Abstract
The article offers a panoramic overview of goddesses attested in the Southern Levant, that is within the cultural horizon of ancient Israelite and Judahite religion\s. Its main premise is that ancient gods and goddesses reflect socially significant functions, and that they were conceived along both sociomorphic and anthropomorphic models. Whereas earlier models largely based on the biblical record stressed the exceptionality of Israel’s god, more recent research has relocated Yahweh within the larger context of ancient Southern Levantine societies and religious trends. Currently available epigraphic and visual evidence points to the worship of a goddess Asherah alongside Yahweh, the major male deity in ancient (pre-exilic) Israel and Judah. During the latter half of the first millennium BCE, various of elite groups brought Yahweh into an increasingly hostile stance against (his) Asherah and other Levantine goddesses, a process that the historian must explain in strictly socio-historical terms. It resulted in various exclusivist, partial and often one-sided views of the deity, not least with regard to gender issues, views which later Judaism, Christianity and Islam were often hard-pressed to compensate and which have profoundly influenced the way “God” is imagined and figured in the Western imaginary until this day.
Uehlinger, Christoph