The Three Tree Goddesses in the Bible by Janet Rudolph

For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters,

and that spreadeth out her roots by the river,

(Jeremiah 17:8 KJV)[1]

And we shall be likened to trees,

our roots nourished by living waters.

(MPV)[2]

The cosmic tree, tree of life, axis mundi, world tree – all one and the same – is a symbol that is found throughout the world in every culture and mythology. In many of these societies, the tree is considered to be the ancestor of humankind. As University of Chicago Professor, Mircea Eliade taught, there is often a mythological ancestor related to or born from the cosmic tree.[3] He gives numerous examples including how the Miao groups of Burma “worship the bamboo as their ancestor,” and Australian tribes view the mimosa as theirs. A tribe from Madagascar, called Antaivandrika which means “people of the tree,” consider themselves descendants of the banana tree.[4]

The Norse Yggdrasil was a yew. The Druids were known as “oak seers.” Egyptians had the sycamore and tamarisk, the Mayans, the ceiba tree, the Chinese, the pear and mulberry trees and in parts of Russia, the birch tree. The world tree of Sumeria, the huluppu tree, was thought to be a date palm by Wolkstein and Kramer.[5] The tree in the biblical Eden is generally considered to be a fig, apple or almond tree.

Even in the world today, we still speak about our own ancestors as “the roots” of our “family tree” of which there are many “branches.” Our descendants are offshoots. Our children are the fruit of our loins.

In further recognition of human beings’ relationship to trees, the Hebrew language offers more confirmation. In Hebrew the word for tree is ets. If you add the universal breath syllable, ah (or ha) you get ets-ah which means spine. Ets-yim[6] in Hebrew means bones. We all carry our own trees of life within our human bodies. Our bones are likened to the bones of the trees. Our spines and the truck/spines of trees are deeply connected. 

This comes to life in the mythos of the ancient Great Tree Goddesses of the Mideast. It was common for goddesses to live, or more than that, to BE the body of the trees. In that capacity they provided sustenance for the human population.

The model of a goddess inhabiting a tree is perhaps most explicit in Egypt, where there are images of Isis as the “Lady of the Sycamore.” 

Isis as tree goddess suckling the future pharaoh, Tuthmosis IIIfrom her branches (18^th dynasty which ruled from 1504-1450 BCE)

Isis as tree goddess providing nourishment in the form of fruit and drink. From the tomb of Pashedu (19^th dynasty, 1314-1200 BCE).

It is with this foundation that we can look at the three major tree goddesses that are found in the bible; Ashera, Lilith and Eve.

Ashera was the great goddess of the Sumerians. She is most known in the bible through the tree groves, called Asherot or Asherim, Hebrew makes words plural by adding either “ot” or “eem.” The Hebrew plural form can be used in two different ways. Similar to English, the plural form can indicate more than one. Asherim, for example, means tree grove indicating that it consists of more than one tree. But here is where Hebrew differs – the plural can also mean a single tree but one that is particularly grand, large or noteworthy. All three Ashera-based terms are often translated as groves or poles. Ashera is referenced 40 times in the bible, none of them in a good way.

But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images,

and cut down their groves

Exodus 34:13 (KJV)

Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the LORD thy God,

Deuteronomy 16:21 (KJV)

Ashera must have been a powerful goddess for the scribes to put such effort in destroying Her. And She has been damaged, first by the cutting of Her groves and second as She has been translated almost out of existence.

But lucky for us, the ancient scribes could not completely erase her and Ashera peeks out of the texts. The Hebrew language is a language of roots. Words with the same roots tend to be related. The primary root of Ashera is Shin – Resh or the Sh and R sounds. The following passage is when Leah’s maid-servant Zilpah, gives birth to Asher. In Hebrew law of the time, he was seen as her child with Jacob. The words with the same roots are bolded:

And Leah said, Happy am I, for the daughters will call me blessed:

and she called his name Asher.

Genesis 30:13 (KJV)

Raphael Patai writes that the phrasing “happy am I” or, “Osher” (sh-r root) likely comes from an ancient invocation dating at least back to the 7^th century BCE. Women of that time would use that intonation to call upon Ashera for help in childbirth.[7]

The root of the name of Ashera gives rise to another meaning that not only confirms Patai’s theory but adds another layer of depth. Shor (same sh-r root) means umbilical cord. Here it is in bold lettering below.  

on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut

Ezekiel 16:4 (New KJV)

Ashera appears to be a simple name but look at the depth of knowledge that She brings to us. Ashera connects us to the common family tree of humanity. She brings us messages of blessings, joy and fertility. Her symbology of umbilical cord is a potent reminder of our connections to divinity, to each other and to all of life.

There are two other tree images in the bible that adhere more closely to the traditional symbols of the World Tree. The most common symbols feature a serpent at its base and a bird in its branches. Often there is also a goddess in its trunk. We see this in the Enuma Elish, the Sumerian story of creation. In this story, the huluppu tree[8] came to be inhabited by the goddess Lilith along with a “serpent who could not be charmed” at its base and a bird in its canopy.   According to the story, another goddess Inanna grew upset and engaged Gilgamesh to cut the tree down. This is Lilith’s only appearance in Sumerian mythology. She came to be identified as a demon who stole babies or seduced men to their doom. Notice how Lilith exists in the same vein as Isis and Ashera, goddesses inhabiting or otherwise deeply connected with trees.

Does this theme of cutting down trees to rid a population of a tree goddess sound familiar? Lilith’s Sumerian story is far older than the extant stories we have of Ashera. It dates to the 13^th century BCE. This is a sign that the reversal of tree goddesses into elements of curses was well underway by the time the bible was written.

Lilith’s lineage before she was demonized can be traced to even more ancient times. Words likely derived from Lilith’s name are the Libyan lilu (water), Lithuanian liete (to pour) and lyti (to rain). To mythologist Ariel Golan these “suggest that Lilith of the Ancient East was a vestige of the goddess of heavenly moisture, older than Sumerian mythology, i.e., the Great Goddess.”[9]

There is only one place in the bible where we find the traditional world tree with the serpent, the bird and a Goddess. It is not in Genesis. Like the Enuma Elish, Lilith only appears in the bible one time and Her appearance presages despair.

The wild beasts of the desert shall

also meet with the wild beasts of the island,

and the satyr shall cry to his fellow;

the screech owl[10] also shall rest there,

and find for herself a place of rest.

There shall the great owl[11] make her nest,

and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow:

 there shall the vultures also be gathered,

every one with her mate.

Isaiah 34:14-15 (KJV)

In this passage Isaiah proclaims the curses that will befall the Israelites for declared disobedience. I believe it is an older passage that was also reversed to exhibit the World Tree as a place of desolation and despair. I believe the original, which has been lost to us, was an ode to the fertility and life-giving properties of the World Tree. Clues remain. Here is my own translation using Hebrew root words rather than the translations as they have come down to us.

Humanity.beings[12], natal of the Earth

shall gather in dry lands

blessed by heaven’s dew

and trumpet their yearning for each to each.

There, as Lilith drapes her gentle darkness

bringing repose and rest,

the winged ones of the skies and their mates, together will nest,

and the serpents of the ground will lay their eggs

expectant of emergent life.

MPV

And of course, there is the more famous World Tree which exists in the garden of Eden and contains a goddess in its trunk and a serpent. This story contains the added mysterious element of a serpent who is able to speak. Eve is the only “person” able to communicate with the talking-serpent.  

 Eve in Hebrew means life as the bible tells us outright,

And Adam called his wife’s name Eve;

because she was the mother of all living.

Genesis 3:20 (KJV)

Eve is chavah or hawwah depending on the transliteration. In Hebrew, the “tree of Life” is the tree of ha-hay-yim.

The tree of life, literally translated, means the tree of Eve (transcendent of gender) in its grandest, most powerful aspect. Ha-hay-yim[13] is life in plural, LIFE/EVE writ large in the fullness of all mystery. 

Among the many languages deriving from the same source, called Central Semitic,[14] are Aramaic, Arabic, and Hebrew. Comparative word studies show that it is not just the tree that is a namesake to Eve. As Barbara Walker writes, “In Arabic, the words for ‘snake,’ ‘life’ and ‘teaching’ are all related to the name of Eve – the Biblical versions of the Goddess with her serpent form, who gave the food of enlightenment to the first man.”[15] In Arabic and Aramaic the word for serpent is hayyat.

In Eden, Eve (hawwah) is encouraged by an aspect of herself (hayyat) to eat the fruit from another aspect of herself, the tree of life (ha-hay-yim). This fruit, which has been the source of so much pain amid cursing, was a gift from Eve’s own body and was Hers to freely give. How would our lives be different if this were the foundational belief of our world? Matthew Fox calls this the Original Blessing. I call it the Original Gifting.

If we fast forward to today, we see that our forests are not in good shape. Between pollution, fires, clear cutting, continuing devastation of old-growth forests, our culture does not understand nor value trees. We too easily forget that trees have been crucial in creating an Earth that is habitable for Life. What we do to the trees, we ultimately do to ourselves. Ashera, Lilith and Eve stand ready to remind us. They are here to provide us with the wisdoms of the oldest foundations of human culture, the knowledge of our ancestors, the trees.

Proverbs 3:18

She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her,

And happy are all who retain her.

KJV

She is a tree of life to those who treasure Her

And blessed are all who embrace Her essence.

MPV

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[1] KJV is King James Version, a traditional translation

[2] MPV is Mystic Pagan Version, my own translation

[3] Eliade, Mircea Patterns of Comparative Religion, translated by Rosemary Sheed, University of Nebraska Press, 1996; 276.

[4] Ibid, 300-301

[5] Wolkstein Diane and Kramer, Samuel, Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth, Harper and Row, 1983, 178.

[6] Or ets-eem. It is a plural form.

[7] Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess pg 39. There is a tablet from this time period with the invocation.

[8] Wolkstein Diane and Kramer, Samuel, Inanna Queen of Heaven and Earth, Harper and Row, 1983, 178.

[9] Golan, Myth and Symbol, Jerusalem, 1991, 228.

[10] Lilit in Hebrew.

[11] Other translations use “arrow snake” or “tree snake.”

[12] “Humanity refers to all of life’s creations.

[13] The “w” and “y” are interchangeable. The “eem” or “yim” sound at the end makes it singular plural.

[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Semitic_languages; consulted February 214.  Also in Jean, Georges, Writing The Story of Alphabets and Scripts, Discoveries at Harry N. Abrams, Inc, 1992; 53-55.  He calls the common root the “Phoenician alphabet.”

[15] Walker, Barbara G., The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects Harper SanFrancisco, 1988; 388.

(Meet Mago Contributor) Janet Rudolph