Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 05/03/2005 21:48, Yitzhak Sapir wrote:

> ...  Maybe
> the Yahwist - traditionally a source written in the "South" after the
> division of the
> Monarchy and before the Assyrian conquest - wrote J at Kuntillet
> Ajrud.  ...  All of this is rather indirect, but I think
> it gives enough
> basis to argue that perhaps Kuntillet Ajrud was the home of the Yahwist.  
> Would
> we claim that the Yahwist's view of Yahweh was "odd and aberrant"?
>
>  
There is something very strange about your method of arguing here. You 
start with a hypothesis that "perhaps Kuntillet Ajrud was the home of 
the Yahwist", and give some very circumstantial evidence why this might 
be possible. But then you look at the evidence which should immediately 
rule out this hypothesis, the clear fact that the concept of Yahweh 
having a consort Asherah is entirely repugnant to the authors of every 
strand of the Pentateuch, but you don't allow this to be evidence 
against your hypothesis. Rather, you argue from your unproved hypothesis 
to a need to revise the evidence of the actual text supposedly written 
by the Yahwist.

> So if we strike out the part about the establishment, what we get is: "some 
> folk
> in some parts of Israel thought that Yahweh had a consort".  That's
> not much, but
> it's perhaps all we can say.
>  

No, we can't say this much, because Kuntillet Ajrud was not in the land 
of Israel, or at best on its borders, and there is no evidence that the 
worshippers there were Israelites. They could well have been Edomites or 
similar who had grafted the Israelite divine name on to their own 
polytheistic beliefs.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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