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Asher Ashes

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

ha-Hokmah" (Spring

of Wisdom), Korets, 1817 homilies on the Pentateuch and other books of the Bible. Zweifel in his work in defense of Hasidism ("Shalom al-Yisrael," pp. 81, 82) quotes aphorisms from this work but is fair

—containing cabalistic



enough to conclude with one that shows Asher's contempt for those who study the laws of nature or secular science.

Bibliography Sefer Seder ha-Dorot mi-Talmide

lia-Besht,

p. 30b.

L. G.

P.

Wl.

ASHERAH

(mK>N): A Hebrew word occurring frequently in the Bible (P.. V.) and signifying, except in a few late passages noted below, a wooden post or pole planted near the altars of various gods. In the Authorized Version the word is rendered "grove." It has often been inferred from Deut. xvi. 21 that the Asherah was originally a tree, but the passage should be .translated " an asherah of any kind of

wood" (compare Moore, "Ency.

Bibl." and Budde, World," viii. 734), since the sacred tree had a name of its own, el, elah, elon, and the Asherah was sometimes set up under the living tree (II Kings This pole was often of considerable size xvii. 10). (Judges vi. 25), since it could furnish fuel for the sacrifice of a bullock. It was found near the altars of Baal, and, down to the days of Josiah, near those of Yhwh also, not only at Samaria (II Kings xiii. 6) and Beth-el (II Kings xxiii. 15), but even at Jerusalem (II Kings xxiii. 6). Sometimes it was carved in revolting shapes (I Kings xv. 13), and at times, perhaps, draped (II Kings xxiii. 7). It is most often associated in the Bible with the pillars ("mazzebot") that in primitive days served at once as a representation of the god and as an altar (W. K. Smith, " ReIt was proligion of the Semites," 2d ed., p. 204). scribed in the Deuteronomic law and abolished in Josiah's reform (II Kings xxii. 23). In a few passages (Judges iii. 7 I Kings xviii. 19; II Kings xxiii. 4) Asherah appears to be the name of a goddess, but the text has in every case been corrupted or glossed (compare Moore and Budde, as cited above). In the first of the three passages the name Ashtaroth should stand, as it does

"New



Possibly a trace of this goddess

is to be found in an inscription from Citium in Cyprus, which dedicates an object to " My lady mother Asherah. Ashera" (compare Schrdder, "Z. D. the Name M. 6. " xxxv. 424). Many scholars, of a Syrian however, interpret the passage otherGoddess, wise (compare Moore, I.e.). Hommel has recently announced ("Expository Times," xi. 190) that he has discovered in a Minanan inscription a goddess Athirat. phonetically equivalent to Asherah. This would indicate that Asherah was a name for an old Semitic goddess long before the fifteenth century B.C. but for the present this must be regarded merely in the light of a possibility. The relation of this goddess to the pole called Asherah

The name in the is a difficult problem. Bible is masculine the plural " Asherim " occurring sixteen times, and the plural "Asherot" but three

in the Bible



times.

The latter is clearly an error. Asherah must be

a nomen unitatis. G. Hoffmann has shown ("Ueber Einige Phonizische Inschriften," pp. 26 et seq.) that these posts originally marked the limits of the sacred precincts, and that in the Ma'sub inscription it is the equivalent of "sacred enclosure." Moore finds in this fact the explanation of the use of the word in Assyrian {ashirtu, ashr&ti ; esldrtu, eshrdti), in the sense of sanctuary. Hommel fancies that he sees in the original form of the ideogram for Ishtar (compare Thureau-Dangin, "L'Ecriture Cuneiforme," No. 294), a post on which hangs the skin of an animal. Quite apart, however, from Hommel's somewhat imaginary conjecture, the Assyrian and Phenician use of the word in the sense of " sanctuary, " taken in connection with the Arabian and Syrian use of it as the name of a goddess, indicates that the posts were used at the sanctuaries of the primitive Semitic mother-goddess, and that in course of time their name attached itself in certain quarters to the goddess herself, and has survived in South Arabia and

When, therefore, the late editors of the Old Testament books made of the Asherah a fetish or cultus god, history was but repeating itself (see Asht toreth, Idolatry, Mazzebah, Phenicia). Syria.

Movers, Die PhOnizwr, i. 560 et seq. Wellhausen, Composition des Hexateuchs, 1889, 2d ed., pp. 281 et idem, Stade, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, pp. 458 et seq. seq.

Bibliography









G. Hoffmann, 1. 345, iv. 295 et seq., vi. 318 et seq. Ueber Einige PhOnizische Inschriften, pp. 26 etseq. W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 2d ed., pp. 187 et seq. Schrader, Zeit. fur Assyriologie und Verwandte Gebiete, lii. 364; Collins, 'in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archeology, xi. 291 et seq. ; Barton, in Journal of Biblical Literature, x. 82 et seq. idem, in Hehraica, x. 40 et seq. idem, Semitic Origins, 1902, 246 et seq. Nowack, Lelirbuch der Hebrliisehen Archdologie, 1894, ii. 19 et seq.; I. Benzinger, Hebrdisehe Archtiologie, 1894, pp. 380 et seq. Driver, Commentary on Deuteronomy, in the International Critical Commentary, 1895, p. 201; Moore, Commentary on Judges, pp. 86 et seq., 191 et seq.; P. Torge, Asehera und Astarte,

Zeitschrift,





elsewhere, in the case of similar charges of defection

Yhwh

(compare Judges

Sam. In the other two passages, the term vii. 4, xii. 10). Asherah is superfluous. These passages may indicate, as Moore suggests, that the Asherah became in some localities a fetish or cultus god. Asherah was also the name of a Syrian goddess.

from

ii.

13, x. 6;

I

In the El-Amarna tablets of the fifteenth century B.C. her name appears with the determinative for deity as a part of the name Arad-Ashirta (or 'EbedAsherah). It also appears in a Sumerian hymn published by Reisner (" Sumerisch-Babylonische Hymnen," p. 92), on a hematite cylinder (" Zeit. f. Assyr. vi. 161), and in an astronomical text of the Arsacide She appears to have been the period (ib. vi. 241). consort of the god Amurru, a Baal of the Lebanon region (compare Jensen, "Zeit. f. Assyr." xi. 302-

Arad-Ashirta in the El-Amarna tablets represents not only a sheik, but a cian, and is possibly the one which afterward became the tribe of Asher. 305).









Leipsic, 1902. j.

G. A. B.

jr.

ASHERI

0""tB»K,

"the Asherite"):

which Asher ben Jehiel

A

name by

frequently cited in rabbinical literature, especially in halakic discus" Ashersions. Modern historians use the expression ides " when speaking of the sons and descendants of

Asher j.

is

b. Jehiel.

L. G.

sr.

ASHES.—Biblical tion of the

Hebrew

Data: The usual

" efer "

transla-

which occurs often

in

expressions of mourning and in other connections.