An Old Journal Article About Asherah

New Light on Israelite Religion: The Implications of the
Inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud

l
By J. A. Emerton
(St John's College, Cambridge, CB2 1TB)
Did Yahweh have a consort? That question was the provocative
title of an article by Z. Meshel in 1979, and it arose from a new Interpreta-
tion of some inscriptions that he had published for the first time in the
previous year. They were found on jars at Kuntillet ' Ajrud, about 50 km
south of Kadesh-barnea, where several routes met and there was a build-
ing that Meshel regards s a religious centre. He dates the finds between
the middle of the ninth and the middle of the eighth centuries B.C. He
originally favoured the reign of Athaliah ( presumably for historical, rather
than archaeological, reasons), but he now puts them a little later, in the
reign of Joash of Israel, on the precarious ground that a word which he
restores s ^[sjw] is a variant form of Joash's name (see Weinfeld, p. 284).
These inscriptions are important for several reasons. With the possible
exception of an unpublished seal from the eighth Century (Cross, p. 61),
they appear to be the first texts written by Israelites ( unlike the Moabite
Stone) on which jhwh, the longer form of the divine name, occurs. The
other reasons will be considered below.
One of the inscriptions includes the words: brkt. Hkm . Ijhwh . smrn .
wl*srth, I have blessed you by Yahweh smrn and his Asherah. The verb
brkt is regarded s the first person singular perfect (berkti) without a
mater lectionis at the end, and the same formula of blessing is found at
Arad (162-3; 212-3; 40s). Similarly, a Phoenician inscription from Saqqara
in the sixth Century has brkt k lb
f
l spn, I have blessed thee by Baal
Zaphon ( KAI 502-3; cp. Lemaire, p. 602). It implies a wish s well s
being a Statement, and so Meshel translates the verb and its object s
May you be blessed.
1
A list of the principal works cited will be found at the end of the article. I am grateful to
several friends for their help. Dr G. I. Davies read the article in draft and made some
helpful suggestions ( including references to several works). Dr J. Day made available to me
a copy of Z. MeshePs article of 1979, to which I should not otherwise have had access. Dr
A. Mazar drew my attention to M. Weinfeld's article, and Professor M. Haran enabled me
to see it before the book in which it appears became available in Cambridge. Professor
E. Wrthwein reminded me of the relevance of H. Donner's article. The help I have
received makes me more conscious than ever of the value of international co-operation
among scholars.
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J. A. Emerton, New Light on Israelite Religion 3
The word smrn was first understood by Meshel s the active partici-
ple qal of the verb samr with a first person plural suffix: som
e
renu, who
guards us; and the verb appears in another inscription from Kuntillet
'Ajrud in which someone named ^mrjw says: brktk . Ijhwh /.../ wl^rth .
jbrk . wjsmrk wjhj
f
m . *dnj, I have blessed thee by Yahweh [...] and his
Asherah. May he bless and keep thee, and be with my lord. One might
have expected it to be written smrnw, with a final mater lectionis, but the
writers were not consistent in their use of such vowel letters, and we have
seen that brkt was written, not brktj.
A different Suggestion was made in the following year (1979) by
M. Gilula, who preferred the reading som
e
row, S amaria. Whether
because of Gilula's article, or s a result of his own further thought,
MeshePs article of the same year also allows the possibility of this reading,
though it notes a syntactical problem ( which we shall consider below) in
understanding the phrase to mean Yahweh of S amaria. Such an Inter-
pretation of the expression has, however, now been confirmed by the
reading of several other inscriptions, which have another place name: jhwh
tmn w*srth Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah; and Meshel accepts
this way of understanding the inscriptions.
2
It is thus probable that the inscriptions from shortly before or after
800 B.C. refer to Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah and Yahweh of
Teman and his Asherah. The purpose of the present article is to consider
some of the implications of these texts for the study of Israelite religion.
I.
When I visited the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in May 1981 and saw
the way in which these inscriptions are now read, it struck me at once that
they had a bearing on a syntactical problem that has been much discussed
by Old Testament scholars. One of the questions raised by the phrase jhwh
fba^t is whether it is legitimate to regard it s meaning Yahweh of
fba^t, or whether the second word must be in apposition to the first.
The former way of understanding the phrase appears to treat the tetra-
grammaton s if it were in the construct state, but such a usage has seemed
anomalous to some. Yet at Kuntillet 'Ajrud the divine name is used in a
comparable syntactical relationship. It would, however, be a superficial
treatment of the subject merely to appeal to the new evidence without
considering the nature of the problem. Moreover, a discussion of the syn-
tactical problem has a bearing on some further questions which will be
examined in later parts of the present article.
2
See p. 284 of Weinfeld's article, which gives Meshel's most recent opinions on the subject.
The inscriptions are now explained thus in the Israel Museum.
4 J. A. Emerton, New Light on Israelite Religion
It has been maintained that proper names of persons are not used in
the construct state in Hebrew. Thus a Standard work on Hebrew grammar
holds that Real proper nouns, s being the names of things (or persons)
only once met with, are sufficiently determinate in themselves and, there-
fore, do not admit of the article, nor can they be in the construct state
( G.K. 125 d
y
cp. tf). A similaropinionisexpressed by Joon, 131 o, 137 b.
It is generally recognized that a number of names of places appear,
prima fade at least, to be used in the construct state in particular circum-
stances: e.g. ^r ksdim, *rm nh^rjim, bet laeb&m fhd. G. K. 125
h suggests that such phrases involve the ellipse of a word for city or
region in the construct state e.g. Ur (the city) of the Chaldees but
it is admitted that some examples ... come very near to the actual con-
struct state. There is not, of course, the same difficulty when the name of
the place is an appellative such s gib
f
, whence gib
f
t sa*l, the Gibeah
named after Saul to distinguish it from others (G. K. 125tf, h). Even,
however, when the name of a town or region cannot be described thus, its
use in the construct state is intended to distinguish it from other places
with the same name: e.g. the Bethlehem in Judah, not the Bethlehem in
Zebulun (Jos 19is). Since such names of places are accordingly no longer
names found only in one special sense, the conclusion is drawn that they
are no longer proper names in the strictest sense ( 125 h). Presumably,
sijjn q*ds jisraêl ( Jes60i4) does not come into this category but is
explained s an example of the ellipse of
f
ir or the like.
jhwh s
c
ba*t, however, is a personal name, not the name of a place.
Even M. Lambert, who believes that place names can be in the construct
state, notes that On ne trouve pas de nom propre de personne a Petat
construit ( 228, n. 2). Whether or not it is legitimate to speak of a gram-
matical rule that personal names cannot be in the construct state, the fact
that they do not appear to be so used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible has
led some to believe that the second word in the phrase jhwh s
e
ba*t is in
apposition to the first, and that the first is not in the construct state. On
the other hand, G. K. 125 h suggests that there is an ellipse of ^lohe
between the two words, and that the meaning is Yahweh ( the God) of
hosts, just s
5
r ksdim means Ur (the city) of the Chaldees. The
existence of the longer expression jhwh **lohe fba*t (or hsfba*t]
probably bears witness that the relationship of fba*t to what precedes it
was similarly understood in the shorter form jhwh s
e
ba*t, and so that the
latter was thought to mean Yahweh of s
e
ba*t or something barely
distinguishable from it. Such a view is tenable, even though the fact that
the shorter phrase is overwhelmingly more common makes us hesitate to
postulate that the longer form was in use before it; it is possible that an
ellipse was intended from the beginning.
There is another way of explaining the phrase s meaning Yahweh
of s
e
ba*t. This explanation is related to the fact that, when a place
name is used in the construct state, there is normally a need to distinguish
it from some other place with the same name. That might suggest that the
name Yahweh was shared by more than one deity. Such a view has not
commended itself to many scholars, but there is more support for the
opinion that there were what may be called different manifestations of
him. Alternatively, it has been suggested that Yahweh has virtually
ceased to be regarded s a proper name and has come to mean more
generally God.
3
It may be doubted, however, whether this understanding
of the tetragrammaton can be substantiated from the Old Testament. It
certainly does not fit the phrase jhwh **lohe fba*t, whose meaning is
unlikely to have been different from that of the shorter form.
Evidence in the cognate languages has been compared with the
Hebrew phrase jhwh fba*t. In his discussion ( pp. 259-75) of the Car-
thaginian expression *>smn
f
strt, W.W. Baudissin considers the Hebrew
material on pp. 2623, and explains it in the same way s G. K. 125 h.
Thus,
c
sfrot ( for which he wishes to read the singular) qrnjim is
thought by him to mean Astarte (die Besitzerin) der beiden Hrner or
( die Gttin) des Ortes Karnajim, and jhwh s
e
ba't Jahwe (der Herr)
der Heerschaaren; similarly, the Phoenician rsp mkl is understood s
Rsp (der Gott) des Ortes Mkl.
f
strt
f
pp, however, is explained s die
Astarte von Paphos, and there is thought to be a genitive relationship
between the two parts of *smn
f
strt, Esmun der Astarte (p. 275). G.R.
Driver goes farther and seeks to refute the opinion that proper names s
such cannot stand in the construct state (p. 125) in Opposition to an
article by J. Obermann. Driver gives examples of Semitic texts in which
personal ( including divine) and place names appear in the construct state
or in which proper names ... take pronominal Suffixes, which imply the
construct state (p. 125). He even claims to find two indubitable in-
stances of personal names in the construct state in the Old Testament,
namely, in PS 3823 and Ez382, and suggests that the text of Gen 152 and
Jer39a should be emended in such a way s to produce further examples.
Driver's article seems to have been overlooked by L. Delekat
(pp. 667) and M. Rose (pp. 289), who compare the usage in cognate
languages and claim to find a Moabite example of a suffix with a proper
name. They suggest that jhwh in line 18 of the Moabite Stone ( KAI 181) is
not the longer form of the divine name Yahweh, but the shorter form j hw
with a third person singular suffi x in -h,
4
which Delekat reads s Yhuw-
. They compare w*qh . msm .
3
/r
3
/// . jhwh . w*shb . hm . Ipnj . kms
3
This view is maintained by B. N. Wambacq, L'epithete divine Jahve S
e
ba">ot, 1947, 100.
4
Rose's discussion of matres lectionis in the Moabite stone (pp. 25-7) presents a view that
is difficult to accept. He says on p. 25: Ob die Mesa-Inschrift matres lectionis in Auslaut
voraussetzt, mu unsicher bleiben. Yet he appears to recognize on p. 26 that a final -h
can represent an o vowel. He explains bnh, he built, in line 18 s *ban, and
(lines 17-18) with w*sb . msm .
3
f . V
3
/ . dwdh . w'[s]hbh . Ipnj . kms
( lines 12-13), and argue that, since dwdh has a suffix, jhwh is likely to
have one s well. It does not necessarily follow, however, that the con-
structions of the two sentences must be identical in every detail, any more
than two of the corresponding verbs are (w*qh and w*sb). If it was not
the practice to use a suffix with a proper name, then the writer would not
have done so even in a sentence comparable with another sentence in
which a common noun had a suffix. Delekat and Rose are influenced in
their reading of the Moabite text by their theory that jhw was the original
form of the divine name, and that jhwh was not introduced until later.
Delekat dates the longer form of the name between 722 and 621 B.C.
(pp. 68-9), and Rose s late s the reign of Josiah (pp. 35-6). Yet if
MeshePs dating of the Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions is correct, then the
form jhwh (in addition to the shorter form j hw on a stone vessel see
Meshel, 1978) is attested earlier than is compatible with the theory of
Delekat and Rose. The latter, indeed, offers an explanation, not of the
Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions, but of a text from Khirbet êl-Qom, which
is emended by Lemaire (see section III below) to read brk . *rjhw . Ijhwh .
wl^srth, and for which Rose offers the translation gesegnet sei Uri jahu
von seinem JHW und von seiner Aschera (p. 29, n. 104). Such a construc-
tion will not, however, fit the Kuntillet Âjrud inscriptions with the verb
in the first person and with the second person singular or plural s object:
brktk and brkt . *tkm (see p. 2 above). The existence of the newly-dis-
covered inscriptions from a date not far removed from that of the Moabite
Stone scarcely favours their explanation of jhwh in line 18 of that text.
Driver's arguments are criticized by M. Tsevat. The use of pronominal
Suffixes with proper names is, claims Tsevat, different from the use of such
names in the construct state (though he does not note that Driver's argu-
ments are relevant to his refutation of Obermann, who denies on p. 305
the possibility of such a usage except in Arabic). Further, Driver's under-
standing of PS 3823 is dependent on the LXX, not on the M.T. which is
perfectly satisfactory; and Ez382 is very probably a case of a wrong
word division (p. 54). More fundamentally, he regards s unsatisfactory
Driver's formulation of the opinion that he attacks, namely, that proper
names s such cannot stand in the construct state. According to Tsevat,
This may be an acceptable formulation for first orientation but it is too
inaccurate for scholarly study. Instead, he prefers Hebrew and other
ancient Semitic languages avoid certain kinds of overdetermination of
substantives (p. 52). It is certainly true that Driver's discussion takes no
account of the careful distinctions made in G. K. and states the issue in
terms that are too general, although it seems a fair refutation of what
Obermann says on p. 305.
Driver's examples fall into two classes (apart from proper names with
pronominal suffixes). First, there are place names, but he fails to discuss
the points made by G. K., and there is no need to repeat them here.
Secondly, there are personal names, whether of human beings or of deines.
As far s human names are concerned, the Arabic Khtim of (the tribe of)
Tayy may be compared with what was said above about place names.
There were doubtless a number of people called Khtim, and it was neces-
sary to distinguish a particular bearer of the name from all the others. In
the case of divine names, there is no difficulty about the element Baal,
because the word b
f
l has not lost its sense of lord (cp. Delekat, p. 66).
Thus, b
f
l smd ( KAI 24, 15), to which Driver refers, may mean Lord of
the club. The usage is analogous to that of gib't sa*l. Tsevat goes
farther and points out that many members of Oriental pantheons were in
frequent danger of losing their identity (p. 52). The word istar, for exam-
ple, in Mesopotamia can mean either the goddess Ishtar or goddess in
general. Similarly, the words for Baal and Astarte are used in the plural in
the Old Testament, and the place name Anathoth appears to be a plural of
the name of the goddess Anath. These words oscillate between proper
and common nouns (p. 53). It might at first sight seem more doubtful
whether the same was true of Resheph, for whom Driver cites the phrases
[rs]p njjt ( KAI 413-4), and rs p mkl ( KAI 382; 39a; 40s); and rsp sprm
( KAI 26 A II, 10-11.12), rs p hs ( KAI 32s. 4), and, in Ugaritic, rs p gn (RS 16.
179 = KTU4.219 = UT1088, line 3) might be added to the list. Tsevat,
however, refers to S.A.Cook, The Religion of Ancient Palestine in the
Light of Archaeology, 1930, 112, who mentions an Egyptian text in which
officers of Ramses III are said to be mighty - >like the Reshephs<. This
example alone may be thought inadequate evidence, for the use of the
plural of Resheph may be due to the fact the comparison is with a number
of human beings. Yet in the same year in which Tsevat's article appeared,
confirmatory evidence became available with the publication of a Ugaritic
tablet, RS 19. 15 = KTU 1. 91 = UT 2004. Line 11 contains the words
t
f
rbn . rspm, the Reshephs enter, and line 15 has rs p sfo
3
/.
5
On the
allows on p. p. 28 that nbh in line 14 may be Nebo. P. 25, n. 87, strangely maintains that
the -; at the end of the first person singular perfect verbs mlktj ( lines 2-3) and bntj ( lines
21, etc.) may be semi-consonantal because it owes its origin to the analogy of the first
person singular suffi x attached to nouns. But he advances no evidence for his new theory
that -/ at the end of the verb was pronouned s -j a in such circumstances, and C. Brockel-
mann, and H. Bauer and P. Leander, to whom he appeals, do not suggest that it was used
s any thing other than a vowel letter. It would also be an unsupported innovative specula-
tion to see a semi-consonantal -/ in the ending of the first person singular object suf f i x in
hr*nj in line 4, and hs
e
nj in line 12. Rose does not discuss
f
tnrj, Omri, in lines 45, etc.
Nor does he consider the fi nal u vowel of
e
sw, make, in line 24. His treatment of the
evidence is less convincing than that of F. M. Cross and D. N. Freedman, Early Hebrew
Orthography, 1952, 35-44, who transcribe jhwh in line 18 s *y ahwe (p. 41). If final
matres lectionis were used, there is no difficulty in supposing that -h could be used to
represent an e vowel, s in later Hebrew inscriptions.
5
On these two texts see W. J. Fulco, p. 42. See also n. 6 below.
other band, I do not know of any evidence that the names of
f
nt, a god-
dess with a distinct personality, and *atrt
y
the wife of El, were used in such
a way in Ugaritic texts, and yet they appear to be used in the construct
state. We read of < nt spn in CTA 36. 17 and RS 24. 253. 13-14 = KTU
1. 109. 13-14; and *nt d>i in RS24. 252. 8 = KTU 1. 108. 8 is another
possible example, although it is admittedly obscure. The phrase *atrt y m is
often thought to mean Athirat of the Sea; but, if Albright's Suggestion
(1953, pp. 77-8) that the first word is a participle and that the phrase
means She who Walks on the Sea or in the Sea is correct, then *atrt is
not used s a proper name in the fllest sense. Yet Albright's theory is far
from certain and, in any case, *>atrt srm in CTA 14. 4. 201 probably
means Athirat of the Tyrians (cp. *ilt sdy nm, the goddess of the Sido-
nians, in line 202), and certainly not She who Walks on the Tyrians. It
may be added that, even where divine names are not used in a generic
sense, their appearance in the construct state may indicate a particular
manifestation of a deity in distinction from other manifestations of the
same deity; e.g. the manifestation of Athirat at Tyre in distinction from
that at Ugarit. ( And we shall see in section II that not all the different
phrases containing b
f
l necessarily denote different gods.) In contrast to the
use in the construct state of the names of pagan deities, Tsevat maintains
that there is no onomatological need whatsoever to determine the name
Yahweh in the manner and for the reasons that the above names are deter-
mined (p. 54).
The discussion before the discoveries at Kuntillet 'Ajrud cannot be
said to have reached a decisive conclusion. On the one hand, it may be
argued that, if place names can be used in the construct state in certain
circumstances in Hebrew, and if personal names in Phoenician, Ugaritic,
and Aramaic are apparently sometimes used in the construct state, the
question arises whether it is justifiable to confine the Hebrew usage to the
circumstances recognized by G. K. and Tsevat. On the other, it may be
replied that we are concerned with Hebrew usage, not with what is done
even in closely related languages. What is needed is a convincing Hebrew
parallel to support the view that the disputed phrase can mean Yahweh
of s*ba*t. Indeed, even the theory that there is an ellipse of ^lohe, and
that the phrase means Yahweh ( the God) of s
e
ba
y
t, would be stronger if
there were a Hebrew parallel.
The needed Hebrew evidence is now supplied by the inscriptions from
Kuntillet 'Ajrud but, s far s I am aware, nobody has drawn out the
implications for the phrase jhwh s
e
ba*t. It was, indeed, not until I had
prepared the first draft of the present article that I came across M. Gilula's
discussion of the inscriptions, in which he contrasts Yahweh of fba*t
with Yahweh of Samaria from a religious point of view, or had access
to Z. MesheFs article of 1979, in which he notes the possible syntactical
difficulty in understanding jhwh smrn s Yahweh of Samaria and says
Yhwh >Yahweh< is never followed by a proper name ( with the exception
of the title tsebaot, usually translated >God of Hosts<) (p. 31). But neither
goes on to mention the relevance of the new evidence to the elucidation of
the biblical phrase.
The new evidence is itself capable of being explained in two ways
from the syntactical point of view, for it is possible either to regard Yah-
weh s being in the construct state, or to postulate an ellipse of ^lohe
between it and Samaria or Teman. In either case, the phrase means
virtually the same: Yahweh of Samaria or Yahweh of Teman. There
can thus no longer be any syntactical objection to understanding jhwh
fba^t s Yahweh of s
e
ba*t. Moreover, the phrase jhwh fba*t
becomes more easily comparable with some of the phrases concerning
Resheph that were noted above. In particular, it is tempting to ask how far
the Hebrew phrase may be compared with the Ugaritic rsp sb*i
6
- but we
must beware of venturing too far when we have so little evidence.
The evidence from Kuntillet
f
Ajrud does not prove that jhwh fba^t
must mean Yahweh of fba*t or that the second word cannot be in
apposition to the first. Nor does it help us to determine the meaning of
fbcPot in this context. It does, however, establish the possibility that the
phrase means Yahweh of fba*t. It may also have a bearing on some
of the uses of V/. F. M. Cross (p. 49) discusses such names s V/
f
lam,
*el bef*e\, *el b
c
rit, and *el r
&3
/. An epithet *el
f
olm, he says, is
most easily read >the god of eternity.< We cannot take the proper name ">E1
to be in a construct relationship to the noun
f
lam. The new evidence
suggests that the possibility can no longer be excluded on the ground of
syntax.
II
What are the religious implications of the phrases Yahweh of
Samaria and Yahweh of Teman? The former obviously includes the
idea that Yahweh was worshipped at Samaria, whatever further .meaning
it may have possessed, and the words were very likely written by a travel-
ler from Samaria, in the latter, however, Teman is unlikely to be the name
of a town. The word can denote the south in general, but it is also used in
connexion with Edom. It probably denotes a region of Edom rather than a
town, and it is perhaps also used s almost a synonym of the land of
Edom.
7
A reference is made to this region in Hab 33, which teils how
God came from Teman, and the parallel is and the Holy One from
6
Fulco (p. 42) understands the phrase to mean Resep of the army/host. M. Liverani, Le
preistoria delPepiteto Yahweh seb^t, AION, N.S. 17 (1967), 331-4, however,
believes that it means Reshef il soldato. He suggests that the word sb>i in the Ugaritic
text may be in the genitive case because it is required by the whole context, not because
rsp is in the construct state.
7
See R. de Vaux, Teman, ville ou region d'tdom?, RB 76 (1969), 379^-85.
Mount Paran. Since the region is in Edomite territory, it is unlikely that
the phrase at Kuntillet 'Ajrud refers to a cult of Yahweh in Teman, unless
we are to suppose that, s in the Kenite hypothesis, Yahweh was wor-
shipped by nomadic groups in the south, and that the cult continued s
late s c. 800 B.C. and was to be found in Edom. The meaning is likely to
be similar to that to Hab 33: it is from the southern region that Yahweh
has come, and it belongs in a special way to him. It is possible to compare
Dtn332 and Jdc54, and also ze sinj in Jdc5s and PS 68 9 if the phrase
means the One of S inai or the Lord of S inai. Kuntillet 'Ajrud was a
halting-place for travellers, many of whom would be going south. We do
not know precisely how far west Edom's influence extended at this period
but, be that s it may, the idea of Yahweh's connexion with Teman would
be relevant to a blessing on someone who hoped for divine protection on
the journey.
M. Gilula advances a theory that there were two Yahwistic traditions
in Israel: the tradition of jhwh s
e
fctf
3
o, which was associated with the ark
in Shiloh and later in Jerusalem, and the tradition of the northern tribes,
which he identifies with that of Yahweh of S amaria, and each tradition
had a different cultic symbol. In this connexion, he offers an Interpretation
of a drawing of three figures on the same jar on which the inscription
mentioning Yahweh of Samaria is found. At the right is a female being
playing the lyre, of which he says little. In the middle is a figure which
Meshel identifies with the Egyptian god Bes, but which Gilula believes to
be female. It has breasts, and he thinks that what he regards s a penis (or
is it a tail?) is a later addition to the drawing. The third figure, on the left,
which Meshel takes to be another representation of Bes, is thought by
Gilula to be in bovine shape. Since the drawing of the three figures comes
immediately below the inscription indeed, it overlaps the bottom of the
inscription - he believes that the words Yahweh of Samaria and his
Asherah refer to the middle and left-hand figures (but not apparently the
one on the right). The supposedly female figure in the middle is Asherah,
and the figure on the left is Yahweh in the form of a young bull (< eg< zl).
Gilula associates the young bull with the story in Ex 32 and the account of
the images of young bulls that Jeroboam set up at Dan and Bethel
(I Reg 1228ff., etc.). The theory is interesting, but venturesome. There is, s
he admits, no certainty that the inscription was intended to describe the
drawing ( and it may be added that it would be strnge for a description of
a drawing of three figures to mention only two of them), and, in any case,
he builds a great deal on a narrow foundation. Further, he wrote before
the publication of the phrase Yahweh of Teman, which complicates
matters for his theory, because it is no longer possible to think simply of a
contrast between jhwh fba*t (a phrase that does not appear on any of
the inscriptions from Kuntillet
f
Ajrud that have been published so far)
and Yahweh of Samaria.
The use of the tetragrammaton followed by a place name reminds us of
the place names like Ur of the Chaldees that were considered in section I
above, and of the divine names in which one name is further defined by
another. That raises the question whether that usage can shed light on the
phrases Yahweh of S amaria and Yahweh of Teman at Kuntillet 'Aj-
rud. In the case of place names, we have seen that the second element was
usually added in order to make it plain which of the different places bear-
ing the first element s their name was intended in a particular context.
Something similar seems to have been true of at least some divine names
with two elements. Here we encounter an old problem in trying to inter-
pret the nature of the Canaanite religion described in the Old Testament,
particularly the references to Baal or Baals. The subject is well discussed
by M. J. Mulder in Baâl in het Oude Testament, his dissertation at the
Free University of Amsterdam ( 1962). The Old Testament sometimes
speaks of b
Cf
alim and
f
start in the plural, and that might lead us to
suppose that there were many different deities bearing the names Baal and
Astarte. The relevant passages are, however, polemical in character, and it
is possible to ask whether the Canaanites would themselves have described
their religion in the same way. Did they believe that there were many
Baals, or that they were all different forms of the same Baal? The word
manifestations is sometimes used in the discussion, and it is perhaps the
best term to use of the second explanation, even though it is not at once
clear precisely what is meant by it. It is not easy for us in the twentieth
Century to be certain which Interpretation is correct. Sometimes, indeed, it
seems that more than one god is meant. We have seen in section I that a
Ugaritic text refers to more than one Resheph. It is also clear that the
word b
f
l can be used of more than one deity, which is not surprising in
view of its meaning lord. Thus, in the Kilamuwa inscription from Zen-
jirli of about 825 B.C. ( KAI24) the gods b
f
l smd and b
f
l hmn (lines
15-16) are distinct, and the god named rkbH is given the epithel b
f
l bt,
lord of the house ( line 16). Similarly, the Azitawadda inscription from
Karatepe about a Century later ( KAI 26) distinguishes between b
f
l krntrjs
(A II 19, etc.) and b
f
l smm (A III 18), and it seems to be the former to
whom reference is made in the short form b
f
l in some places (lines l ff.,
etc.). Yet the fact that Baal could be used of more than one god does
not prove that it could not be used predominantly of one pre-eminent god
in certain contexts. In the Ugaritic mythological texts, b
f
l appears s virtu-
ally the proper name of the god who is also known s hd ( probably *had-
du, i.e. Hadad). In view of the many points of contact between the Baal
religion at Ugarit and the Old Testament there is a good case for suppos-
ing that many of the references to Baal in the latter are to the same deity,
even though his name may be further defined by the addition of another
word. For example, b
f
l b
e
rit ( Jdc833, 94) may well have been regarded
s essentially the same s the god or gods presupposed by such place
names s b
f
l gd ( Josl l i ?), b
e
l hcermn ( JdcS s, I Chr 523), and
perhaps even the Moabite b
f
al p
f
r ( Num253. s, Dtn43, PS 1062g; and
the expression is apparently used s a place name in Hos 9io). b
f
l z
e
bb
is described s ">
x
lohe
f
&qrn in II Reg 12. 3. 6. 10, but that does not
necessarily prove that he was distinct from other gods named Baal, for it is
possible to regard him s the great god Baal s manifested and worshipped
in Ekron. Although the plural of the noun b
f
l is sometimes employed in
polemical contexts, it also frequently appears in the singular with the
definite article s hbb'l, referring to one particular Baal. We have seen
that the Karatepe inscription can use b
f
l s a short way of referring to b
f
l
krntrjs but there is nothing to suggest that the Old Testament has in mind
different particular Baals on the different occasions when it mentions
hbb
f
l. It is more natural to suppose that it refers to the same major
god, s in the Ugaritic texts. It is, therefore, likely that many of the divine
names containing b
f
l s one element refer to the same deity. He was wor-
shipped in different places, and there were doubtless local variations in the
cult, but, in general, the different Baals were probably viewed s essential-
ly the same god.
It has been suggested that something similar was true of populr
Israelite religion, in which the name of Yahweh was associated with sever-
al different sanctuaries. For example, K. Budde, Die Bcher Samuel, 1902,
4, offers the following comment on Fhisth*wot w
c
lizboh Ijhwh fba*t
b
e
sil in IS am 13: Wir werden in eine Zeit versetzt, wo man den [glei-
chen] Gott der verschiedenen Anbetungssttten unterscheidet und verschie-
den wertet, and he compares Ijhwh b
e
h&brn in II Sam 15?. The case for
insisting on such an understanding of the former name s Yahweh in
Shiloh is weak, but the Interpretation is possible; the case for Yahweh
in Hebron in the latter is stronger, although it is not certain. H. Donner
develops the argument farther and compares, not only II Sam 15?, but also
I Reg 1228 where the plural verb is used with the golden calves in Bethel
and Dan s subject in the words hinne **loh&ka jisraêl *saer h&
fX
-
lka me^cerces misrajim. He recognizes that officially there was only one
Yahweh, Aber was lag nher, als da Jahwe in der Frmmigkeit des Vol-
kes an der lokalen Vielgestaltigkeit teilnahm, die fr die kanaanische
Baalsreligion charakteristisch gewesen war? Da es nun einen Jahwe von
Bethel, einen von Dan, und womglich von Sichern, Jerusalem, Beerseba
usw. gab, und da es keineswegs gleichgltig war, an welchen dieser Jah-
wes man sich wandte? (p. 49). While the evidence from Kuntillet 'Ajrud
scarcely suffices to prove a theory of Polyjahwismus, s it is called by
Donner, it can be interpreted in such a way, and it can reasonably be
claimed that it offers some support for it.
We must not read too much into the inscriptions, but their use of the
phrases Yahweh of Samaria and Yahweh of Teman needs to be ex-
plained. The former phrase was probably written by someone from
Samaria who, while he did not believe in a multiplicity of deities named
Yahweh, thought it best to pray to Yahweh s he was worshipped in
Samaria. The latter probably associates Yahweh with Teman and the
southern region in general, not only because the connexion had a tradi-
tional background ( Hab 33), but because it was relevant to a journey in
the region to the south of Judah. He presumably worshipped Yahweh in
some place other than Teman, and the phrase Yahweh of Teman did
not denote a deity different from Yahweh of S amaria, or perhaps Yah-
weh of Jersualem or whatever it was, but the needs of the Situation led
him to recall the one Yahweh's traditional connexion with Teman when
he invoked a blessing on a friend.
III.
We must now consider the final element in the phrases Yahweh of
Samaria and his Asherah and Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah.
With them may be compared an eighth Century inscription from Khirbet
êl-Qom, 14km west of Hebron and 10km east-south-east of Lachish,
which has words that are read by A. Lemaire (pp. 597603) s brk . *rjhw
. Ijhwh . wmsrjh . l^srth . hws
f
lh (lines 1-3). Lemaire suggests that a
scribe has made a mistake and that the last few words should be read s
Ijhwh . wl*srth . msrjh . hws
f
lh.
s
The meaning would then be Beni soit
Uryahu par Yhwh et par son asherah; de ses ennemis, il l'a sauve.
What is meant by his Asherah? The word was understood by
Meshel in 1978 to mean cella or symbol, but Gilula's article argues that
the word never has that meaning in the Bible, and that it denotes the god-
dess Asherah or her symbol. Further, he infers from the inscription that
she was regarded s Yahweh's consort. His Interpretation of the inscrip-
tion is associated with his theory that the figure on the left of the drawing
on the jar is Yahweh, and that the middle figure is Asherah, but it is not
dependent on it. Meshel's article of 1979 modifies his earlier Statement
and recognizes that the goddess Asherah may be regarded s Yahweh's
consort - hence the question in the article's title - but he does not believe
such an understanding to be the only possibility (p. 31).
It would not be surprising if Yahweh were thought to have a wife in
some kinds of populr religion - or, indeed, in some forms of official
religion. The Old Testament contains polemic against Astarte and
Asherah, and the latter is mentioned in connexion, not only with an altar
of Baal (Jdc 625-30), but also with Yahweh's altar ( Dtn 1621), and is even
installed in the Jerusalem temple and has to be removed in a reformation
(I Reg 1513, II Reg 184, 21?, 234. 6. ?). There is no difficulty in supposing
8
According to Weinfeld (p. 280, n. 2), J. Naveh suggests the reading nsrj, my protector
where Lemaire reads wmsrjh.
that Asherah may have been the wife of Yahweh in such a syncretistic
cult, just s Athirat was the wife of El in the Ugaritic pantheon. Further,
there is the analogy of evidence at Elephantine in the fi ft h Century B.C.
that a Jew could swear, not only by jhw
3
//?
3
(if the text is rightly res-
tored) and the temple (or perhaps stele - msgd*),
9
but also by 'ntjhw
(AP 44, 3). W.F.Albright attempted in 1925 (pp. 92-7) to explain < nt in
this word and in
f
ntbjt*l (AP 22, 125) s no more than the providence [or
predestination] of God, and thus merely a hypostatization of a divine
quality, and a similar view was maintained by him in 1953 (p. 174),
though here in the form of Sign (of the Active Presence) of God or Will
of God (cp. 1957, p. 373). It is, however, difficult to separate
f
nt here
from the well-known goddess Anath, and R.Borger has argued that an
Accadian treaty of c. 676 B.C. between Esarhaddon of Assyria and Baal,
the king of Tyre, contains a reference to Anath-Bethel s a deity, and the
first element in the names at Elephantine cannot convincingly be explained
in the way suggested by Albright. In his book of 1968 (p. 197) Albright
refers to Borger's article and says that his own earlier views require mod-
ification today; it is not clear whether he has abandoned his earlier theo-
ry, but that is perhaps implied by his Statement that these Aramaic gods
appear at Elephantine s >Bethel< and >Anath-bethel<. The words
f
ntjhw
and
f
ntbjt*l remind us of W.W. Baudissin's discussion of *>smn
f
strt, and
it is probable that there were Jews at Elephantine in the fi ft h Century who
believed that their God had Anath s a consort. It would scarcely be sur-
prising if some Israelites four centuries earlier had believed that Asherah,
another goddess, was the wife of Yahweh.
There is, however, a difficulty in understanding his Asherah to be
the equivalent of his ( wife) Asherah. As was seen in section I above, the
Hebrew Bible nowhere attaches a pronominal suffix to a personal name,
and that fact is not altered by G. R. Driver's evidence for such a use of a
suffix in other Semitic languages. In view of what was said above about
the syntax of the phrases Yahweh of Samaria and Yahweh of Teman,
we should perhaps hesitate to be too dogmatic in stating what was not
possible in Hebrew, and we must be prepared to modify our opinions in
the light of new evidence. Nevertheless, the use of a suffix with a personal
name is not in accordance with Hebrew idiom s far s we know it, and it
is unwise to Interpret the newly-found inscriptions in such a way unless
9
J. Hoftijzer, Dictionnaire des inscriptions semitiques de Pouest, 1965, 160, follows
A. Cowley in understanding the word to mean Heu d'adoration, temple, but he gives the
word in other places the meaning objet servant adorer de permanente la divinite
a laquelle il est dedie, adoratoir ... dit p.e. d'une stele ... d'un autel, etc. E.G. Kraeling,
The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri, 1953, 91, questions whether the word means
temple at Elephantine. He thinks it possible that it means a stela or pillar, but notes
that it might be read s msgr\
there is no satisfactory alternative. If the writers had intended to refer to
Yahweh and his consort Asherah, we should have expected them to write
Ijhwh wl'srh >sth or the like (cp. Gen 12s. 11, 2014, IS am 119, 19n, etc.).
It is for that reason that Meshel (1979, p. 31) does not regard 'srth s a
proper name with a suffix. He suggests three other possibilities.
First, Meshel notes that, if Asherah had the generic meaning of a
female deity who was Yahweh's consort, then the possessive form could
have been used. It is presumably in this sense that he notes s a possible
translation his ( Yahweh's) consort (cp. Tsevat's argument, which was
considered in section I above). However, while the possibility of such a
generic sense cannot be excluded, there seems to be no evidence for it. In
the Old Testament, the word has the meaning described in the following
paragraph.
Second, he suggests that his Asherah may be an example of the
meaning an object, usually a tree, which symbolizes a deity. The word
^ser in the Old Testament is, indeed, often regarded by scholars s a
wooden object representing the goddess Asherah (see, for example,
W. L. Reed, The Asherah in the Old Testament, 1949). It is said to be
made of wood and can be cut down ( Jdc 625. 28.30, II Reg 2314) and burnt
( Jdc626, IIReg23i s), and the verb nat
f
, to plant, is used of it
(Dtn 1621). Several passages in the Mishna regard the Asherah s a tree
(Aboda Zara III 7-10; cp. Orla I 7-8, Sukka III 1-3, 5), and the LXX
usually renders it , grove, and has , trees, in Jes 17s,
279. J.C. de Moor, however, rightly points out that some of the evidence
does not suit a living tree: the Asherah is found under trees (I Reg 1423,
II Reg 1710), and it is made (
f
sh, I Regl 4i s, 1633, II Reg 1710, 213. 7); and
it may be added that it was set up (wjjssib^ II Reg 1710). Moreover,
II Reg 21 ? refers to p&s&l ha^ser, which suggests that it was an image
of a goddess - though, s Lemaire points out (p. 606, n. 55), the phrase
pourrait aussi designer une representation figuree (sculptee ou fondue)
d'un arbre sacre. It is, therefore, likely to have been some kind of woo-
den symbol of the goddess Asherah. This understanding of the word fits
the inscriptions from Kuntillet
f
Ajrud. People are blessed by Yahweh and
the wooden symbol of the goddess Asherah. If it was possible at Elephan-
tine to swear by the msgd* ( whatever precisely it may have been) s well
s by jhw and
f
ntjhw, there is no difficulty in supposing that blessings at
Kuntillet
f
Aj r ud may have been by the symbol of Asherah s well s by
Yahweh. We have seen that her symbol was sometimes associated with the
altar or temple of Yahweh, and so it could be called his Asherah. Yah-
weh, however, remains more important than the symbol of the goddess
associated with him, and that may be the reason why he alone is the sub-
ject of the following verbs in the *mrjw inscription (see p. 3 above).
Third, Meshel suggests s a possible meaning of Asherah a cella or
holy of holies (or shrine). This is the same s the only explanation that he
offered in 1978. A similar theory about the biblical evidence was advanced
by E. Lipinski in 1972, and that theory will now be examined.
Lipinski surveys the ancient Near Eastern evidence for the goddess
Athirat in several countries and languages. He denies, however, that the
Hebrew word **ser is ever used of her (pp. 111-16).
10
The two places
where the word seems to designate a goddess or her emblem are both
textually doubtful (p. 114). In Jdc3? the reading ha*sert is to be reject-
ed in favour of the variant ha
f
start
y
which is what Jdc2i3, 10o, and
IS am74, 1210 lead us to expect. In I Reg 1819 the words the four hun-
dred prophets of the Asherah are an Interpolation: these prophets play
no pari in the rest of the story, and the phrase is marked with an asterisk in
the Hexapla to indicate that it was not an original part of the LXX. The
genuine references to *ser in the Hebrew Bible are to be explained
differently, and Lipinski maintains that the word has two related meanings.
According to Lipinski, the fundamental meaning of Asherah is
place, and so it can be used in the Old Testament to denote a chapel or
shrine. This theory about the etymology is not new, for Albright's article
of 1925 (p. 100) suggests it, and it is accepted by de Moor. Lipinski,
however, maintains, not merely that this is the etymology of Asherah, but
that the word has this meaning in several places in the Bible. He compares
similar Accadian words which all designate shrines, chapels, sanc-
tuaries, and also Phoenician ^srt and
5
sr, Old Aramaic
3
srt, and later
Aramaic
3
M
3
(in the emphatic state) and Vr. The Old Testament speaks
of making and setting up (see above), building (wjjibn^ I Reg 1423), and
restoring (ufh&^mid, IIChr33i 9 - but does the verb mean restored?)
an Asherah. He explains wjjascem âet-p&s&l ha^ser *scer
f
as bb-
bjit ( II Reg 21 ?), where many have seen a reference to an image of
Asherah, s follows. Lipinski translates the words and he put in the tem-
ple the idol of the *ser that he had made, and suggests that the refer-
ence is to a shrine (^ser) containing an idol or emblem (p&s&l),
which the king ventured to transfer with its shrine to the temple of Yah-
weh (p. 113). Lipinski wrote before the inscriptions from Kuntillet
r
Aj-
rud were discovered, but his theory, no less than the theory that the
*sera was the wooden symbol of a goddess, suits them and is compa-
tible with a comparison between a blessing by Yahweh and his Asherah
and the oath in AP 44, 3, which was mentioned above.
Lipinski's other meaning for Asherah, which he finds in the oldest
biblical texts, Jdc 625-30 and Dtn 1621, s well s in several other places,
10
Lemaire (p. 603, n. 37) asks why, if Asherah was the name of a goddess in the Bible, it
does not appear in Hebrew or Phoenician and Punic names. It may be observed, however,
that, although F. Grndahl, Die Personennamen der Texte aus Ugarit, 1967, 316, records
the name abdi-a-sar-ti in syllabic cuneiform at Ugarit, no examples of *atrt in personal
names in alphabetic cuneiform are recorded. Yet the religious texts show that she was an
important goddess.
is a woody spot, a Canaanite sacred grove (p. 112 - so too Albright,
1968, p. 166), and we have seen that this understanding has the support of
the LXX (cp. the Mishnaic belief that it was a sacred tree). The explana-
tion suits the verbs used of an Asherah in several passages ( planting, cut-
ting, burning), and Lipinski advances an argument ( which will be consid-
ered below) that Jdc 6 25-30 refers to a grove, and not a single wooden
symbol of a goddess. He connects this meaning of ^ser with the other by
writing of a shrine, which can be a sacred grove or a chapel (p. 114).
Lipinski's article is valuable for the ancient Near Eastern material
that he collects, and for his characteristically learned and interesting dis-
cussion of it. Nevertheless, his evaluation of the Old Testament material is
open to question. In the first place, it may be asked whether his Interpreta-
tion of II Reg 21 ? is the most probable. If the writer wished to say that
Manasseh transferred an idol or emblem ... with its shrine to the tem-
ple, why did he not write ^cet-happcesael w
e
*&t-ha^
a
ser, instead of *&t-
pazscel ha^ser? IIChr33? substituted hss&mcel for ha*
a
ser, and ap-
parently did not understand the latter word in the way favoured by Lipins-
ki. It seems natural to translate paesael ha^ser the image of the
Asherah, and p&scel is used in the construct state before a word or words
denoting what is represented by it in Dtn4i6. 23. 25, s well s in
II Chr33?; otherwise ( apart from textually dubious occurrences in Dtn 5s,
Jdc 18is) it is used with mik in Jdc 18 31 to indicate that Micah was the
owner of the image (cp. the use with the suffix in Jes 4417, 45 20, 48s), but
that is not the same s the meaning suggested by Lipinski for II Reg 21?.
Further, the related noun p
e
si/ is used in the construct plural before the
word gods, i.e. before the beings represented by the images, in Dtn 725,
123, Jes 219 ( s well s before a word denoting the substance of which the
images are made in Jes 3022; and the noun can also be used with a suffix
denoting ownership). While Lipinski's understanding of II Reg 21? is not
impossible, it does not seem the most likely. Secondly, it is possible to
off er a different Interpretation of the evidence of Jdc 6 25-30, where Lipin-
ski believes that the *ser consisted at least of several trees. Not only
the text speaks explicitly of >the trees (!) of the >aser< , but these trees had
to furni sh fuel for the sacrifice of a bullock (v. 26) and Gideon needed ten
of his servants to cut them down ( v. 27) (p. 112). In the phrase
e
*se
ha^ser (Jdc 620), however, the plural of
f
es may denote simply pieces
of wood, s in some other places in the Hebrew Bible, and not trees.
Nor need the fact that the Asherah was used s fuel for the fire under the
sacrifice imply that it supplied all the fuel and that no other wood was
used. Further, Gideon's servants were not employed solely in cutting down
the Asherah: they also had to demolish the altar of Baal, build a new altar,
and look after the bull - quite apart from the possible need for a body-
guard if anyone discovered what was happening. Thirdly, the verbs used
with an Asherah s the object are compatible with the theory that it was a
wooden symbol of a goddess. Even the verb wjjibn in I Reg 1423 is not a
difficulty. It may have been chosen primarily because it is appropriate to
the first two objects bamt mssebt (cp. Lemaire, p. 606), and it is used
in the qal in Gen 222 of fashioning a rib into a woman, and in the niph
f
al
of people being established or built up in Gen 162, 3(h, Jer 12ie, Mal 3 is,
Hi2223, and could scarcely be said to be impossible with a wooden Sym-
bol of a goddess s its object. Fourthly, it may be doubted whether Lipins-
ki is right to distinguish the Asherah in II Reg 184, 2314. is from the
Asherah in I Reg 1423, II Reg 1710, and to maintain that the former verses
refer to a grove and the latter to a shrine (p. 112). All the verses contain a
polemic against bamot, massebt, and ^ser or ^serim, and it is natural
to suppose that the Asherah has the same meaning in each verse. The
former group of verses refers to the Asherah being cut down and Lipinski
agrees that a shrine is not meant, and the latter says that the Asherah was
found under a tree and teils against the view that it was a grove. If both
groups of verses are taken together, they suggest that the Asherah was
neither a shrine nor a grove. Fifthly , Lipinski does not consider II Reg 23 4,
which speaks of kl-hkkelim ha^sjim lbbfcl w*la**ser Fkol fba*
hssamajim. Here the Asherah is mentioned between the god Baal and the
astral deities, and it is more natural to understand the Asherah to be per-
sonal and a goddess (or at least the symbol of a goddess) than a
shrine.
It is thus doubtful whether ^ser is used in the Hebrew ible to
denote a sacred place, whether a grove or a shrine, although similar words
in Accadian, Phoenician and Aramaic have such a meaning. It is more
likely that it denotes a wooden object representing the goddess Asherah,
the same goddess who plays a prominent part in Ugaritic religious texts. It
is possible, of course, that the word in the inscriptions from Kuntillet
'Ajrud and Khirbet êl-Qom is used in a different sense and that it there
denotes a shrine. It is even possible that it is used s a loan-word, and
Phoenician inscriptions have been found at the former site (Meshel, 1978).
It seems best, however, to Interpret these Hebrew inscriptions in the light
of known Hebrew usage, rather than to appeal to cognate languages and
to postulate a meaning not established in the Old Testament.
What do the inscriptions from Kunt i l l et
f
Ajrud add to the knowledge
of the Asherah that we can acquire from the Old Testament? They con-
firm what we already knew, namely, that the Asherah was associated with
some forms of the cult of Yahweh. The fact that the Asherah is singled out
from among other cultic objects to be used alongside the name of Yahweh
in blessings at Kuntillet 'Ajrud underlines its special importance in at least
one form of populr Yahwism, but otherwise adds nothing of substance to
our previous knowledge. The new evidence does not prove that Asherah
was regarded in some circles s the consort of Yahweh, though it perhaps
strengthens the case for such a view.
IV.
The conclusions of the present article will now be summarized:
1. The phrases jhwh smrn, Yahweh of S amaria, and jhwh tmn, Yah-
weh of Teman, show that it is possible to understand jhwh fba*t s
Yahweh of fba*t, whether it is thought that the tetragrammaton is in
the construct state or that there is an ellipse of ^lohe between the two
words.
2. The phrase Yahweh of S amaria was probably used by someone who
normally shared in the cult in that city, and it supports the theory that,
though the unity of Yahweh may not have been denied, his cult took a
variety of local forms. It does not prove, though it perhaps favours, the
view that different manifestations of Yahweh were associted with such
differences in the cult.
3. The phrase Yahweh of Teman is to be explained differently . The
blessing that uses his name invokes the protection of the God who comes
from the southern region (cp. Hab 33) on a traveller in the south.
4. The Asherah invoked in the phrase Yahweh and his Asherah is pro-
bably the wooden symbol of the goddess of that name, whose association
with the cult of Yahweh is attested in the Old Testament. She may have
been regarded in some circles s the consort of Yahweh, but the inscrip-
tions do not offer direct proof of such a relationship.
List of principal works cited
W. F. Albright, The evolution of the West-Semitic divinity 'An-'Anat-'Att, AJSL 41
(1924-5), 73-101.
Idem, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 1953
3
.
Idem, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 1957
2
.
Idem, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, 1968.
AP = A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., 1923.
Arad = Y. Aharoni, Arad Inscriptions ( Hebrew), 1975.
W.W. Baudissin, Adonis und Esmun, 1911.
R. Borger, Anath-Bethel, VT 7 (1957), 102-4.
F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 1973.
CTA = A. Herdner, Corpus des tablettes en cuneiformes alphabetiques decouvertes Ras
S hamra-Ugarit de 1929 1939, 1963.
L. Delekat, Yah-Yahwae und die alttestamentlichen Gottesnamenkorrekturen, in G. Jere-
mias et al. ( ed.), Tradition und Glaube. Das frhe Christentum in seiner Umwelt. Fest-
gabe fr K. G. Khn, 1971, 23-75.
H. Donner, Hier sind deine Gtter, Israel!, in H. Gese and H. P. Rger (ed.), Wort und
Geschichte. Festschrift fr K. Elliger, 1973, 45-50.
G. R. Driver, Reflections on recent articles, JBL 73 (1954), 125-36.
W. J. Fulco, The Canaanite God Resep, 1976.
M. Gi l ul a, To Yahweh Shomron and his Asherah (Hebrew), Shnaton 3 (1978-9), 129-37.
20 Rainer Albertz, Jer 2-6 und die Frhzeitverkiindigung Jeremias
G.K. = A.E. Cowley (ed.), Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar s Edited and Enlarged by the late
E. Kautzsch, 1910
2
( = 1909
28
of the German original).
P. Joon, Grammaire de Fhebreu biblique, 1947
2
.
KAI = H. Donner and W. Roll ig, Kanaanische und aramische Inschriften, 1962-4.
KTU = M. Dietrich, O. Loretz, and J. Sanmar'n, Die keilalphabetischen Texte aus Ugarit,
1976.
M. Lambert, Traite de grammaire hebraique, 1946
2
.
A. Lemaire, Les inscriptions de Khirbet el-Qom et PAsherah de Yhwh, RB84 (1977),
595-608.
E. Lipinski, The goddess Atirat in ancient Arabia, in Babylon, and in Ugarit, Orientalia
Lovaniensia Periodica 3 (1972), 101-19.
Z. Meshel, Kuntillet 'Ajrud. A Religious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Monarchy on
the Border of Sinai, The Israel Museum, Catalogue no. 175, 1978.
Idem, Did Yahweh have a consort? The new religious inscriptions from the Sinai, Biblical
Archaeological Review 5 (1979), 24-35.
J.C. de Moor, Art. +ser, ThW AT I, 1973, 472-81.
J.Obermann, The divine name YHWH in the light of recent discoveries, JBL 68 (1949),
301-23.
M. Rose, Jahwe. Zum Streit um den alttestamentlichen Gottesnamen, 1978.
M. Tsevat, Studies in the Book of Samuel IV, HUCA 36 (1965), 49-58.
UT = C.H. Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook, 1965.
M. Weinfeld, discussion of Z. MeshePs two publications of 1978 and 1979 (Hebrew), Shna-
ton 4 (1980), 280-4.
The phrases Ijhwh smrn wl'srth and jhwh tmn w^srth in the Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscrip-
tions confirm the opinion that jhwh fba*t may mean Yahweh of fba*ot. The phrase
Yahweh of Samaria supports the view that the cult of Yahweh took a variety of local
forms, but Yahweh of Teman was probably invoked for protection in the region south of
Judah. The Asherah is probably the wooden symbol of the goddess, but the inscriptions do
not prove that she was regarded s the consort of Yahweh.
Jer 2-6 und die Frhzeitverkndigung Jeremias
Von Rainer Albertz
( Ruprccht-Karls-Universitt Heidelberg)
1. Das Problem
Die Frhzeitverkndigung des Propheten Jeremia gehrt nach wie vor
zu den nur unbefriedigend gelsten Problemen alttestamentlicher For-
schung. Weder hinsichtlich ihrer zeitlichen Ansetzung, noch ihres Inhalts
und ihres Adressaten ist es bisher zu einer konsensfhigen Klrung gekom-
0044-2526/82/0941-0002 $ 2.00
Copyright by Walter de Gruyter & Co.

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New Light on Israelite Religion: The Implications of the

Inscriptions from Kuntillet 'Ajrud

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