Abstract
The essay considers the possibility that the Book of Lamentations contains passages lamenting the theological matricide that the ancient religion of Israel and the life of faith and worship have undergone. Despite the fact that archaeological findings, and biblical descriptions, point to the presence of a divine mother figure at the core of the religion and worship of the ancient people of Israel, the violent expulsion of this mother from the people’s life of faith and worship from the outset, as described in the Bible itself, has not been thoroughly investigated in terms of its spiritual-existential implications. This essay argues that what is described in Lamentations 1 may not only originate from the nation’s grief, the sense of chaos, and the destruction of the temple and the city, but also from the existential emotional violent separation from the Mother-Goddess, from the nation’s life of faith and worship, and the disaster that followed this disconnect and separation.
Introduction
The archaeological and literary-biblical studies on the ancient religion of Israel have established the hypothesis that the worship of a Mother-Goddess was an integral part of the religion in its early days. Numerous goddess figurines, ritual objects, as well as rich iconography that were found in Yahweh’s worship regions and identified in studies as representing the goddess, have all strengthened the hypothesis that goddess worship was extremely dominant in the life of Israelite faith.
While the biblical narrator dissociated Yahweh from any divine consort, and associated the biblical Asherah with Ba’al, archaeological findings have indicated that Asherah was actually perceived as Yahweh’s consort. In the findings of Kuntillet Ajrud 1 in northeastern Sinai and Khirbet el-Qom near Hebron, 2 there were inscriptions, which featured a believer, who blesses and vows in the name of Yahweh and his Asherah.
Studies on Asherah in the Bible concluded that Asherah was a popular and beloved Mother-Goddess in the religion of Israel. Despite endless warnings and the severe punishments that the messengers and prophets of Yahweh warned against, the people, as well as many of their kings, insisted on worshipping the Divine Mother. The human queens oversaw Asherah’s worship and hosted her priests 3 and the worship of Asherah, as the Book of 2 Kings 21.7 itself attests, was conducted within the Holy Temple alongside the worship of Yahweh.
Although biblical authors cast worship of this divine spouse as idolatry leading to sin, this was probably contrary to the prevalent cultic religion in the early days of Israel.
4
We can learn about the Israelite people’s reverence for the Mother-Goddess Asherah from the Bible itself, which refers to her epithet as the ‘Queen of Heaven’. There is debate among scholars as to the identity of the Queen of Heaven,
5
but based on 2 Kings 23.4, 5–6 it can be concluded, as did Koch,
6
that this was an epithet for Asherah: Then the king ordered the high priest Hilkiah, the priests of the second rank, and the guards of the threshold to bring out of the Temple of the Lord all the objects made for Baal and Asherah and all the host of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem . . . And those who made offerings to Baal, to the sun and moon and constellations – all the host of heaven. He brought out the Asherah from the House of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and burned it in the Kidron Valley.
These verses make a clear connection between the worship of celestial astral beings and Asherah. The army of the heavens, which includes the sun, the moon and the stars, is mentioned in the context of Asherah’s ritual objects. Thus, she may well be called the Queen of Heaven, the one in charge of the heavenly army.
The Queen of Heaven is described as being venerated by the people of Judea, who bring her incense and offerings. According to Jeremiah (44.15–18), the Judean women would prepare cakes in her image, and the whole family partook of this ritual. The belief was that these rituals would lead to a good life, security and abundance. The people associated Asherah with a benevolent, divine kingship, who bestows abundance and protection to the people.
In chapter 44.15–18, Jeremiah describes the people’s feelings towards their beloved Goddess, the Queen of Heaven (which, according to the argument presented here, is Asherah): Then all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to other gods, with all the women who stood by, a great multitude, and all the people who dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: ‘As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you! But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine’. (King James Version)
In these verses, Jeremiah reveals the strong existential religious experience of the people regarding their Goddess, the Queen of Heaven whom they worship. It is she, rather than Yahweh, who is responsible for abundance, security and goodness. When they cease to worship her, abandoning her and instead exclusively worshipping Yahweh, their situation worsens and they suffer. During the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the people report that they have experienced security and abundance, while under the rule of Yahweh who demanded the separation from the Goddess, the people report that they experienced hunger, horror and terror.
It can therefore be understood that the worship of the goddess and the belief in her constituted in the eyes of the people a vital and critical element in its existential-spiritual security. It can be assumed, then, that the violent elimination of this Mother-Goddess from the life of faith and worship, as described in the Bible itself (2 Kings 23.4, 5–6, 4–25), generated great panic, distress, horror, and a sense of extinction and destruction among the believers. However, this crisis has not been thoroughly investigated in terms of its implications on the spirit of the people, how it was dealt with and how this disaster has been depicted in religious writings. It is possible that the biblical presentation of this goddess as a foreign element and a grave sin that leads to punishment and exile has created disregard and denial of a constitutive phenomenon defined by feminist scholars as Matricide that was performed, according to the biblical descriptions themselves, in the religious life of ancient Israel.
Matricide has been defined by feminist researchers 7 as a process of transforming the maternal position and the relationship with her, into a negligible and marginal entity, to the point of its utter destruction and erasure.
Matricide entails the denial of the tangible and substantial actuality of the initial connection with the mother. It also involves the rejection of the mother in the life of the individual, culture, mythology and religion. This sociological, cultural and theological process has many implications both in terms of individual psychology and group psychology.
Matricide researchers have often referred to the Freudian theory as one that has established such denial. The Oedipal model, as conceptualized by Freud, assumes the existence of two complementary processes: accepting the father as the object of identification and erasing the dominance of the mother while ending the unique relationship with her. According to Freud, the acceptance of the undisputed authority of the father involves the rejection of femininity, as embodied in the mother’s body.
Separation from the mother in the Oedipal model involves not only a change in the nature of the relationship with the mother and the father, but also a sweeping negation of the validity and significance of the relationship with the mother. For Freud, the solution of the Oedipal Complex involves the complete destruction of the initial relationship with the mother. The love for the mother is replaced with hatred, which is, in fact, an attempt to cling to life, against the identification with the inner void that opens up following her denied erasure.
Freud also projected from his individual psychology to group psychology, and to the psychology of the Jewish religion in particular. In the book Moses and Monotheism, 8 published in 1939, Freud described Judaism as created and shaped by the ‘Oedipal complex’, that is, the effect of the struggles, desires, anxieties, and needs of fathers and sons.
Freud describes the religion of Israel as carrying within it the memory of the murder of the figure of the ancient father (Moses according to Freud was murdered by the people). The guilt for the murder of the father (Moses) creates in the son (the people of Israel) a ‘Neuroticism’ that constitutes the cultural, social and religious characteristics of the Jewish religion, which sanctifies the worship of the ancestral ‘father’ in the light of God – a single male father.
Freud sums up the analysis of Judaism with an event that is centred on the father and maleness, while the mother character is not even considered an active and effective force. The only time that Freud mentions the mother is when he argues that the religion of the mothers is inferior in terms of status and culture. 9
As in his psychological theory, so in his theological perception, the mother represents an ancient, almost denied stage, from which one must separate.
The denial and deletion of the mother figure on the theological and mythical level is characteristic not only of the Freudian theory but also of the studies of many researchers of the Jewish religion in its various fields. Despite the fact that archaeological findings, and biblical descriptions, point to the presence of a divine mother figure at the core of the religion and worship of the ancient people of Israel, the violent expulsion of this mother from the people’s life of faith and worship from the outset, as described in the Bible itself, has not been thoroughly investigated in terms of its implications. The presentation of this goddess as a foreign element, alienated from the religion of Yahweh, that constituted a grave sin and led to severe punishment in the biblical religion, has led to a complete disregard of the central role that this goddess has played in the process of the formation of the Israelite and Jewish faith, worship and customs.
It can be assumed that just as the murder and erasure of a psychological mother has serious consequences for her children, so too the murder of a theological mother must have had serious consequences for her followers and worshippers. Many of her prophets who have guided the people in their religious worship were killed and annihilated according to biblical descriptions, and many of the believers were also punished and killed. In addition, such forceful and violent elimination of a beloved deity, which is perceived to be responsible for the blessings of abundance, harmony and fertility, produces shock, anxiety, and a spiritual and existential breach of faith. It is likely that all of this was to be expressed in a religious literary work – both as a personal literary manifestation and as a popular and national literary expression. But these literary expressions do not seem to exist in the tradition and religious inscriptions.
Given this absence, this essay argues that the experience of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, described in the Book of Lamentations, and the constitutive experience of the heavy mourning, may express in some parts, the mourning over the divine mother, who is symbolically slaughtered and destroyed both spiritually and religiously in the life of ancient Israel. Therefore, these literary passages in the Book of Lamentations may constitute a window to the experience of horror experienced by the people, not only in the context of the Temple itself but also in the context of the theological matricide performed in the ancient religion of Israel as described in 2 Kings 23.
Asherah as an Ancient Divine Mother in the Religious Life of Ancient Israel
Asherah has been extensively researched and studied in terms of its various references in the Bible and in archaeological findings. Many books and articles have been written about her. In this section, I will focus on her qualities as the Mother-Goddess and references that attest to this.
Asherah is mentioned in the Ugaritic texts from the thirteenth to fourteenth century BC, named ‘Athirat’ as the wife of El, the main god, the father of the gods, when she is the mother of the gods, the creator of the gods, and they are her children. Her Phoenician equivalent, Tanit, was also known as a mother figure and was also called ‘Rahamay’ – the one of the womb. She was attributed the abilities to care and nurture – nutrix – nurse of the gods.
The inscriptions about Yahweh and his Asherah were discovered in the findings of Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qum, which date to the eighth century BC. Alongside the inscriptions, there were drawings of a cow’s udders and a calf – the symbol of the nursing cow in the Ancient Near East. 10 Similarly, the pillar figurines of Asherah, dated as typical to the period of 720–587 BC, are characterized by its prominent breasts bearing milk – a symbol of abundance and nourishment – the divine nursing cow. 11
The Bible denies any mention of Asherah as a divine mother or any ‘authentic’ religious connection (which is not ‘idol worship’) between the people of Israel and Asherah. Yet the symbol of the tree and vegetation can be clearly identified as a central motif in Israel’s religious worship of Asherah. She is worshipped ‘under every leafy tree’, 12 it is forbidden to plant an Asherah, 13 and Asherah is described as being cut down. 14 From the findings of the study of iconography, it is known that the tree symbolizes the Mother-Goddess – a symbol of abundance, nutritional and existential security and harmony of life, as described in the Bible as ‘a tree planted by streams of water’, 15 that is, an optimal state of satisfaction, that was ‘borrowed’ during a monotheistic correction and used for Yahweh worshippers only.
The Divine Mother of Israel in the Bible
The divine mother of Israel, as real and not as a metaphorical figure, is denied in the biblical religion, yet she appears as a human mother (Sarah that bore you, Isa. 51.2) or as a metaphorical mother – among others as Jerusalem, Zion, mother-woman prostitute in the literature of the prophets, or as a mother-wisdom in the book of Proverbs.
Some scholars have suggested that the name ‘El Shadday’ reflects the qualities and role of the Divine Mother, because in Hebrew, it translates as the ‘God with the Breasts’. This epithet appears in the contexts of fertility. 16
The Bible actually ignores or denies the lack of the maternal quality in the experience of the people. But then, by relying on biblical sources about the people’s prevalent, common, insistent devotion and worship of Asherah, and cross-referencing this information with the findings of the archaeological research of the ancient religion of Israel, the picture that is revealed is this: In the ancient faith of Israel, a beloved Mother-Goddess was present and perceived as ensuring the needs and well-being of the people. She was even part of the Temple itself and part of the worship. Yet, the Israelite people have repeatedly experienced attempts to eliminate and exterminate the goddess, culminating in the monarchical period of the seventh century BC, in the period of King Josiah. The Bible describes a methodical religious reform, in which the goddess’ cult was burned, and her prophets and priests were annihilated.
He brought out [the image] of Asherah from the House of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem, and burned it in the Kidron Valley; he beat it to dust and scattered the dust over the burial ground of the common people. He tore down the cubicles of the male prostitutes in the House of the Lord, at the place where the women wove coverings for Asherah. He brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and defiled the shrines where the priests had been making offerings – from Geba to Beer-sheba. He also demolished the shrines of the gates, which were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua, the city prefect – which were on a person’s left at the city gate. The priests of the shrines, however, did not ascend the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they ate the unleavened bread along with their kinsmen. He also defiled Tophet, which is in the Valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one might consign his son or daughter to the fire of Molech. He did away with the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun at the entrance of the House of the Lord, near the chamber of the eunuch Nathan-melech, which was in the precincts. He burned the chariots of the sun. And the king tore down the altars made by the kings of Judah on the roof by the upper chamber of Ahaz, and the altars made by Manasseh in the two courts of the House of the Lord. He removed them quickly from there and scattered their rubble in the Kidron Valley. The king also defiled the shrines facing Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of the Destroyer, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Ashtoreth, the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom, the detestable thing of the Ammonites. He shattered their pillars and cut down their sacred posts and covered their sites with human bones. As for the altar in Bethel, the shrine made by Jeroboam son of Nebat who caused Israel to sin – that altar, too, and the shrine as well, he tore down. He burned down the shrine and beat it to dust, and he burned Asherah. (2 Kings 23.6–15)
What is described then is a theological Matricide – the Mother-Goddess, who in the people’s perception guarantees their happiness, is taken away. However, as mentioned, there is no overt textual expression in the Bible for this dreadful religious and existential situation.
On the contrary, it is possible to identify in the book that is considered as a national lament over the destruction of the Temple, elements that are associated with the Goddess in Ancient Near Eastern literature and in symbols of the ancient religion of Israel. It is possible that they constitute segments of erased or blurred expressions of lamentation and mourning prevalent among the people over the destruction of the cult of Asherah.
Parallels Between Motifs in the Book of Lamentations and the Lamenting Goddess Literature in the Ancient Near East
The Use of the Name ‘Bat’ (Daughter in Hebrew) for the Name of the City of Zion or Jerusalem
Scholars have pointed to the common use of the term ‘daughter’ (Bat) in the Book of Lamentations, which is similar to the use of the word equivalent to ‘daughter’ in the Mesopotamian literature of lamenting goddesses.
Dobbs-Alsopp 17 claims that the source of the amalgamation of Bat Zion in the Book of Lamentations is the Mesopotamian figure of the lamenting goddess. The biblical lament, it is argued, was heavily influenced by the Mesopotamian lamentation. Klein 18 sees in the Book of Lamentations a marked similarity to Mesopotamian lamentations where the female entity is the Goddess who laments her city, her shrine and her ruined kingdom. In these laments, the author’s description of the goddess mourning the destruction is intertwined with the direct plea and cry of the goddess herself. The author typically encourages the goddess to lament and cry to the supreme god who is responsible for the destruction, and sometimes the people lament their city and their Goddess. 19
For example, in the Mesopotamian lamentation for the city of Ur, the words of the goddess Ningal, wife of the patron god of the city, are heard.
20
The speakers are the narrator and the Goddess: The lady/daughter in her house which was plundered, for which she weeps bitterly, Nana whose land is lost, The light of his people will lament, the faithful woman, the lady will sigh for her city Nangal – for the sake of not giving respite to her eyelids for her land Light, for the sake of her city, she will sacrifice, she will weep bitterly For her home, which he robbed, the lady will sacrifice, she will cry bitterly . . .
21
The characteristics of the Mesopotamian lamentation also appear in the Book of Lamentations, in which the female entity of Bat Zion, or Jerusalem, mourns the destruction, and there is an interaction between the author’s voice and her own lament or that of her people.
In Mesopotamian literature, the lamenting Goddess is frequently referred to as ‘Bat’ – ‘daughter’ (märat) in conjunction with the name of the ruined city. For example, in the Babylonian lament of Tammuz, Ishtar is called ‘Bat Nopur’ when she laments her husband and her city 22 (märat Larak or märat Nippuri).
The juxtaposition that included the word ‘bat’ and the city name indicates the appellation for the patron Goddess of the city. Klein 23 explains that, in light of the assumption that the Book of Lamentations was composed in Israel and not in Babylon, it was not directly influenced by Mesopotamian poetry. The biblical feminine anthropomorphizing of Jerusalem is probably borrowed from Western Semitic literature, through which the Mesopotamian influences were also absorbed.
The researchers did not mean, however, that the author of the Scroll was lamenting the Goddess, maintaining that it was merely a borrowed literary image. But Fitzgerald 24 points out that it could have been the goddess in the popular religious perception.
Typical Goddess Epithets in the Ancient Near East and Their Presence in the Book of Lamentations
Lamentations 1.1 reads, How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! How is she become as a widow! She that was great (‘
‘Raba’ or rbt is the common epithet of the goddess in Canaanite literature meaning the Great One. 25 In the relevant context, ‘Raba’ or rbt was Asherah’s epithet. 26 Raba Athirat was the name of Asherah.
‘Saratu’ means queen in the Sumerian / Akkadian languages. This epithet was used for the Mother-Goddess, the head of the pantheon of the gods – the Queen.
So, verse 1 in the Book of Lamentations positions epithets characteristic of the goddess in this cultural and religious region. The epithet ‘sarati’ (my queen) coupled with ‘rabati’ (the great one) at the beginning of the Book of Lamentations, may be taken from an ancient version of a lamentation over the destruction of the cult of the people’s Mother-Goddess. It is not only the anthropomorphized figure of Jerusalem that is mourning, not only Jerusalem that is described as trampled, but also the Goddess who was worshipped in Jerusalem. She has also fallen from power. She has been humiliated and crushed. As we know, the Bible records that the Temple contained objects of worship and symbols of Asherah alongside those of Yahweh. As her people are exiled from their country, so too are they exiled from their Mother-Goddess. Bat Zion, the divine patron of Jerusalem, the Mother-Goddess of the people of Israel, weeps and laments.
It is possible that in versions that were edited and sealed in much later times, the same Goddess’ images were used, in the ‘monotheistic’ lamentations, over the city of Yahweh alone, while the editors and signers might not have been aware of the more ancient world of images and epithets in relation to the Goddess of Israel.
Therefore, if the name ‘Bat Zion’ or ‘Zion’ and ‘Jerusalem’ were originally the epithet of the Mother-Goddess, Asherah, ancient biblical descriptions of Jerusalem or Zion may tell, then, a different erased story about the source of the deep agony that is being reflected in the Book of Lamentations.
Iconography of the Goddess in the Book of Lamentations
Apart from the above-mentioned epithets, it is possible to identify in the Book some iconographic images that were research-proven to be associated with the Mother-Goddess.
Verse 6 in Chapter 1 mentions one of the prominent religious symbols of Asherah. The tree and ibex, which was the symbol of abundance, fertility and divine nourishment that the followers believed that the divine mother has bestowed on them 27 : ‘Gone from Zion are all that were her glory; her leaders were like deer that found no pasture; they could only walk feebly before their pursuer’ (Lam. 1.6). In the author’s description, the deer/ibex did not find a place to feed. The iconographic icon for abundance and nourishment is severely breached. The Goddess can no longer provide security, nourishment and abundance, and the prevailing condition is one of deficiency, distress and suffering.
The canonical author probably was not referring to the Goddess herself when he used her symbol, but the earlier version of the lament could have dealt with the Goddess through the use of her commonly accepted symbols. Later, due to the changes in Israel’s religion and the process of biblical editing, the symbol remained as a poetic literary image, without the editor’s awareness of its original significance.
Further reinforcement of the assumption that the description in Chapter 1 originally referred to an ancient Goddess of Israel lamenting her people, and the plight of the city and the people in her absence, can be found in the similarity between the description of the people’s experience when they ceased to worship her, as described in Jeremiah 44, and the description in chapter I of Lamentations. The prophet Jeremiah is generally believed to be the author of Lamentations, so there is great significance in this similarity.
According to Jeremiah, the people emphasize that during the reign of the Goddess, there was plenty of food. ‘For then we had plenty of bread to eat, we were well-off, and suffered no misfortune’ (Jer. 44.17). The change to a state of hunger and lack of bread occurred when the reign of the Goddess was harmed, despised or trampled, and the people had to stop worshiping her: ‘We have lacked everything, and we have been consumed by the sword and by famine’ (44.18). This existential religious situation is very similarly described in Lamentations 1.11. It seems to embody the situation of distress that the people referred to in the Book of Jeremiah reported when the rule of the Goddess and her worship are harmed: ‘All her inhabitants sigh as they search for bread; they have bartered their treasures for food, to keep themselves alive. See O Lord, and behold, how abject I have become’. The lamenting Goddess tells of her parallel situation that is reflected in the condition of her people. When she was in a position of power, she bestowed an abundance of nutrition, but now she is broken, her people are starving, ‘sighing for bread’, crying out for food.
The parallel in these situations reinforces the assumption that the description of lamentation illustrates the people’s existential religious feeling of depending on the presence of the Mother-Goddess for their faith and survival. What is described in Lamentations 1 may not only originate from the nation’s grief, the sense of chaos, and the destruction of the temple and the city but also from the existential emotional violent separation from the Mother-Goddess, from the nation’s life of faith and worship, and the disaster that followed this disconnect and separation. The lament may embody the sense of loss experienced by the people when their mother, in whose defence they trust and depend, is despised and brought low, bringing about the destruction of the people.
Summary
This essay considered the possibility that the Book of Lamentations contains passages lamenting the theological matricide that the ancient religion of Israel and the life of faith and worship have undergone. One cannot deny the fact, which has been proven by both archaeological and literary research, that a beloved and popular Mother-Goddess was an integral part of popular faith and worship, from the inception of the religion of Israel. Therefore, it is also impossible to ignore the lack of religious literature that expresses the sentiments of mourning, grief and loss that the people have experienced, due to the violent and traumatic elimination of the Mother-Goddess from their life whether or not it was justified or vital to the religion of Yahweh.
Such disregard, which has been characteristic of most research to date, excludes one aspect of the religious-existential experience of the ancient people of Israel. This aspect remains denied, repressed and concealed in a way that allows no tracing of its infiltration, underground currents and impact over the life of faith of the Israeli and Jewish religion, as it has evolved over the generations.
Further research is, therefore, essential for finding literary, archaeological, ritual and ceremonial fossils that will uncover and further reveal the manifestations of the theological matricide that has transpired.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
1.
Meshel Z, Ornan T, Ahituv S, et al. (2015) To the Lord of Teman and Ashtarte: Inscriptions and Drawings from Kuntillet Ajrud (Teman Ruins) in Sinai. Jerusalem, Israel: Ben Zvi Publishers; Gilula M (1979) To the lord of Shomron and Ashtarte. Yearbook of the Study of Ancient East 3: 129–137; Na’aman N (2013) The inscriptions of Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in the context of historical research. Zmanim: A Historical Quarterly 121(1): 4–15.
2.
See Dever WG (1999) Archeology and the ancient Israelite cult: Ajrud how the Khel-Qom and Kuntillet Ashera’s texts have changed the picture. Eretz-Israel: Archaeological, Historical and Geographical Studies 26: 9–15; Olyan SM (1988) Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.
3.
Ackerman S (1999) The queen mother and the cult in ancient Israel. In: Bach A (ed.) Women in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Routledge, 179–195; Ackerman S (2008) Asherah, the West Semitic goddess of spinning and weaving? Journal of Near Eastern Studies 67(1): 1–30.
4.
Day J (2002) Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. New York; London: Sheffield Academic Press; Day J (1986) Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic literature. Journal of Biblical Literature 105(3): 385–408.
5.
See discussion in Hadley J (2001) The queen of heaven – who is she? In: Brenner A (ed.) Prophets and Daniel. New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 30–54; Ackerman S (1999) ‘And the women knead dough’: the worship of the Queen of Heaven in sixth-century Judah. In: Bach A (ed.) Women in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Routledge, 21–33.
6.
Koch K (1988) Aschera als himmelskönigin in Jerusalem. UF 20: 97–120.
7.
Jacobs A (2007) On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis, and the Law of the Mother. New York: Columbia University Press; Rozmarin M (2020) Matricide, Key. Lexical Journal of Political Thought 15: 117–135.
8.
Freud S (1939) Moses and Monotheism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
9.
Freud S (1939) Moses and Monotheism.
10.
Ornan T (2008) Gods and symbols in Israel in 600–1000 BC. In: Kister M, Geiger J, Neeman N, et al. (eds) Gods of Ancient Times: Polytheism in Israel and Its Neighbors. Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 64–90.
11.
Hadley JM (2000) The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 84–100; Holladay JS (1987) Religion in Israel and Judah under the Monarchy: an explicitly archaeological approach. In: Miller PD and Cross FM (eds) Ancient Isaraelite Religion: Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 249–299; Kletter R (1996) The Judean Pillar-Figurines and the Archaeology of Asherah. Oxford: Hadrian Books.
12.
Deut.12.2; 1 Kings 1.14.
13.
Deut. 27.
14.
Judg. 6.25–32.
15.
Psalm 43.
16.
Biale D (1982) The god with breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible. History of Religions 21(3): 240–256, see 244; Lutzky H (1998) Shadday as a Goddess epithet. Vetus Testamentum 48: 15–36.
17.
Dobbs-Allsopp FW (1995) The syntagma of bat followed by a geographical name in the Hebrew Bible: a reconsideration of its meaning and grammar. CBQ 57: 467–470.
18.
Klein J (2016) Bat-Ṣiyon in the book of lamentations and the lamenting goddess in Mesopotamian literature. Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 1: 177–207.
19.
Klein J (2016) Bat-Ṣiyon in the book of lamentations and the lamenting goddess in Mesopotamian literature, 198–199.
20.
There is a marked similarity between these lines and Lamentations 1:11–22 and 2.18–22.
21.
Shifra S and Klein J (1996) In Those Distant Days: Anthology of Mesopotamian Literature in Hebrew. Tel Aviv, Israel: Am Oved, 429.
22.
Klein S (2016) Bat-Ṣiyon in the book of lamentations and the lamenting goddess in Mesopotamian literature, 203.
23.
Klein S (2016) Bat-Ṣiyon in the book of lamentations and the lamenting goddess in Mesopotamian literature, 204.
24.
Fitzgerald A (1975) The mythological background for the presentation of Jerusalem as a queen and false worship as adultery in the old testament. CBQ 37: 403–416.
25.
Avinery I (1975) The position of the demonstrative pronoun in Syriac. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 34(2): 123–127.
26.
Cornelius I (2004) The Many Faces of the Goddess. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht; Academic Press Fribourg, 99.
27.
Keel O and Uehlinger C (1996) Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient Israel. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press; Ornan T (2008) Gods and symbols in Israel in 600–1000 BC. In: Kister M, Geiger J, Neeman N, et al. (eds) Gods of Ancient Times: Polytheism in Israel and Its Neighbors. Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 70–82.