T he J ewish Q uarierly R eview , LXXXI, N os.

1-2 (July October, 1990) 207 212

OLYAN’S A SH E R A H AND THE CULT OF YAHW EH IN ISR A E L •

The monograph under review is an Minvestigation of the evidence pertaining to

Asherah and her cult-symbol in the monarchic era” (p. xiii). Chapter I examines
the Asherah and her cult-symbol in the Bible. Chapter 2 deals with epigraphic
sources pertaining to the cult. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between Baal,
Asherah, El, and Yahweh in the first millennium. Chapter 4 is devoted to a study
of the gods Baal $am£m and Baal Addir meant to refute Oden’s contention that
they were identical with El. The book concludes with a bibliography and indexes
of passages and authors.
According to the authors of the Bible, Yahweh was the only legitimate object of
Israelite worship. All other gods were to be abominated, including the ancient
Wcst-Scmitic goddess Asherah, and the homonymous object “the asherah,” or
“sacred pole," generally thought, but never demonstrated, to have had some
relation to the cult of the goddess. Both Asherah and the 5asherah are sometimes
(e.g., Judg 6:25-30, 2 Kings 18:19) associated by the biblical writers with Baal, the
ancient Syrian god of storms and fertility. Nowhere in the extant biblical texts do
the writers allow that Asherah or the Jasherah might be a legitimate component of
the cult of Yahweh.
As amply documented by Olyan, the biblical material relating to Asherah and
the 'asherah have been restudied frequently in the last decade in the light of newly
discovered inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai and Khirbet cl-Qdm on
the West Bank of the Jordan.*1These texts, dating from the ninth/eighth centuries
b c e ., in what were then ancient Judah and Israel, refer to Yahweh in association

with something that appears relevant to the biblical A/asherah. Thus one inscrip­
tion reads: njYWKVl pntP mn'V 03HX rD*13. Another text refers similarly to
rtmtPIO Jon m n \ In the case of the Yahweh epithets, it is now clear that
the combinations are to be interpreted respectively as "Yahweh-Samaria” and
“Yahwch-Tcman." The interpretation of the form niVHPX, however, is disputed.
According to the maximalist interpretation, the writers of these inscriptions
associated Yahweh with the goddess Asherah, so that one should translate, “I
bless you by / commend you to / Yahweh-Samaria and his Asherah.” In general,
scholars have objected to this interpretation because it requires the addition of a
suffix to a proper name, a grammatical anomaly in Hebrew (p. 31). Another line

* Saul M. Olyan. Asherah and the Cult o f Yahweh in Israel. SBL Monograph
Series 34; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988. Pp. xiv + 100.
1 Much of the documentation in Olyan's monograph was already available in
J. Day, “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature," JBL
105(1986): 385-408.
208 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

of interpretation maintains that mtPK had by the time of these inscriptions

become a common noun meaning “goddess” (cf. Judg 3:7), so that one might
translate “Yahweh-Samaria / Teman and its goddess”; or with less likelihood, as
noted by Olyan (p. 26), “divine consort,” so that one might translate “Yahwch-
Samaria and his divine-consort.” Some scholars connect the term with Akkadian
aiirtu,1*"temple," an interpretation which renders the inscriptions irrelevant to
biblical Ashcrah / ’asherah. Olyan himself follows those scholars who regard the
form as a suffixed common noun meaning "his / its cultic pillar.” These last two
interpretations, while grammatically unobjectionable, do not appear to have
formal parallels. Hence Olyan (p. 31) adduces no examples to controvert Dever's
objection that it would not be logical for “an inanimate object or even a sanc­
tuary" to be “mentioned on an equal footing with the principal deity as an object
of blessing."
In the present state of the evidence, the most likely interpretations of the
inscriptions are those which are consistent with accepted grammatical rules of
Hebrew and which commend themselves on formal grounds. These conditions are
best met by taking njlIVR as an alternative form of the name of the goddess
Asherah, such as “Asheratah"’ or "Ashirtah.”4*If so, we may compare the phrases
in question with letter-formulae’ in which senders commend their recipients to the
various gods. One particularly interesting example is the Aramaic nrrV j r o ia
ainVl, "I bless you by / commend you to / Yahu and Khnub” (Cl-G Ost 70
A 2-3).‘
As we have seen, Olyan understands nnnwx of the Hebrew inscriptions as a
reference to the Jasherah, the cultic pillar which he associates with the goddess,

1 The term is wcll-attcstcd in Akkadian. Sec CAD A /II, 436-39; For borrow­
ings into Aramaic and Phoenician see KAI 19:4; S f l B: 11.
J So Z. Zeviu, “The Khirbet el-Q6m Inscription Mentioning a Goddess,”
BASOR 255(1984): 45-46.
4 See. A. Angerstorfer, “Asherah als ‘consort of Jahwc’ Oder Ashirtah?"
Bibtische Notizen 17 (1982): 7-16.
* See A. Lemaire, "Les Inscriptions dc Khirbet cl Qdm ct l'Ashcrah dc Yhwh,”
Revue biblique 84 (1977): 602; Cf. D. Pardee, “The ‘Epistolary Perfect' in Hebrew
Letters,” Biblische Notizen 22 (1983): 35, n. 9.
4 See J. Fitzmyer, A Wandering Aramean: Collected Essays (Chico, CA,
1979), p. 192. Cf. further the Hcrmopolis form om onn 'bx baVi JDX byab iro n s,
“I commend you to Baal Saphon and all the gods of Tahpanhes.” See P. Dion,
“A Tentative Classification of Aramaic Letter Types,” SBLSP (1977): 420. Note
that the name Baal-Saphon, literally “Baal-North,” provides a formal parallel to
Yahweh-Teman, literally “Yahweh-South.” Our translation follows Pardee, who
explains the epistolary formula V in a attested in the Hebrew letters from Arad as
"pronounce a blessing in favor of someone to a deity,” much like Akkadian
karabu. Sec D. Pardee in D. Pardee and S. D. Sperling, Handbook o f Ancient
Hebrew Letters (Chico, 1982), p. 49; idem, BN 22 (1983): 35-36.
 OLYAN’S A S H E R A H —SPERLING 209

and which is condemned in the Bible, rather than to the goddess herself. He
further maintains that the biblical opposition to iTWK was essentially directed
against the cultic pillar. Following a suggestion by A. Lemaire, Olyan devotes
most of his study to the thesis that the association of the Canaanite Baal with the
goddess Asherah in the Hebrew Bible was a polemical creation of the Dcute-
ronomist. In the Canaanite religion of the second millennium bce Asherah had
been the consort of El. According to Olyan, Asherah never transferred her
affection to Baal in Canaanite myth and cult of the first millennium. Unfor­
tunately, most contemporary scholarship has accepted the biblical association of
Baal and Asherah as an accurate depiction of first-millennium developments in
Canaanite religion. In fact, argues Olyan, Canaanite religion was extremely con­
servative. There is no extrabiblical evidence to support the biblical view that
Asherah had become Baal’s consort. In actuality, once the Israelite god Yahwch
had become identified with Canaanite El, it was only natural for him to appro­
priate Asherah, El's consort (p. xiv). Accordingly, for most Israelites, Asherah
and her pillar, the 5asherah, became legitimate components of the cult of Yahwch,
as shown by the new inscriptional finds. Olyan, following Lemaire, argues that by
maligning Asherah as Baal’s consort, the Deuteronomists dclegitimated the cultic
object bearing her name, just as they maligned such ancient sacred objects as the
bron/e serpent (2 Kings 18:4).
Olyan is certainly correct in echoing the views of medieval Jewish exegetes,
such as Rashi, that the 3asherah was connected by many Israelites with the cult of
Yahweh. It would have made as little sense for Dcut 16:21 to prohibit anyone
from planting or setting up an 'asherah, defined as “any tree,” adjacent to a
Yahweh altar, if such was not the practice (cf. Josh 24:26). as it would have been
to prohibit the erection of a stone pillar if that were not an actual practice (Deut
16:22; cf. Gen 28:18, 22). His other arguments, however, are less convincing. Thus
Olyan operates with the questionable premise that because in Israel the rivalry
between Yahwch and Baal was intense during the divided monarchy, "it would
make little sense for the two gods to share the same consort” (p. xiv; cf. p. 38).
Therefore, if Asherah was associated with Yahwch. she could not be associated
with Baal, and vice versa. One might respond that, on the contrary, those
Israelites who had a preference for Yahweh over Baal might have insisted on
associating Asherah with their male favorite, while Baalists retained Asherah as
Baal’s associate. Such an insistence would have been encouraged by competing
religious and political institutions. It will be recalled that in Mesopotamia Marduk
was usually associated with the goddess Sarpanitum while the goddess Ishtar had
Tammuz for her consort. Nonetheless, Marduk and Ishtar were also associated
romantically with each other in Babylonian myth and cult.7 Olyan’s initial faulty

7 See W. Lambert, “The Problem of the Love Lyrics,” in H. Goedicke and

J. Roberts, eds., Unity and Diversity (Baltimore, 1975), pp. 98 135.
210 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

premise obligates him to spend all of Chapter 3 attempting to demonstrate that in

the second millennium Baal and Ashcrah were always enemies, and that given the
conservatism of Canaanite religion the situation did not change in the first
millennium. With regard to the second millennium, the facts support Olyan only
in part. The Ugaritic myths adduced by Olyan do not provide a consistent picture
of the relationship between Baal and Asherah. Although some texts (CTA 6)
show great hostility between Baal and Asherah and her children, others depict
Asherah interceding with El in behalf of Baal, and then later show Baal entertain­
ing his “brothers," the seventy sons of Asherah (CTA 4:cols. iv-vi).**
As far as the first millennium is concerned, Olyan is in a double bind. In my
opinion, those scholars are correct who maintain that only the Hebrew Bible and
the newly discovered Hebrew inscriptions provide sure attestations of the goddess
Asherah in first-millennium Canaanite texts.* Because Olyan maintains that the
inscriptions refer only to the asherah and not to the goddess, he has even less
material available for contrasting the biblical depictions of Asherah and her
consort with actual Canaanite practice. (If she was worshiped in the first millen­
nium under other names, as Olyan and others argue, that in itself undercuts
claims of conservatism.) Accordingly, Olyan accepts the view of Cross that
Ashcrah was worshiped in the first millennium under the name of Tannit.10 That
identification creates another difficulty for his thesis. The regular epithet of Tannit
in Punic texts was pane ha'l “hypostatir.ed face (or presence) of ba l ” (p. 59), If
so, Tannit-Asherah was closely connected with Baal in the first millennium
outside of the Hebrew Bible. Aware of this difficulty, Olyan (ibid.) states: “We are
assuming that the hacl of this epithet is Baal Hamon, "a god considered by many
scholars to be an El rather than a Baal deity.” But even if Olyan is correct about
the identity of Baal Hamon," he is not out of the woods. First, what grounds arc
there for his assumption other than its necessity for his thesis? Indeed, the many
inscriptions in which Baal-Hamon is accompanied by Tannit-face-of-Baal rather
than by Tannit-face-of-Baal-Hamon suggest strongly that Tannit was the hypo­

* Olyan (p. 46) attempts to find hostility between Baal and Asherah in CTA
4:ii: 24-26 by restoring the partially broken text and translating, “As for my
adversaries (i.e., Baal and Anat), have they struck my children? Have they made
an end of the band of my kin?” A more likely rendition is, “ Have my children
battled each other, or the band of my kinsmen fought one another?” See M. Held,
“Rhetorical Questions in Ugaritic and Biblical Hebrew,” Eretz Israel 9 (1969): 77.
* Asherah is not mentioned in the first plaque from Arslan Tash. See Day, JBL
105:395. For references to Aramaic attestations sec ibid., 397.
10 More likely to be vocalized “Tinnit,” as noted most recently by Day, JBL
106:396; See KAI 175:2, 176:1-3. For convenience, Olyan’s vocalization is
retained in this review.
" See the caveats of Day. JBL 106:396-97.
 OLYAN’S A S H E R A H - S P E R L M G 211

stasis of a Baal other than Baal-Hamon.12 Second, in his subsequent challenge of

Oden’s claim that the well-attested DDU? *?y3, “Lord of Heaven," is a Baal deity
rather than an El deity, Olyan (p. 64) cites a god list from KAI 78, which further
undermines the assumption that Baal in Tannit’s epithet is Baal-Hamon. The text
reads: ]on l7ya‘? pxV i Vid |D nin*? nanVi dob? pxV, “To the Master, the
Lord (Baal) of heaven, and to the Mistress, to Tannit-Face-of the-Lord (Baal),
and to the Master Baal Hamon.” If Olyan is correct that, contra Oden, the Lord
of Heaven (DOB? bP3) is a Baal deity and that Tannit is the first-millennium name
of Asherah, then the most natural reading of the list offers three Baal hypostases,
including Tannit (=Asherah).
To prove Lemaire’s thesis that in the Bible anti-^j/icra/? polemic “is restricted
to the Deuteronomistic History or to materials which betray the influence of
Deuteronomistic language and theology" (p. 3; cf. p. 14), Olyan must show that
there arc no anti -'asherah passages independent of Deuteronomy and the Deute-
ronomic school. Inasmuch as similarity of diction is a surer sign of close relation­
ship than similarity of theology, Olyan’s case would be strengthened if he were to
demonstrate the specific linguistic influence of Deuteronomy on the passages in
question.
As examples of Olyan’s approach we turn to his study of the four passages in
the prophetic corpus which mention the Jasherah, from which he concludes that
all show “either Deuteronomistic influence or provenance" (p. 14). Thus, because
Isa 17:7-8 ends awkwardly with the phrase “sacred poles and incense altars," the
text indicates “a later editorial gloss on the te x t.. . certainly of Deuteronomistic
provenance" (p. 15). Now, while these words make for an awkward conclusion to
the verse, the word for “incense altar" (jan) is unaltesied in Deuteronomy. The
term is attested, however, in Isa 27:9 in the fuller expression cmBfK im p’ xb
traom , “The sacred poles and incense altars shall stand no longer." Rather than
regard the “sacred poles and incense altars” as a gloss in Isa 17:8, we would be
better advised to restore the verbal phrase lOlp’ X*?, thus providing Isa 17:8 and
27:9 with the identical conclusion. As for Isa 27:9 itself, Olyan does not even
attempt to demonstrate linguistic connections with the Deuteronomistic school.
Instead, we learn that “the concerns of this passage are close to those of the
Deuteronomistic school (altars, wherahs, guilt/sin of Jacob),” and that “the
relationship of the school of Second Isaiah and the Deuteronomistic school needs
to be explored in more depth” (p. 16).
There is a similar difficulty with the alleged Deuteronomistic provenance of the
pericope in Micah 5:9-14. It is significant that the terms Din, “smash,” and 7JIDD,

12 For references to Tannit and Baal Hamon see the indexes in K A I III, 57, 59.
In K A I 137:1 Tannit-face-of-Baa! follows Baal sans Hamon. According to Olyan
(p. 47, n. 35), Baal Hamon is intended. Cf. further S. Harris, A Grammar o f the
Phoenician Language (New Haven, 1936), p. 156, s.v. tnt.
212 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW

“fortress,” do not appear in Deuteronomy. The only convincing example of

Deuteronomistic language in the four passages is Jcr 17:2.
Despite the strictures expressed here, the monograph remains a serious scholarly
effort from which readers may learn much. There are some minor inaccuracies.
Thus the meaning of Ugaritic Vtf is far from “unclear” (p. 45). The vocable is
surely related to Akkadian enSSu “become weak," said of sinews, exactly as in the
Ugaritic passage discussed by Olyan.'3 Similarly, one wonders what purpose is
served (ibid.) by comparing Ugaritic fr, “back," with the Hebrew words for
“noon” and “roof,” rather than with Amarna zufjru, Akkadian seru, and Arabic
zahr, all of which mean “back."1314

Hebrew Union Collcgc-Jewish Institute of Religion, S. D avid S perling

New York

13 See M. Held, "Studies in comparative Semitic Lexicography,” Assyriologicat

Studies 16(1965). 405.
14 See Held, ibid.