syro-Palestinian region. The laconic quality of personal names provides few hints about his character and identity, while the single literary text in which the divine name occurs is highly polemical and of limited use (Isa 65:11). Further complicating matters is that not only was there a god in the southern Levant known as Gad, but the noun gad was also commonly used in personal names in its appellative sense to identify a particular god as a source of good fortune. During the first millennium it seems a variety of gods could be described as a source of gad, as reflected in the personal names gdmlqrt (“Melqart is fortune”), gdʿštrt (“Astarte is fortune”), gdnbw (“Nabu is fortune”), gdyhw (“Yahu is my fortune”), gdyʾl (“El is my fortune”), mlkmgd (“Milkom is fortune”), ṣlmgd (“Ṣlm is fortune”). Eventually the name gad was generalized and came to be used as a title for patron deities of cities, tribes, and localities in the Graeco-Roman Near East (Höfner 1965: 438-39; Lipiński 1995: 62-64; Kaizer 1997; Ribichini 1999: 340).
Who is Baal?
According to the biblical narrative, the worship of Baal (meaning “Lord”) was the primary threat to the exclusive worship of YHWH during Israel’s life in the land of Canaan. From their first contact with Canaanite peoples, the Israelites are portrayed as irresistibly drawn to this polytheistic and iconolatrous cult. At Peor in the Transjordan they intermix with the local inhabitants and begin to worship the Baal of Peor. Hosea describes their change in cultic loyalties as almost instantaneous, “But they came to Baal of Peor and consecrated themselves to a thing of shame” (Hos 9:10). Similarly, soon after having settled in the promised land, a new generation arises after the generation of the conquest had passed on, and they, the Dtr author alleges, “did what was evil in the sight of YHWH and worshiped the Baals; they abandoned YHWH, the god of their ancestors, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; they followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were all around them, and bowed down to them” (Jdgs 2:12).