Abstract
Introduction
Ancient Near Eastern tradition—from which the early Israelite religion is believed to have emerged—produced a rich body of myths in which divine succession and family structures played a central role in maintaining cosmic order. Texts from Ugarit, Mesopotamia, and Egypt reveal pantheons headed by High Gods who delegated authority to their progeny through complex familial networks. Biblical texts and archeological finds suggest that the early Israelite religion, Yahwism, emerged from within this cultural and theological milieu. Many examinations of Yahweh's rise to supremacy—such as those by Cross1, Smith2, and Day3—treat his divinity as a monolatrous certainty, proposing that Yahweh gradually subsumed the high god El and that other gods were redacted or reinterpreted within an emerging monotheistic framework. However, this view risks overlooking both textual and material hints that suggest a more nuanced genealogy informed by the gods that the Israelite god eventually replaced.
This paper adopts an interdisciplinary approach, utilising comparative mythology, textual criticism, archaeological hermeneutics, and constructive synthesis to trace a potential maternal link between Asherah and Yahweh. It draws on Ugaritic inscriptions, biblical texts, and archaeological artifacts to explore familial motifs within ancient Near Eastern divine council myths. Particular attention is given to textual variants—notably the Septuagint and Dead Sea Scrolls—that may preserve earlier theological strata. These sources, often analysed in isolation, may collectively preserve echoes of a divine genealogy in which Yahweh was not initially conceived as the supreme god, but as a son within a broader regional pantheon.
By situating Yahweh within patterns of divine succession and maternal iconography—symbols and images associated with fertility, childbirth, and nursing—this paper argues that some early Israelite traditions may have imagined him as the son of El and Asherah, rather than as an eternal and sourceless sovereign. This argument will develop through a comparative reading of mythological frameworks, biblical passages, and archaeological inscriptions.
Mythic Origins and Divine Parentage
Divine councils, typically governed by a patriarchal high god, appear with notable consistency across the mythic traditions of the ancient Near East. These councils served not only symbolic functions, but cosmological roles such as overseeing fertility or weather, and judicial roles such as mediating disputes or enforcing divine law, within their mythic frameworks (Smith 2002). From El in the Ugaritic pantheon to Anu in Mesopotamia and Osiris in Egypt, myths of divine kings, their consorts, and the eventual successions by their sons recur throughout the region. It is from within this cultural milieu that Yahwism, the early Israelite religion, emerged.
In Ugaritic myth, the high god, El, ruled as the king of the gods. El was given a variety of epithets in mythic writing, including: ṯr il (Bull-El), ʾil milk (El the King), and, as noted by Mark S. Smith, ’l wʽlyn (El Elyon, El the Most High) (2002, 34). The children of El and his consort, Asherah,—traditionally numbered as seventy—populated the Canaanite pantheon, an assembly sometimes referred to by the plural ʾl-h-m (Elohim) (KTU 1.4 VI 46). This divine genealogy—centered on the paternal authority of El and the maternal fecundity of Asherah—offers a compelling lens through which to view how the early Israelite conception of Yahweh, his role, and the ‘Elohim’ may have evolved from within this inherited mythological framework.
The Ba'al Cycle provides further insight into divine succession frameworks in Canaanite mythological tradition. KTU 1.4 IV sees Ba'al's quest for kingship hinge not on his own strength or martial prowess, but on securing El's favour through the intervention of Asherah (Athirat). Asherah's journey to El, and her mediation on Ba'als behalf, frames her not as a passive consort but a powerful matriarchal figure; one whose endorsement helps facilitate the transfer of divine rule. This episode underscores a broader pattern in ancient Near Eastern myth: the authority of male deities is often legitimised within familial frameworks, and mother deities such as Asherah are central to that process. In this light, biblical portrayals of Yahweh’s elevation—particularly those emphasizing inheritance and succession—may preserve echoes of a similar model.
Among the most striking archaeological artifacts from the early Israelites are the inscriptions from Kuntillet ʿAjrūd, an eighth-century BCE site in northeastern Sinai. Two inscriptions reference “Yahweh [...] and his Asherah”4, a phrase typically interpreted as referring to either a divine consort (Stavrakopoulou 2021) or a cultic object associated with Yahwistic worship (Keel and Uehlinger 1998). Yet this binary may obscure a third, less-examined possibility. If the pronominal suffix (“his”) is not original to the text—as Hess argues5, noting that the evidence supports its absence—then “Yahweh and Asherah” may signify not possession or proximity, but lineage. As Margaret Barker has proposed in her broader work on temple theology—and as this essay will further explore—Asherah may not have been Yahweh's consort or cultic symbol, but rather figured in some traditions as his mother.
Even if the pronominal suffix is present in the Kuntillet ʿAjrūd inscriptions, the broader context still supports the possibility that Asherah was regarded as Yahweh's mother-deity. If the reference is to a cultic object, as some scholars suggest, it remains unclear why Yahweh is being associated with the symbol of another deity—unless that object reflected reverence or subordination. Moreover, the inscriptions date to a period before the consolidation of Yahweh with El is thought to have been completed. It would therefore be premature to assume Yahweh had already taken on the roles and relationships of the Most High. Taken together, these factors suggest that even a possessive suffix might indicate a symbolic or inherited relationship which is consistent with Asherah's traditional role as the mother of the gods.
Asherah in the Archaeological Record
This textual ambiguity gains further dimension from the archaeological record, particularly in the widespread discovery of small clay figurines associated with the goddess Asherah.
(Figure 1. Please replace with info.)
Figure 1, a 13th century BCE clay figurine excavated at Revadim, Israel, is widely interpreted as a representation of the goddess Asherah. Her prominent breasts, nursed by two infants, and the exaggerated depiction of the vulvar region are visual motifs strongly associated with fertility and maternal function in ancient Near Eastern contexts. Additional symbols, including what appears to be a stylised sacred tree and an ibex rendered on her thighs, further align with themes linked to Asherah worship. The dating of this figurine to the 13th century—before the emergence of Yahwism in Israel—underscores that Asherah's status as a fertility and mother goddess was already well established in Israelite tradition before Yahweh's rise to theological centrality.
(Figure 2. Describe later.)
Figure 2 depicts a cultic shrine discovered at Rehov, Israel, tentatively identified by some scholars as an example of an Asherah installation, possibly corresponding to the “Asherim” mentioned throughout the Hebrew Bible. Central to the relief is a stylised tree flanked by two.female figures—iconographic elements frequently associated with fertility and divine femininity in the Levantine religious tradition. Dated to the 10th century BCE, the artifact's Yahwistic context suggests that veneration of Asherah or an analogous goddess persisted in ancient Israelite religious practices, even as Yahweh emerged as the central figure of devotion.
This possible familial link between the Israelite god Yahweh and the Ugaritic deities El and Asherah invites a reconsideration of biblical portrayals of divine lineage, such as those preserved in Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82.
Divine Inheritance in the Hebrew Bible
The Nations of Men and Their Gods
Genesis 10—the Table of Nations—echoes Ugaritic tradition in how it presents a mythologised genealogy of humanity after the flood. It lists the descendants of Noah, describing their dispersion into seventy peoples and lands. This number, which has symbolic resonance in ancient Near Eastern cosmology—it is the number of sons of Asherah in the Ba’al Cycle—also appears in Exodus 1:5. This list functions not only as an ethnological map, but also as a narrative foundation that Deuteronomy 32 later echoes in its account of divine inheritance.
Deuteronomy 32:8–9 preserves what may be one of the clearest insights into the Israelite religion’s mythic inheritance. In the Masoretic Text (MT), the passage describes the Most High (Elyon) dividing the nations ‘according to the number of sons of Israel.’ He then assigns Israel to himself as his portion. This reading, however, raises both theological and narrative inconsistencies. The reference to “sons of Israel” can only refer to Jacob’s descendents—since the nation of Israel did not yet exist—but if the Most High is equated with Yahweh in this version, then Yahweh appears to divide up the nations only to allocate them all to himself, rendering the logic circular. Earlier recordings such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QDeutj) and the Septuagint preserve a more coherent reading: ‘according to the number of the sons of God’ (bene ’elohim). This version restores the divine council motif common in ANE religion, in which a high god apportions nations to a pantheon of lesser deities, with Yahweh receiving Israel—‘For Yahweh's portion is His people, Jacob His own allotment.’ If Yahweh is among the sons of El Elyon, then his relationship to Israel is one of assigned stewardship. This positions Yahweh not as the original Most High, but as a younger deity within a divine family—possibly the son of El and Asherah—whose eventual ascension parallels the mythic succession narratives of the surrounding cultures.
Inheritance In Psalm 82
This divine familial context—in which Yahweh is potentially one among many sons of El and Asherah who receive dominion—is not merely preserved in fragmented inscriptions and obscure textual variants. It is echoed, almost explicitly, in Psalm 82. Here, Yahweh appears not as the unquestioned sovereign, but as a participant in a divine council, issuing judgement over the other deities. What follows is not merely a condemnation, but a consolidation: the gods are sentenced to mortality, and Yahweh is poised to inherit the nations.
While Psalm 82 is often understood by traditional Jewish and Christian frameworks as a metaphorical judgement of earthly rulers or corrupt human judges, a closer reading of the text—particularly in its lexical choices and mythological resonance—suggests a more cosmological scene. The opening verse— “God stands in the divine assembly; among the divine beings He pronounces judgment” (Psalm 82:1)—uses the Hebrew ’elohim (‘god’) in both singular and plural forms. Traditional interpreters often seek to resolve this ambiguity by treating the ‘divine beings’ as human authorities, metaphorically elevated to the status of deities. However, this understanding is not necessitated by the language itself and, much like the edits to Deuteronomy 32:8–9, may reflect later theological developments aimed at preserving strict monotheism.
Crucially, the judgement pronounced upon the ’elohim appears to support the divine council model. “I had taken you for divine beings, sons of the Most High, all of you; but you shall die as men do, fall like any prince” (Psalms 82:6–7). These two verses imply that the condemned are not already men; rather, they appear to be gods facing a loss of immortality or divine status. As in older versions of Deuteronomy 32, the council are portrayed as the sons of the Most High and given the same title as the Israelite god. Psalm 82 may thus serve as narrative witness to a theological transition from divine plurality to the exclusive sovereignty of Yahweh.
The first occurrence of ’elohim in Psalm 82:1 is traditionally understood to refer to Yahweh, likely reflecting his role as the Israelites’ national god by the time of the psalm's composition. However, the mention of Elyon in verse 6 suggests that there remained a distinction between Yahweh and the patriarchal head of the council. In this reading, Yahweh presides in judgement not as the Most High himself, but as his chosen or exalted son. This differentiation may reflect a stage in theological development in which Yahweh's authority had become central to Israel, even as older mythic frameworks retained Elyon as a separate, supreme deity.
It is the final verse of this psalm, however, which provides the most compelling link to Yahweh's parentage: “Arise, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are Your possession” (82:8). The rendering of “possession” appears to be an interpretive decision; the original Hebrew term, tin-ḥal, is more accurately translated as “to inherit.” This textual and conceptual distinction is significant, as it suggests an act of succession or familial transmission, rather than prior and intrinsic dominion. 4
Anticipated Objections: On the Limits of Prevailing Models
Although the argument presented aligns with the available evidence, any hypothesis that diverges from prevailing scholarly models will naturally invite heightened scrutiny. This section addresses anticipated areas of interpretive tension and responds to potential objections.
Critics may point to the absence of textual evidence in the Bible portraying Asherah as the mother of Yahweh—yet the same can be said of her status as divine consort. What the texts do preserve is her iconographic presence in sites of Yahwistic worship, and a persistent relationship with fertility and life-giving, not conjugal symbolism. The pattern finds compelling precedent in ancient Egyptian religion, where Isis is rarely portrayed as a consort within Horus's cult, despite being his mother in myth. At Edfu, the temple of Horus, Isis and Osiris appear in supporting reliefs while Horus remains the central figure. This reflects his elevation from son-deity to divine authority, while the parental lineage is ritually acknowledged. The absence of textual acknowledgement of Isis's maternity in the temple space does not imply she was unknown as Horus's mother. In this light, Asherah's fragmentary presence in Israelite literature may not reflect the erasure of a consort but the residual acknowledgement of a once-venerated maternal figure—a deity whose role, like Isis's, became diminished as Yahweh rose to exclusive and supreme prominence.
Conclusion
This study began as an exploration of the prevailing interpretations of Asherah—as either Yahweh’s consort or a cultic object—but found that these models often skip a theologically rich and consequential possibility. If El was once understood as Yahweh’s father, and Asherah as El’s consort and the mother of the gods, then it is striking that the possibility of Asherah as Yahweh’s mother has received so little scholarly attention. This model is not only consistent with regional mythic frameworks, but is also supported by residual iconography and textual ambiguity. That this interpretive step remains largely unexamined in mainstream scholarship suggests a reluctance—perhaps unconscious—to grant maternal figures theological centrality within Israelite religion.
Ugaritic texts underscore the central role of divine maternity in Canaanite succession myths; inscriptions from Kuntillet ʿAjrūd reveal persistent associations between Yahweh and Asherah; and close readings of Deuteronomy 32 and Psalm 82 suggest a residual divine council structure in which Yahweh's authority is inherited, not innate.
Together, these findings invite a reconsideration of Israelite theological development—not as a clean rupture from polytheism, but as a gradual realignment shaped by inherited familial cosmologies. They also challenge the minimisation of maternal deities in biblical interpretation, suggesting that Asherah's role may have been foundational rather than peripheral.
In light of this, further research into ancient Israelite religious beliefs should take the maternal imagery and divine succession not as peripheral curiosities, but as integral components of its earliest theological imagination.
Notes
1 (1973)2 (2002)3 (2000)4 Both inscriptions follow the same structure: “Blessed are you by Yahweh of Samaria and [his] Asherah”(Inscription 3.1), and “I bless you by Yahweh of Teman and [his] Asherah” (Inscription 3.6), showing a
consistent formula but different regional epithets.
(Meshel 2012)5 Hess critiques the assumption that the pronominal suffix should be read possessively, arguing instead that “the evidence will support the absence of this pronominal suffix.” (cite here)
