Creation
and Goddess Symbols in Genesis 1-3
Michel
A. Rizzotti
The creation myth of Genesis is typical of
many creation myths that describe the beginning of a new cultural, religious,
and cosmological reality. It is similar to Egyptian, Akkadian,
Babylonian, and Iranian cosmogonies.1 These
accounts show how God uses his word to articulate a new
"world". The word, and consequently language, is the medium that
allows the divinity to communicate to "man" his creation.
the
setting.............the beginning of the "world"
the hero................God
the quest..............order and meaning
the obstacle..........void, darkness, and chaos
the mentor............speech and language
the outcome..........the Genesis
─beginning─ of the Bible
The first book of the Bible is
appropriately called Genesis, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew
"in the beginning". As such, it is the introductory setting for the
story of the people of
Israel
as recounted in the first five books of the Bible: namely, Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are also called the Pentateuch
and the Torah.
God did not physically write these words.
Several unknown priests did. Extensive biblical studies show that several
versions of similar stories were compiled together by a redactor called
"R" into one single narrative. His final compilation shows how
important his role has been in creating the Bible. He was responsible for
putting together into one narrative several versions of often contradictory
accounts that, until recently, were believed to have been written by Moses.2
Genesis 1 thru 3, which is the subject of
this chapter, is divided according to three sources of composition:
verses
1:1 to 2:3 are accredited to P
verse 2:4a is attributed to
R
verses
2:4b to
3:24
are written by J
P refers to the priestly source, who is
also the largest contributor to the Pentateuch. He has been given this
designation because his accounts are mainly concerned in securing priestly
interests. The second source, which is a single phrase, is written by R, the
Redactor. This single verse links the two sources into one uniform account of
the creation. J, the writer of the second version of the creation of
"man", as well as the fall, is called the Yahwist
because in his accounts he refers to God as Yahweh.
P
Gen. 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The
earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep;
and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said,
"Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light
was good; and God separated the light from darkness. God called the light Day,
and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning,
one day.
The first paragraph above is more of an
introduction to God's creative activity which really begins with:3
Gen. 1:3 And God said...
God literally uses his speech to create the
world. Language is God's primordial tool. Without it he could not reveal his
existence, neither could he describe his creation.
If we make a parallel with this to the
first verses of the Gospel of John we find that the Evangelist also identifies
Christ with the "Word" in the beginning. The example is in itself an
important clue to the nature of the "Word" in God's creative
endeavor.4
John. 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made
through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
Similar ancient Babylonian, Egyptian, and
Indian cosmogonies also imply a divine power inherent in the word itself which
when uttered brings out order. Numerous ancient myths provide a good example of
the likeness of the creative power of the divine word. In ancient
Egypt
the god Ptah
of
Memphis,
in a comparable fashion, created the world through his spoken word.5
While Sumerian myths describe how divinities first plan their creation by
thinking, and then the world comes into being through the power of speech.
Based on the content of the biblical text
above, it appears that speech is one of God's primordial activities.6
Language allows the divinity to reveal his creation to us. We might say that
the existence of language precedes the existence of God, since before the first
words of Genesis are spoken there is nothingness, and before the order of
syntax is put forth there is chaos. The Bible -from the Latin ta biblia which
means the little books- is sacred precisely because the words have been
recorded, but mostly because they have been preserved for posterity by the
Priests.
Hence, God's rhetoric describes the
"beginning" of a reality which is the Bible itself. As such, the
Bible is foremost a literary creation, albeit a sacred one for the believers.7
The narrative does not explain to whom God
speaks, nor from where. God here is an individuum vaguum; i.e.,
a vague and imageless individual. He nevertheless uses speech, which is a human
characteristic. He does so without using the configuration of an individuum certum, in
other words, without assuming the identity -or the image- of a person.
Consequently, the creative powers of the word supersedes
any other human attribute.
Furthermore, the way the narrative reports
God's words is analogous to the way lords or sovereigns dictated their will to
the scribes. As the account reveals, the lord speaks and his will is being
transcribed. In this context, the account links the ancient oral tradition to
the written.8
Moreover, the biblical Hebrew alphabet is
made up primarily of 22 consonants. In the un-vocalized Hebrew alphabet, speech
is necessary to give meaning to the un-vocalized words,
otherwise the letters are a meaningless and chaotic code. Only with the spoken
word are the vowels uttered. By exhaling one's breath into the letters, the
alphabet miraculously takes on a life and Spirit of its own, and words finally
become meaningful.
As the text shows, God speaks from nowhere
and to nobody in particular. Yet he becomes preoccupied with the order and plan
of things to which he is about to give names. He also becomes involved in the
separation of the world into a set order of categories; most obvious of which
is the division of time into seven days and the classification of his creation
by name.9
The name giving activity in creation is not
exclusive to the Bible either. It is also prevalent in the ancient Near Eastern
mythology where it was seen as an exercise of sovereignty, especially in terms
of property and dominion.10
The act of separating and naming reveals
another important facet of the divine creative activity. This classification of
words and names can be appropriately referred to as a biblical glossary.11
This order becomes in effect a description of God's
identifiable creation; i.e., the inventory of the property to which
"man" can "have dominion". The definition of things and
beings is setting the stage for the "world" of the Bible.
Numerous studies made on "primitive"
classification reveal how this complex display of symbolic representations and
relationships is meant to represent the grounds of social organization. A
typical example is the system of moieties in tribes of
Australia.
It is also prevalent in the astronomical, astrological, geomantic, and
horoscope divinatory systems of ancient
China,
of which Taoism is a fine example. Closer to home, the Zuni Pueblo of New
Mexico is yet another fine example of how classification is at the core of its
mythology and cosmology. We further develop the classification aspect of
mythology in an other essay on Zuni on this site.12
In the 6th day, his last day of activity,
God ultimately utters the concept of his most important creation.
Gen. 1:26 Then God said,
"Let us make man in our image, after our likeness..." So God created
man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he
created them.
God speaks in the first person until verse
26, but as he gets closer to the pinnacle of his creation he finally opts for
the plural form. The change is fundamental, especially in view of its
underlining message.
The first and obvious
sense of "Let us" could be taken as "abstract plural" or
"plural of intensity". In Hebrew, for instance,
the word for man -'adam-
also has a collective meaning and may be used here in the sense of
"mankind".
There may be yet another connotation
implied by the plurality. Before the people of
Israel
adopted Yahweh as their only God, they worshipped El, which was also the God of
the neighboring Canaanites.
El, which means literally the God, shared
his title with his wife, goddess Asherah. Both had the epithets of the
"creator" and the "creatress".
Archaeological findings at
Quntillet cAjrud show that not only El, but also Yahweh was
associated with a divine consort named Asherah.13
J
Gen. 2:7 then the lord
God formed man of the dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a living being. And the lord God planted a
garden in
Eden,
in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground
the lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for
food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil.
In Hebrew, the words genesis, beginning,
and birth are all synonyms. So are the words Spirit, wind, breath, and life.
They all point to pro-creation as the genesis of life itself.
In the narrative God proceeds to mold from
the soil 'adam -man- which is taken from 'adamah -the ground- and like a potter he molds his
creation. Adam finally "becomes a living being" when God breaths into
it the "breath of life".
Although in the first account
"man", the only creation that is able to understand God's words, is
created on the last day, all that was created prior to him was created
specifically for him. In chapter two, however, "man" is the center of
attention, everything evolves around him.
In chapter one, the
creation is "spoken" out of chaos and nothingness into an orderly
syntax. Whereas in the second version God creates
man to put him in the center of a tree garden called
Eden.
Man is purposefully created by God as a "tiller" and
"keeper" of his garden. At the outset, the relationship between God
and man is established as one of land-lord and keeper. J marks a clear
distinction between the sovereignty of God over his garden and man; i.e., the
separation between the creator and his creation, between the master and his slave.
Unlike in the former version, God enables
man to "call" and "name" every living creature; an
important role he had kept for himself before. In doing so he allows man to
share his divine power of speech and appropriation.
Gardens, particularly fertile fields, were
the marked possession of great Kings. And as we see in verses 2:4b-6 the writer
uses words like "plant", "field", "earth",
"herb", "sprung up", "rain", "till the
ground", and "soil" from which "man" was made. All
these terms have an agricultural connotation and expose the fertility symbolism
of the passage.
Finally, in the midst of this garden God
planted the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And God
commanded "man" not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil
or else he will die. The theme of the center, as we will see throughout this
book, is primordial.14 Here, the narrative
describes both trees of life and of good and evil as being in the middle of the
garden.15
Popular misconception still associates the forbidden
fruit with the apple. There is no mention of an apple tree in the text. The
confusion probably stemmed from the similarity between the Latin words malum, evil, and malus, apple. The
two terms were apparently confused in the course of history.
Concerned about man's solitude God decides
to give him a "helper". The narrative goes on to describe a shift in
the normal role of procreation. Ironically, God and man appropriate the
function of begetting: God takes the "woman" out of the
"man". Then the "man" called his companion
"Woman" because she was "taken out" of him. This inversion
reveals a fundamental aspect of ancient Judaism. It lies in the patriarchal
appropriation of woman's fecundity and the strict opposition to the fertility
cults associated with the Goddess. Any implicit allusion to the Goddess
worship, especially as typified here by Asherah, has been obliterated from the
narrative. The first commandment given by Yahweh is clear: he opposes any other
divinity including that of the Goddess.16
Deut.
16:21
You shall not plant any tree as an Ashe'rah beside
the altar of the lord your God which you shall make. And you shall not set up a
pillar, which the lord your God hates.
The first Commandment is explicit and
categorical, any worship of or reference to any other god is prohibited. The
ethos implemented by the priests through the ages reinforced this belief. The
narrative of Genesis implicitly overshadows the fact that the tree is a
metaphor for the Goddess and a symbol of Asherah.
The fundamental point to be made about
biblical patriarchy is related to the genealogy of the people as a tribal clan.
Only with strict ethical laws and prohibitions could men control women's
fertility and their progeny. In addition, these laws legally reinforced the
fact that women were a closely supervised "property" of men who
became their controlling agents of fecundity.17
Gen. 2:24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves
to his wife, and they become one flesh.
The above verse of Genesis, which is a
reference to matriarchy, is in plain contradiction with the patriarchal customs
of Judaism. According to ancient Jewish customs, it is not the man who leaves
his parents but the woman.18 This passage
may suggest remnants of a matriarchal past. Such a contradiction in context to
the rest of the narrative is only one among the many clues that show the full
extent of the exclusion and opposition to the fertility cults of the Goddess in
the Bible.
*
Gen. 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than
any other wild creature that the lord God had made. He said to the woman,
"Did God say, `You shall not eat of any tree of the garden'?" And the
woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the
garden; but God said, `You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die'". But
the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die. For
God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be
like God, knowing good and evil."
the
setting............the tree garden of
Eden
the
quest..............knowledge of good and evil
the
hero...............the woman
the
obstacle...........God's ban
the
mentor.............the serpent
the
outcome............Eve: the mother of all living
In The Fall, the events that describe the
beginning of the relationship between the protagonists are doomed at the
outset. The narrative depicts the characters entangled in a situation in which
the quest for knowledge and the emulation of God are greater than the fear of
punishment. The crux of the narrative reveals that the desire to be like God
prevails.19 But because of their deliberate
disobedience, Adam and Eve are thrown out of the garden. As a consequence, they
will be excluded from God's presence and property. The narrative makes it
explicitly clear that the woman is to be held responsible for man's alienation
from his God.
As we have suggested earlier, the garden of Eden is full of fertility symbols. The four rivers
that flow in the garden allude to it. The trees bearing the most alluring of
fruits denote it. And the presence of the serpent confirms it.
The serpent, a Canaanite symbol of life,
health, and fecundity, simply strengthens the fertility theme of the whole
narrative. Not to mention that the "tree of life" is obviously
another prominent metaphor for fertility.20 But the most stunning
aspect about these verses is that the tree as well as the serpent are both symbols
of the goddess Asherah.21 There is even an etymological connection
between the Hebrew name Eve,
hawwah, and the name Asherah.22 In addition,
there is also a similarity between the name
hawwah and the Aramaic word hewya' for serpent.23
Gen. 3:20 The man called his wife's name Eve,
because she was the mother of all living.
The meaning of Eve as "the mother of
all living" is a further allusion to fertility connected to the
"mother goddess" Asherah as the "nurse to the gods".
Moreover, the explicit consequence of the woman's disobedience is described as
the pains of childbearing emphasizing even further the fertility theme of the
narrative.
The serpent is a major protagonist in the
creation myths of the ancient Near East where he is a celebrated symbol of
wisdom.
Mt.
10:16 So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
Many of the oldest Egyptian goddesses were
thought of as serpents, mostly as cobras. In fact, the symbol of the serpent
preceded the name of most of the goddesses and is the hieroglyphic symbol for
the word "Goddess". The Sumerian goddess Nidaba,
the patron deity of writing, was also depicted as a snake, while the Sumerian
goddess was referred to as the Great Mother Serpent of Heaven. Furthermore,
symbols of numerous goddesses of Old European, Indian, Akkadian,
and Babylonian mythologies were also portrayed as serpents. Most of them
represented a common symbol of fertility and immortality.24
The presence of the snake among God, Adam,
and Eve represents the alien, which from the outset is excluded from God's
design. As such, he is the visible cause of the fall. Furthermore, the
narrative correlates the woman to the reptile as both outsiders. They are
portrayed as the rebellious prototypes who ignore
God's command.
As the account shows, the serpent offers
Eve much more than the knowledge of good and evil; he tells her she could be
God's equal. That suggestion even implies that she would forsake her rank of
tiller.
The narrative makes it quite clear that the
serpent and the woman are both responsible for man's alienation from God. It is
no coincidence that so early in the biblical texts the writers portray the
woman and the serpent as being condemned by God. As we mentioned earlier, both
are linked to symbols of pagan cults that are radically opposed by Yahweh.
1 Kings 16:32 He erected
an altar for Ba'al in the house of Ba'al, which he built in Samar'ia.
And Ahab made an Ashe'rah. Ahab did more to provoke
the lord, the God of Israel, to anger than all the Kings of Israel who were
before him.
*
Gen. 3:21 And the lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of
skins, and clothed them. Then the lord God said, "Behold, the man has
become like one of us , knowing good and evil; and
now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and
live for ever"- therefore the lord God sent him forth from the garden of
Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at
the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim,
and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of
life.
As a result of the transgression, the
couple's eyes were opened and they "perceived" their nakedness.25
Too much emphasis has been placed on the sexual
connotation of the narrative. It is rather the theme of fertility and the
nature of apperception itself that should be more readily stressed. Their eyes
are "opened" to a new condition which is closely tied to the
transgression. Especially in the awareness of transition from:
nakedness/nature
to clothing/culture26
The narrative explains that the reason why
the woman was enticed to eat the fruit in the first place was to be like God.
But as they both ate from the fruit they soon realized that God is the sole
ruler of the garden and that they, as tillers, are
naked and destitute. As a result, Adam and Eve covered themselves with readily
accessible leaves while afterward God clothed them with garments made of skins,
denoting the property of cattle. The difference in clothing also marks a
distinction between:
leaves/nature
and skins/domestication
leaves/agriculture
and skins/herdsmanship.
We will see in the next chapter how the
exodus is closely tied to the idea of herdsmanship.
God himself favored sheepherding, a predominantly patriarchal occupation, over
agriculture which was closely connected with the fertility cults of the Goddess
which he opposed.
Adam and Eve were living in the garden
surrounded by God's overwhelming dominion. Eve, nevertheless, chose to
challenge God's authority. She refused to be at the center of God's
providential condescension, preferring independence instead. Perhaps the
serpent's assertion that the eating of the fruit would not bring her death may
have convinced her. In fact, the serpent's assertion turns out to be right, God's threat of impending death does not materialize.
It shows here that the serpent is indeed a symbol of wisdom.
Contrary to popular belief, it is not hard
work that is the unfortunate consequence of the fall -man tilled and kept the
garden before his expulsion- it is the exclusion of man from God's realm. It is
an exclusion from the presence of the holy.
Finally, God is concerned that the couple
might also eat from the tree of life and live forever. To eliminate such a
prospect he quickly evicts them. The act of disobedience also brought forth
suspicion and distrust, another consequence of the fall. Promptly, God places a cherubim to guard the garden's entrance. The angel becomes
a symbol of man's alienation from God.27
As the story shows, the cherub's duty is to
guard the boundaries of the sacred and to protect the tree of life located at
its center.
Contrary to popular belief, the cherub -or
cherubim- is not a cute and chubby winged child flying about the clouds of
heavens. Biblical tradition describes the cherub as a sphinx: a four legged
animal often depicted with the body of a lion, the wings of a bird, and the
head of a human, most frequently the face of a woman. The cherub was usually
carved out of olive wood and plated with gold.28
The symbol of the cherub is part of another
sacred Jewish tradition. The sphinx was also present inside the first Temple of
Jerusalem.29 Two of these carved creatures were placed side by side
with their wings stretched to form the tabernacle. Between their protective
custody lay the ark. The ark, which is
Israel's
most sacred relic, was a golden box which contained the tablets of the ten commandments, and, according to different sources, also
contained a sample of the manna; i.e., the food sent from heaven to sustain the
life of the people of
Israel
during the exodus.30
The symbolic cherub is used as a guardian
of both sacred places: the garden of Eden and the ark.
At the center of the garden are the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and the
tree of life. In the midst of the
Jerusalem
temple, which according to Jewish beliefs is also located at the center of the
world, is the ark with the ten commandments and the
manna.
Furthermore, the knowledge of good and evil
is connected to the law embodied by the ten commandments.
One who knows and interprets the law knows the difference between good and
evil.
God's immediate concern in placing the
cherub is stopping Adam and Eve from eating from the tree of life. Yet the tree
of life is also connected to another content of the ark. Both, the tree of life
and the manna, are symbols of a sustenance of
mysterious origin.
The cherub is put in both places to protect
and guard the garden and the ark from the profane man and woman. Henceforth,
only God is permitted to enter the garden, and only the high priest can enter
the Holy of Holies. Jewish law forbids anyone but the priest to enter the Holy
of Holies, and whoever does must be killed.
The symbolic analogy between the garden and
the ark is interesting. It shows that J, who wrote the account, was preoccupied
with preserving the priestly dominion over the divine law. The texts also
suggest that the fall brought forth the separation between the sacred center which God rules and the outside boundaries of the
profane.
*
In the text above, the tree is a metaphor
of Asherah, the hidden and profane reality located at the center of the garden.
It reveals that the profane reality of the Goddess has been excluded from the
sacred texts and the cultic practices of
Israel.
The opposition to the profane reality in general, and to the Goddess in
particular, is at the core of the Judeo-Christian religious experience.
netage
_____________________
1 Hermann Gunkel,
The Legends of Genesis, Chicago,
Open
Court, 1901.
2 See Richard Elliott Friedman, Who Wrote
the Bible?,
New
York,
Summit
Books, 1987.
3 The first verse can also be rendered
"in the beginning of" which also allows the translation: "When
God began to create the heavens and earth". The Torah, The
Jewish Publication Society of
America,
Philadelphia,
1962.
4 Yet orthodox interpretation of the
significance of the "word" is commonly understood as being an
expression of God's will. See Gerhard von Rad, on the
Word of God in "Old Testament Theology",
London,
Oliver and Boyd Ltd, 1966.
5 Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion,
New York,
Cornell
University Press, 1973, 159 f. Another interesting
aspect about ancient Egyptian creation myths is God Khnum's
creative ability as craftsman and procreator compared to the biblical God who
molded man from the ground and created woman from man.
6 The noted Old Testament scholar Gerhard
von Rad explains: "This naming is thus both an
act of copying and an act of appropriative ordering, by which man
intellectually objectifies the creatures for himself. Thus one may say that
something is said here about the origin of language, so long as one does not
emphasize the discovery of external words but rather that inner appropriation
of recognizing and interpreting which happens in language." in, Genesis,
London,
SCM
Press, 1963, 81.
7 Northrop Frye, The
Great Code,
Toronto,
Academic Press
Canada,
1982, XVI.
8 And as we have already mentioned writing
and recording were the monopoly of the scribes.
9 Paul Ricoeur
has suggested that there is something to be said about the
"metaphorical" as being at the origin of logical thought; Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, Toronto, University of
Toronto Press, 1977.
10 As Gerhard von Rad
puts it; "let us remind ourselves once more that name-giving in the
ancient Orient was primarily an exercise of sovereignty, of command." in
Genesis, Ibid., 81.
11 Emile Durkheim and
Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification,
Chicago,
University of
Chicago Press, 1963.
12 Emile Durkheim, Ibid.
13 See article by David Noel Freedman,
Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah, in, Biblical Archeologist, December 1987,
241-249.
14 Mircea
Eliade, Cosmos and History,
New York, Harper And Row, 1959, 12 ff.
15 The word midst could be translated as
the center or middle. The Torah uses the word "bad" instead of evil,
which gives a more pragmatic significance, see The Torah, Ibid.
16 Asherah was also known as Athirat, which is a dialectical variant. She is also
referred to in the Bible as Ashtoreth, Ashteroth, Astoreth, Astaroth, Ashterathite, Anath, Beeshterah, Elath, and Baalath. The title
"holy one", is also believed to be one of her epithets. See Merlin
Stone, When God Was a Woman,
San
Diego, A Harvest Book/HBJ Book, 1976,
163-170.
17 Denise L. Carmody,
Judaism, in, Women and World Religions, ed. by Arvind
Sharma, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1987. I cannot help
thinking, whenever I come across similar examples, of how men are fascinated
and also envious of women's fertility. It seems that men had to compensate for
their sense of inadequacy in this regard by a propensity to dominate religion
and mythology, since they are unable to control nature. The powerful God
depicted as the male creator figure is just one example.
18 "Curiously, the statement about
forsaking father and mother does not quite correspond to the patriarchal family
customs of Ancient Israel, for after the marriage the wife breaks loose from
her family much more than the man does from his. Does this tendentious
statement perhaps preserve something from a time of matriarchal culture?"
Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, a Commentary,
London,
SCM
Press, 1963, 83.
19 See the role that desire and vanity play
in Rene Girard's, Mensonge Romantique
et Verite Romanesque, Paris,
Grasset, 1961.
20 "Thus we can see that there is an
association between Asherah and trees or symbols related to trees although the
full details of this association are unknown. Since Asherah herself is the
great mother-goddess, chief consort of the Canaanite high god El, it stands to
reason that the cultic symbols of the goddess could be associated with
fertility or the gift of life in some manner." See Howard N. Wallace's
dissertation, The Eden Narrative,
Atlanta,
Scholars Press, 114.
21 Howard N. Wallace, Ibid.,
163
22 "The possible
etymologies for hawwah suggest that the name and the
connection with Asherah are part of a long tradition."
Howard N. Wallace, Ibid., 157-158.
23 Howard N. Wallace, Ibid.,
148.
24 Barbara G. Walker, The Woman's
Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1983,
903-909.
25 Torah, Idid.
26 Claude Levi-Strauss, The
Raw and the Cooked,
New York,
Harper & Row, 1969.
27 The angel, throughout the Bible, is
depicted as God's messenger; as such, he is depicted as the symbol of an obstacle
to the direct communication between God and man.
28 R. E. Friedman, Ibid.,
86-87.
29 J, who wrote the account, was from the
southern
kingdom
of
Judah
where Solomon built the first
Jerusalem
temple. A strict Yahwist, J was outraged by the
idolatries of King Jeroboam who ruled the northern kingdom of
Israel.
The King had built in the cities of Beth-El and Dan two shrines for the worship
of the golden calf associated with the fertility cults of Asherah.
30 Ex. 16:31f.
