[Editor’s Note: This poem was included in the journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies (Vol 3 No 2, 2024).]
In this brief but intriguing book, Dvora Lederman-Daniely proposes that Sarai/Sarah, the wife of Abraham in the Book of Genesis, is actually a demythologized version of the Goddess Asherah, regarded by many scholars as the consort of the god YHWH in pre-exilic Israel.
This hypothesis is succinctly argued in eleven short chapters, after an Introduction reviewing the evidence that the Goddess Asherah was worshipped in ancient Israel, despite the attempts of post-exilic authors and editors to erase her presence in the Hebrew text. Chapter 1, “The Biblical Story of Sarai Containing Mythological Fragments,” probes the narratives about Sarai in Genesis, with special attention to Gen 18:12-15, a dialogue between Sarai and God where Sarai laughs at the announcement that she will bear a child in her husband’s old age. As Lederman-Daniely notes, there is an odd mismatch between God’s declaration and Sarai’s reply. Sarai laughs at the idea that she can still experience pleasure, since her husband is old. God replies, “Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying: Shall I of a surety bear and child? and I am old?” (Gen 18:12), implying that the aged one is not Abraham, or Sarai, but God himself. Moreover, the conversation is presented as if it’s between two equals, God and Goddess—perhaps echoing an ancient tale where God, not Abraham, was the husband.
Chapter 2 (“Canaanite Narratives and their Link with the Narrative in Genesis 12, 18 and 20”) mines Canaanite mythology for myths in which the Goddess Asherah and her ancient husband, El, are represented as being in an unsatisfactory sexual relationship from the Goddess’s perspective. In the Ugaritic myth, the Goddess seeks sexual pleasure elsewhere, whereas in Genesis, Sarai/Sarah is handed over by her cowardly husband to two foreign kings, after which she becomes pregnant. Chapter 3 (“Sarai as the Name of Asherah”) goes on to argue that not only does the biblical Sarai reflect Canaanite mythic motifs, but also that her name shares a root (šr—”to rule”) with several ancient near eastern goddesses: Asherah, Ashartum, Asheratu, Ashirtu, and Ashratum, also called sharat. The answer to the question posed in Chapter 4 (“Could Sarai—Meaning ‘she who rules’—Be the Name of Asherah?”) is affirmed with the observation that in the Canaanite pantheon, Asherah is not only the mother of the gods but a ruling queen, as she was in ancient Israel (Jeremiah 16:16-19; 2 Kings 22:4, 5-6). Chapter 5 reviews “Biblical References Portraying a Figure Called Sarai as a Superhuman Being”: the “Great One” and “Princess” (Sarati) among the nations (Lamentations 1:1); the Queen of Heaven who provided for the people of Jerusalem before she was banished (Jer 44:17); the ancient creative power who was the divine patroness of Jerusalem (Isaiah 51:1-2, 9); divine Wisdom who was the consort of God before the dawn of creation (Proverbs 8:24, 26-27), the source of happiness (ashrei).
Chapter 6 turns to “The Deir ‘Alla Archaeological Discoveries,” which offer evidence of a goddess named Sarai. Deir ‘Alla is an archaeological site in Jordan that features inscriptions concerning Bal’am son on Be’or, a Moabite prophet named in the bible (Numbers 22-24). In the inscription, the prophet refers to two sets of gods, the Elim (male gods) and Shaddain—a group which appeals to a Goddess whose name beings with an Š followed by two illegible letters—probably Shaddai, an epithet of Asherah. Chapter 7 asks the question whether “The Motif of the Jealous and Punitive Husband in the Bible” is a literary metaphor, or has a mythological origin. The prophetic motif of YHWH as the jealous husband of his unfaithful bride, Israel, the author asserts, is related to a “mythological story whose protagonists are Yahweh and Sarai” (p. 40). Chapter 8 (“Violent Partnering and Parenting”) relates the metaphorical violence inflicted by God on his spouse and children (Israel and the children of Israel) to “the early beginnings of Israel’s faith, as the sexual jealous of a husband for his wife. The destruction, death, punishment, suffering and exile of this woman’s children (the people), were his revenge of the woman-goddess who was unfaithful to her husband” (p. 45).
Lederman-Daniely returns to the Genesis narrative in Chapter 9, “The Mythological Vision of the Binding of Isaac.” In this famous story, Abraham is ordered by God to kill his son as a test of obedience (Genesis 22:2). In the biblical narrative, Sarai/Sarah is absent, but the author relates the detail of the ram caught in a thicket (Genesis 22:13), divinely provided as a substitute for the sacrifice of the son, to the ancient near eastern symbol of the ibex and the tree, where “the Goddess was symbolized by horned animals like an ibex or ram standing next to tree branches or shrubs” (p. 47). In a much earlier version of the story, the depiction of the ram in the thicket may attest to the protective presence of Sarai/Asherah. Chapter 10 asks the question “El Shaddai or El Sarai?” The former is a divine epithet is found 48X in the Hebrew bible, and it has been studied extensively. Lederman-Daniely takes up the hypothesis that its origin is not in a divine attribute (El=God of Shaddai=of breastfeeding/fertility/birth) but the name of a God (El) and Goddess (Shaddai), “two spouses, the heads of the religious pantheon of ancient Israel, the God and Goddess, El and Asherah” (p. 53), like Milk-’Ashtart or Anat-Yahu (p. 52). The hypothesis that the Goddess Shaddai was in fact Sarai is supported by the similarity of their names, which differ only by one letter which could easily be mistaken for the other: ד in Shaddai, and ר in Sarai. The final chapter (11: “Has the Name ‘Sarai’ Indicating the Name of the Mother Goddess been Eradicated from the Religion of Israel?”) concludes that “Despite multiple efforts to conceal the source of the ancient name and the divine Goddess, her epithet was embedded in the name of the ancient people [Israel] for generations, with no possibility of a complete erasure” (p. 61).
The puzzle pieces that Lederman-Daniely painstakingly puts together do imply — although they cannot definitively prove — that the matriarch Sarai might indeed be a demythologized Asherah. This does not obviate the intensely patriarchal nature of ancient Israelite religion, where jealous men and gods engage in abusive relationships with their human and divine spouses. I was surprised to read the unqualified assertion that Hebrew word for wisdom is bina (p. 34), when the synonymous hochmah is used much more often in the Wisdom literature to refer to the female personification of divine Wisdom, including in the two examples cited by the author (Prov 9:1 and 24:3 [erroneously printed as 23:3]). These reservations aside, this work is an interesting and suggestive contribution to the study of Goddess worship in pre-exilic Israel.
[Editor’s Note: This book review was first published in the journal, S/HE: An International Journal of Goddess Studies, V3 N2 2024.]