Sex, Drugs , Violence and the Bible
By Chris Bennett and Neil McQueen

Baal and Asherah

The fertility cult practiced by the inhabitants of the Ancient Near East was universal. That Abraham himself hailed from Ur shows that his family were also worshippers of the Divine King and Queen. The Hebrews were faithful in their devotions to the Goddess and her divine brother/husband, despite their monotheistic leanings. The actual worshippers of Yahweh and Yahweh alone were a stark minority. The worship of Baal and Asherah was tied to the continued fertility of the Earth. In order to insure a bountiful harvest and healthy offspring it was essential to worship the King and Queen of Heaven in imitation of their connuptual liaison on New Years Day. There is no shortage of records revealing the sexual nature of this fertility rite. Especially from within the Bible

"The Israelite men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to sacrifice to their gods. The people ate and bowed down before their gods. So Israel joined in worshipping the Baal of Peor." (Numbers 25:1-5). Here we have an example of the "sin of Balaam". The fertility rites of the "Baal of Peor" involved the imitation by the human practitioners of the divine couple Baal and Asherah as they had sex. It was the duty of every one in the culture to follow suit in order to insure a bountiful harvest and many children. It was a rite practised throughout the Fertile Crescent under the various names of the divine couple: Baal and Asherah, Tammuz and Ishtar, Osiris and Isis.

The judges and the prophets testify to this practice. Both Yahweh and Moses were infuriated at the Israelites for their "unfaithfulness" in worshipping these deities.

And the Lords anger burned against them. The Lord said to Moses, "Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the Lord's fierce anger may turn them away from Israel." So Moses said to Israel's judges, "Each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshipping the Baal of Peor." (???????????)

It certainly wasn't something alien to the culture of the Israelites. There are testimonies to the worship of Baal throughout the pages of the Old Testament. A few examples should suffice: "And the king commanded Hilkiah high priest... to bring forth out of the Temple of the Lord all the vessels that we re made for Baal and for Ashera, and for all the hosts of heaven. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields... and took the ashes to Beth-El. He did away with the pagan priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem--those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and the moon, to the constellations of the starry hosts. He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine-prostitutes which were in the temple of the Lord and where woman did weaving for Asherah." (2 Kings 23:4-20?????) In this telling passage we can see that the "male shrine-prostitutes" were within the precincts of the temple itself. In order for them to be there, there had to be a broad base of support for them among the Children of Israel.

Main

Next