Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Patrina" <patrina AT bestmail.us>]

On Sun, 6 Jun 2004 18:20:23 -0700 (PDT), "Noam Eitan" <bhebrew AT yahoo.com>
said:

> Noam Eitan, Brooklyn, NY [who, for the sake of clarification, worships
> Ashera, the Great Queen of Heaven, as well as our LORD, Ba’al (as well as
> his dear consort Anat - also my sister’s name) and a number of other
> deities, and who wails and mourns at  the end of spring the god Tammuz,
> the faithful son of the fresh waters which come from the earth.]

LOL.  Well Noam, maybe you're the person to ask whether Ashtoret of
Tzidon (1 Kings 11:5) is the same as Ashera, Queen of Heaven?  I think
there's a word play on the fertility goddess in Deut 7:13, 28:4, 18, and
51, where "ashterot tzon" is translated as 'flocks of your sheep and
goats' in my Stone edition Tanach.  As far as I can tell, this occurs
nowhere else, only in Deuteronomy in connection with fertility.  As is
fitting for an all-powerful deity, YHWH subsumes the attributes of the
surrounding deities through the pen of the the Deuteronomist in this
example (I think).

Patrina Nuske Small
Adelaide, South Australia

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