YAHWEH AND HIS ANGEL

Sety I in Ished-tree (Hypostyl hall, Karnak), with Thoth inscribing the king’s name on a leaf and receiving jubilees from Amun-Re and Weret-Hekau.

Now that we have established to what period in Egyptian history Moses belongs, and have come up with an approximate date for the Exodus, i.e. sometime during the reigns of Ramesses IV or V, we can begin to examine the Hebrew god Yahweh within the context of Egyptian religion.

Our first step in performing this task is to briefly go over the meaning of Yahweh’s name, as this is currently accepted by most modern scholars.  The best explanation of the name Yahweh is still held to be that propounded by Professor Frank M. Cross in his book _Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic_: YHWH is a shortening of the phrase ‘il zu Yahweh s.aba’t or “El/God who creates the hosts (of heaven)”.  Here Yahweh is a causative of the verb h-w-y, “to be” (further information courtesy Professor John Huehnergard, Harvard University).  I concur with this theory, despite a recent attempt by Adam Strich (“The Root *HWY and the Name YHWH”, Harvard University, 2008) to demonstrate that the ‘to be’ definition is secondary to the original meaning of the root, which was ‘to fall’.

Yahweh is most certainly to be derived from the Hebrew verb hayah or hawah, “to be or become”.  The ancient Hebrew god is, therefore, “He Who Comes Into Being” or, simply, “He Who Becomes”/”The Becoming One”.  Indeed, it has been expressed that the idea is not that of being or of existing, but of coming to pass.

It is not at all certain, however, that it really is Yahweh in the Burning Bush.  To quote the relevant passage from Exodus 3:2 and 3:4:

“There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush… When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush…”

Now, theologians have attempted to account for the ‘angel’ by assuming this was merely the physical manifestation of God. In other words, when God chose to reveal himself to men, he took on the appearance of the ‘angel’.

This is correct only to a point.  The Hebrew word used in this context for ‘angel’ is mal’ak.  It derives from an unused root meaning “to dispatch as a deputy”.  The meaning is actually “messenger”.  Now, in Egyptian religion the moon god Thoth (DHw.t.y, probably pronounced something like ‘Djehuti’) had the common epithet of isti ra, “the deputy/substitute/representative of [the sun god] Re”.  According to Boylan’s “Thoth: The Hermes of Egypt”, this epithet refers to the idea that the moon takes the place of the sun at night, but its light is merely a reflection of that of the sun.  A late epithet of Thoth is wpwty, “messenger”, a designation which may have come about because of Thoth’s identification with Hermes.  From very early on, Thoth was a kind of agent of Re, being the latter’s chief scribe/minister (information courtesy Aayko K. Eymo).

The etymology of the name Thoth is unknown.  Current opinion holds to the notion that DHw.t.y may stand for “He of DHw.t”.  The problem with this theory is that no such place as DHw.t is recorded in the Egyptian sources.

In an effort to come up with a better derivation for Thoth’s name, my attention was recently drawn to an Egyptian baboon deity named DjehDjeh (DHDH). The repetition that is obvious in Djeh-Djeh caused me to consider the possibility that the name could be imitative in origin. So I wrote to two world experts on baboons and asked whether there is a vocalization among the Hamadrayas baboons that could have been represented or "mimicked" by 'Djeh! - Djeh!'. In response, Dr. Dorothy Cheney pointed me to her web site page with baboon vocalizations:

http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~seyfarth/Baboon%20research/vocalizations.htm

After paying very close attention to various kinds of barks, I concluded that the two-phase calls of baboons could easily have been rendered by ‘Djeh-Djeh’.

Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin claimed that DH-DH tied in with Cushitic gwa-gwa / gaw-gaw, "(large) monkey", but he admits that the data are too scarce and unreliable to really postulate an Afroasiatic word. It seems clear to me that the Cushitic word

is likewise a sound mimicking word, and that to apply Afroasiatic sound shifts to it would be very dubious.

To go a step further, I wonder whether it is possible that the above mentioned baboon call, of purely imitative origin, could have yielded a hypothetical word/name for the sacred baboon, *DH(w). This occured to me as Hopfner  proposed a hypothetical word *DH(w ) for 'ibis', to explain the problematic name of the god Thoth (DHw.t.y), but to my knowledge his hypothetical word for ibis cannot be backed up with ancient Egyptian or Afroasiatic examples.

According to Thomas Kelly (via the AEgyptian-L mailing list):

“An imitative origin for Djeh-Djeh has merit. Jaromir Malek states, on page 25, in “The Cat in Ancient Egypt”: “There was only one word for cat in pharaonic Egypt which we can find in the hieroglyphic writing.  It was the onomatopoeic miu or mii (feminine miit), imi (feminine imiit or miat) in demotic, the penultimate stage of the Egyptian language, and emu or amu in Coptic, written from c. the third century AD. The cat was simply '(s) he who mews,' and as we shall see, this was how the Egyptians themselves understood it.  If the "miu" from a cat became the word for cat then it is possible that the bark from a baboon could become the word for baboon.”

Thoth, according to Gardiner, Peet and Cerny (_The Inscriptions of Sinai, Part II), was the nomen loci or patron deity of Maghara near Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai.  Both these places were mined by the Egyptians (see below).  Thoth is also present in several inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim.

But if the angel of the Lord is the moon god Thoth, how can Yahweh be the sun god Ra?

The Egyptians had a marvelous capacity for religious syncretization.  One god could be identified with another, and often gods who served very specific functions became mere aspects of a greater god.  The syncretized deity we are most interested in when it comes to Yahweh as a possible aspect of Re is Re-Khepri.

Khepri was the god of the rising sun in Egyptian religion, and as such also the god of the resurrected sun who had survived the night in the underworld to be reborn in the morning.  Symbolized by a scarab beetle, the name of this god derives from the verb xpr, “come into being”.  A related word is xprw, “form, manifestation”, literally ‘that which has come into being’.

Scarab ( = Khepri) amulets were found at Timna and Serabit el-Khadim, as were sphinxes (= Horemakhet-Khepri and, of course, the pharaoh as the human incarnation of that syncretized deity).  Serabit el-Khadim has two sphinxes representing Thutmose III flanking and adoring Hathor in the form of a sistrum.

One of the sphinxes at Timna bears the upper portion of a cartouche containing the prenomen ‘User-ma’at-re’ for Ramesses II, III or V.  Petrie describes statues of sphinxes flanking the temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim; these were representative of Thutmose III.  The god Khepri is mentioned in only one dedication in the Sinai.  This occurs at Serabit el-Khadim, where Thutmose III is called the “precious egg of Khepri”.

So if Yahweh is merely a Semitic rendering of the Egyptian divine name Khepri, and the angel of Yahweh is the Egyptian god Thoth, Yahweh himself may not actually be present in the Burning Bush.  Thoth may be there alone, speaking not only for Yahweh-Khepri, but as Yahweh-Khepri.

Margaret Barker, in her recent book THE GREAT ANGEL: A STUDY OF ISRAEL’S SECOND GOD (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), has proposed that the apparent confusion between Yahweh and his angel/messenger is due to the fact that originally Elohim (the plural of majesty and excellence used for a single divine being, not a plural in number, as for “gods”) was the chief creator deity of Israel, and Yahweh his son.  According to this theory, then, Yahweh was the messenger of Elohim.  The problem with Barker’s argument is that it fails to take into account the significance of Yahweh to a thoroughly Egyptianized Asiatic (see below for Moses’ ancestry).  Moses identified his own Egyptian deity with a Midianite god.  But it would appear the ‘messenger’ that spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush was not Yahweh/Khepri himself, but an entity the Egyptians would have been very familiar with – Thoth the deputy of the sun god.

Does this explanation adequately explain the mystery of the deity (or deities) of the Burning Bush?  Well, it may do so if we view the phenomenon solely from the Egyptian perspective.  Unfortunately, this nice, neat picture I’ve just painted does not take into account some important factors on the Midianite side of things. Nor does it take into consideration the identity of Abraham’s god prior to the Hebrew’s long stay in Egypt.

Any investigation of Abraham or Abram must begin with an analysis of his name as well as those of his immediate family.

From “Abraham: What cultural, textual, and archaeological sources can tell us about this patriarch”, by P. Kyle McCarter, in Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple, edited by Hershel Shanks, Biblical Archaeology Society:

“…the connections between the family of Abraham and the city of Haran in northern Mesopotamia (Eski Harran or "Old Haran" in modern Turkey) are very precise in our earliest narrative source (J. or the Yahwist). Terah, Nahor and Serug--Abraham's father, grandfather and great grandfather (Genesis 11:22-26)--seem to be the eponymous ancestors of towns in the basin of the Balikh River, near Haran.

All three names appear in Assyrian texts from the first half of the first millennium B.C.E. as the name of towns or ruined towns in the regions of Haran, namely Til-(sha)-Turakhi (the ruin of Turakh), Ti-Nakhiri (the ruin of Nakhir) and Sarugi. Earlier, in the second millennium B.C.E., il-Nakhiri had been an important administrative center, called Nakhuru. The patriarchal connection with this region may be rooted in historical memories of Amorite culture of the second millennium B.C.E.”

The reference to the Amorites (literally ‘Westerners’) here leads us to brief discussion of Abram’s ‘Ur of the Chaldees’.  While various places have been selected for this site, the best is still Ur in southern Mesopotamia.  This became part of the Amorite kingdom, as described succinctly in this account from http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/MesopotamiaAmorites.htm:

“The Amorites began to arrive in the territory to the west of the Euphrates, modern Syria, from around 2500 BC. The Akkadians called them Amurru, and they probably originated from Arabia (a less popular theory places them in India). Although there was no actual invasion, for a period of five hundred years they drifted down into southern Mesopotamia, integrating into Sumerian civilisation where they lived in enclaves. They served in the armies of Third Dynasty Ur, and provided general labour for both Ur and Akkad before that. As Ur declined, and with it Sumerian civilisation, many Amorites rose to positions of power. When the final end of Ur came at the hands of the Elamites, the Amorites, virtually Sumerians themselves by now, were in a strong position to pick up the pieces.

Rather than maintain the Sumerian system of city states, where farms, cattle and people belonged to the gods or the temples (ie. the king), the Amorites founded kingdoms which had their capitals at many of the old cities, even if some of these new kingdoms were virtually the equivalent of a city state in their size and power. As well as inheriting the surviving Sumerian cities, the Amorites also built a number of large and powerful cities of their own, from Syria down to southern Mesopotamia…

They founded or expanded cities and created kingdoms of their own, such as Amrit, Amurru, Andarig, Arvad, Dilbat, Ekallatum, Eshnunna, Hamath, Isin, Karana, Qattara, Razama, Terqa, and Tuttul (and probably Der as well, although records here are sketchy). They also assumed control of older city states throughout Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan, such as Alalakh, Alep (Aleppo), Borsippa, Carchemish, Ebla, Gebal, Kazallu, Kish, Lagash, Larsa, Mari, Nippur, Qatna, Sippar, Tuba, Ur and Uruk.”

But can we prove Abram was an Amorite?  Well, the Encyclopedia Judaica (2007) says of the name Abram:

“ABRAHAM (originally Abram ; Heb. אַבְרָהָם, אַבְרָם), first patriarch of the people of Israel. The form "Abram" occurs in the Bible only in Genesis 11:26–17:5, Nehemiah 9:7, and i Chronicles 1:26. Otherwise, "Abraham" appears invariably, and the name is borne by no one else. No certain extra-biblical parallel exists. A-ba-am-ra-ma, A-ba-ra-ma, A-ba-am-ra-am occur in 19th-century b.c.e. Akkadian cuneiform texts. Abrm appears in Ugaritic (Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (1965), pp. 286, 348, text 2095, line 4), but is most likely to be read A-bi-ra-mì (Palais Royal d' Ugarit, 3 (1955), p.20, text 15.63, line 1). There is no evidence that Abram is a shortened form of Abiram. As to the meaning of Abram, the first element is undoubtedly the common Semitic for "father"; the second could be derived from Akkadian ra'âmu ("to love") or from West-Semitic rwm ("to be high"). "He loved the father" or "father loves" is a far less likely meaning than "he is exalted with respect to father" i.e., he is of distinguished lineage. The meaning "exalted father" or "father is exalted," while less satisfactory, cannot be ruled out. No Hebrew derivation for Abraham exists. In Genesis 17:5 "the father of a multitude [of nations]" is a popular etymology, although it might possibly conceal an obsolete Hebrew cognate of Arabic ruhâm, "numerous." More likely, Abraham is a mere dialectic variant of Abram, representing the insertion of h in weak verbal stems, a phenomenon known from Aramaic and elsewhere.”

It should be pointed out that the cuneiform text forms of the name alluded to above come from the city of Dilbat, which was of Amorite foundation.

But the best evidence we have that Abraham was an Amorite comes from the name of his father.  Terah can indeed be linked to the Amorite city name Til-sha-Turakh.  But this is only part of the story.  The name Terah itself (once wrongly linked with a moon god because of the Ur-Haran connection; see the entry for Terah in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible) has been properly derived from Akkadian turahu (remember the –h in both words is pronounced liked a k), ‘mountain goat, ibex’.  And this etymology tells us exactly who Terah is: he is Amurru/Martu, the god of the Amorites.

Amurru/Martu, whose city was the unlocated Ninab, had as his sacred animal a ‘caprid’, i.e. a horned, goat-like animal.  According to Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Ancient Near East, he is variously depicted stepping on a caprid, holding a caprid in his arms, or the caprid may appear alone, symbolizing the god, or may appear with only the god’s shepherd’s crook.

Thus Abram is ‘son of Amurru/Martu’, i.e. he is an Amorite.

The god of Abraham was originally Amurru/Martu.  The adoption of the Canaanite El – the equivalent god in that pantheon – was a logical and perhaps inevitable development once the Hebrews found themselves in Canaan.  By consulting such excellent sources as the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, we quickly learn of the many identical traits shared by Amurru and El:

“[Amurru] is best characterized as a storm god… A number of scholars believe the name Shadday, usually found as El-Shadday, reflects the epithet bel sade, ‘Lord of he Mountain’, currently carried by Amurru… Martu has many traits of a West Semitic storm god… According to a Sumerian hymn, Amurru is a warrior god, strong as a lion, equipped with bows and arrows, and using storm and thunder as his weapons…His behavior typically reflects the characteristics of Amorite nomads as perceived by civilized Mesopotamians… Cross explains the combination El-Shadday by assuming Amurru is the Amorite name (or form) of El.  He argues that El as the divine warrior of important western tribes or leagues was reintroduced into Mesopotamia under the name Amurru… The cuneiform orthography An-an-mart-tu could be read as El-Amurrum, ‘the Amorite El’… The pairing of Amurru with Ashratu, morever, also suggests an underlying identification with El…”

Amurru's affinity with the storm god Adad is evinced by his being referred to as 'Adad of the Deluge'.  The Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Ancient Near East discusses this aspect of his character:

"Amurru is repeatedly represented together with the symbol of the storm god Adad, the lightning bolt.  The divine figures seem to have shared special bonds in written sources.  Additionally, they seem to have borrowed iconographic attributes from each other from time to time.  When bearing in mind that Amurru as a god of the steppe might have developed some features of a storm god, his association with Adad is not surprising."

We will see in the next chapter just how Amurru plays into the Moses story.  For now, it is important only to point out that the ibex of Amurru shows up with the name of Yahweh associated with it – and both are brought into the iconographic context of the tree or pole of Yahweh’s consort Asherah.

THE BURNING BUSH

All of which leads us back to a careful consideration of the Burning Bush.  In Egyptian religion, gods and goddesses are frequently associated with sacred trees and often this association is intended to convey the fact that the trees in question are actual symbols for the divinities, i.e. the god or goddess is the tree.  For Khepri, however, I was only able to find two instances in which the god is definitively linked to trees.

In the first, Khepri as scarab beetle is found atop the head of Iusaas, goddess of the sacred acacia located just north of Heliopolis, in the temples of Hibis, Edfu and Dendera (Elisabeth O’Connell, Assistant Keeper, Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, The British Msueum).  This goddess, also apparently referred to as Nebet-Hetepet, “Lady of Offerings”, was in the Ptolemaic period assimilated to Hathor, who then took on the title of “Lady of the Acacia”.  In the Late Period, a text relates how Seth approached the “wonderful hall of Iusaas with the acacia tree in which life and death are contained (Katherine Griffis-Greenberg, Doctoral Program, Oriental Institute, University of Oxford).”  Originally Hathor’s tree was the sycamore, and the sun was said to rise between two sycamore trees in the east every morning.  In one of the Pyramid texts, the god Horus is said to emerge from an acacia tree (Khepri was identified with Horus as Horemakhet, Horus in the Horizon, the name given to the Great Sphinx at Giza by Thutmose IV), and the god Osiris (Khepri can be depicted wearing the crown of Osiris) in Late Period monuments and documents is called ‘Unique [or alone] in the acacia tree’.  Yet another Pyramid Text gives the Pharaoh Pepi as “the son of Khepri, born from Hetepet, under the tresses of [the goddess] of the town of Iusaas, north of On [Heliopolis]…”  Finally, the Coffin Texts speak twice of “the acacia of Iusaas-town north of” Heliopolis (Dr. Martina Ullman).  The Book of the Dead says of Osiris that “I betook myself to the Acacia Tree of the [divine] Children”.

There is no doubt, then, that Khepri is brought into intimate connection with the acacia tree.  Unfortunately, his appearing atop the head of the goddess Iusaas as an iconographical motif is found only in the Late or Ptolemaic periods (Dr. Martina Ullmann).  In addition, the acacia is called shittim in the Bible, as was the wood used to build Yahweh’s ark (more on which I will have below).  It would appear, then, that the seneh or “thorn bush” that is the Burning Bush cannot have been an acacia (although see below).

The second tree from Egyptian religion which can be shown to have a connection with Khepri also has an affiliation with Thoth, the angel of Yahweh-Khepri.  This is the so-called Desert Date, Balanites aegyptica, known to the ancient Egyptians as the ished tree.

On the southern wall of the tomb of the Ramesses II period official Amenmose (TT 373) is a representation of the Egyptian ished tree, which is said to be the tree of the eastern horizon from which the sun rises (Pierre Koemoth and Sydney H. Aufrere).  In front of the ished tree is the god Osiris in his capacity of wp iSd, “opener of the ished tree”.  Osiris had to open the ished so that the sun could escape from the underworld – in its guise as Khepri – and ascend into the morning sky.  We can plainly perceive Khepri as a winged scarab beetle flying towards/into the ished, which Osiris is “opening” for him.

A more startling example of Khepri with the ished is shown on a wall relief at the Temple of Hibis.  Here we can see Khepri crowning the ished tree, while Thoth, the “Angel of Yahweh/Khepri”, is writing on the leaves of the tree.

Thoth is known to have written the name of Ramesses II on the leaves of the ished tree at Heliopolis.  The moon god performs the same function on ished tree scenes involving Seti I and Ramesses II at Karnak.  According to Donald Redford, the ished tree motif first appears during the 12th Dynasty.  So we can make the irrefutable claim that both Khepri and Thoth were placed in close connection with Balanites aegyptica by the ancient Egyptians.

Having thus determined that there is justification for linking both Khepri (= Yahweh?) and Thoth (= the angel of Khepri-Re?) with the Desert Date or Balanite Tree, we need to take a closer look at the Biblical Burning Bush.

The Hebrew word used to name the Burning Bush is cenah, pronounced seneh.  This is from an unused root meaning “to prick”.  As such, it is usually described as a “thorn bush”.  The Balanite or ished tree of Thoth and Khepri has thorns.

While there is no indication the ished tree was conceived of by the ancient Egyptians as a symbol for a goddess, we must remember that Hathor, the chief deity of both the Serabit el-Khadim and Timna temples in the Sinai Peninsula, was called “Lady of the Sycamore”.  In Egyptian belief, the sun rose between two “Sycamores of Turquoise”.  Another epithet of Hathor was “Lady of the Turquoise”.  Isis and the sky goddess Nut could also appear as sycamore trees.

Walter Mattfield, basing his conclusions on the findings of several respectable Egyptologists, has convincingly argued for the Golden Calf of the Moses story being the Egyptian sun-calf who is depicted rising between Hathor’s sycamore trees. The sun-calf was also said to be born each morning from Nut the “Heavenly Cow”.  So Moses’ injunction against worshipping the Golden Calf was directed at the god Ihy, son of Hathor, who could take the form of a calf.  For the Egyptians, even the pharaoh, as the human incarnation of the sun god, could take the form of a golden calf.  The Hebrews who were worshipping the Golden Calf as the rising sun were merely worshipping Khepri under another guise.

It would not be unreasonable, therefore, to see in the ished tree of the eastern horizon yet another representation of the sky goddess.  Khepri (Yahweh?) and the Thoth (Angel of Yahweh?) could be viewed as occupying the Burning Bush precisely because they are in the sky.  The various rock carvings in the Sinai of the seven-branched menorah are themselves, of course, images of the sky-tree, in whose branches burn the flames of the seven planets.

While the balanite would seem to be the Burning Bush, we are once again (as I hinted at in the last chapter) focusing solely on the Egyptian material.  We are not taking into account the god of Abraham, i.e. Amurru of the Amorites.  Nor are we bearing in mind something even more important.

We have found ‘Yahweh’ names in the 2^nd millennium B.C. cuneiform archives of Mari in NW Mesopotamia.  These names take the form Yahwi-ilum, Yahwi-Adad, Yahwi-Dagan and the like.  Yahwi- in these theonyms is usually taken to mean  ‘to manifest [oneself]’ or similar and the word is, indeed, derived from the same word meaning ‘to be’.  Thus the Shasu group called YHW’ in the Egyptian records (see the next chapter) is not the only occurrence of the Yahweh word or name found outside the Bible. 

For the Hebrews, the sacred tree or pole was the Asherah, named for the goddess of this name.  She was the consort of El, but also of Amurru, the god of Abraham.  Learning more about Asherah and discovering the identity of her tree are critical for our understanding of what happened at the Burning Bush. 

As Professor Nicolas Wyatt’s entry on Asherah in the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible makes clear, “the etymological possibilities [for Asherah] are considerable.”  No consensus has yet been reached on the name, but in my opinion only one makes sense given the Biblical context.  I refer the reader to the dictionary entry for a discussion of all the current proposed etymologies.

The most common misunderstanding when it comes to the word asherah in the Bible is that a pole (or poles) is mentioned.  It is not – ever.  The idea of a pole comes from what appears to be implied by the text.  For instance, we know the asherah (or plural asherim) were made of wood.  Also, a tree that was planted in a sacred precinct could be termed an asherah. The most important verse for our purposes is Deuteronomy 16:21, here from the New Revised Standard Version:

“You shall not plant any tree as a SACRED POLE [the highlighted words are here substituted as an inferior translation for the word asherah] beside the altar that you make for the Lord your God; nor shall you set up a STONE PILLAR [matstsebah] – things that the Lord your God hates.”

Now the real question is this: was 1) the use of the goddess’s name as a common noun denoting a pole or tree due to the fact that as she was symbolized by a tree, the tree itself coming to be called after her or 2) did her name itself originally mean tree or pole or, finally, 3) are we totally wrong about the asherah being a tree or pole and, if so, what was it/she?

To help us determine which of these three possibilities best explains the name Asherah, I will list first the remaining Bible verses (from the NRSV) that contain her name, leaving her name intact rather than translating it with an unwarranted phrase:

Judges 6:25 NRS

That night the Lord said to him, "Take your father's bull, the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar [mizbeach] of Baal that belongs to your father, and cut down the ASHERAH that is beside it;

Judges 6:26 NRS

and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, in proper order; then take the second bull, and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the ASHERAH that you shall cut down."

Judges 6:28 NRS

When the townspeople rose early in the morning, the altar of Baal was broken down, and the ASHERAH beside it was cut down, and the second bull was offered on the altar that had been built.

Judges 6:30 NRS

Then the townspeople said to Joash, "Bring out your son, so that he may die, for he has pulled down the altar of Baal and cut down the ASHERAH beside it."

1 Kings 16:33 NRS

Ahab also made an ASHERAH. Ahab did more to provoke the anger of the Lord, the God of Israel, than had all the kings of Israel who were before him.

2 Kings 13:6 NRS

Nevertheless they did not depart from the sins of the house of Jeroboam, which he caused Israel to sin, but walked in them; the ASHERAH also remained in Samaria.

2 Kings 17:16 NRS

They rejected all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves cast images of two calves; they made an ASHERAH, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

2 Kings 18:4 NRS

He removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the ASHERAH. He broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.

2 Kings 21:3 NRS

For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he erected altars for Baal, made an ASHERAH, as King Ahab of Israel had done, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served them.

2 Kings 23:15 NRS

Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin—he pulled down that altar along with the high place. He burned the high place, crushing it to dust; he also burned the ASHERAH.

The ONLY proposed etymology for the goddess name that fits what is going on in the above-quoted verses is Akkadian asirtum (esertu/isirtu/isertu), discussed by Tilde Binger in Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 232, 1997):

“Asirtum [etc.] –

Sanctuary, chapel, temple (place of congregation); the goddess of the temple; a separate room in private houses for cultic purposes; a temple-shaped base, used for placing pictures and symbols (sacred); a ‘place of grace’; a sacrifice or gift for the gods; care; charity; guidance; an overseer; a female organizer or supervisor of sacrifices

…Mesopotamian asirtum is almost exclusively used of sacred places.”*

The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, under its entry for the word igigu, mentions a god found in a list named I-sir-tum, from isirtu, ‘sanctuary’.

Now, in light of this etymology, we can see Asherah in a two-fold way:  she is, on the one hand, the sanctuary itself, delimited by a sacred tree, and the goddess named for the sanctuary.  Thus you can GO TO THE ASHERAH to worship ASHERAH.

*The Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible article adds “the common noun atr (‘asr), meaning ‘sacred place’ is most widely attested in the Semitic languages (Albright, AJSL 41 1925; Day 1986).

In the Canaanite myth “The Gracious Gods”, El tells Asherah and her doublet Rahmay and their two sons, the Morning and Evening Star, to

“…raise up a sanctuary (or dais? better throne) in the midst of the holy desert:

“…there you will make your dwelling among the stones and trees.”

If we notice in the Bible verses cited, the asherah tree or pole is almost always paired with either a stone pillar or an altar (itself often made of unhewn stone).  This is startlingly similar to Athirat’s sanctuary (or throne) and dwelling ‘among the stones and trees’.

I would make one comment on Tilde Binger’s discussion of the word asirtum.  The same noun is found in Old Babylonian as ašte2; (ĝeš) aš-te; (ĝeš) iš-de3, "chair, throne; seat, dwelling; shrine, chapel”.  This immediately reminds one of the throne of Athirat, as well as the chair the goddess Inanna (Ishtar, the Canaanite Astarte) wants Gilgamesh to make for her from the wood of the huluppu tree she planted in her garden in Uruk.  She also wants a bed made and both may be considered emblems of Venus as queen and goddess of love/sex (or the marriage bed?).  If the throne of the goddess were manifest in the tree, then the Asherah as sacred space would specifically be her place of enthronement.  She could be, by extension, the Throne-goddess as well as the Sanctuary-goddess.

The same huluppu tree is home to the Anzu-bird (thundercloud in its crown), Lilitu (wind demoness in its trunk) and the snake that knows no charm (Euphrates River at its roots).  Thus we are talking about a fairly typical world tree, whose top was positioned at the North Pole, the point upon which the sky turned.  The most familiar example of such a tree would be the tree of the golden sun apples belonging to the Hesperides of Greek myth.  This tree’s fruit is known to be solar in nature, as it was the sun that made the western sky glow golden when it set.  As is the case with the huluppu tree, the tree of the Hesperides was guarded by a serpent, Ladon of a Hundred Heads. 

As to whom Athirat/Asherah really is, Professor Nicolas Wyatt has made his case for seeing her and her sister Raymay as hypostases for the sun goddess Shapsu.  For those interested in reading his argument, please see “The Gracious Gods: A Sacred Marriage Liturgy”, found in Religious Texts from Ugarit, 2002.  Other top scholars do not agree with Wyatt’s argument.  However, it is clear that she and her sister give birth, respectively, to the Morning and Evening Star.  In the Mesopotamian system, Ishtar/Inanna, i.e. Venus, has as her mother either Ninlil consort of Enlil the father of the gods, or Ningal the consort of Nanna the moon god.  Athirat/Asherah, as consort of El the father god would then be the Canaanite equivalent of Ninlil, “Lady Wind”.

Professor John Day of Oxford passed along the following information regarding Asherah the goddess and Asherah the cult object:

“The most likely view is that Ugaritic Athirat/Hebrew Asherah/Akkadian Ashratum means "sanctuary, holy place". This fits the fact that the name sometimes appears parallel in Ugaritic with the name Qudshu, which has this same meaning. Asherah is not a sun goddess. She appears as the mother of the gods, "creatress of creatures", and would appear to have been a kind of fertility goddess of some kind, as indicated by certain depictions showing her with emphasized breasts. The symbolism of her by a stylized tree (rather than a mere pole) also coheres with this.

If you read my book on Yahweh & the gods and goddesses of Canaan, or my articles on Asherah in Journal of Biblical Literature 1986 or in Anchor Bible Dictionary vol. 1, you will know that I see "Asherah" in the Old Testament as denoting sometimes the goddess and more often the wooden symbol of her. This wooden symbol is expressly stated to have been manmade in the OT, so not a living tree as the rabbis later imagined. I have also argued that the symbol had the form of a stylized tree, as depicted on one of the "Yahweh and his Asherah" pithoi from Kuntillet Ajrud.  (The Hebrews may have forgotten the original etymological meaning 'sanctuary'.) "Asherah" and "the asherah" are mentioned in similar contexts, so there is no doubt that the latter was named after the former.”

The particular stylized tree that he mentions is flanked by two ibexes who are feeding on its leaves.  This helps us identify just exactly what tree belonged to the goddess.  I’ve consulted several modern scientific studies on the diets of ibexes (e.g. Hakham and Ritte 1993 on these animals in the Dead Sea region), and somewhere around 70% of their diet is composed of ACACIA LEAVES. [Of course, the ibex also consume the Desert Date or Ished Tree.]

There is, in fact, an important symbiotic relationship that exists between ibex and acacia.  To quote from Elanor M. Bell’s Life at Extremes: Environments, Organisms and Strategies for Survival (2010):

“[Dorcas gazelles and ibex] are both predators and dispersers of Acacia seeds: while some seeds are destroyed, others are defecated unharmed.  Ingestion by large herbivores facilitates germination by scarification of the seedcoat.  While infestation by bruchid beetles reduces Acacia germination, herbivores may reduce brucchid infestation: (i) due to their stomach acids; (ii) crushing by the herbivore’s teeth; or (iii) by removing seeds prior to (re-) infestation.”

Why is this significant?  Because of the extraordinary holy nature of the wood of the acacia.  From  biblestudytools.com/encyclopedias/isbe/acacia.html:

“ACACIA

a-ka'-sha (shiTTah, the shittah tree of the King James Version, Isaiah 41:19, and `atse-shiTTah, acacia wood; shittah wood the King James Version, Exodus 25:5,10,13; 26:15,26; 27:1,6; Deuteronomy 10:3.):

ShiTTah (= shinTah) is equivalent to the Arabic sant which is now the name of the Acacia Nilotica (NOT Leguminosae), but no doubt the name once included other species of desert acacias. If one particular species is indicated in the Old Testament it is probably the Acacia Seyal--the Arabic Seyyal--which yields the well-known gum Arabic. This tree, which has finely leaved ular flowers, grows to a height of twenty feet or more, and its stem may sometimes reach two feet in thickness. The tree often assumes a characteristic umbrella-like form. The wood is close-grained and is not readily attacked by insects. It would be well suited for such purposes as described, the construction of the ark of the covenant, the altar and boarding of the tabernacle. Even today these trees survive in considerable numbers around `Ain Jidy and in the valleys to the south.”

I would add that a very common site at Timna (see Chapter 4 below) is ibex feeding on acacia trees.

So, what we have for the Egyptian and Hebrew trees and their associated deities are these:

1) Ished tree with Khepri and Thoth

2) Acacia tree with Yahweh and Angel/Messenger of the Yahweh

The problem is that the Angel of Yahweh is the actual fire in the bush.  This does not fit Thoth at all.  Furthermore, a little further in the Moses story (Exodus 13:21-22, we are told that Yahweh went before the Hebrews in the form of a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.  As the pillar of fire is almost certainly the same cloud filled with heavenly fire, i.e. lightning, most especially sheet lightning, and as the cloud that descends upon Mt. Sinai during the Theophany is the same lightning-filled cloud as well as the cloud otherwise associated with the Tabernacle and described as Yahweh’s tent (Psalm 18:10-11), we must assume the old storm god Amurru of the ibex is still present.  We will see in the next chapter that the same cloud was generated with incense and appeared over the ‘mercy seat’ of the ark of the covenant.

So what to make of the Burning Bush episode?  Well, as it turns out, we must introduce another god known to be associated with the Egyptian ished tree into the equation.  This is the Father god – and ram god – Amun, the head of the Egyptian pantheon.  Amun not only was conflated with Khepri, but is often described in terms very similar to Khepri himself (see David Klotz’s Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple, Yale Egyptological Studies 6, 2006). Amun’s name means ‘The Hidden One”, and other gods – like the sun god Re – were considered to be his physical manifestation.  So in his capacity as Amun-Re he was both visible and invisible.

Amun was a very complicated deity, who eventually subsumed pretty much every other god in the pantheon.  Often these gods were referred to as his bas, ba being a word that not only indicates a sort of  soul, but a sort of separate physical mode of existence for its owner. Ba can also mean ‘ram’, and ‘to be manifest, present’. 

What follows is a hymn from Hibis to Amun as the Ba of Shu, the air/wind god:

THIRD BA

[Yo]u are Amun,

you are Shu,

you are the highest of gods,

you are “Sacred of Manifestations” [dsr-hpr.w; title for Ba of Shu] as the four winds of heaven,

so (you) are called, when they come forth from the mouth of his majesty.

The Ba of Shu, who bends the winds, who traverses heaven daily,

Who lives as the Supports of Shu, unto the limit of the heavenly circuit.

He enters into every tree,

with the result that the branches come alive:

His power is more cutting than any powerful lion.

He makes the sky rage,

and he stirs up the sea :

It is (only) through his calming that they settle down.

The one who is most manifest (ba) of manifestations (ba.w).

He makes Hapi flood according to his will,

and he makes flourish (?) the fields according to his desire:

nobody else being as p[owerful] besides him.

His voice is heard, but he is not seen,

while letting every throat breathe.

The one who reassures the pregnant concerning her children,

so the newborn which comes from her lives.

He who goes around the mysterious-regions for [W]eary-of-Heart,

existing as the sweet, northern wind.

It was to let him have use of his body

that he filled his nose by means of all of his scents, at all times, every day,

while arriving at his time, without cease in his action,

In his name of Horus Valiant of Arm,

who protects Shentayt,

so that her son might endure upon the throne of his father,

may he live eternally.

Amun, the Ba of Shu,

Who travels  inside a cloud,

while separating earth from heaven,

as he endures in all things.

The Life-force from whom one lives, eternally.

Now, we may immediately recognize here the ram-god Amun, existing inside a cloud, invisible as the wind.  In a Ptolemaic hymn to Amun, we are told:

“Loud of voice without being seen:

It was within his cloud that he shouted on earth.”

The “shouting” is, of course, thunder, taken as the voice of the god.

I would see Yahweh and his ‘angel’ the same way.  I’ve already alluded to the Amorite theonyms found at Mari – Yahwi-ilum, Yahwi-Adad, Yahwi-Dagan.  If we then allow for such names to be read as ‘Manifest is El/Adad/Dagan’ or, perhaps better, ‘Manifestation of El/Adad/Dagan’, then Yahweh IS Amun, while the Angel of Yahweh is Amun’s storm-cloud manifestation, which we can equate with the earlier Amurru/El.  In other words, Yahweh/Amun “resides” within the storm-cloud (Amurru/El), but is himself invisible.  If we accept this, then Yahweh and the cloud-angel are one and the same entity and yet separate entities. The old Amurru/El as Angel is merely the visible aspect of the unnamed, hidden god Amun.

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT:

The name YHWH has exactly the same meaning as that of the Egyptian Khepri.  While I do not see evidence in YHWH's cult of Khepri, the word xpr, 'to be, to become, to manifest', as well as bA, ' to be manifest', 'to be present', are used for Amun, the chief god of the Egyptian pantheon, in several contexts.  All other gods came to be viewed as manifestations of Amun. 

In the Amorite personal names I alluded to, the Yahwi- component is not a divine name.  It is paired with a divine name and means something like 'god X is manifest'.  The YHW’ Shasu group may have been called such because they worshipped a god called 'the Manifest One’ or ‘the One who Manifests Himself’.

Syncretism being what it is, deities with similar characteristics were often identified with each other.  There is a lot of evidence for an Amorite connection for Abraham, and if his father Terah the ibex/wild mountain goat is a reference to the caprid of Amurru/Martu, then we can at least say that before the Hebrews stayed in Egypt they were Amorites who worshiped the storm god Amurru.  The latter has been related to the Canaanite El by several scholars, and not only because of their shared consort, Athirat/Ashratu (the Asherah of Yahweh). 

If Amurru worshipers were in Egypt long enough, they may have conflated their ibex-god with the ram-god Amun, El's counterpart.  And Amun, in turn, whose visible manifestation was the storm cloud (as demonstrated in Egyptian hymns to the god), was identified by the Midianites with their own god Yahweh, the Manifested One. 

Having established that Moses’ ished/balanite tree was syncretized with the Midianite acacia, and that Amun of the ished was similarly syncretized with Yahweh of the Asherah, and that Yahweh’s angel is merely a designation for the storm-cloud form of Amun/Yahweh, where was the sacred mountain of the god and tree?