Alyson Skabelund Von Feldt, a highly engaged LDS mother, writes in the latest FARMS Review (vol. 19, no. 1, 2007),

Does God have a wife?  Yes.  Or so members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have understood since Joseph Smith’s time (81).

This is how she begins her 38-page review of William G. Dever’s book, Did God Have a Wife?  Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2005).  For a counterpoint perspective, please read the book review, “Did God Really Have a Wife?” by Shmuel Ahituv in Biblical Archaeological Review (September/October 2006).

Obviously, as a non-Mormon reading the entirety of Alyson’s review, I have lots of questions, intensely laced with irony because of my affections for God.  May I be permitted to burst forth with a potpourri of inquiry?

If Alyson Feldt and others like my friend, Kerry Shirts, are passionately highlighting a mother goddess, please explain to me why the current LDS prophet and apostles are largely quiet on this?  Why do the General Authorities talk more about earthly wives in conference sessions than the LDS Heavenly Mother?  When so many people of this world believe in gods and goddesses (like the sherpas of Nepal – one of them being our famous friend in Utah), when there is so much archaeological evidence (as noted in Marija Gimbutas’ magnum opus, The Language of the Goddess) to prove this religious belief in ancient past, why are the Church apostles, who believe in continual revelation from an open heaven, seemingly bound in taciturnity on this topic of God’s wife?  Who would William G. Dever respect more for open transparency?  The countryside LDS, the backyard professor like Kerry Shirts in his recent post, and the few LDS scholars like David Paulsen and Dan Peterson? Or General Authorities in high-profile office positions?  Who is strongly leading whom on the fundamental LDS theme that God has a wife?  Lucius Apuleius clear back in the second century A.D. invokes Isis, who appears and proclaims before all, “I am she that is the natural mother of all things, mistress and governess of all the elements, the initial progeny of worlds, chief of the powers divine, queen of all that are in Hell, the principal of them all that dwell in Heaven, manifested alone and under one form of all the gods and goddesses.  At my will the planets of the sky, the wholesome winds of the seas, and the lamentable silences of hell be disposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout the world, in divers manners, in variable customs, and by many names.”  Would LDS authorities stand with ancient Lucius and start acknowledging LDS Heavenly Mother in the next conference sessions?  How many decades will it take before she is set free to speak with power in the sense of standard-work revelation?  I know that it has been emphasized by FAIR that the General Authorities’ main “responsibility is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Their primary work is to ‘bear testimony of the restoration of the gospel and that Jesus is the Christ.’”  But how long will LDS apostles and prophets rob their constituency of uplifting messages by LDS Heavenly Mother that build up members’ faith?

 Now may I interject some more irony?

If I was a goddess, I would be furious by what appears to be timidity and lopsidedness of Church leaders in both their public speech and printed words.  I would be angry that the founding LDS prophet did not record any words from a goddess in the standard works.  I would demand that LDS temples give proper respect and worship by finally stating above front entryways, “Holiness unto the Lord and his Wife (Consort)”.  Am I simply to sit in the shadows because of mankind’s unbelief?  I think not.  I would expect courage in public venues from those who believe in me over this very fundamental aspect—my existence and relevant influence.  And you had better believe that my husband would speak much of my message.  What kind of love is this, when a husband never praises his wife publicly before those who admire him?  I would never marry such a man.  For if he can openly share himself among those who love him, why not me?  Why shroud my sacredness in secrecy?  And please don’t give me the excuse that it is for my own protection.  Does he need to protect my input from his own sincere followers?

 

If I was Asherah, I would be divinely livid with Church leaders in their hypocrisy for following Christian creeds and for retaining an Old Testament in their standard works that applauds both king “Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:4) and Josiah (2 Kings 23:4-25)” in initiating “reforms to stamp out unauthorized worship.”  How can LDS apostles just sit back and not correct the Old Testament libel, where “biblical texts couple me [Asherah] with Baal”?  Bold Alyson proclaims in her affirmation of Dever’s interpretation,

This libel, of course, eventually worked.  But not until after the exile to Babylon” (88).

 Now may I be serious? 

As a Christian who will not bow my heart or ascribe any glory to Asherah, I do admit this—Dever is right.  Ancient Israelites loved Asherah or Asherah poles.  That is why God severely judged them. They would not heed the piercing and excruciating statements by God’s prophet, Isaiah, before the exile,

Yet the gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel.  At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.  And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves [Asherim], or the images (Isaiah 17:6-8).

In the chapter that our church family looked at this Wednesday night, God chastised Israel for their Asherim.  The Jews had no strength within their own hearts to remove their idols, so God had to do it for them.

By this therefore shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged; and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones that are beaten in sunder, the groves and the images shall not stand up (Isaiah 27:9).

But Alyson writes in favor with Dever, “The edited Bible speaks caustically about Asherah.  She was abhorred by the so-called Deuteronomistic redactors” (91).  Does this mean she thinks Isaiah 17 and 27 have been corrupted by later editors?  Is the great Isaiah scroll from Qumran on these chapters infected by anti-Asherim bias?  See The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible (Harper, 1999) by Abegg, Flint, and Ulrich.

 

I find it ironic that the BoM is a higher authority than archaeological evidence (please note the upcoming LDS archaeological DVD); and yet such things—terra-cotta female figurines, Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions, Lachish icons containing trees and pubic triangles, and a Taanach offering stand dug out of the earth—trump Old Testament, divinely inspired revelation exalting the one and only God (described with both masculine and feminine imagery) above all earthly conceptions of goddesses. 

 

I simply don’t understand.

 A funny conclusion for the Intermountain West to consider 

Let me close with one more puzzling thought.  Flowing from a discussion of the Taanach stand as a “plausible model of the creature in Ezekiel’s visions” (103) and possible “physical evidence of a theology of apotheosis” (109), Alyson writes this on page 110, joined with an audacious quote from Dever:

Ezekiel uses the epithet “El Shadday,” a name for God found only in the oldest strata of the biblical test (Ezekiel 5:5).  The Authorized Version translates it “Almighty God,” but Dever himself (in a discussion not directly related to the Taanach stand) shows that

“Shadday” means “mountain,” here possibly in the dual, so the divine name is really “El, the One of the mountains.” . . . In the Ugaritic texts, El in particular sits on the throne at the base of the cosmic Mt. Saphon . . . at the sources of two waters, sweet and salt. . . . The Hebrew term shad, “mountain,” derives from earlier West Semitic thad, “breast.”  Thus the twin mountain peaks “Shadday” are likened to two breasts (think of the name “Grand Tetons” for the high-peaked Wyoming ranges). (p. 257)

First, are we going to take every Hebrew word of the Old Testament beyond its possible evolved meaning and biblical context?  If this is so, I think every word would need to be reinvented and recopied in the BofM Isaiah texts.  Secondly, when LDS women here in Southeastern Idaho view the Grand Tetons, do they think of a grandly breasted Heavenly Mother?

 

I stick with the company of the prophets.  El-Shaddai is God Almighty who is powerful enough to create, not organize, and to redeem two equal but fallen creatures, man and woman, in order for them to glorify the Triune Creator of all and to love one another.