This week on Goddess Bible Study, we are in the 9th century BCE, investigating the three Queen Mothers from Israel and Judah who were deposed in the Book of Kings for their worship of the mother goddess Asherah. This is the first of two parts.

Queen Jezebel is the most famous of the three and the most reviled woman in the Bible. She was assassinated by the followers of Yahweh, as was her daughter Athaliah, the only woman ever to rule in Jerusalem. The first to be thrown out was Queen Maacah, wife of Rehoboam, who was deposed by her own grandson, King Asa.

We will also dive into the famous Battle of the Prophets on Mount Carmel, where I argue that Elijah used stage magic to make his offering erupt in flames and defeat the prophets of Baal and Asherah.

We are now entering territory where scriptural history begins to align with hard archaeological evidence, as literacy emerged in the 9th century BCE with new alphabetic scripts copied from the Phoenicians.

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King Asa and the Deposition of Queen Maacah

King Asa was the grandson of the bad king Rehoboam and ruled Judah from 911 to 870 BCE. He is depicted in scripture as the first of the reformist Yahwist kings to actively suppress the worship of Asherah and other traditional pagan religious practices. There is no specific archaeological evidence of Asa or his reforms — we have only the Biblical narrative to go on — but the Bible makes it clear that these Israelites were polytheists fighting a culture war over the role of the old gods versus the new.

Among Asa’s most striking acts was the deposition of his own grandmother, Queen Mother Maacah, because she had constructed an Asherah pole. He also expelled the male qadesh — transgender priests translated in some Bibles as “temple sodomites” — from the land. Notably, he did not expel the female qedesha, who appear to have been a far more entrenched and difficult opponent for the Yahwist reformers.

Jehoshaphat, son of Asa, continued his father's Yahwist reforms, though paganism remained widespread throughout the land. He was also an ally of the northern kingdom of Israel and rode into battle alongside King Ahab — the very battle in which Ahab was killed. The qadesh were still present during Jehoshaphat's reign and were persecuted again, which suggests that the earlier expulsions had been only partially effective.

The Book of Chronicles tells this story somewhat differently. Written later than the Book of Kings, Chronicles clearly adjusts the narrative to present the Biblical heroes in a more favorable light, removing embarrassing details and amplifying their piety.

9th Century BCE: When the Bible Meets Archaeology

The 9th century BCE marks a turning point in the history of Israel, both politically and in terms of the historical record. This is the period when scriptural history begins to align with archaeological data, largely because writing — in both Hebrew and early Greek — returns at this time. Hebrew inscriptions and coins begin to appear regularly, giving historians solid ground to work with.

Omri became king of Israel in 884 BCE, establishing the new city of Samaria as his capital. His lineage is unknown, but his impact was immediate and lasting. He is one of the oldest Biblical figures whose existence has been confirmed archaeologically, and the royal house he founded became known as the House of Omri, just as Judah’s royal line was called the House of David. After roughly fifty years of civil war, Omri stabilized the political situation in Israel, forming alliances with Judah to the south and the Phoenicians to the north, while resisting the growing pressure of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Omri’s son Ahab succeeded him as king of Israel around 873 BCE and reigned until his death in 852 BCE. Ahab was a serious and formidable military commander whose forces were large enough to be mentioned by neighboring kingdoms. The Biblical writers, however, despised both Omri and Ahab for their devotion to traditional religion. Samaria under their rule featured a large Asherah pole and a temple dedicated to Baal.

Ahab Becomes King of Israel

The Battle of Qarqar, 853 BCE — The Kurkh Stele

In 853 BCE, King Ahab led a major military force at the Battle of Qarqar, one of the largest and most significant battles of the ancient Near East. The battle pitted the resurgent Neo-Assyrian Empire, led by Emperor Shalmaneser III, against a coalition of twelve kings fighting in resistance.

According to the Kurkh Stele — an Assyrian victory monument now in the British Museum — King Ahab of Israel sent the largest contingent of chariots among the resistance, though scholars dispute the exact numbers. The Kurkh Stele is one of the earliest extra-Biblical references to an Israelite king. Remarkably, the Bible makes no mention of the Battle of Qarqar at all, a notable omission given how significant the conflict was for the entire region.

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The Battle with Moab, 840 BCE — The Mesha Stele

The Mesha Stele is a victory monument erected by King Mesha of Moab, celebrating his successful war against Israel and Judah and the victory of his god Chemosh over Yahweh. It is the oldest known mention of Yahweh outside the Bible and also references the House of Omri, possibly the House of David, and King Ahab himself. The events described on the stele correspond to the account in 2 Kings 3:1–27.

The Biblical account includes a dramatic and disturbing turning point: when the king of Moab saw that the battle had turned against him, he sacrificed his own firstborn son and heir on the city wall — and the tide suddenly shifted in Moab’s favor. According to the Bible, the human sacrifice of a royal prince appeared to work.

Jezebel, The Phoenician Princess and Queen of Israel

Ahab’s queen was the Phoenician princess Jezebel, who died in 841 BCE and remains the most vilified woman in the entire Bible. She was the daughter of Ithobaal I — also known as Ethbaal — of Tyre and Sidon, who had been a high priest of Astarte before assassinating the previous king and seizing the throne. Ithobaal is an actual historical figure, documented to have lived from approximately 915 to 847 BCE. The royal marriage between Jezebel and Ahab served as the seal on a powerful political alliance between Phoenicia and Israel.

Together, Ahab and Jezebel built a new temple to Baal in Samaria, complete with 450 prophets, and erected a grand Asherah pole in the capital city. In Jezreel, they built both a palace and a temple to the mother goddess Asherah, home to 400 prophets, with Jezebel as their personal patron.

The story is generally told that Jezebel introduced foreign gods into Israel — but this framing is misleading. Baal and Asherah were not foreign gods. They were the incumbent gods, the traditional deities of the land. Yahweh was the new, young god, representing a radical break from established religious tradition. When Jezebel supported Baal and Asherah, she was defending the old ways against dangerous revolutionaries. It was Elijah and the Yahwists who were the insurgents.

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Elijah and the Battle of the Prophets on Mount Carmel

Elijah was a prophet of Yahweh in Israel and the chief opponent of Ahab and Jezebel. The Yahwist prophetic order — called the "Sons of the Prophets" — operated as his movement. Jezebel, for her part, actively persecuted the Yahwists and worked to eliminate them. Elijah confronted Ahab directly, declaring: "I will bring disaster upon you and wipe out your house." He also prophesied Jezebel's gruesome end:

The confrontation reached its peak at the Battle of the Prophets on Mount Carmel, described in 1 Kings 18:22–40. The contest was simple: each side would call upon their god to ignite a sacrificial bull on an altar, without the use of fire.

Elijah won — and in the aftermath, slaughtered all 450 prophets of Baal. The 400 prophets of Asherah, however, were left entirely untouched.

Elijah chose Mount Carmel strategically. There was an old limestone altar to Yahweh there that had been torn down, and limestone that had been burned changes chemically into quicklime (calcium oxide). His preparation was a three-step setup:

1. Rebuilt the altar from the old quicklime limestone

2. Salted the meat and altar with powdered sulfur

3. Drenched everything with what appeared to be water but was actually naphtha — “thick water,” a clear petroleum distillate known in the ancient world, imported from Persia

The combination of naphtha + sulfur + quicklime creates a violent, fiery chemical reaction — essentially the same technology later weaponized as Greek Fire in naval battles. A related recipe appears in 2 Maccabees 1:31–36, where “nephthar” (meaning purification) produces exactly such a fire.

Elijah was very clever — he challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest he knew they would lose because he was utilizing a magician’s trick.

It is notable that all 450 prophets of Baal were killed while the 400 prophets of Asherah were left entirely untouched. In this period, Yahweh was associated with Asherah, and would eventually be associated with Anat as well. This fight was between Baal and Yahweh — the goddesses remained, ready to align themselves with whichever male god came out victorious.

Jezebel’s response was fury. She sent a threatening message to Elijah: “May the gods punish me severely if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like one of them.” Elijah, afraid for his life, fled into the desert. Jezebel surely prayed to Anat for his slaughter.

Next week, we will continue the story of Jezebel, Athaliah, and their murders at the hands of Jehu the usurper and the followers of Yahweh.

We will discuss this topic on the Goddess Bible Study podcast on YouTube and soon on other platforms as well.

https://www.youtube.com/@goddessbiblestudy

Goddess Bible Study returns this week, and we dive into the histories of pagan Israel and pagan Judah during the First Temple period. For the next few sessions, we will be on the historical era of the First Temple as recorded in the Books of I & II Kings, along with some prophets, including Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.

Today, we discuss some good kings and bad kings to kick off the journey.

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931 BCE - The Death of King Solomon

In 931 BCE, King Solomon died after a glorious 40-year reign. He passed fat, rich, and happy in his bed, surrounded by his many wives who loved him dearly. If his goddess worship angered any deities, they did not show it in his lifetime.

If anything, the goddesses wept for the loss of their favorite king.

Jerusalem was the spiritual home of Yahweh, but in the late 10th century BCE, the Israelites were entirely pagan, with a full pantheon of gods. Monotheism was centuries away.

Yahweh was worshiped as part of the Divine Council, alongside the mother goddess Asherah, Astarte (Ashtoreth) and Anat, and qedesha priestesses worked in the temple. The “Yahweh and his Asherah” inscriptions date from this period.

The Biblical writers claim that Yahweh chastised Solomon for his worship of the goddess and threatened to divide the kingdom of Israel. Yet the story itself does not illustrate such a tale, as we will see, the stated reasons for the breakup had nothing to do with religion.

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Solomon’s death and burial were recorded simply:

The Kingdom Splits: Rehoboam and Jeroboam

Solomon was succeeded by his son Rehoboam, a famously bad king who inspired ten of the twelve tribes to revolt and form the northern kingdom of Israel, leaving the smaller state of Judah with Jerusalem as its capital and the temple of Yahweh.

The founding of Israel and Judah remains a mystery to scholars. There is firm evidence that both nations existed as independent countries, a wide variety of coins and royal inscriptions have confirmed this. But there is no firm evidence of a united kingdom that broke apart, or of the kings Rehoboam or Jeroboam.

All the written evidence is from the 9th century forward. King Solomon lived in the 10th century BCE, an illiterate period before the new Hebrew written language was invented. We do know that Jeroboam II was a highly successful king of Israel in the 8th century BCE.

Egypt still recorded hieroglyphics on monuments, but the relevant records are damaged, as we will see below.

Jeroboam was a work supervisor under King Solomon and had objected to the heavy labor demanded of the workers. Solomon forced him into exile. Jeroboam returned when Rehoboam was crowned and attempted to mend fences with the new king.

The breakup of the kingdom was, at its core, a labor dispute, a workers’ revolt against a bad king. Biblical writers blame Solomon's paganism for the split, but the Bible describes a conflict over harsh labor practices.

Golden Calves at Bethel and Dan

The first thing Jeroboam did after breaking away from the temple leadership in Jerusalem was to establish pagan shrines in Israel, particularly erecting Golden Calves in the towns of Bethel and Dan.

Bethel was a rival worship center to Jerusalem’s temple and they did not like each other. Bethel represented the old traditions of El and Baal. It is home to the altar built by Jacob that reads “El Elohe Israel” - El is the god of Israel.

The northern kingdom of Israel was pagan throughout its entire 210-year history. Israel originally worshiped Baal as king of the gods, but the competitive Yahweh cult made inroads, competing for kingship. Israel was always polytheistic.

King Jeroboam built high places, new altars, and instituted new festivals to create political allegiance to his new kingdom, pulling the people away from Jerusalem.

Jeroboam erected Asherah poles across the land and appointed priests from among the common people. This did not please the Biblical writers.

Rehoboam, King of Judah

Meanwhile, the kingdom of Judah under Rehoboam was no more virtuous than Israel under Jeroboam. Judah too maintained its pagan practices - Asherah poles, high places, sacred stones, and even the male qadesh shrine priests all persisted under the House of David.

925 BCE - Pharaoh Shishak attacks Canaan

Pharaoh Shishak (Sheshonq I) is a historical figure. The Bible says Shishak attacked Jerusalem and plundered the wealth from the temple, perhaps conveniently covering for the fact that there never was any such wealth there.

Shishak really did attack Canaan in 925 BCE. His victory stele, recorded on the Bubastite Portal at the temple of Karnak, details his military conquests across Canaan. The portal mentions many towns that were sacked, but does not mention Jerusalem.

Many scholars believe this is evidence that Shishak did not sack Jerusalem because there was nothing of value there. But the stele is fractured, and the location where Jerusalem would appear has been rubbed away. It remains an enigma. If Jerusalem were clearly mentioned, it would help resolve the mystery of Solomon and the united kingdom of Israel.

Egyptian hieroglyphics were rare in this period, used only on royal monuments — not for day-to-day texts and letters. What survives is precious, and what is missing is maddening.

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Next time on Goddess Bible Study, we will continue in the Book of Kings. We will detail the fall of the Three Queen Mothers, Maacah, Jezebel, and her daughter Athalia. Along with the famous Battle of the Prophets on Mt. Carmel, and the palace coup by Jehu, who then committed a series of mass murders and desecrated the temple of Baal. This topic may spread across two sessions.

Queen Jezebel of Israel is the Bible's most famous villain — and its most reviled woman. Her name alone became a byword for wickedness, manipulation, and dangerous sexuality, an image that has endured for three thousand years. But from her perspective, she was behaving honorably and defending her traditions against dangerous revolutionaries.

Let’s learn more about Jezebel!

The podcast discussions are continuing, but will appear in a separate email. We are upgrading the production, details soon.

Contact:

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We have been doing things on the cheap until now, using free software to livestream to YouTube. Going forward, we will start properly editing the programs and sharing them to multiple platforms.

Maybe even do some marketing!

We also want to expand our offerings so we can discuss current events and bring in some more voices into the conversation.

Goddess Bible Study began nearly a year ago on a whim, and now we are having a great conversation where we are diving into robust theological and philosophical topics.

As we move forward on the historical timeline, the stories will be increasingly relevant to the world today and less esoteric ancient history.

I am gratified by the progress we have made, the encouragement I have received, and I am super-excited to elevate the production.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading and listening.

We will be back in June with GBS 2.0!

This week’s Goddess Bible Study focuses on one of the most controversial topics in the Bible, the greatest sin committed by the Israelites and Canaanites (aka Phoenicians), child sacrifice.

The grotesque sin of child sacrifice was documented by Greek and Roman writers, in addition to the Hebrew prophets. These imperial rivals to the Phoenicians were universally disgusted by the practice, and it was a crucial distinction between their cultures.

We see evidence of child sacrifice in the cultures that worshipped Baal, particularly Carthage in North Africa, which was a Phoenician colony. The cult of Yahweh emerged in the Iron Age and challenged the primacy of Baal, the incumbent king of the gods. Child sacrifice was one of the most important issues they fought over.

The Greek story of Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia at the beginning of the Trojan War, as well as the Hebrew story of Abraham and Isaac, indicate that these practices were culturally familiar, but they were clearly rejected in the religious reformations of the Iron Age.

The Hebrews and Hellenistic Greeks saw themselves as superior peoples, in part, because they rejected the child sacrifice practices of their ancestors.

Sacrifices were made under different circumstances. There were obligatory sacrifices of firstborns, usually animals but sometimes children. Some infants were killed to honor a request being granted by the gods. In other cases, children, including royal children, could be sacrificed in times of danger and deprivation, such as a siege or famine, in hopes of saving the entire community.

This was an era of high child mortality, parents expected to lose many babies, and this is certainly part of the context for these ritual sacrifices.

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Child Sacrifice in the Bible

An early passage from the Bible indicates that child sacrifice had once been commanded.

One of the most famous stories in the Bible is the near-sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham. God (El at this stage of history) ordered Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, and Abraham reluctantly agreed, but upon proving his faith, the demand was rescinded by Yahweh.

It is an interesting detail that the story begins with God demanding the sacrifice, while Yahweh steps in at the end to provide the deliverance. This indicates both the distinction between God (El) and Yahweh, who were two separate gods, and also the opposition to sacrifice by the Yahweh cult.

Many scholars believe the original story featured the death of Isaac and that it was later modified by Yahwists. The sacrifice of Iphigenia is similarly told in contradictory stories; in some cases, the girl dies, and in others she is saved by the goddess Artemis and replaced with a substitute.

Several Biblical kings are recorded to have sacrificed their children.

In one instance, Canaanite child sacrifice apparently worked to defend against an assault by the Israelites. Fortunately, we now understand that these sacrifices were a futile and useless superstition that our ancestors were correct to abandon.

The battle featured in the following verse is a real historical incident. The Moabite victory was commemorated on the Mesha Stele from 840 BC, which happens to be the first appearance of Yahweh in the historical record. Mesha, the king of Moab, in an act of desperation, sacrificed his firstborn son, the crown prince, to appeal to the gods to save the city from imminent defeat and destruction. According to the Bible, the sacrifice worked, and victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat.

According to the Hebrew Bible, several kings, primarily of Judah, engaged in the ritual of child sacrifice. There are suggestions that other kings also permitted or participated in the practice.

Ahaz, King of Judah (c. 735–715 BCE):

Manasseh, King of Judah (c. 687–643 BCE):

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Phoenicians

Despite being a civilized and cosmopolitan people, the Phoenicians were deeply superstitious by Greek and Roman accounts, clinging to talismans and amulets that would help protect them from their malevolent gods.

Archaeology has confirmed that the Baalists did practice human sacrifice. Thousands of infant remains have been unearthed at Carthage in a huge “tophet,” a burial ground for charred human and animal sacrifices.

Smaller tophets were also found at Phoenician sites in Sicily, Sardinia, and Tunisia. Child sacrifice at Carthage took place continuously for over 600 years through good times and bad. No tophets have been found in Israel/Canaan, but they may have once existed.

The tophets contain a mix of animal and child remains carefully placed in urns, indicating that animals were used as well, or as substitutes for children. The fact that the animals and children were all buried together shows that these were not cemeteries, but ritual offerings to the gods.

Human sacrifice in the form of killing war captives and slaves was not unusual in the ancient world. Nor was it unheard of for an entire royal court to practice ritual suicide upon the death of the king or Pharaoh. These and other similar practices, including cannibalism, have been documented in many cultures around the world.

But the Phoenician/Canaanite practice of sacrificing their own children to placate the gods does seem unique in the Iron Age Mediterranean, and does not appear to have been practiced in any of the neighboring cultures like Mesopotamia or Egypt. The Greeks allude to child sacrifice in their mythology as an ancient practice of their uncivilized forebears.

Carthaginian child sacrifices are extremely controversial among academics, some refuse to accept that it was happening. Human sacrifice was part of their culture, and most of the literature describes the sacrifices as the fulfillment of vows and responses to prayers being answered by the gods. Apparently, people would offer a child if the gods delivered their prayer requests.

Dramatic Rituals

The method of sacrifice was dramatic, a bronze statue of a god with arms outstretched was stoked with a hot fire. The babies and animals were placed in the god’s arms and immediately consumed by the flames.

Greek historian Cleitarchus, who wrote a biography of Alexander the Great, also wrote about child sacrifice.

Children could be purchased from the poor for sacrificial purposes. It was a requirement that the parents of the sacrificed child do not shed any tears, or else the sacrifice was invalidated, the money lost, and the child would still be dead.

Greek historian Plutarch wrote:

Greek writers wrote for Greek audiences, and they routinely used the familiar names of Greek gods when describing foreign gods, which leads to some confusion among later scholars, who must take care to recognize which gods are being described. In the context of human sacrifice, the Greeks consistently describe them as sacrifices to Cronos, the cruel king of the Titans, the older generation of gods who ate his own children and was displaced by his son, Zeus. The Greeks clearly associate Cronos with El, the god of Israel.

El’s Sacrifice of His Son Ieoud

Very little Phoenician writing or mythology has survived, but bits from the legendary writer Sanchuniathon were preserved by Philo of Byblos and recorded later by the Christian Bishop Eusebius in his polemics against the hated pagans.

One Phoenician myth features El sacrificing his infant son Ieoud in a story reminiscent of Abraham and Isaac.

This story again demonstrates that the Greeks correlated El with Cronos.

Child sacrifices were made by the wealthy and elite, including the royalty. The practice fell into disrepute and corruption when the rich were allowed to purchase the children of the poor as substitutes for their own children. Carthage came under siege in 308 BCE by the king of Syracuse, leading to a political crisis and mass sacrifices.

Biblical Opposition to Sacrifice

The Yahweh cult began pushing its cultural reforms in the 10th century BCE, and child sacrifice was one of the defining issues. The issue was heated throughout the entire First Temple period. The prophet Jeremiah was particularly exercised about it.

Moloch/Mulk

In the Bible, the practice is usually described as sacrifices to the god Moloch, or as “passing the children through fire.”

It is possible that “Moloch” is actually a mistranslation and does not refer to a god but is simply a name for this particular type of sacrifice. Biblical Hebrew is written with no vowels, leading to many possible translations of the same words.

One reason is that there is no evidence in the archaeological record of a god named Moloch anywhere, he only appears in the Bible.

The Hebrew word used is “mlk” traditionally seen as the deity Moloch, but scholars now believe the word is “mulk,” the name used for the sacrifice in Carthage. If the sacrifices were not made to Moloch, that also strengthens the argument that the sacrifices were made to El.

Passing Thru Fire

12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides described a pagan custom of passing infants through fire, or a candle, that did not involve sacrifice, but was reminiscent of the Mystery religions, and the various myths where the goddesses Isis and Demeter put an infant in a fire to grant them immortality.

I believe all of us today can be thankful that child sacrifice was long ago abandoned.

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Next episode of Goddess Bible Study, we will return to the Book of Kings and the reforms against child sacrifice, and the goddesses.

In this week’s Goddess Bible Study, we focus on a special topic: trans folks. This is a hot-button political topic these days, with a lot of sensitivity around language choices. Some people may object to my language choices here, but I am going to stick to the most accurate language I know, and you can’t please everybody.

Transgender people have existed throughout history and across cultures, and they were highly celebrated in goddess traditions of the ancient world, often serving as shamans and high priests. They appear in both the Old and New Testaments, as well as in neighboring cultures.

Many of the great goddesses, such as Ishtar and Cybele, were themselves transgender. Gender bending represents the unification of paradoxes and the wholeness of creation.

Trans people had great names in the ancient world, a few examples include:

• The god Hermaphroditus from Greece

• Qadesh (Holy Ones) in the Bible

• The Galli priests of the great Roman mother goddess Cybele

• The Megabyzi at the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus

• Gala priests in Sumer

• Enaree shamans with the Scythians, as mentioned by Herodotus

• Hijra in India and Kathoey in Thailand, who are still around today

• Ardhanarishvara is a Hindu god, a composite, androgynous form of Shiva and his consort Parvati (Shakti)

Merging male and female symbolizes the synthesis of masculine and feminine energies and the inseparable nature of consciousness and matter. It signifies that the union of opposites creates the rhythm of life, maintaining balance, unity, and harmony in the universe.

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Jesus Christ (New Testament)

Jesus Christ described the condition of male→female transitioners perfectly in the Gospel of Matthew when he said:

A eunuch is a castrated man, and was the common term in the ancient world that would describe today’s transexuals. Jesus describes three types: those who were born that way (biologically intersex, or hermaphrodites), those who were made by others (castrated without consent, generally to work in the palace), and those who choose it for spiritual purposes (voluntary transexuals and priests). There are also cross-dressers who maintain their sexual functions and serve in goddess traditions.

“Those who can accept this should accept it,” says Jesus.

Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)

In the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), the male transgender priests are called the qadesh, the “holy ones”, and they were the counterparts to the female qedesha priestesses. They were prominent in the earlier pagan Israelite traditions, and they were pushed out, along with the goddesses, in the monotheistic reforms.

The qadesh are only mentioned when they are being chased away and insulted. Their names are translated in a derogatory manner. In English texts, the qadesh are called “temple sodomites” and “dogs,” just as the female qedesha are called “temple prostitutes,” and “harlots” rather than “holy ones.”

The qadesh priests are uniformly condemned by the Biblical writers as a sign of sexual degeneracy by bad pagan kings. Their removal under the reformer kings of Yahweh is celebrated. Ultimately, laws were crafted by the Israelites that forbade the practice in sacred settings.

The qadesh appear in the Biblical narrative during the periods of religious reform, when the Yahweh-alone movement attacked and attempted to destroy the old pagan Israelite traditions. We will be digging into these stories in upcoming episodes of Goddess Bible Study.

Scholars generally associate the male qadesh as being the equivalent of the Roman Galli priests, who are well documented.

Scholars debate the historical usage of the terms eunuch, qadesh, and sodomite, and admittedly, these can be slippery. We can see in the contemporary debate on these topics how fluid gender identity and sexual practices can be, and it was every bit as fluid in ancient times as well.

We only have limited information to draw conclusions from, but we do know with certainty that gender-bending is an ancient practice and was highly celebrated in many societies. We also know with certainty that the patriarchal, monotheistic faiths that restricted the nature-based practices of the goddesses were hostile to anything that made men effeminate.

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Inanna/Ishtar/Astarte

Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and war (Astarte in the Bible), was herself transgender and was one of the most popular deities in the Ancient Near East. Ishtar could produce a beard and present as a man when she went into battle. In one lamentation, Ishtar says,

One of Inanna/Ishtar’s most famous stories is her Descent to the Underworld, where she attempted to visit without permission and was struck dead. The goddess was rescued by sexless eunuchs and brought back to life. These characters were represented in the temples by the kurgarrū and assinnu, servants of Ishtar who dressed in female clothing and performed dances in Ishtar’s temples. Several Akkadian proverbs seem to suggest that they may have also had homosexual proclivities, and some were eunuchs.

During earlier Sumerian times, Inanna was served by priests known as Gala, who performed elegies and lamentations. Men who became gala sometimes adopted female names, and their songs were composed in the Sumerian emesal dialect, which, in literary texts, is normally reserved for the speech of female characters. Some Sumerian proverbs seem to suggest that gala had a reputation for engaging in anal sex with men.

Hermaphroditus

The Greeks and Romans recognized the intersex god Hermaphroditus, the child of Hermes and Aphrodite. He was a remarkably beautiful boy who was merged with a nymph who had fallen in love with him. Hermaphroditus was the god of androgyny and effeminacy and was portrayed as a woman with male genitals.

There are many examples of marble statues of Hermaphroditus from the Greek and Roman eras. Here is one example, displayed in the Louvre Musuem in Paris.

Galli Priests of Cybele

The best documented of the priestly eunuchs were the Galli priests of Rome who served Cybele, the mother of the Gods. The Galli were famous and controversial in the Roman Empire, they had long flowing hair, perfume, and bright, colorful clothes. They engaged in ecstatic rituals filled with song and dance, plant drugs, ritual sex, self-flagellation, and the blood of animal sacrifices. And in a dramatic moment of wild abandon, initiates castrated themselves with a sharp flint knife in service of the great goddess.

These traditions were incredibly ancient, they were formally imported into the Roman Empire from Anatolia (Turkey) in dramatic ceremonies at the height of the Punic Wars. Cybele was credited with helping the Romans defeat Carthage and become the mighty empire. Many temples were built in Rome to the Mater Dei, the Mother of the Gods.

Cybele’s mythology was steeped in stories of castrations and gender-bending. In a famous poem, the Roman poet Catullus detailed the shocking moment when a new initiate, lost in the frenzy of the wild, intoxicated celebrations, cut himself and bled on the forest floor, and turned from he into she.

Cybele’s Galli priests were both honored and marginalized. At this late stage of Roman paganism, hard patriarchy and machismo dominated the culture. The effeminate Galli contradicted all notions of Roman masculinity, and they were confined to their temple most of the year.

Megabyzi of Artemis at Ephesus

The biggest and most famous pagan temple in Jesus’s day was the Grand Temple to Artemis at Ephesus. It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and was a major pilgrimage spot for centuries.

The Megabyzi were transgendered eunuch priests who served Artemis at the Grand Temple.

The temple of Artemis makes a cameo appearance in the New Testament when the Apostle Paul visited and nearly caused a riot. (Acts 19:24-31).

Scythian Enaree

The Enaree roamed with the nomadic horse-riding Scythians and their Amazon warrior women. Herodotus wrote that they were hermaphrodite shamans blessed by Aphrodite Urania, the Queen of Heaven, whom the Scythians called Artimpasa.

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Ardhanarishvara

Hijra of India - Kathoey of Thailand

Transgender traditions never disappeared; they lived on around the world and continue today. Some examples include the Hijra of India, and Kathoey (ladyboys) of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.

Hinduism recognizes Hijras as a third gender category in law and culture. Trans people have been part of South Asian society forever, but Christian missionaries and the European colonialists viewed them as depraved and worked for centuries to have them criminalized and eradicated.

Christian colonialists and missionaries introduced new sexual mores to the Indian subcontinent that rejected and criminalized homosexuality and outward expressions of gender-bending. Today, the Hijras and Kathoey continue to survive, albeit living on the fringes of society and forced into begging and prostitution to earn money.

Trans people have been around forever, they have unique identities and proud histories. Sometimes venerated and sometimes persecuted, trans people have always been visible and held distinct roles in society. Whether as musicians, sex workers, shamans, or priests, trans people tap into possibilities that most people cannot access and should be given their space to flourish.

Next episode, we will continue with our third contained subject, child sacrifice, before returning to the Bible narrative. Ritual child sacrifice was a common practice in some cultures, including the Canaanites and pagan Israelites. Eliminating child sacrifice was one of the primary reforms the Hebrew prophets of the First Temple period were attempting to achieve.

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Live discussion Tuesday, April 28 at 7 pm EST.

Cannabis in the Bible

This is the topic that started it all for me. In 2018, I began researching cannabis in the Bible with the plan of writing a book.

I was aware that cannabis is mentioned by name in five verses of the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, but was mistranslated as a different plant, so we don’t see it in modern Bibles. This mistranslation occurred in the Septuagint, the first Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible around 300 BC, so the meaning of the word has long been lost and only recently rediscovered.

We now know that cannabis was once sacred to the Hebrews. It is an ingredient in Moses’ Holy Anointing Oil, a recipe that comes directly from the mouth of God, so it must have been important, but cannabis is clearly not sacred in modern Jewish and Christian traditions today. They must have gotten rid of the plant at some point in history. My plan for the book was to figure out when and why it happened.

I opened a Bible for the first time since High School, and began digging into the modern academic scholarship to try and make sense of the story. It was here that I first discovered Asherah, the one-time wife of God.

God had a Wife?

I thought this was the most outrageous thing I had ever heard, and it made no sense, and now we have Goddess Bible Study, but that is another story.

I quickly came to the hypothesis that cannabis and the goddess must have been thrown out together, and that is exactly what happened. Cannabis was deeply sacred in the goddess traditions of the original pagan Israelites when they still had a mother goddess. But they divorced her when they transitioned from pagans into monotheists, and all her nature-based traditions and sacred plants were deemed profane.

My book was originally titled “Cannabis and the Goddess” before a last-minute change at publication time to “A History of the Goddess: from the Ice Age to the Bible,” which I think is much better.

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Anyway, let’s get into the evidence and the stories.

Five Verses

Five verses in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) use the Hebrew word kaneh, or kaneh bosm, which is the name of cannabis, but it is mistranslated as either calamus or aromatic cane. In all five instances, cannabis fits the context while calamus and aromatic cane does not. Aromatic cane is rather meaningless.

Exodus 30:23; Song of Solomon 4:14; Isaiah 43:24; Jeremiah 6:20; Ezekiel 27:17

Kaneh is described as a sacred ingredient in Moses’ holy anointing oil, a valued aromatic herb, a burnt offering in the temple (twice), and as an object of trade from Lebanon.

All of these references are during the First Temple period (or earlier). Cannabis was eventually thrown out in the reformations of the Yahweh-alone movement, and it does not appear again in the Second Temple.

Biblical commentary has long noticed that the spice mentioned in these five verses (kaneh, kaneh bosm) is vague and ambiguous, and there is no historical consensus among Jewish and Christian scholars on the proper translation. Bosm means sweet, or pungent; often in the context of aromatics applied to the body.

Among various candidates suggested for kaneh (bosm) include calamus, sweet cane, ginger grass, camel grass, lemon grass, sugar cane, balm oil, fennel, and other plants as well.

Aromatic cane is actually a good description of cannabis, which grows 10 feet tall and is pungent.

This is an important scholarly question, it is not just trivia for potheads. If it can be proven that kaneh is cannabis and was burned in the first Hebrew Temple, then there are profound theological, historical, cultural, and legal implications that reverberate in today’s society, beginning with the entire concept of marijuana prohibition.

Why Not Calamus?

Calamus, Acorus calamus L.- Sweet flag, is an herbaceous perennial, a common marsh plant. The flowers are sweetly fragrant and psychoactive. It is a well-known plant used in Indian traditional medicine for centuries. Its aroma makes calamus an essential oil valued in the perfume industry and used as a flavor for foods, alcoholic beverages, and bitters.

So far, so good for calamus, the problem is that calamus is extremely toxic in high doses, as required in the Holy Anointing Oil, nor is it typically a burnt offering.

Calamus was even banned for use as human food or as a food additive in 1968 by the United States Food and Drug Administration because it contains more than 75% asarone. Asarone is a poison that has been shown to cause cancer, and has ill effects on heart, liver, and kidney functions. This toxin in calamus is used for pest control.

Sula Benet - the Scholar

The etymology of kaneh bosm as cannabis was first identified by Polish scholar Sula Benet (aka Sara Benetowa) in her 1936 PhD thesis from Columbia University, and again in a 1975 paper. Her work has been confirmed by modern scholars, though her conclusions are controversial in conservative circles.

Modern cannabis scholar Chris Bennet discovered Sula Benet’s work in the 1990s and popularized the finding with today’s audiences.

Kaneh bosm has clear similarities to other ancient names for cannabis, such as the Assyrian kunubu. Kunubu is listed as an ingredient in the sacred rites in a letter by the mother of Assyrian King Esarhaddon, 680 BCE, which is contemporary to the First Temple.

Cannabis was widely used for both fibers and drugs across Bronze Age Anatolia, Canaan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia, and is thoroughly documented as deeply sacred in India since prehistoric times.

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Here are the five verses:

Moses’ Holy Anointing Oil

The Holy Anointing Oil is the most important reference since it highlights the sacred value of the plant. This recipe was given directly by God to Moses, and it was used to anoint all the sacred objects in the temple, as well as to anoint high priests and kings.

Producing this recipe with calamus would likely make you sick, but with cannabis, it is highly psychoactive.

The recipe for the holy anointing oil is potent. 250 shekels of cannabis equals 6.28 pounds of flowering cannabis tops infused into roughly 1.5 gallons of olive oil (around 6 liters, hin is not a precise measure), plus myrrh, cinnamon, and cassia. This recipe was boiled and distilled so that all the spices were infused into the oil.

See more here:

Song of Songs

Frankincense, myrrh, and cannabis were routinely blended to make intoxicating incense in the ancient world. Here they are listed among aromatic herbs in the romantic Song of Songs.

Isaiah - Burnt Offering to Yahweh

Cannabis was burned in the First Temple, commanded by Yahweh.

Ezekiel - Trade Goods from Tyre

Cannabis fiber and drug products were widely traded in the ancient world. Here, the prophet Ezekiel listed cannabis among trade goods from the Phoenician (Lebanese) city of Tyre. The Bekaa Valley in Lebanon has been famous for growing cannabis since ancient times.

Jeremiah - Burnt Offering Rejected

Jeremiah was a leading prophet of Yahweh during Josiah’s reign. He witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and went into exile in Egypt. Yahweh is angry about something here and not satisfied with the offerings being made. Perhaps this is part of the reforms, Jeremiah was one of the reformer prophets.

Evidence of Cannabis at Tel Arad Temple

The scholarly argument for cannabis in the Bible had been based on etymology and conjecture until a recent archeological study brought full confirmation. Tel Arad is an extremely important site in Israel, as it contains the only example of a temple outside Jerusalem during the period when the First Temple stood.

The site is controversial because the temple is pagan and clearly contains a pair of standing stones for Yahweh and Asherah in the Holy of Holies. There are also a pair of incense altars accompanying the standing stones.

The altars contain residues of plant material. This residue had been observed for decades, but it was only in 2020 that the samples were finally analyzed and the findings published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The pair of incense altars were found to have residues of frankincense and cannabis, and provides firm scientific evidence confirming the etymological argument for cannabis in the Bible.

The smaller altar had cannabis and was paired with the standing stone for Asherah, while the larger frankincense altar went with Yahweh.

Evidence of Reforms at Tel Arad

The Tel Arad temple site had been carefully buried in the 8th century BCE, allowing its full preservation. The twin standing stones and incense altars for Yahweh and Asherah that stood in the Holy of Holies were laid down and buried by hand.

The question is, why was the temple site buried?

The site was either buried because of the monotheistic reforms of King Hezekiah as described in the Bible, or because of the Assyrian invasion in that period that saw Israel destroyed and Jerusalem attacked (but barely surviving). Scholars argue both sides.

The Bible tells us about the reformer kings Hezekiah and Josiah in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE. These kings championed the Yahweh-alone movement and worked to centralize worship in the Jerusalem temple. The reforms centered on shutting down the popular pagan goddess traditions that were not subject to their authority,

Hezekiah was King of Judah from 715-686 BCE. He is a historical figure thoroughly attested by archaeologists. The religious reforms were early in his reign.

King Josiah’s Reforms

King Josiah was Hezekiah’s grandson and ruled Judah from 640-609 BCE, with the reforms around 630 BCE.

Women Defend the Queen of Heaven

Not long after, in 586 BCE, Jerusalem was sacked and the First Temple destroyed by the invading Babylonians. The Israelites were sent into exile.

As the exiles were leaving their home, with Jerusalem in flames behind them, the prophet Jeremiah attempted to castigate the women for their ongoing goddess worship and scapegoat them for the tragic turn of events.

The women weren’t having it.

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Divorce of the Sacred Marriage

The Garden of Eden story is a mythological condemnation of the traditional goddess religion of Asherah, Astarte, and Anat. The Garden of Eden story was likely written during the reforms of kings Hezekiah and Josiah, when the Yahwists worked hard to centralize control in the Jerusalem temple and shut down the popular goddess traditions.

Like Hesiod’s Pandora (a contemporary story), the first woman, Eve, was cast as the source of all of men’s troubles, and she must be restrained.

Many celebrated symbols and images of the goddesses, such as the serpent, gardens, sacred plants, and childbirth, were inverted and profaned in the Garden of Eden story in an effort to subvert Eve and all women to patriarchal authority. Cannabis makes an important appearance in my interpretation and is also condemned.

The great goddess traditions were matriarchal women’s religions, and the patriarchal Yahwists shut them down so that the Heavenly Father could rule alone with no wife or competition.

Garden of Eden

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

Could the forbidden fruit be cannabis? It matches the description.

• The fruit of the tree was good for food; cannabis seeds are among the most nutritious seeds found anywhere in nature, valued by humans, animals, and birds.

• The woman saw that the plant was pleasing to the eye; cannabis is widely regarded as a beautiful, attractive plant.

• The plant is desirable for gaining wisdom; cannabis has long been used in religion and ritual, valued for its capacity to promote shamanistic insight and meditative reflection.

• Adam and Eve ate the fruit and their eyes were opened, they realized they were naked; they ate the cannabis, got high, and had ideas; a classic entheogenic experience.

• They sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves; they used the hemp fibers to sew clothes.

Revelation - The Tree of Life

Could cannabis be the Tree of Life, yielding its twelve crops of fruit every month?

We will do a dedicated topic on the Book of Revelation when the time comes.

Next episode of GBS, we will dive into the long, cross-cultural traditions of transgender people.

reach out:

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

Live discussion on cannabis, Tuesday, April 14, 2026 at 7pm EST.

This week on Goddess Bible Study, we conclude our deep dive into King Solomon, the father of the wisdom traditions, with some of his legends outside the Bible.

Our favorite goddess worshipper is arguably the most celebrated biblical figure over the centuries, across many cultures. King Solomon looms large in the religious traditions of Ethiopia, the spiritual legends of the Islamic world, and the magical traditions of Renaissance Europe.

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Queen of Sheba

We will start with one short passage from the Bible, the famous story of the Queen of Sheba, which inspired profound traditions in Ethiopia that live on to this day.

The Queen of Sheba visited King Solomon. The beautiful Queen had heard of Solomon’s great wisdom and wealth and wanted to see for herself. She came bearing fabulous gifts and departed with many of her own.

In Ethiopian legend, the King and Queen had a child of noble birth and historic importance. By tradition, the Queen is believed to have come from Ethiopia, though many scholars say the location was more likely Yemen (especially Yemeni scholars).

Kebra Nagast
In Ethiopian tradition, the Queen of Sheba is named Makeda. She had a child with King Solomon named Menelik, who became king and patriarch of the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia. The Kebra Nagast, the “Glory of Kings,” is an Ethiopian sacred text written 1314-1322, but whose origins were centuries earlier. It expounds on many Biblical tales and presents the history of the Solomonic dynasty.

The Kebra Nagast tells the full story of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. It also tells how their son Menelik took the Ark of the Covenant with him back to Ethiopia, where it still resides today.

By tradition, the Ark of the Covenant is said to reside in a small chapel in the Ethiopian town of Axum under the careful watch of a single priest who will remain on duty until he dies. Tourists can visit the chapel, but no one is allowed in.

Menelik
The Kebra Nagast tells the story of how Menelik traveled from Ethiopia to Jerusalem to meet his father for the first time when he was 22 years old. As Menelik approached Jerusalem, the people who saw him were amazed at his resemblance to King Solomon. The people became excited, and Solomon soon learned of the regal visitor making his way to the palace.

When the king first saw Menelik, he knew immediately that the visitor was his son and embraced him warmly. No proof was required as their features and manner were so similar. Menelik displayed great bearing and wisdom even as a young man.

King Solomon brought Menelik into his chambers and arrayed him in gorgeous apparel, including a belt of gold and a crown. Solomon presented Menelik to all the nobles, who accepted him and gave him presents.

Solomon wanted Menelik to remain in Jerusalem and succeed him as king, but Menelik was anxious to return to Ethiopia and be king there.

Menelik knew that his half-brother Rehoboam had a claim to the throne in Jerusalem and would be a rival. Rehoboam was six years older and born to Solomon’s wife, while Makeda and Solomon were never married.

King Solomon was aware that Rehoboam lacked wisdom and would be a poor king. Solomon begged Menelik to stay, he offered him the kingdom and many wives and concubines, but Menelik would not be swayed.

Menelik had sworn on his mother’s breast that he would return home soon and not marry a woman in Israel. To swear by a woman’s breast was a serious matter.

Solomonic Dynasty
Solomon saw that it was impossible to keep Menelik in Jerusalem. So the king declared his intention to send the eldest sons of the nobles to Ethiopia, to found a new colony of Hebrews. Zadok the priest anointed Menelik King of Ethiopia inside the Holy of Holies, drenching him with the sacred cannabis oil. Menelik took the Hebrew name, David II, after his grandfather.

Not everyone was happy to leave Jerusalem, for the Ark of the Covenant contained the laws of God and brought good fortune to Israel. Some of Menelik’s men suggested that they secretly take the Ark with them. Some versions of the story say that Menelik knew of the plan, others say he did not.

Menelik’s men fashioned a wooden box that was a replica of the Ark, which was always kept covered under a sacred cloth. The men were not being completely selfish, for they knew that the Kingdom was not stable. Solomon was getting old, and many enemies were rising against him.

Ark of the Covenant
Menelik’s men were able to sneak the Ark of the Covenant out of the Temple because Yahweh wanted the Ark moved. The Ark was loaded onto a wagon and covered with baggage. Menelik received Solomon’s blessings and said farewell. As the caravan left Jerusalem, the men and women wailed, and the animals howled. King Solomon and his people knew instinctively that the glory of Israel had departed with the caravan.

As Menelik traveled, the caravan was led by the Archangel Michael, who cut a path and sheltered them from the heat. Neither man nor beast touched the ground with their feet, they were carried aloft with the speed of an eagle. The caravan traveled in one day a distance that normally took thirteen.

It was revealed to the entire company that they were in possession of the Ark of the Covenant. They all let out a great cheer, and Menelik vowed to establish the second Kingdom of God in Ethiopia.

King Menelik ruled honorably and fathered the Solomonic dynasty. The Ark of the Covenant has remained in Ethiopia until this day, 3000 years later.

When Zadok the priest discovered the Ark missing, he fainted on the spot. Solomon led his men in pursuit of the caravan, but it was too late. The king returned to Jerusalem and wept bitterly. King Solomon knew that the Ark of the Covenant could not have been carried off without Yahweh’s support, for the Ark is powerful and able to take care of itself. Previous usurpers had all been destroyed.

Satisfied that the will of God is irresistible, Solomon and the priests vowed to keep the disappearance of the Ark a secret. They allowed the duplicate box to remain in place, covered with cloth, lest enemies take advantage of their misfortune.

After King Solomon died, he was followed by his cruel and unwise son, Rehoboam. The ten northern tribes rebelled against the young king and formed the northern kingdom of Israel. The nation was split in two, never to be rejoined until modern times.

Pharaoh Shishak’s Invasion

In Rehoboam’s fifth year, 925 BCE, Pharaoh Shishak of Egypt led a military campaign across Canaan. He attacked Judah and plundered the temple, taking away everything, so it was good that the Ark of the Covenant had already been moved to Africa. It is never mentioned again in the Biblical text.

Pharaoh Shishak’s invasion of Canaan was a real historical event recorded in both Egyptian records and the Bible, with the dates from both sources aligning perfectly.

Shishak recorded his campaign on the Bubasite Stele in Karnak, but unfortunately for us, the stele is heavily damaged. The sections about Jerusalem and Judah are not legible, and therefore, we don’t know what was taken from the Jerusalem temple, if anything. The Bible says that all the gold in the temple was taken by Shishak, but the proof text is lost to us.

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Ethiopia
Ethiopia is the birthplace of humanity, the oldest human skeletons were found there, and it is where the migrations out of Africa originated. There are many important spiritual traditions in Ethiopia. To this day, Ethiopia has maintained the oldest continuous traditions of Judaism and Christianity. The country played an important role in the foundation of Islam, and was an inspiration to modern Rastafarians.

Beta Israel is an ancient tribe of Black Jews who live in Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea. Beta Israel traces their heritage directly back to King Menelik and are pre-Rabbinic. They have unique traditions, and no one is sure of their most ancient origins, except that they migrated down the Nile River over time. The Black Jews are the keepers of the Ark of the Covenant, and the Kebra Nagast is one of their sacred texts.

The Ark of the Covenant is kept in a small chapel in the town of Axum (Aksum) where only a single priest, appointed for life, is allowed to see it. Apparently, Indiana Jones and the rest of the Protestants have not been well-informed, because they seem to think the Ark has been lost all this time.

Ethiopian Coptic Christians trace their roots back to the first century CE and the evangelizing of the Apostle Matthew, who was one of the original 12 disciples of Jesus. Coptic traditions are as old as the Catholic Church, and they traditionally depict Jesus as black.

The Prophet Mohammed also visited Ethiopia in the early days of Islam to escape persecution and was given sanctuary. In thankfulness and respect for his hosts, Mohammed dictated in the Koran that jihad, holy war, should never be conducted in Ethiopia. When all the neighboring African countries became thoroughly Islamic, Ethiopia was spared. The native Ethiopian Jewish and Christian traditions were permitted to co-exist alongside Islam, an arrangement that has persisted to this day.

Emperor Haile Selassie
Modern Ethiopians trace their royal lineage back 3000 years, to King Solomon, Makeda, and Menelik. In practice, their royal line began in the 1200’s and continued unbroken to their last emperor in the 20th century, Haile Selassie.

Emperor Haile Selassie had a long career and was a major figure in international politics. Selassie successfully resisted European colonialism and fought an important war against fascist Italy in the 1930s. Ethiopia is the only African country not colonized by either Europeans or Islamists.

Haile Selassie was the last, and only true African royalty of the 20th century, during an era of rising African Black pride and independence. Haile Selassie was given equivalent honors to all the royalty in Europe and was hailed by Africans the world over, who were struggling to reclaim their identity after centuries of slavery and oppression. The Emperor helped to found the League of Nations and the United Nations, where he represented the voices of the colonized Africans.

Sadly, Haile Selassie was deposed and murdered by Marxist insurgents in 1975 under circumstances that remain disputed.

Haile Selassie was seen by some people to be a messiah, and he inspired a new religion in the 1930’s called Rastafari, though Selassie himself never claimed divine powers of any kind. This new religion was founded in Jamaica and empowered many pan-African liberationists, such as Marcus Garvey, who sought to overthrow the European colonial powers dominating Africa. The most famous Rastafarian is the late Reggae musician Bob Marley, and the religion continues to have a strong community to this day.

King Solomon in Islam

King Solomon (Sulayman in Arabic) is a towering figure in Islamic culture. He appears in the Koran and is widely celebrated in Arab folklore, literature, and occult traditions, often depicted as the ultimate master of the supernatural. The Koran portrays him as a prophet-king, while broader Arab culture expanded his persona into a legendary mage and a central character in epic storytelling.

In popular Arab legends, Solomon’s power is physically tied to the Seal of Solomon (Khatam Sulayman), a miraculous signet ring that contains his seal of intertwined triangles and precious stones. The ring gives Solomon power over jinn, animals, and the elements, and was his protective amulet.

Solomon appears frequently in the Arabian Nights (Alf Layla wa-Layla) as the “Lord of the Age” who imprisons disobedient Jinn.

In stories like “The Fisherman and the Jinni,” Solomon is the one who sealed rebellious spirits in copper carafes with leaden seals, throwing them into the sea to remain until found by unsuspecting humans centuries later. He is often associated with the construction of legendary, unreachable cities made of metal or glass, where his magical legacies are guarded by mechanical automata or trapped spirits.

Occult and Esoteric Traditions

Solomon is a foundational figure in Arabic grimoires and “books of wonders.” He is viewed as the “Grandmaster” of all secret knowledge, including alchemy and the summoning of spirits. Works like those of Ahmed al-Buni (a famous 13th-century occultist) attribute complex magical squares and talismans to Solomon’s wisdom.

Arab folklore attributes the construction of various ancient megalithic sites—such as Palmyra (Tadmur) in Syria and Persepolis in Iran—to Solomon’s Jinn, claiming only supernatural labor could move such massive stones.

Solomon’s wisdom is so ingrained that he is a frequent subject in Arabic poetry and idioms. To say someone has “the wisdom of Solomon” or to reference his ability to “hear the whisper of the ant” is a common way to denote extreme perception or justice in Arabic literary culture.

The Hoopoe, or Messenger Bird, Solomon’s scout, remains a symbol of loyalty and the “bearer of news” in traditional Arab imagery.

Solomonic Magic

King Solomon continued to inspire people’s imaginations for thousands of years. Solomonic magic is a system of European ceremonial magic rooted in Medieval and Renaissance grimoires attributed to the Biblical King Solomon. A grimoire is a book of spells and incantations.

The three great European grimoires are the Key of Solomon and the Lesser Key of Solomon, which focus on rituals and preparations of the magicians, and also the Testament of Solomon, which is written in the first person and describes how Solomon created the magical ring of Andaleeb and used it to control demons and build the First Temple in Jerusalem. The Key and Lesser Key of Solomon are likely medieval texts, while the Testament of Solomon may be much older, going back to the 1st century AD. Scholars have no consensus on when the texts were written.

Aleister Crowley and co-writers translated all three texts from the original Greek language into English and compiled them into a single book, “The Three Magical Books of Solomon.”

Another famous grimoire is the Hygromanteia, the Magical Treatise of Solomon. This is a 16th-century Byzantine work that serves as a bridge between late antique Greek magic and later European traditions. The book was written in medieval Greek and contains various magical techniques and tools, as well as guides for how to summon and control spirits and demons.

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King Solomon’s wisdom, wealth, magic, poetry, and sensuality are all gifts of the divine Mother. These attributes are all seen in the traditions of Isis and the Hindu goddesses, and that is a lesson we can take with us.

I don’t think it is an accident that the goddess-worshipping King Solomon is the most popular and enduring Bible character outside the Bible, with more stories and traditions than anyone else. He is the one character that people seem to feel free to write new stories about, outside the sacred scriptures, without being accused of blasphemy and heresy.

I think it is because the goddess brings undeniable authority of her own.

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In the next few weeks, we will focus on some specific topics before jumping back into Bible history in the book of Kings.

First, a topic near and dear to my heart. We will do a complete breakdown on the evidence of cannabis in the Bible, the subject that got me started on the path of the goddess.

Second, another timely political topic, transgenders! Most people don’t know that there are transexual eunuchs in the Bible called the holy ones. They are the male counterparts of the qedesha priestesses. The male qadesh are only mentioned when they are being chased away, but they are mentioned.

Trans folks were high priests of the goddesses across many pagan cultures, and there is a rich set of traditions for them in the ancient world.

Third, we will dig into the evidence for child sacrifice rituals among the Canaanites, which I believe was real. Eliminating child sacrifice was one of the central reforms the Hebrew prophets were trying to achieve, and I think most modern folks can thank them for their efforts.

Reach out:

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

Live discussion Tuesday, April 7 at 7 pm EST.

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This week on Goddess Bible Study, we continue with King Solomon, our favorite Biblical goddess worshipper.

In this episode, we focus on the Song of Songs, also called the Song of Solomon, or the Canticles. It is the most confounding book in the Bible, possibly the most popular, and arguably the most holy. It is also the most goddess-infused.

Song of Songs is the only openly romantic and erotic book in the Bible, and it gives more voice to a woman than any other. It makes no mention of God or anything particularly spiritual, yet rabbis treat it as very holy. It is traditionally read in synagogues on the Shabbat of Passover, and also at weddings.

Song of Songs is a collection of steamy, sultry love poetry, completely lacking in religious content, full of detailed descriptions of the lovers’ relations and naked bodies. There is no mention of God, piety, moral instruction, deliberations over justice, or the fate of humankind. It never mentions Israel, its history, or its covenant.

It is a love song of passion and devotion between the groom and his beautiful new bride. It is among the most difficult books to interpret in the Bible and provides some of the greatest hermeneutical challenges. How is a sexy love poem revealed by God Almighty?

This question was hotly disputed when the final canon of the Hebrew Bible was determined at the Council of Jamnia in 90 AD. Jamnia was the main spiritual center in Israel after Jerusalem, and the 2nd temple were destroyed. The Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes, another late text also attributed to Solomon, were the last selected for canonization, after a fierce debate.

The highly respected Rabbi Aqiva carried the day with his famous declaration:

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The song is credited to King Solomon, who lived in the 10th century BC, but no one believes he actually wrote it. By tradition, King Solomon was known for his wisdom, poetry, and his love of learning. He also had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

Most scholars believe Song of Songs is a late text, written in the Hellenistic era, perhaps the 3rd century BC, but there is no consensus on who wrote it, when, or who the characters are.

The song clearly comes from the tradition of Babylonian hieros gamos love poetry that goes back to Bronze Age sacred marriage rituals, joining the king with the great goddess. King Solomon worshipped the love goddess Astarte and may have taken part in the rituals personally. The old goddess-worshiping traditions had an entire genre of sacred love poetry that was read aloud during hieros gamos celebrations.

The Bride is unnamed, and the groom’s identity is ambiguous, he may or may not be Solomon. By tradition, she is thought to be the Pharaoh’s daughter, but of course, Solomon had many wives. In the verses, she is said to be from Lebanon. The bride is dark-skinned, and Solomon has black hair.

There is heavy garden imagery throughout. Songs 4:14 mentions cannabis (qaneh) in a list of aromatic and psychoactive herbs, but it is usually translated as calamus, so readers miss the cannabis reference.

Theologians generally view the Song of Songs as an allegory of God’s love for Israel if one is Jewish, or Christ’s love for the church for Christians, and of the redemptive history of Israel.

One may see the Song of Songs as God’s love for the Goddess, his bride, Mother Nature, and all of creation.

Muslims believe the Song is about the Prophet Muhammad. They believe the word “altogether lovely” (mhmdym) in the following verse translates as the name of Muhammad because it sounds similar.

Here, the legendary Billy Graham gives his take. The Song of Songs is God’s love affair with humanity.

The Song advances through a few sections, first the bride and groom describe their love for one another, and she lists his virtues to her friends, perhaps the bridesmaids. Then there is the wedding day and celebration, as well as absence, longing, and searching for one another. The song is circuitous and meandering, and one can see why it is tricky to understand.

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Here is the entire Song of Songs from the NIV, New International Version.

Next week is possibly our last devoted to King Solomon, if we can get through all the remaining material. We will dive into the extra-biblical legends of King Solomon, particularly the Ethiopian traditions of the Kebra Nagast, featuring the Queen of Sheba, Menelik, and the Ark of the Covenant. As well as Islamic traditions, and Solomonic magic from medieval Europe.

We will discuss on the podcast, livestreaming on Tuesday, March 24, at 7 pm EST.

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

We continue with King Solomon on Goddess Bible Study, our favorite goddess-worshipping wiseman. I must confess that this post is a bit of a cheat, I am repeating the Biblical material about King Solomon’s temple that we did not get to last week.

We spent the entire previous podcast discussing the potential for a Third Temple in today’s Israel and the implications for WW3. I am personally quite pessimistic and alarmist about current events, but no need to get into that now.

This week, we continue with our regularly scheduled programming and dive into the most glorious temple in the ancient world, according to the Bible.

The image above from ChatGPT is not perfect, here is a more accurate infographic of the temple. Courtesy of the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology.

King Solomon’s Temple

King Solomon’s Temple was the first Hebrew temple in Jerusalem. It was built around 957 BCE on top of Mount Moriah, where a sacred stone is said to be the location where Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

Extensive retaining walls and a platform were built on the steep hillsides to provide a location for the temple, which is known as the Temple Mount. The Holy of Holies at the heart of the temple is over the sacred foundation stone.

King Solomon was a pagan goddess worshipper, and an Asherah pole representing the mother goddess stood beside the altar to Yahweh in the temple for two-thirds of its history, roughly 240 out of 360 years, according to the eminent Jewish historian Raphael Patai, author of “The Hebrew Goddess.”

King Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, sending the Israelites into exile. The Israelites were allowed to return after 70 years when the Persian King Cyrus defeated the Babylonians. It is more than a bit ironic (or moronic) that the contemporary Israelis now find themselves at war to the death with the Persians.

A modest second temple was restored immediately, but it was dramatically rebuilt under King Herod around 18 BCE during Roman rule. The expanded Temple Mount was the largest religious building in the Roman Empire and among the most grand. Jesus visited this temple in the Gospels, and he was crucified nearby. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE after the Jews revolted.

Jerusalem was burned down by the Romans, but was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian and renamed Aelia Capitolina in 130 CE after yet another Jewish revolt. A temple to Jupiter was built on the Temple Mount, and Jews were banned from the city.

In the 4th century, Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and made it the Imperial religion. Jerusalem was consecrated as a holy Christian city. The temple to the goddess Venus near the Temple Mount was sanctified as the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the burial place of Jesus Christ.

The Roman city later fell into decline, and it was taken by the Muslims in 638 without a fight.

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Wealth

The original United Kingdom of Israel reached its greatest territorial expanse under King Solomon in the 10th century BCE. He dominated the local tribes to the east, the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, and sent his armies into Syria as well. He exacted tribute and forced the tribes to labor on his building projects. Palestine lies along important trade routes linking Africa to Asia and Europe.

Solomon had close and profitable relations with King Hiram of Tyre and the Phoenicians. With control of Edom, Israel had ports on both the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea, enabling lucrative trade from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.

Solomon raised the kingdom to the heights of its commercial potential. He became fabulously wealthy, and the people were very happy. With trade came peace, and King Solomon ruled over a prosperous kingdom. At least, that is the story.

King Hiram of Tyre

King Solomon’s alliance with the Phoenician King Hiram of Tyre had previously been established by King David. The Tyrians were among the world’s great sailors, traders, and craftsmen, and they possessed the valuable cedar forests of Lebanon. King Hiram provided Solomon with all the cedar and juniper timber he wanted, and Solomon paid him in wheat and olive oil. Together, they engaged in wide-ranging and profitable trade.

Gold from Ophir

King Solomon is reported to have been the richest king ever, his gold from Ophir is legendary. For centuries, people have searched for Solomon’s famous gold mines, but nothing definitive has been found.

King Solomon was said to be so wealthy that he used gold plates, goblets, and utensils, and that the people of Israel did not even bother using silver because it was as common as stones. Solomon amassed massive stores of gold, thousands of horses, cavalry, men, and chariots. We can assume the elaborate claims of wealth to be literary embellishments.

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Building Projects

Solomon went on an extensive building campaign throughout the country. According to the Bible, he built garrison towns for his cavalry, and the fortified cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, along with impressive water conduits that allowed cities to withstand sieges.

Solomon was especially lavish with his capital, Jerusalem; he built a great wall and terraces to support buildings and paid particular attention to the new temple and royal palace. Solomon also built temples and tolerated the worship of foreign gods by travelers and visitors on trade missions. Solomon put thousands of men into forced labor to build his palace, temple, and other civil works.

In time, Solomon’s ill-treatment of his slaves and laborers led to the revolt that split the kingdom of Israel. Although the Yahwist prophets and Biblical writers would scapegoat his goddess worship instead.

Hiram Abiff

Modern Freemason mythology centers on King Solomon’s architect and his tragic murder.

King Hiram sent architects and skilled craftsmen to help King Solomon build his temples and other projects. Chief among them was Hiram Abiff, the widow’s son from Tyre. Hiram Abiff was skilled in every kind of bronze work, and Solomon appointed him to be chief architect and Master of Works.

Hiram Abiff constructed Solomon’s grand throne made of ivory and overlaid with gold, with six steps, two lions stood beside the armrests, and twelve more lions stood beside the six steps. A throne of lions fit for a king, or for a goddess.

The lion throne is another clear indication of Solomon’s goddess worship. This tradition goes back to Catal Huyuk, but the Biblical writers seem to think it was unique. The goddess Cybele sat in a similar lion throne a thousand years later in Rome.

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Solomon’s Temple

King Solomon constructed the legendary first Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem. It took seven years to build. The Temple’s magnificence is detailed in the Bible and has long been extolled in legend. King Hiram of Tyre provided the materials and skilled workmen, and the Temple was built in the style of pagan temples of the era.

The Biblical description of Solomon’s Temple suggests that the inside ceiling was 60 cubits long (90 feet), 20 cubits wide (30 feet), and 30 cubits high (45 feet). Solomon’s Temple had a three-room plan with an inner sanctum at the rear. The temple was built from stone and cedar, and the construction consisted of finely hewn masonry combined with carved wooden cherubs and bronze basins. The inner walls were overlaid with carved cedar and completely gilded with gold.

The temple was decorated in a Garden of Eden motif of cherubs and verdant vegetation; palm trees, open flowers, pomegranates, gourds, lions, and oxen. The cherubim appear like angels with wings. There was a pair of large cherubim statues that guarded the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, an interior room no one was allowed into except the high priest.

The plans of the building were Phoenician in origin, and the materials, skilled workmen, and architects were delivered by King Hiram of Tyre. Archaeologists have uncovered pagan temples virtually identical to Solomon’s from the same era. The Ain Dara temple to Astarte in Syria has the same layout and was operating from 1300 BCE to 740 BCE, the same period as Solomon’s.

Holy Smoke

When the priests dedicated the temple and brought the Ark of the Covenant into the Holy of Holies, a thick cloud of smoke, the Shekinah, filled the temple and prevented the completion of the rituals.

The Shekinah, the presence of God, manifests as a cloud of smoke that filled the Temple.

Phoenician Megalithic Stones

Final bonus, deep inside one of the retaining walls on the western side of the Temple Mount, where the Jews have been allowed to excavate, they discovered one of the largest megalithic stones ever used anywhere in the world.

This stone is estimated to weigh 570 tons and is similar in style to the stones used in Baalbek, Lebanon. Even though this wall is said to be Herodian, the Romans never worked stones so large. This stonework is thought to be the work of the Phoenicians, if not some earlier culture. King Hiram of Tyre was a Phoenician, so that would track with the Biblical text.

Live discussion on Tuesday, March 17 at 7pm EST.

Reach out at:

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

This is a special episode of Goddess Bible Study because this week, we connect with current events, and these events are unsettling to say the least.

We were already scheduled to discuss King Solomon’s temple as part of our extended discussion of the father of wisdom. But all of a sudden, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem has become the center of world affairs, as a terrifying war with Biblical themes and nuclear weapons threatens the entire Middle East, the global economy, and perhaps worse.

The Temple Mount was once home to the First and Second Hebrew Temples, and is currently home to the Dome of the Rock and the al Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam. Many Christian and Jewish prophecies predict a restored Third Jewish Temple as a critical sign of armageddon, the Jewish messiah, the second coming of Jesus Christ, and many other end-times beliefs.

Today, the current nation of Israel, along with the United States, is in a violent war with Iran. Volleys of missiles and drones are flying across the sky and crashing into sensitive targets across every Persian Gulf nation. The entire Middle East is on fire, and there is no end in sight.

In the context of this war, messianic Zionists and Christians have concluded that the end times are here, and it is now time to construct a Third Temple, today. The problem is that the Dome of the Rock is in their way, and to remove it would ignite religious war between Muslims, Jews, and Christians around the world.

It is entirely possible, if not likely, that the Dome of the Rock will be destroyed during the current round of fighting. More than one Israeli commentator has stated that the ongoing missile barrages are the perfect cover to blow up the shrine and blame it on the Iranians, hopefully (for them) sparking conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

It is difficult to overstate the religious and geopolitical significance of the Temple Mount and the response to any possible damage to sacred Islamic sites.

The Temple Mount is already the most contested piece of real estate on planet Earth, and has been at the heart of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians since Israel was founded in 1948. It has been the site of many riots and is closely policed under extremely tense arrangements between Islamic and Jewish authorities.

It has long been the dream of certain messianic Jews and Christians to restore the temple, and they have been operating in the open for many years. The Temple Institute is a public-facing organization that has been fundraising and gathering together all of the sacred items to sanctify a new temple, including sacred garments for the priests, a large menorah, and even a new Ark of the Covenant, among other items.

Temple Institute

Their vision to restore the temple has support from the highest echelons of the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The vast majority of the American public is secular and has no idea of a prophetic Third Temple, or of the catasprophic geopolitical risk this religious movement represents.

If the Third Temple movement is successful, it will enrage Muslims around the world with consequences that are impossible to predict. Acts of Jihadi terrorism would be justified for decades to come, which also means that false-flag terrorist attacks are likely to happen. There is always someone, of any political persuasion, looking to profit from bloodshed and chaos.

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Here is some Israeli and Palestinian discussion of the Third Temple movement.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/what-do-the-third-temple-movement-and-noahide-laws-have-in-common-a-far-right-vision/

https://imeu.org/resources/important-events/explainer-the-temple-mount-movement/115

This high-quality documentary video by Third Temple Christians lays out all the details of the preparations and end-times fantasies, with glee and great expectations.

Perhaps the strangest and most controversial item gathered for the Third Temple is a perfect red heifer (a red cow), which must be ritually sacrificed for temple purposes. Apparently, an unblemished, perfectly red cow is hard to find, and none had been identified for 2000 years until an evangelical rancher in Texas found five of them in his herd. Now the Temple movement has its red heifers, which is a sign from the heavens to move forward with their plans.

This is no joke, and the details are even weirder. See the video below.

Goddess, please save us all from these messianic lunatics armed with nuclear weapons.

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Back to our normal programming…

King Solomon’s Temple

King Solomon’s Temple was the first Hebrew temple. It was built on top of Mount Moriah, where a sacred stone is said to be the location where Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

Extensive retaining walls and a platform were built on the steep hillsides to provide a location for the temple, which is known as the Temple Mount. The Holy of Holies at the heart of the temple is over the sacred foundation stone.

King Solomon was a pagan goddess worshipper, and an Asherah pole representing the mother goddess stood beside the altar to Yahweh in the temple for two-thirds of its history.

King Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, sending the Israelites into exile. The Israelites were allowed to return after 70 years when the Persian King Cyrus defeated the Babylonians. It is more than a bit ironic (or moronic) that the contemporary Israelis now find themselves at war to the death with the Persians.

A modest second temple was restored immediately, but it was dramatically rebuilt under King Herod around 18 BCE during the Roman Empire. The expanded Temple Mount was the largest religious building in the Roman Empire and among the most grand. Jesus visited this temple in the Gospels, and he was crucified nearby. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE after the Jews revolted.

Jerusalem was burned down by the Romans, but was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian and renamed Aelia Capitolina in 130 CE. A temple to Jupiter was built on the Temple Mount, and Jews were banned from the city.

In the 4th century, Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and made it the Imperial religion. Jerusalem was consecrated as a holy Christian city. The temple to the goddess Venus near the Temple Mount was sanctified as the church of the Holy Sepulcher, the burial place of Jesus Christ.

The Roman city later fell into decline, and it was taken by the Muslims in 638 without a fight.

Subscribe now

Wealth

The original United Kingdom of Israel reached its greatest territorial expanse under King Solomon in the 10th century BCE. He dominated the local tribes to the east, the Ammonites, Moabites, and Edomites, and sent his armies into Syria as well. He exacted tribute and forced the tribes to labor on his building projects. Palestine lies along important trade routes linking Africa to Asia and Europe.

Solomon had close and profitable relations with King Hiram of Tyre and the Phoenicians. With control of Edom, Israel had ports on both the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea, enabling lucrative trade from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.

Solomon raised the kingdom to the heights of its commercial potential. He became fabulously wealthy, and the people were very happy. With trade came peace, and King Solomon ruled over a prosperous kingdom. At least, that is the story.

King Hiram of Tyre

King Solomon’s alliance with the Phoenician King Hiram of Tyre had previously been established by King David. The Tyrians were among the world’s great sailors, traders, and craftsmen, and they possessed the valuable cedar forests of Lebanon. King Hiram provided Solomon with all the cedar and juniper timber he wanted, and Solomon paid him in wheat and olive oil. Together, they engaged in wide-ranging and profitable trade.

Gold from Ophir

King Solomon is reported to have been the richest king ever, his gold from Ophir is legendary. For centuries, people have searched for Solomon’s famous gold mines, but nothing definitive has been found.

King Solomon was said to be so wealthy that he used gold plates, goblets, and utensils, and that the people of Israel did not even bother using silver because it was as common as stones. Solomon amassed massive stores of gold, thousands of horses, cavalry, men, and chariots. We can assume the elaborate claims of wealth to be literary embellishments.

Building Projects

Solomon went on an extensive building campaign throughout the country. He built garrison towns for his cavalry, and the fortified cities of Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer, along with impressive water conduits that allowed cities to withstand sieges.

Solomon was especially lavish with his capital, Jerusalem; he built a great wall and terraces to support buildings and paid particular attention to the new temple and royal palace. Solomon also built temples and tolerated the worship of foreign gods by travelers and visitors on trade missions. Solomon put thousands of men into forced labor to build his palace, temple, and other civil works.

In time, Solomon’s ill-treatment of his slaves and laborers led to the revolt that split the kingdom of Israel. Although the Yahwist prophets and Biblical writers would scapegoat his goddess worship instead.

Hiram Abiff

Modern Freemason mythology centers on King Solomon’s architect and his tragic murder.

King Hiram sent architects and skilled craftsmen to help King Solomon build his temples and other projects. Chief among them was Hiram Abiff, the widow’s son from Tyre. Hiram Abiff was skilled in every kind of bronze work, and Solomon appointed him to be chief architect and Master of Works.

Hiram Abiff constructed Solomon’s grand throne made of ivory and overlaid with gold, with six steps, two lions stood beside the armrests, and twelve more lions stood beside the six steps. A throne of lions fit for a king, or for a goddess.

The lion throne is another clear indication of Solomon’s goddess worship. This tradition goes back to Catal Huyuk, but the Biblical writers seem to think it was unique. The goddess Cybele sat in a similar lion throne a thousand years later in Rome.

Solomon’s Temple

King Solomon constructed the legendary first Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem. It took seven years to build. The Temple’s magnificence is detailed in the Bible and has long been extolled in legend. King Hiram of Tyre provided the materials and skilled workmen, and the Temple was built in the style of pagan temples of the era.

The Biblical description of Solomon’s Temple suggests that the inside ceiling was 60 cubits long (90 feet), 20 cubits wide (30 feet), and 30 cubits high (45 feet). Solomon’s Temple had a three-room plan with an inner sanctum at the rear. The temple was built from stone and cedar, and the construction consisted of finely hewn masonry combined with carved wooden cherubs and bronze basins. The inner walls were overlaid with carved cedar and completely gilded with gold.

The temple was decorated in a Garden of Eden motif of cherubs and verdant vegetation; palm trees, open flowers, pomegranates, gourds, lions, and oxen. The cherubim appear like angels with wings. There was a pair of large cherubim statues that guarded the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, an interior room no one was allowed into except the high priest.

The plans of the building were Phoenician in origin, and the materials, skilled workmen, and architects were delivered by King Hiram of Tyre. Archaeologists have uncovered pagan temples virtually identical to Solomon’s from the same era. The Ain Dara temple to Astarte in Syria has the same layout and was operating from 1300 BCE to 740 BCE, the same period as Solomon’s.

Holy Smoke

When the priests dedicated the temple and brought the Ark of the Covenant into the Holy of Holies, a thick cloud of smoke, the Shekinah, filled the temple and prevented the completion of the rituals.

The Shekinah, the presence of God, manifests as a cloud of smoke that filled the Temple.

Phoenician Megalithic Stones

Final bonus, deep inside one of the retaining walls on the western side of the Temple Mount, where the Jews have been allowed to excavate, they discovered one of the largest megalithic stones ever used anywhere in the world.

This stone is estimated to weigh 570 tons and is similar in style to the stones used in Baalbek, Lebanon. Even though this wall is said to be Herodian, the Romans never worked stones so large. This stonework is thought to be the work of the Phoenicians, if not some earlier culture. King Hiram of Tyre was a Phoenician, so that would track with the Biblical text.

Live discussion on Tuesday, March 10 at 7pm EST.

Reach out at:

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

Next week’s Goddess Bible Study, we will dive into the Song of Songs, the Canticles, the only romantic and sexual text in the Bible, and for many faithful, the most divinely inspired text of them all.

This week on Goddess Bible Study, we will keep it pretty simple with part II of King Solomon and dive into some of his wisdom texts. He is famous for writing the Biblical books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, as well as the Apocryphal book, Wisdom of Solomon, and some psalms.

King Solomon inspired poets, philosophers, theologians, and magicians for centuries. Some of the most profound literature in the Biblical tradition is attributed to him.

King Solomon was a goddess worshiper, the Bible tells us. He is the conduit through which the visceral pagan goddess traditions were transmuted into the ephemeral wisdom traditions of Sophia.

Sophia is the one aspect of the feminine divine that is acceptable in the Abrahamic faiths, and she lies at the heart of every Western esoteric tradition, from the Gnostics and Kabalah to the Freemasons.

Most of these texts were written long after King Solomon’s time, in the post-exilic and Hellenistic periods, though some of the earliest Proverbs and psalms may have come from the First Temple. Magical texts about Solomon continued to be written for another thousand years in the Islamic world and Medieval Europe.

There is no evidence that King Solomon personally wrote anything, since there is no evidence of literacy in the time period he was alive (10th century BCE). The court of a historical King Solomon, if he even existed, was likely operating in the oral tradition.

Written Hebrew was a new language in the Iron Age, and first appears in the historical record a century after Solomon. Perhaps his court had some role in early Hebrew writing, which was copied from the Phoenicians, who were friends of Solomon, but the Bible itself does not say so.

The Bible makes no mention of Solomon writing anything at all, and if he helped invent a new form of writing, they probably would have given him credit.

I am content to believe that there was a historical King Solomon and a First Temple in Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE, but I do not believe most of the legends about him are historical. His wealth, his wives, and his wisdom serve a variety of symbolic and theological purposes in the Bible.

King Solomon is a literary figure who represents the Yahwists’ greatest mythological and propagandistic glory, a united kingdom overflowing with wealth and great achievements that likely never existed in real life.

Yet King Solomon has inspired some of the deepest philosophy for thousands of years. We will let these samples speak for themselves.

These are rare passages from the Bible in which the Goddess speaks, even if she is somewhat veiled.

Wisdom is Sophia, and Shakti, the Divine Mother.

Proverbs

BLESSED IS HE WHO FINDS WISDOM:
Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed.

– Proverbs 3:13-18

By wisdom Yahweh laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; by his knowledge the watery depths were divided, and the clouds let drop the dew. My son, do not let wisdom and understanding out of your sight, preserve sound judgment and discretion; they will be life for you, an ornament to grace your neck.

– Proverbs 3:19-21

EXCELLENCE OF WISDOM:
Does not wisdom call out? Does not understanding raise her voice? At the highest point along the way, where the paths meet, she takes her stand; beside the gate leading into the city, at the entrance, she cries aloud:

“To you, O people, I call out; I raise my voice to all mankind. You who are simple, gain prudence; you who are foolish, set your hearts on it. Listen, for I have trustworthy things to say; I open my lips to speak what is right. My mouth speaks what is true, for my lips detest wickedness.

All the words of my mouth are just; none of them is crooked or perverse. To the discerning all of them are right; they are upright to those who have found knowledge. Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.

“I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence; I possess knowledge and discretion. To fear Yahweh is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. Counsel and sound judgment are mine; I have insight, I have power. By me kings reign and rulers issue decrees that are just; by me princes govern, and nobles – all who rule on earth.

I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me. With me are riches and honor, enduring wealth and prosperity. My fruit is better than fine gold; what I yield surpasses choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, along the paths of justice, bestowing a rich inheritance on those who love me and making their treasuries full.

“Yahweh brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be.

When there were no watery depths, I was given birth, when there were no springs overflowing with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth before he made the world or its fields or any of the dust of the earth.

I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.

Then I was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mankind.

“Now then, my children, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways. Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not disregard it.

Blessed are those who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For those who find me find life and receive favor from Yahweh. But those who fail to find me harm themselves; all who hate me love death.”

– Proverbs 8:1-36

Wisdom reposes in the heart of the discerning and even among fools she lets herself be known.

– Proverbs 14:33

The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out.

– Proverbs 18:15

The one who gets wisdom loves life; the one who cherishes understanding will soon prosper.

– Proverbs 19:8

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Ecclesiastes

Contemporary Biblical scholars believe the book of Ecclesiastes was written in the Hellenistic period around 250 BCE and reflects Hellenistic philosophy, though some may be from the earlier Persian period.

From much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.

– Ecclesiastes 1:18

Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.

– Ecclesiastes 5:10

Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions. Wisdom, like an inheritance, is a good thing and benefits those who see the sun. Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: Wisdom preserves those who have it.

– Ecclesiastes 7:10-12

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.
So I commend the enjoyment of life because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.

– Ecclesiastes 8:14-15

No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning. Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it.

– Ecclesiastes 8:17

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them.

– Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.

– Ecclesiastes 1:4

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

– Ecclesiastes 1:7

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

– Ecclesiastes 1:9

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Wisdom of Solomon

The Wisdom of Solomon is a Jewish work believed to have been written in the first century BCE in Alexandria, Egypt. It is one of the Apocryphal books of the Bible and would have been embraced in the Gnostic traditions.

The Wisdom of Solomon reflects core beliefs of Hellenistic philosophy at the time when Sophia, wisdom, was elevated as the feminine aspect of God’s glory and the bride of God.

The text is in Greek, so it was certainly not written by King Solomon personally, it is a synthesis of Greek and Jewish philosophical thought and dedicated to the father of the wisdom traditions.

This sample is a short passage from a much longer book.

I learned both what is secret and what is manifest,
for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.

There is in her a spirit that is intelligent,
holy, unique, manifold,
subtle, mobile, clear,
unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable,
loving the good, keen, irresistible,
beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure,
free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all,
and penetrating through all spirits
that are intelligent and pure and most subtle.

For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;
because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.

For she is a breath of the power of God,

and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;

therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.

For she is a reflection of eternal light,
a spotless mirror of the working of God,
and an image of his goodness.

Although she is but one, she can do all things,
and while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
in every generation she passes into holy souls
and makes them friends of God, and prophets;
for God loves nothing so much as the man who lives with wisdom.

She is more beautiful than the sun, and excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior,
for it is succeeded by the night, but against wisdom evil does not prevail.

–Wisdom of Solomon, 7:21-30 (RSV, Apocrypha)

We will continue with King Solomon for a few more weeks. Next, we have his great wealth and building projects, especially the First Temple, and also the Song of Songs. Then we will conclude the discussion of King Solomon with some extra-Biblical material, including the Ethiopian legends of the Queen of Sheba, the Kebra Negast, and the Ark of the Covenant, the Freemasons, as well as Arab legends such as the Ring of Andaleeb, and other magical texts.

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Live discussion Tues, March 3, at 7:00 pm EST

Goddess Bible Study this week begins a deep dive into King Solomon, the wisest, wealthiest, and most celebrated of all the Biblical kings. We will spend a few weeks on King Solomon as he is one of the pivotal figures in the Goddess Bible Study narrative.

King Solomon is a paradox, the Biblical writers dress him up as the wisest king ever, and he is known as the father of the esoteric wisdom traditions. Yet the Biblical writers are also harshly critical of Solomon for worshipping goddesses, which they blame on his many wives.

King Solomon followed Yahweh, but he did not follow Yahweh alone.

King Solomon is the transitional figure who transmuted Israelite paganism into Biblical monotheism. Through Solomon, theologians pass through the acceptable aspects of the feminine divine while rejecting others. Theologians accept transcendent “wisdom”, which they describe as “she,” while they reject all the visceral nature-based traditions rooted in matriarchy, sexuality, plant medicine, and ecstasy.

The ephemeral feminine divine wisdom is seen in all Western esoteric traditions, including Kabbalah, the Rosicrucians, Hermetics, Gnostics, and modern Freemasons. The Greeks gave wisdom the name Sophia, and commonly presented her as a goddess, a tradition that continues today.

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As King David’s health failed at the end of his long rule, various princes asserted their claims for the throne. David’s wife Bathsheba, with whom he had had a scandalous adulterous affair when they first met, maneuvered her youngest son to be chosen by David as his successor.

It is worth noting the role played by Solomon’s mother in placing Solomon on the throne ahead of his many rivals.

David and Bathsheba’s 15-year-old son was named Jedidiah, “the friend of God.” After being anointed king beside the Gihon Spring, drenched in the holy cannabis oil, he would be known by a name of legendary renown.

King Solomon ruled in Jerusalem for 40 years from 970-931 BCE and is revered by Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Rastafarians as the wisest and wealthiest of all the world’s ancient kings. King Solomon is perhaps the most celebrated of all Old Testament characters (alongside Moses), and countless stories exist about him outside the Bible.

Known as the “King of Peace,” Solomon ruled the united kingdom of Israel at its legendary height, brought trade and prosperity, and built the first Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem. The Father of Wisdom is credited with authoring the biblical books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, and some Psalms.

Solomon’s exploits and wealth are clearly exaggerated, and scholars debate the very existence of King Solomon and King David, since no archaeological evidence confirming them has been found.

It is accepted that the Israelites were in Jerusalem during this period, but scholars do not believe that Jerusalem was wealthy. There was no grand palace or other large construction projects as described in the Bible.

There are megalithic stones tourists can see in the Temple Mount, similar to those found in Baalbek, Lebanon, indicating a Phoenician-style temple, but we don’t know what it looked like, and it’s doubtful that it was layered in gold.

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is currently the home of the Islamic Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and has not been archaeologically studied outside the Jewish sections. It is the single most contentious location on all of planet Earth, fought over by Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike.

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Solomon’s Pagan Worship

Young King Solomon had to work to consolidate his power and fend off rivals. Meanwhile, the people continued to worship in the old pagan ways, offering sacrifices and burning incense at the high places. High places were hilltop altars, stone platforms, and sacred groves where the people made offerings to the various gods and goddesses.

There was no authority or centralized worship in pagan folk traditions, just community altars that people built themselves. The big cities had state religions and large temples, but in the countryside, religion was a community and family affair. There was no doctrine, dogma, or overarching authority on spiritual matters. Paganism was a do-it-yourself religious framework, and the Yahweh-alone reforms would come later.

Wise King Solomon followed the people and also burned incense and made offerings on the high places. The following passage about young Solomon is crucial. “The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place.”

King Solomon made a thousand burnt offerings at Gibeon, the most important pagan shrine. Rather than being angry, Yahweh rewarded Solomon by granting him wisdom. Solomon took that blessing and became the philosophical bridge between the pagan and monotheistic traditions.

The Book of Chronicles was written later, and it tells the same story slightly differently. The writer of Chronicles altered the detail that Gibeon was “the most important high place” and changed it to be the location for Moses’s tent of meeting instead.

This is a clear example of revisionist history, as the Bible went through generations of writers over many centuries.

Goddess Worshipper

For all of King Solomon’s great attributes, he is harshly criticized in the Bible for his goddess worship and devotion to his wives. King Solomon built a temple (or high place) to Astarte in Jerusalem. The writers blame Solomon, in part, for the later breakup of the united kingdom of Israel into Israel and Judah.

Solomon is said to have had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He loved women, and the women loved him. The king was a sensuous man who appreciated the finer things in life: luxury, poetry, wisdom, and love.

King Solomon likely took part in the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) rituals. The Song of Solomon comes from a genre of sacred love poetry used in these traditions. The king had close relations with the goddess-worshipping Phoenicians, who helped him build the Jerusalem temple and with whom he engaged in wide-ranging trade.

Two Women and a Baby

Solomon demonstrated his wisdom when he judged a famous dispute in the Bible. Two women came to him, both claiming to be the mother of the same baby, while the other’s baby was dead. The king said, “Bring me a sword, cut the child in half, and give one half to each mother.”

The woman whose child was alive was deeply moved out of love for her son and said, “Do not kill the living baby!” But the woman whose child was dead said, “Neither of us can have him!”

Then the king made his ruling, “Give the baby to the first woman, she is the mother of the living child.” When all Israel heard the verdict, they were awed by Solomon’s wisdom.

In the book of Proverbs, Solomon describes how wisdom was at God’s side as he laid the foundations of creation, guided by her hand.

King Solomon would eventually die in his bed, fat, rich, and happy, surrounded by his family and the women who loved him. If God was unhappy with King Solomon, he did not show it in Solomon’s lifetime, or perhaps the Goddess just loved him more.

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Next week, we will dive into some of the wisdom texts in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Solomon. Following that, we have his great wealth and building projects, especially the First Temple, and also the Song of Songs. Then we will conclude the discussion of King Solomon with some extra-Biblical material, including the Ethiopian legends of the Queen of Sheba, the Kebra Negast, and the Ark of the Covenant, as well as Arab legends such as the Ring of Andaleeb.

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Live discussion Tues, Feb. 24, at 7:00 pm EST

In the late 11th century BCE, the Israelites decided they wanted a king to lead them. Whether the people understood at the time or not, this decision would end their tribal, more cooperative and egalitarian lifestyle, and replace it with top-down rule by kings who demand taxes, tribute, and the service of the people’s sons and daughters.

The arrival of kingship also extinguished the final vestiges of Bronze Age matriarchy that still existed among the Israelites and ushered in the new era of firm Iron Age patriarchy.

The first king was the disgraced Saul, followed by the most beloved King David, and then the wisest, King Solomon, as seen in the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel.

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But first, we look at the book of Ruth, which is the last mention of a matriarchy in the Biblical timeline. It is a treatise on why women should join the patriarchal Yahweh clans.

Earlier, we saw the prophetesses Deborah and Miriam as tribal leaders. Going forward, we see kings with many wives, while the Queen Mothers, like Jezebel, will be overthrown.

I have been making the case all along that during the Bronze Age, patriarchal and matriarchal family structures coexisted (mother’s homes and father’s homes), and in the Iron Age, the tribal matriarchies were purged from civilization.

The Book of Ruth shows this historical transition point when the last of the tribal matriarchies were still around, and women still had a bit of choice in the matter.

Ruth was a Moabite woman who married into an Israelite family that had moved to Moab to escape famine in Israel. Famines were a feature in this time period and are mentioned during the reign of King David. Modern scholarship shows there were many famines during the 300-year Bronze Age Collapse that contributed to the instability and social breakdown.

Ruth had married one of the two sons, but tragically, all the men died, leaving three widows, the mother Naomi, and two daughters-in-law. Naomi instructed the young women to return to their “mother’s home,” and their gods in Moab, which was one of the matriarchal, polytheistic Canaanite groups that the Biblical writers are always raging against. But Ruth chose to stay with her mother-in-law and put her faith in Yahweh, who rewarded her with an honorable husband, named Boaz, and a child who would become the grandfather of King David.

The story is a not-so-subtle pitch to the women of the day that Yahweh would take care of you in his patriarchal families, even if your husband dies. In matriarchal families, the women could rely on each other for support and were less dependent on their husbands. Women had to be convinced, sold, or kidnapped into joining patriarchal families.

They go back to Bethlehem, where Ruth meets Boaz, an honorable kinsman. There are clear sexual overtones in the following story, as the word “feet” commonly serves as a euphemism for “penis” throughout the Bible.

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Sometime around 1030 BCE, during the hard period of famine and lawlessness, the Israelite people demanded a king to fight their battles for them. The elders summoned the prophet Samuel and asked him to appoint a king to lead them.

Prophet Samuel objected. He told the people that a king would take the best of everything for himself and drive them into slavery, but the people insisted. Samuel’s warnings all proved true, and we live with the effects to this day.

King Saul was the first king of Israel, but Saul was eventually disgraced. He stands as a cautionary tale of hubris and mistrust. Though the Bible is not precise, scholars believe Saul ruled Israel for roughly 20 years, from around 1030-1010 BCE.

Saul was a great military leader, tall and handsome. He fought many battles and won many victories against the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Philistines, the Amalekites, and others. A biblical summary states that “wherever he turned, he was victorious”.

King Saul died by his own sword in battle, and the Philistines took his armor to the temple of Astarte as a war prize.

King Saul lost favor, and Yahweh chose a young shepherd named David to become the new king. King David is one of the great heroes of the Bible.

David was first brought into Saul’s court as his young armor-bearer and gained fame when he defeated the giant Goliath using only a stone and a sling. David became Saul’s top general, and his military success and popularity with the people made him a threat to the king.

Saul tried to have David killed, but Saul’s son Jonathan was a close friend of David and repeatedly helped him escape. Many modern critical scholars suggest that David and Jonathan may have been lovers. Jonathan was killed alongside his father, and David mourned bitterly.

After Saul’s death, David had to fight another of Saul's sons, Ish-Bosheth, who was king for two years. Ish-Bosheth means “man of shame.” His proper name was Eshbaal, “man of Baal".

The -eth epithet meaning “shame” is also applied to the goddesses. Ashtoreth means “shameful Astarte,” and represents the origin of slut-shaming.

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King David fought many military victories, he was a great general.

Perhaps David’s most long-lasting military legacy was taking Jerusalem from the Jebusites in the year 1004 BCE. Scholars accept that this was a historical event (even if there was no real King David), and we can place a flag firmly on our timeline here.

The Bible offers minimal details, but it appears that David led his soldiers up a water shaft to get past the city walls. Jerusalem was well-fortified and proved to be a difficult city to capture over the centuries.

David had many wives and concubines. But the most famous and scandalous wife was Bathsheba, the mother of Solomon.

Bathsheba was a married woman when the king summoned her for a visit. David impregnated her, setting off a series of events as David attempted to cover his tracks. Bathsheba’s husband was a loyal officer named Uriah. David brought him home from the battle in hopes he would visit his wife, but Uriah refused the comforts of home while his men remained in the field. Then David raised the stakes. He sent Uriah into the thick of the fight, knowing that he would be struck down.

Uriah was killed, and Bathsheba mourned him. After a time, David brought her home and married her, and their child was born. This scandalous behaviour displeased Yahweh and the prophet Nathan, who confronted David with his crimes. David admitted everything, and Nathan proclaimed that tragedy would befall David’s family.

The baby was struck ill and died. David had many children with his various wives, and throughout his life, there was always family turmoil. At one point, his oldest son, Absalom, would rebel and attempt to seize the throne before being killed.

David established an archetype that has been followed by kings, presidents, and prime ministers ever since. When caught in adultery or other scandals, the politician theatrically retreats to the model of King David by publicly confessing, proclaiming they are flawed, and seeking redemption from the people. Of course, they all hope to avoid the misery that followed David to his grave.

David lived to be an old man, but the palace intrigue never ended. Of all the famous characters in the Bible, David seems the most real to me, the most human. David’s story reads like the biography of a real historical figure, full of contradictions, heroism and treachery, bravery and tragedy, and with minimal supernatural intervention.

Archaeologists have never confirmed the existence of King David, though they have found evidence of the House of David, which strongly implies his reality. It was an illiterate and anarchic time period, so it makes sense that there are no written records.

There was some joy for David though. He had another child with Bathsheba, who was so beloved, he was given the name Jedidiah, “loved by the Lord.” We know him better as King Solomon.

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For the next few weeks, we will dive into King Solomon, who is the most pivotal Bible figure from the Goddess perspective. King Solomon was the greatest, wisest, and most legendary of all the Israelite kings. His wealth and glory were unsurpassed, and yet King Solomon had a problem, he worshipped the goddesses! And the Biblical writers were not happy about it at all.

King Solomon is the father of the Wisdom traditions. Wisdom is also known as Sophia, a goddess, and she lies at the heart of all Western esoteric and occult traditions, such as Kabalah and Hermeticism. The Greeks portrayed Sophia as a goddess, and the Gnostics placed her at the heart of their mystical Christian traditions.

As the father of wisdom traditions, King Solomon is the conduit through which the acceptable parts of the feminine divine were channeled into the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths.

This week’s discussion will be live on Tuesday, Feb 17 at 7:00 pm EST.

Contact me at:

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

This week on Goddess Bible Study, we are back to our original purpose, discussing the goddesses who appear in the Bible. Let’s dig into some of the archeological evidence for Asherah and the goddesses of pagan Israel.

We continue the story during the period of the Judges in the 10th and 11th centuries BCE, in the depths of the Bronze Age Collapse. It was a lawless and illiterate time in Canaan. The Bible makes it clear that the Israelites worshiped Baal and the Ashtoreths. Baal was the Canaanite king of the gods, like Zeus or Marduk, while Ashtoreths is the goddesses, plural.

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Goddess Archaeology - Israelite Paganism

Thousands of goddess images and figurines have been unearthed by archaeologists all over Syria, Israel, and Palestine, in addition to rich goddess traditions of Egypt. One of the earliest goddess figurines dates back to 4500 BCE and features a naked goddess seated on a stool, balancing a cheese/butter urn atop her head.

Excavations at the early Bronze Age city of Ai, supposedly destroyed by Joshua and the Israelites, uncovered a large post of charred wood, which scholars believe to be an Asherah, one of the sacred wooden poles that represent the goddess.

During the 300 years of Egyptian control of Canaan, there was a great deal of religious syncretization between Canaanite and Egyptian gods. This seems to be the milieu in which the triple goddess Asherah, Astarte, and Anat emerged.

Images in the tradition of Asherah are found on plaques dating to 1500-1200 BCE and feature a nude goddess with wide hips, large breasts, and pubic triangle, often astride a lion, wearing an arrow quiver, and holding lotus flowers and snakes.

In some instances, she has many Egyptian symbols, the sun disk representing the Eye of Ra, the cattle horns of Isis, and the bouffant hair of Hathor, goddess of love and beauty.

In Egypt, Asherah, Astarte, and Anat were syncretized into a single lion-riding goddess named Qedesh, “the Holy One.”

This trinity is mapped from the Egyptian triple goddess Hathor, Bastet, Sekhmet, known as the Eye of Ra. All of these goddesses were in turn absorbed into the super-goddess Isis.

In the Koran, this formulation is seen in the daughters of Allah: Allat, Uzza, and Manat.

Contemporary Hindus today call these goddesses Shakti: Parvati, Durga, and Kali.

This artifact, known as the Stele of Qetesh (Louvre N 237 or Turin 50066), is a limestone monument from the New Kingdom period (19th Dynasty, circa 1290–1189 BCE) and is a prime example of the syncretization of Egyptian and Canaanite religion.

The stele in the image depicts the Canaanite goddess Qedesh, flanked by the Egyptian god Min on the left and the Canaanite god Resheph on the right. This is a cycle of life trinity as Min, with his fully erect penis, represents life and virility. Resphesh, on the other hand, is a Canaanite warrior god associated with the plague and the underworld. Qedesh is the loving, nurturing, mother of the universe.

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Gideon Destroys the Altar to Baal and the Asherah pole

In the Bible story, we see the beginning of the revolt against the goddesses in the character of Gideon, who was an Israelite during the time of the Judges.

In the book of Judges, Yahweh instructs Gideon to tear down the altar to Baal that his father had built and also the Asherah pole beside it.

The fact that Gideon’s father had built the altar and Asherah pole demonstrates clearly that Baal and Asherah were native gods, not foreign gods, and that the early Hebrews were pagan Canaanites.

This story may be fiction, it is difficult to discern the historicity of these particular events, but it follows with the broader intent of the Biblical writers who emphasize their hostility to the old goddess traditions at every opportunity.

Goddess Figurines in Israel and Judah

Goddesses representing nature were at the heart of popular culture. Molds have been discovered for the mass production of small clay goddess figurines in Israel and Judah. These figurines were popular and found in many homes, and reflect a continuity of goddess worship back to the Ice Age

A later type of figurine emerged after the fall of Samaria in the 7th and 8th centuries BCE. These later Judean figurines are called “pillar-base” because they only depict the upper half of the body and not the legs.

These figurines are nude with prominent breasts, one type has simple finger-pinched faces, while others have molded faces. They are not sexualized images and may represent a nursing mother. Scholars believe they represent household gods and that they are not toys.

All told, around 3000 goddess figurines have been found in Israel/Palestine. The figurines are generally found in homes or in debris piles, but not in graves. They were likely a part of home/folk traditions and not the official cults.

Yahweh and his Asherah

Among the most controversial archaeological discoveries was an inscription found at Kuntillet Ajrud, which says “Yahweh and his Asherah”, demonstrating a clear connection between the supposedly monotheistic Yahweh and the Goddess.

The inscription dates from ~830-760 BCE during the First Temple period and was found at a remote site in the Sinai desert near the modern border of Israel and Egypt. This period was during the Hebrew culture wars and shows that the Yahwist reformation took centuries to complete.

The inscriptions were found by archaeologists in 1975 on two large storage jars, or pithos, with unusual drawings and letters written in an early Hebrew script. The inscription, “Yahweh and his Asherah,” has caused considerable debate among scholars as to what it means. Do these inscriptions describe God and his wife, or merely God’s possession of a cultic object?

Conservative scholars and theologians loathe the idea that God could have had a wife, but these inscriptions are among the most unequivocal evidence that the early Hebrews were in fact pagan and worshiped the full Canaanite pantheon. The evidence and the scriptures show that the emergence of monotheism played out over centuries of social conflict.

Another 8th century BCE Hebrew inscription from a tomb at Khirbet el-Qôm, near Hebron, contains a blessing invoking "Yahweh and his Asherah," providing additional epigraphic evidence of the goddess traditions in ancient Judah.

Even more intriguing, there was an iconoclastic group of Hebrews at Elephantine Island in Egypt that continued polytheistic Hebrew practices and worshiped Yahweh-Anat (Anat-Yahu) until the 5th century BCE, after the second temple was built. There are many scraps of documents containing signatures dedicated to Yahweh-Anat, and they wrote letters to the Jerusalem temple signed with the Yahweh-Anat honorific.

Jews in the Second Temple were still arguing about polytheism until the Maccabean Revolt in 167 BCE. It was only under the Maccabees and the Hasmonean kingdom that the Jews became truly monotheistic in the manner we are familiar with today.

This sampling of archaeological evidence reviews the most famous and important items, but it is not a complete review of all the evidence. There are thousands of images of goddesses found in Israel and Judah. There is no ambiguity to the argument that the first temple Israelites were completely pagan.

Bonus section: Israelite Matriarchal Marriages

Probably should have included this material in the discussion of the Israelite matriarch Deborah.

A defining characteristic of tribal matriarchal families is that in marriage, the husband lives with the wife’s family, rather than the woman living with her husband’s family.

There are multiple examples of Israelite men living with their wives’ families during the tribal period of the Judges.

Samson goes to live with his wife’s family, who were Philistines. (Judges 15:1) (before Delilah).

Gideon’s Canaanite concubine/wife lived in Shechem, (Judges 8:31). Their son Abimelech led his mother’s tribe in a revolt against Gideon’s family. (Judges 9:1-6).

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Live discussion on Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 7pm EST.

Reach out if you would like to join the chat.

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

Next session, we will move onto the kings, briefly discussing Saul, but primarly focusing on King David, who took Jerusalem around 1004 BCE. This topic will then lead to King Solomon whom we will stick with for a few weeks, as he is a central figure in the Goddess Bible traditions.

This week on Goddess Bible Study: Joshua, Jericho, the conquest of Canaan, and the Song of Deborah.

12th century BCE

We are now in the 12th century BCE. Egypt fought the Sea Peoples for the second time in 1177 BCE, and lost control of its empire in Canaan, setting the stage for the Israelites to enter the promised land of Canaan in the books of Joshua and Judges.

The Hittite empire was to the north, and the Bronze Age Collapse caused both empires to suffer. The Hittites disappeared completely, while Egypt was forced to withdraw to its homeland, leaving Canaan without governance. The Egyptians had controlled Canaan for 300 years as a buffer state, and they ordered most of the cities to have no walls or fortifications. The loss of Egyptian control plunged Canaan into lawlessness and violence.

This anarchic time period is known in the Bible as the conquest of Canaan and the time of the Judges. Kingship would come a century and a half later, for now the Israelites were still tribal, pagan, and at least partly matriarchal, as we will see.

The pagan Israelites worshiped Baal and the Ashtoreths, the common religion of the day. Baal was king of the gods. Astarte was the Queen of Heaven. Ashtoreths means, “shameful Astarte” in plural. Telling us that goddess temples and shrines were common across the land.

As I have argued previously, I believe that this Biblical time period is akin to the Trojan War, in that dramatic historical events were occurring, but there was no literacy, so all stories were recorded in oral tradition. Dramatic episodes quickly became legends, and after a while, full-on myths complete with supernatural elements and esoteric importance.

Moses died when the Israelites were on the edge of the promised land, and Joshua became the new leader of the Israelites. They fought their neighbors, the Moabites, Edomites, Philistines, and others, for a homeland of their own. These were all new kingdoms that emerged after the big fight in 1177 BCE. The Philistines were likely among the Sea Peoples and settled in today’s Gaza Strip.

Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan

The conquest of Canaan, led by Joshua, is one of the more colorful sections of the Bible, filled with genocidal violence and famous stories of entire cities being sacked and destroyed. This has been a ripe area of investigation for archaeologists, leading to many interesting results.

Similar to the Exodus, there is no evidence that the stories of the Conquest ever happened exactly as described in the Bible. But there is evidence that some stuff happened, and we do know for certain that it was an anarchic time period full of violence.

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The most famous Conquest story by far is the destruction of Jericho by the Israelites in Joshua chapter 6. This story perfectly exemplifies the debates between secular scholars and the faithful.

Jericho is the oldest continually inhabited city in the world. Jericho is even older than Catal Huyuk, its Neolithic settlements are 10,000 years old. Residents of Jericho today describe it as humanity’s oldest city.

By the time Joshua and the Israelites showed up, Jericho had already been inhabited for 7000 years. Precise settlement locations did move around a bit over the centuries, but there is a water source, which was always valuable.

In the story, the Israelites marched around the city for seven days, carrying the mystical Ark of the Covenant, bringing down the tall, impenetrable walls. Children sing songs about it in Sunday School.

The site has been heavily analyzed by archaeologists and apologists, and they did find thick city walls that had been knocked down in apparently dramatic fashion, but the dating is highly controversial.

The ruined walls and burned city appear just as they are described in the Bible. The faithful take this as a sign of the Bible’s inerrancy. But is that really the correct interpretation?

Archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon did extensive work in Jericho and dated the destruction of the walls to 1550 BCE. Fundamentalist scholars have argued for a later date of 1400 BCE, which is when the religious faithful believe the Israelites entered Canaan.

Academics attribute the destruction of Jericho’s thick walls to an earthquake centuries before the Israelites arrived. They believe that Jericho was basically uninhabited when the Israelites emerged in the area around 1200 BCE.

The important question is, when did the walls fall? Were the Hebrews responsible for bringing the walls down as described in the Bible? Or did they find the walls already broken down and then invent stories, taking credit for the ruins in their midst?

Rahab the Prostitute

The story of Rahab is interesting from a goddess perspective. Rahab was a prostitute who lived in Jericho and helped Israelite spies enter the city in exchange for sparing the lives of her and her family.

Rahab is a significant figure in the Bible, she demonstrated faith in Yahweh, and her family was spared destruction. Ultimately, she became an ancestor of Jesus Christ.

Rahab’s family owned a tavern, and she is described as a “zonah”, a conventional prostitute and not a “qedesha.” It was typical for workers in taverns to supplement their income with prostitution, and it was quite normal in ancient times.

Some scholars have suggested Rahab was a qedesha. The name Rahab is one of the names for the Leviathan, the primordial serpent monster swimming in the chaotic seas of creation, and closely associated with Goddess traditions.

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Deborah the Prophetess and Matriarch

We discussed the Song of Deborah previously, it is among the oldest passages in the Bible, dating back to 12th century oral tradition. The song appears to commemorate the anarchy and historical fighting after Egypt left Canaan. Judges 4 tells the full story, while chapter 5 is the original song in archaic Hebrew.

The Song mentions Shamgar, son of Anath, and is one of the few mentions of Anat in scripture, demonstrating that the terrifying goddess of destruction was known at the time, even though the Biblical writers were afraid to discuss her directly.

Deborah was an Israelite matriarch and prophetess. She calls the tribes to battle and leads the men. The story reflects that older tribal matriarchal traditions were still going strong when Yahweh first emerged on the scene.

Deborah orders Barak to lead the men into battle, but he says he will only go if she does. Deborah replies that the honor of Yahweh will then belong to a woman.

Jael is also a woman who kills the enemy commander Sisera when he is asleep.

Victory in the battle belongs to the warrior women!

Barak and Deborah defeated Sisera’s troops and the enemy commander fled on foot, only to meet his fate at the hands of Jael, who plunged a tent spike into his skull.

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Next episode, we will continue in the time of the Judges, and will take a deeper dive into the goddess worship of the era. We will look at Gideon and the moves he makes against Baal and Asherah. We will also look at some of the archaeological evidence for Israelite worship of the mother goddess Asherah.

Live discussion Tuesday, Jan 20 at 7:00 pm EST.

Reach out if you would like to participate or join the discussion group.

goddessbiblestudy@gmail.com

This week on Goddess Bible Study, we have our third and final session with the pagan Moses. Many details in the Bible story suggest that the original Moses was a far cry from the Moses who lives in popular imagination today. The stories of Moses, Miriam, and Aaron have layers, added by numerous authors over many centuries as social, political, and religious circumstances changed.

Monotheistic reformers in both the First Temple and Second Temples worked to make Moses their own by adding layers to the story that reflected their reform agendas, but original layers remained, creating symbolic enigmas.

I contend that there are specific contradictions in the actions of Moses when compared to the Laws of Deuteronomy, which Moses supposedly wrote. These contradictions, along with other odd behaviors, indicate that the oldest layers of Moses reflect pagan Israelite traditions that were later reformed away on the path to monotheism.

Last week, we discussed some of these contradictions, including Moses using powerful snake magic against Pharaoh and among the Israelites, but then condemning the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Moses commands that linen and wool be woven together when constructing the tabernacle and its curtains, but this blend is then explicitly forbidden in Deuteronomy, and is known as shatnez.

This week, we explore how cannabis is in the holy anointing oil, God appearing in a pillar of smoke, and the menorah, the seven-branched candle stand.

Even more importantly, we look at the prophetess Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron, and leader of the women. Miriam is punished by God in a curious story and unceremoniously exits the narrative, only to be buried in the holy city of Kadesh.

Who is Miriam? Was she a qedesha? Why does she disappear from the story?

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Cannabis in the Holy Anointing Oil

Let’s start with cannabis as an ingredient in the holy anointing oil. Modern scholarship reveals that cannabis is named five times in the Hebrew Bible as the word “qaneh,” but was mistranslated in the Septuagint in the 3rd century BC.

These five verses have long troubled Biblical translators, and the holy anointing oil has major theological significance. The English language versions typically say “aromatic cane,” or “calamus,” neither of which makes sense in context, while cannabis does make sense. (We will have a dedicated session on cannabis in the Bible exploring all the references.)

The holy anointing oil was very important. The recipe was prescribed by Yawheh directly to Moses. It distinguished the sacred from the secular, and was used to anoint the priests and kings by pouring it over their heads until the oil dripped from their beards. The holy anointing oil was wiped on every item in the tabernacle, and all over the cloth and carpets of the tabernacle itself, to mark them as sacred.

The recipe for the holy anointing oil is psychoactive and potent. 250 shekels of cannabis equals 6.28 pounds of flowering cannabis tops infused into roughly 1.5 gallons of olive oil (around 6 liters, hin is not a precise measure), plus myrrh, cinnamon, and cassia. This recipe was boiled and distilled so that all the spices were infused into the oil.

Cannabis can be absorbed through the skin, and in the context of a spiritual ritual where the set and setting encourage a mystical experience, the holy anointing oil can create an intense connection to the divine. People continue to prepare this recipe today and attest to its medicinal and psychoactive value.

Calamus can be medicinal but is poisonous in large doses, as would be required in the holy anointing oil.

The prohibition against sharing the recipe or using it for anything other than sacred purposes shows how important the holy anointing oil was. In many cultural traditions, sacred and medicinal recipes were kept secret and never to be revealed, especially if they had potent mystical properties, as magic revealed is magic lost.

There are similar instructions for making sacred incense in the following verses, though they do not explicitly mention qaneh bosm.

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God in a Cloud of Smoke

Moses led the tribes back to Mount Sinai, where he first met Yahweh in the burning bush. Yahweh always visits him in a cloud of smoke. This makes Moses look like a desert shaman, showing the pagan roots of the early Hebrews.

Could the burning bush be cannabis? Many people have thought so over the centuries, and there is no definitive answer to the question.

Could the pillar of smoke be intoxicating smoke? The context makes sense. Many neighboring cultures in this era burned cannabis in a ritual manner.

Moses pitched his own tent outside the camp, called the “Tent of the Meeting,” or the Tabernacle, where he met with Yahweh. The people watched Moses whenever he went to the tent, and waited for the pillar of smoke to arise, which signaled that he was speaking to God.

Shekinah is the Hebrew word describing the physical manifestation of God, particularly as the cloud of smoke in the Tabernacle and later in the Jerusalem Temple. The word does not appear in the Bible but is used by scholars.

Shekinah is a feminine word, invented by medieval Kabbalists in a partial rebirth of the feminine divine. The Kabbalists were Jewish mystics who presented the Shekinah as the feminine representation of God’s earthly presence, the wife of God manifested in stories as a cloud of smoke. The Kabbalists graphically portrayed God and his bride in a sexual embrace.

This motif of God appearing in a cloud of smoke is only seen in the First Temple, when the Israelites were still pagan and burning cannabis. When the Israelites later returned from exile and built the Second Temple, they had moved to monotheism, and God no longer appeared in a cloud of smoke.

Cannabis is obviously not part of Jewish tradition, going back to the time of Jesus. I argue that cannabis was sacred to the pagan Israelites and was eliminated along with the Goddess traditions in the monotheistic reforms.

The Menorah as the Burning Bush

Another data point to consider is the Menorah, and the Hebrew words used to describe it, since qaneh appears again. Qaneh can also mean “branch” or “reed.” Yahweh provides precise instructions to Moses for how to design the seven-branched candle stand, and the word qaneh repeats over and over. (Strong’s Hebrew Concordance; 7070: qaneh.)

Jewish tradition holds that the Menorah is supposed to represent the Burning Bush, where Yahweh first met Moses, and the Tree of Life. It is one of their oldest symbols, and large ones stood in both the First and Second Temples.

The Menorah can be seen as representing cannabis and an earlier phase of pagan Hebrew shamanism. The Menorah is designed in a plant motif, and with all the branches, it looks like a field of cannabis.

Hemp Linens

The linens in the Tabernacle likely included at least some hemp alongside flax, as fine hemp is indistinguishable from flax. Flax was much more common, but hemp was sacred.

Monotheistic reforms introduced shatnez, which bans the mixing of woolen yarn with linen, as blending animal and vegetable fibers was a pagan practice.

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Miriam, Prophetess Punished

The treatment of Miriam, the older sister of Moses and Aaron, is quite strange. It shows that these stories were altered from their earliest versions, with many details removed, before finding their final form.

Miriam was undoubtedly a significant character; she is one of only seven female Hebrew prophetesses and one of the few characters who speak directly to Yahweh. But Miriam was ultimately punished by Yahweh, and her fate leaves many questions unanswered.

As a child, eight-year-old Miriam watched over the infant Moses while he floated in a basket in the Nile River. It was clever Miriam who guided the child into the hands of the Pharaoh’s daughter. She then boldly approached the princess, offering to find a suitable wet-nurse, who was none other than her own mother. This seminal act set forth Moses’ entire fate.

As an adult, Miriam the prophetess was the leader of the women. After the Israelites successfully fled Pharaoh’s forces in the Exodus, Miriam led the women in singing and dancing with tambourines. Her Song of the Sea is one of the oldest songs in the Western tradition and is among the oldest passages in the Bible (c. 1100 BC).

The Hebrews were clearly pagan at this stage, they were hearing the name Yahweh for the first time. They worshipped El, the Heavenly Father, and the Mother Goddess Asherah, along with Astarte, the Queen of Heaven, and the terrifying Anat.

There were qedesha (the holy ones, temple priestesses) in the community, and the practices of sacred sex and ritual prostitution were alive and well.

Miriam may well have been a qedesha herself. She is not said to have had a husband or child, but she did like music and dance. At the very least, Miriam looked after the qedesha as a community leader.

If Miriam was a qedesha, then her curious fate would make much more sense and would reflect the changing norms that the Yahwists sought to impose.

During the forty years of nomadic wandering, Miriam was involved in a dispute with Moses and punished by Yahweh. The nature of the dispute is ambiguous as the Biblical text leaves out the details, and there are wildly different interpretations of the story.

The story shows Yahweh speaking directly to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam together; no one else in the community entered the Tent of the Meeting to speak to Yahweh.

A straight reading of the text implies that Moses has a new wife who is not Zipporah, but a Cushite woman who is unidentified. Miriam and Aaron were angry about it for some reason, perhaps because she was a foreigner of a different race.

The common interpretation of the story says that Miriam was punished for being racist against Moses’s Ethiopian wife. Since Miriam is the one who spoke first and most forcefully, and not Aaron, she is the one punished by Yahweh for criticizing his most faithful servant, Moses.

But there are other interpretations. Jewish Midrash tradition from 200 CE adds additional details to the story that give it a very different meaning. In this version, the Cushite woman is Zipporah, Moses’ faithful wife, and the word Cushite, which means Ethiopian or African, is a description not only of her race but also of her exceptional beauty (beautiful as an Ethiopian).

The dispute with Miriam was the result of Moses having withdrawn from Zipporah sexually so that he could focus his mind on his prophesying. This presents the story in terms of sex and celibacy, not in terms of race.

In this interpretation, Miriam was acting as the leader of the women and defending the interests of the righteous Zipporah. Miriam and Aaron did not want the other prophets to feel obligated to withdraw sexually from their wives, as they thought it would be a bad precedent.

The idea that Miriam could have been a qedesha only adds color to this theory. Miriam would have been quite offended if Moses was breaking free of his traditional sexual obligations, and we can see with 3000 years of hindsight that it is likely what happened.

Throughout the culture clashes in the Hebrew Bible, the sexual practices of the goddess worshippers were one of the primary sources of friction, and this event here may be the first fight.

Yahweh punished Miriam severely for having the impertinence to question Moses. Her skin was struck with leprosy, and she was sent out of the camp for seven days.

Miriam then disappears entirely from the Biblical narrative, except for one last mention, the announcement of her death and burial in the city of Kadesh.

It is ironic, and perhaps intentional symbolism, that Miriam would be buried in the holy city town named for the qedesha, the sacred sex priestesses whose traditions the Hebrews sought to eliminate.

The Biblical writers may have been giving notice that they were burying the traditions of sacred sexuality along with the prophetess.

Miriam’s expulsion from the camp and ignominious exit from the narrative may be the first act in the centuries-long divorce of God from the Mother Goddess.

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This week on Goddess Bible Study, we will continue our discussion of Moses, which began with the Exodus last week. I am going to make the case for a minimalist, historical, pagan Moses.

I believe there was an early tradition of Moses, a prophet of Yahweh, who led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt around 1209 BCE in the Bronze Age Collapse. But I also think that they were completely polytheistic in this period, and there were no religious reforms for Yahweh, who was just another pagan god at this time.

I am persuaded by modern scholarship that suggests the Torah was completed in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 3rd century BCE, and that many of the most important stories were written at that time, layered on top of older source material.

Monotheism was an invention of a completely different era from any historical Moses, and the stories of him bringing the Ten Commandments down from Mt. Sinai, or smashing the Golden Calf to end pagan traditions, were almost certainly later additions to old legends.

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By tradition, Moses led the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity and into 40 years of wandering. There is no confirmation of a historical Moses, and many critical scholars believe he never existed.

Moses is called the “Law-giver.” Tradition says that he wrote the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and laid down an elaborate list of laws and religious reforms before the Israelites ever entered Canaan, but there is no evidence that this is true.

The Torah and law codes do not appear in the Bible story in the First Temple period, nor were the Israelites apparently literate at that time. They were singing songs in the oral tradition, some of which are in the Psalms. The Torah also includes Moses’s death and funeral, making it hard for him to have written.

Considering that the Hebrew written language appears in the 9th century BCE, not the 12th, it is unlikely that a historical Moses, if he existed, wrote anything at all.

Moses’ legendary backstory is well known. He was born a Hebrew slave in Egypt, and his mother put the infant in a basket in the river to escape an order by Pharaoh to kill all Hebrew babies. Moses was found by one of Pharaoh’s daughters and raised as royalty in the palace.

As a young man, Moses killed an Egyptian officer who was abusing a Hebrew and fled into exile. Moses escaped to Midian, where he met Jethro, a pagan priest, and married his beautiful daughter Zipporah, with whom he had a family.

It was in Midian that Moses first encountered Yahweh at the Burning Bush while out shepherding a flock. This is the first appearance of Yahweh in Israel’s mythical history. The first appearance of Yahweh in archaeology is 850 BCE in the Mesha Stele.

Yahweh encouraged Moses to return to Egypt to save his people from captivity, where he confronted Pharaoh along with his brother Aaron. The Exodus was followed by 40 years of wandering in the desert, before the Israelites could enter the promised land of Canaan (we discussed the timing of these events in the last session).

According to the scripture, Abraham and the patriarchs never knew Yahweh. Yahweh was a new god for the polytheistic Israelites, just another tribal god in those early days, one of the many sons of El. Later Yahwist writers added him to older stories of Abraham with El in the effort to conflate Yahweh with El as the single monotheistic God.

The Biblical writers portray Moses as establishing the covenant with Yahweh and initiating religious reforms right away, with new laws presented by Yahweh.

Yahwists would become a patriarchal moral reform cult over the centuries, especially after kingship was established. But it is hard to know at what point they began in earnest to challenge the existing traditional religions by smashing idols and cutting down Asherah poles.

One of the most famous Bible stories takes place while Moses was talking to Yahweh on Mt. Sinai, receiving the laws. Moses was gone for many days, and the people got impatient waiting for him to return.

The pagan Israelites implored Aaron to build a traditional idol, so he collected all the gold jewelry and built a golden calf, the symbol of the Bull of Heaven. They sacrificed to the idol and had a festival.

Yahweh and Moses were outraged. Moses rallies the Levites to follow him and kill all the idol worshippers. The golden calf was destroyed, but Aaron escaped punishment.

The Levite priests were descendants of Aaron, and centuries later, they wrote the Torah.

The golden calf continued to be a feature of Israelite society. Two more were made centuries later in the towns of Bethel and Dan in the northern kingdom of Israel.

Moses used many pagan symbols that would later be banned.

Moses and Aaron carried a staff that turned into a serpent - a symbol of his wisdom and power. Serpents were a common pagan spiritual symbol and closely associated with goddess traditions.

In the Garden of Eden, the serpent was demonized.

The serpent staff continued to appear during the wandering in the desert.

The bronze serpent on a pole was called the Nehushtan, and it was held onto as an idol. Some 500 years later, around 710 BCE, it was destroyed by the reformer King Hezekiah.

Another curious detail that suggests a pagan Moses is the shatnez, which is a law that wool and linen threads should not be mixed. This law is still followed by observant Jews today, kosher clothes cannot be linsey-woolsey, but modern rabbis don’t really know why.

It is a curious law because Moses specifically ordered that the holy vestments for the priests and the curtains in the tabernacle be made of linen and wool blended together. Linen and wool are a blend of animal and vegetable, farmer and shepherd, god and goddess.

These anti-pagan reforms were almost certainly many centuries after Moses lived.

Maimonides, the famous Jewish philosopher from the Middle Ages, described the reasons for shatnez in his 1190 CE book, the Guide for the Perplexed. Maimonides wrote that the shatnez was part of the ban on pagan magical practices and connections to idolatry, and also that the practitioners were typically women.

Next week, we will continue with Moses, the prophetess Miriam, cannabis in the holy anointing oil, the menorah, and some other pagan goodies.

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I am going out on a scholarly limb with this topic and am arguing that the Exodus is rooted in an actual slave escape from Egypt, and that we can put it on the historical timeline around 1209 BCE during the Bronze Age Collapse. This would make the Exodus contemporary to the Trojan War, which we discussed last week.

We will get into the character of Moses more in subsequent sessions. Here, we focus on the historical timeline and the evidence we have to work with.

I believe that the first mention of Israel in archaeology, Pharaoh Merneptah’s victory stele, and one of the oldest passages in the Bible, the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15), are speaking to the same event, a slave escape during the chaotic years when Egypt was repeatedly invaded.

The Song of the Sea and the Song of Deborah are considered to be the oldest passages in the Bible because the language is archaic Hebrew. Most scholars believe they come from the oral tradition, perhaps mid-12th century BCE, centuries before written Hebrew emerged around 850 BCE.

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The Exodus is a controversial subject due to its central importance to religious tradition. The dating is highly disputed. Religious tradition places the Exodus around 1450 BCE, while critical scholarship places any possible Exodus in the 1200s BCE or later. Plenty of scholars view the Bible stories as entirely fictional, or as a tapestry of different people’s memories stitched together, perhaps going as far back as the Hyksos.

The 15th century BCE is unlikely because Canaan was firmly under Egyptian control at that time, and their military dominance did not end until the Bronze Age Collapse around the 12th century BCE.

Scholars are in wide agreement that the Exodus did not happen as literally described. The Bible claims a population left Egypt of 600,000 fighting men, plus women and children, which is upwards of 2 million people. A group of that size would have been larger than the biggest cities of the ancient world, like Uruk, Babylon, and Nineveh, or the entire population of Canaan, and would have left some evidence for archeologists to find.

Scholars do recognize that there were plenty of Semitic peoples living in Egypt at the time, who were subjugated in the same places, such as Avaris, that scripture claims the Hebrews lived in.

Smaller groups of slaves escaping is perfectly reasonable, perhaps even an entire town’s worth of 15- 30,000 people. There exist many Egyptian records over the centuries describing the use of the army to capture escaped slaves, it is not unusual or remarkable.

So here is ED’s Exodus Timeline

1200s BCE - Egypt has ruled Canaan for centuries as a protective buffer state.

1209 BCE - Egypt is attacked by Libyans from the west and Sea Peoples from the Mediterranean. Iit was a costly fight, though the Egyptians prevailed.

• Pharaoh Merneptah’s Victory Stele - details his glorious military campaign and describes Egypt’s continuing dominance in Canaan.

• The stele features the first mention of Israel in the archaeological record.

• The text describes Israel as a people, not a place, and says they have been wiped out.

• Most scholars view this as evidence that Israel was already in the land and the Exodus must have been earlier, around 1250 BCE.

• I think it could be Egyptian propaganda downplaying the loss of a large group of Israelite slaves.

  “Yahweh is a warrior. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea.”

  Song of the Sea (Exodus 15) - 12th C. BCE

• All Egyptian royal writing was propaganda, celebrating victories and minimizing defeats.

• Could the Israelites have taken advantage of the ongoing invasions to escape their bondage, fleeing the town of Avaris?

• Archaeological record of Avaris matches the Biblical tale of Hebrew enslavement.

• Avaris was once the capital of the Hyksos, and was then sacked and enslaved after the Hyksos were overthrown in 1550 BCE. Avaris declined in the 1200s and was finally abandoned in 1060 BCE.

1175 BCE - Battle of the Delta - Sea Peoples attack Egypt again

• The Sea Peoples were repelled again, but at great cost to Egypt, whose power wobbled.

• Wall Relief at Medinet Habu - inscriptions of the battle depict women and children loaded in ox carts, indicating that the attackers may have been refugees looking to settle.

• This second war provides the timing and context for 40 years of wandering in the desert.

• When the Israelites first escaped in 1209 BCE, Egypt still ruled Canaan, but their grip slipped 34 years later, allowing the Israelites to finally enter the promised land.

• Canaanite cities had no defensive walls per Egyptian dictates, so the situation became dangerous in the power vacuum. Native peoples were forced to move around due to a breakdown in law and order.

• People left the cities and made new hilltop settlements, not because they were comfortable or good for farming, but because they were defensible.

• The Sea Peoples settled in the Gaza Strip and became the Philistines of the Bible. They were not present in the area earlier.

• The Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, and Israelites all began to settle in Canaan, eventually forming the kingdoms seen in the Bible, which were new at the time.

1140 BCE - Pharaoh Ramses VI withdraws forces and ends Egyptian rule in Canaan.

• This is the Biblical time period of Joshua, the Conquest of Canaan, and the Judges. All very chaotic and violent times.

• Song of Deborah - When the people chose new gods, like Yahweh (and the Greek Olympians).

1004 BCE - King David takes Jerusalem

850 BCE - Iron Age Kingdoms of Israel and Judah

• Hebrew writing appears

• Mesha Stele - First mention of Yahweh

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During this illiterate time period, all knowledge was passed thru oral tradition. The Song of the Sea and the Song of Deborah are considered to be the oldest passages in the entire Bible due to linguistic clues indicating their archaic character.

The Song of the Sea is also known as Miriam’s Song since it was probably associated with her originally, as women were responsible for music and dance.

The Song of the Sea is the passage closest to the events of the Exodus, and it provides the core, minimal details of the encounter with the Egyptian army.

We see the Israelites fleeing and being pursued by the army, and then through some stroke of good fortune (call it a miracle), Egyptian chariots fell into the water and were lost, allowing the Israelites to escape with their lives into the desert.

When compared to the Merneptah Stele, I believe we see two sides of the same event.

Pharaoh says in his propaganda, “We wiped out those escaping slaves, you will never hear from them again.”

While the Israelites proclaim, “We escaped by the skin of our teeth, it was a miracle! Praise Yahweh!”

Is this a crazy theory? Or does it make sense?

The rest of the timeline comes together as well. We can see why the Israelites were forced to wander in the desert for nearly 40 years, until Egyptian rule finally crumbled. We then see a century and a half of chaotic lawlessness that tracks with the storylines of the Conquest of Canaan and the period of the Judges. The Israelites taking Jerusalem around 1004 BCE is the next historical event we can confirm.

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The Song of Deborah provides some clues to the quality of life during the lawless era of the Bronze Age Collapse. The Song gives a glimpse of tribal matriarchal leadership in the era before kings emerged and patriarchy followed. There is also a rare reference to Anat!

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Next week, we will take a deeper dive into Moses, Miriam, and Aaron, who I believe were totally polytheistic and did not engage in any religious reforms at all.

The stories of Moses on Mt. Sinai, bringing down the Ten Commandments and demanding the worship of Yahweh alone, were written many centuries later, in my humble opinion (and based on modern scholarship).

That said, I think we can discern clues about the early pagan Moses.

Today’s academics can see that there is a clear pattern to these resurrection myths, but they completely fail to make sense of what they are looking at, which is one big cross-cultural tradition of the Mother Goddess, the mother of the Biblical God.

The heart of my presentation was a slide deck prepared by noted Christian mythicist Dr. Richard Carrier, who has made a career arguing that Jesus probably did not exist as a historical person. Richard Carrier is an outspoken atheist and materialist who routinely debates Christian apologists. Let’s see if he is willing to talk to me.

Richard Carrier argues in part that the resurrection of Jesus is part of a broader pagan tradition of dying and rising gods, which is completely true, and he prepared an entire lecture on the subject. He pulls together all the correct evidence, but then completely misreads it.

I am not picking on Richard Carrier personally, I chose his slide deck because it accurately represents contemporary scholarship, and my criticism is with the academic consensus as a whole. Richard was kind enough to publish his slide deck, and it was useful for my purposes.

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I want to thank Jacob Berman, host of the History Valley podcast, for giving me the opportunity to make my case. Jacob gets many of the top biblical scholars on his channel, and he has interviewed me many times since my book came out.

Most atheist scholars don’t want to talk to me, I don’t know why, but the response has been consistent ever since I started working on History of the Goddess in 2019.

It’s funny because I am highly educated and can defend my scholarship. I was at Cornell University for over a dozen years, I have two degrees, and was employed on the research staff. I have a technical career in clean energy and have worked with top-level experts all over the world.

But when it comes to goddess research, I can’t even get the academics to respond to my emails. I think their lack of response says more about their intellectual fragility than it does about the strength of my argument.

Dr. Richard Carrier, Dr. Dan McClellan, Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou, anyone listening?

This week on Goddess Bible Study, we take a look at the timeless beauty, Helen of Troy, and the fall of Mycenaeans during the Bronze Age Collapse around 1200 BCE. Next week, we will return to the Bible with Moses and the Exodus, which I argue was a contemporary event to the fall of Troy.

Helen of Troy has always loomed large in the imagination of Western culture, long before Homer codified the epic tales of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the 7th century BCE. In Homer’s Iliad, he assumes the audience is already familiar with Helen’s tragic story. I am also going to assume that my readers are familiar with the Trojan War and don’t require a recap. I want to focus on a couple of specific points.

It’s important to recognize that the Mycenaean Greeks from the Iliad were a distinct culture from the familiar Hellenistic Greeks of classical antiquity, from whom we learn the stories. Homer was a Hellene, recounting stories from the previous culture that had fallen tragically.

The Mycenaeans were one of the leading imperial cultures of the late Bronze Age, alongside the Hittite Empire in Turkey and the New Kingdom Empire in Egypt that dominated Canaan. All of these empires were wiped out in the Bronze Age Collapse.

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Helen is of course, the most beautiful woman who ever lived, a beguiling figure who drove men to murderous passions. She is the face who launched a thousand ships, but Helen was no empty vessel or passive victim, she played an active role in her own fate.

Helen was a demigod, a child of Zeus. Her beauty was dreadful and otherworldly, a force of nature beyond the control of mere mortals. Even after their city was destroyed, following ten years of war and suffering, the Trojans could still not deny Helen her place of honor.

The character of Helen personifies the primeval power of beauty and sexuality, and how it is a match for the strength of arms. If power, in human terms, is the ability to get people to do stuff they would not otherwise want to do (like parting with their money), then sex and beauty is truly a power that can match violence as a source of influence and coercion.

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Helen was not merely beautiful, she was also a royal princess and heir to the throne of Sparta. Late Bronze Age societies still had potent matriarchal cultures with powerful goddesses leading their pantheons and inheritances passing thru daughters.

Matriarchal inheritance was quite normal in the Bronze Age, and stands in contrast to the hardline patriarchy that emerged in the Iron Age, where male inheritance was the norm. We see this tradition in all the great Queens of the Iliad, Helen, her sister Clytemnestra, and their cousin Penelope, all of whom married great heroes of the epic.

As heir to the throne of Sparta, Helen’s husband would become king. This was also true for Penelope, who was heir to the throne in Ithaca. Penelope married the clever Odysseus, who became king of Ithaca and whose story is told in the Odyssey.

Agamemnon was king of Mycenae, the greatest house, and he married Helen’s younger sister Clytemnestra, who came to live with him. We will return to the blood-soaked tragedy of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon in a later dedicated episode. Clytemnestra was no trivial figure either.

Helen’s beauty had made her famous throughout Greece, and a great contest was held by all the heroes to compete for her hand and the throne of Sparta. Agamemnon arranged for his younger brother Menelaus to win the hand of Helen. Unfortunately for Menelaus, Helen did not care much for him, and she ran off with Prince Paris from Troy, along with her treasure. This undermined Menelaus’s claim to the throne, in addition to the humiliation.

The Greek heroes had already made a pact to support Menelaus, and they rallied one of the greatest armadas of all time to sail across the Aegean and attack Troy. This war took ten years and spawned an entire library of legends that continue to captivate audiences to this day.

The Mycenaeans eventually managed to sack and destroy Troy, after deploying the subterfuge of the Trojan Horse that allowed them to sneak some warriors inside the city walls and open the gates. But this was a pyrrhic victory for the Mycenaeans, whose entire civilization disintegrated in the wake of the war. The Hellenistic Greeks certainly saw it as a cautionary tale.

For many centuries, the Trojan War was viewed as completely mythological, but in the late 1800s, an obsessive archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann discovered the site of Troy on the Turkish coast. Modern scholars now accept that the city of Troy was sacked and destroyed sometime around 1200 BCE, and inspired the Homeric tales.

The collapse of Mycenaea led to a roughly 300-year dark age in Greece, when there was no governance, organized trade, literacy, or social order. The Hellenes came in from the north and eventually took over Greece, establishing a new cultural and religious order featuring the Olympian gods headed by Zeus. The Mycenaeans had a related but different pantheon where Zeus was a minor god and not the leader (who may have been the sea god Poseidon).

The Greek Dark Age was known in antiquity, but now we know that this dark age was not limited to Greece, but extended throughout the eastern Mediterranean, bringing down the Hittite civilization, and severely damaging both the Egyptians and Assyrians. For 300 years, from around 1200-900 BCE, there was a total civilizational breakdown known as the Bronze Age Collapse.

It seems there were many contributing factors to the Bronze Age Collapse, a century of drought caused famines and social unrest, and a series of earthquakes contributed to the misery. This caused migrations, civil unrest, and political revolutions. There was also a technology shift from bronze to iron, which disrupted trade and undermined the wealth earned from the trade in copper and tin that had been the financial foundation for the Bronze Age aristocracies.

Ultimately, the Sea Peoples, a motley crew of sea-faring raiders from the Aegean, which likely included Mycenaean refugees, sacked and destroyed nearly every coastal city along the eastern Mediterranean, ultimately attacking Egypt in titanic battles in 1209 BCE and 1177 BCE (my timing for the Exodus).

The city of Ugarit on the Syrian coast was destroyed in 1180 BCE, leaving behind dramatic records of the invasion, as well as rare Canaanite mythology, including the Baal Cycle, which we discussed in our last session.

The Iron Age followed the Bronze Age, with new trade routes and new empires. Armies were outfitted with iron and steel weapons superior to the old bronze. The old cuneiform writing that had been anchored in the palaces with royal scribes completely disappeared and never returned. There were 300 years of illiteracy with no record keeping, before the new phonetic alphabet (invented by the Phoenicians) came into use in the 9th century BCE. The Hebrews and Greeks were among the first to use the new writing systems.

Iron Age cultures were deeply patriarchal, and we see the status of women fall harshly in the first millennium BCE. All of the leading imperial cultures in that era, the Neo-Assyrians, the Babylonians (Chaldeans), the Hebrews, the Greeks, and others, all severely restricted their women. Matriarchal inheritance, especially around kingship, mostly went away.

Since this represents most of classical antiquity, we take it for granted in Western culture that women were always treated poorly compared to men. It is only recent archaeological and scholarly work that is beginning to reveal the rich Bronze Age cultures where women had much greater property rights and personal latitude in their behavior.

We also see a complete revamping of the goddesses in the Iron Age, no longer would they be independent. The Hebrews completely went to war with their goddesses Asherah, Astarte, and Anat and eventually eliminated them from worship, as we see in the Bible. The Greeks meanwhile, reordered the Olympian pantheon to ensure all the goddesses would be submissive to Zeus.

The clearest distinction between the Bronze Age and Iron Age goddesses is that the Bronze Age goddesses were sexually independent and not submissive to their husbands and fathers, while the Iron Age goddesses are submissive.

Helen of Troy represents this transition, her beauty was feared and respected, but her independence was seen as problematic. Helen always had a mixed reputation in Greek culture, they could never really decide if she was a victim or an agent of destruction. The Greeks and those who followed came to see beauty and feminine power as a source of trouble that needed to be restrained.

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For more scholarly information on Helen, I recommend both of these podcasts by eminent historians.

Bettany Hughes focuses on the history of the Mycenaean culture that spawned the legend of Helen.

Tom Holland’s treatment of Helen focuses on the literary and mythical qualities of the stories.

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We will discuss this topic live on Tuesday, December 2 at 7:00pm EST.

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