A few weeks back I took archaeologist William Dever to task for his unwillingness to extend to contemporary Goddess-worship the same sympathy that he clearly feels for ancient Goddess-worship in his 2005 book Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel. http://witchesandpagans.com/Pagan-Culture-Blogs/an-open-letter-to-william-g-dever.html I'd now like to return to this topic with greater attention to specifics.

Dever describes himself as a “former Christian now turned secular humanist” (46). He distinguishes between “mainstream”—i.e. secularist—feminists and “doctrinaire” feminists, for whom ideology trumps scholarship (xiii). These latter are the “more radical secular feminists” (309) who “style themselves [sic] 'Neopagans' or 'Wiccans' (witches)” (310). This “'Goddess movement'” (a phrase which he consistently delivers in quotes) preaches “without any evidence” a monolithic primal Great Mother who prevailed until dethroned by male deities in early historic times, evidence of whom was later suppressed. The prophet of these “various New Age Goddess cults and 'Neopagan' religions that selectively resuscitate the beliefs, images, deities, and practices of ancient religions” is Marija Gimbutas, whose “pseudo-scholarship” he dismisses without discussion (307). This movement, while it may have “comforted some women superficially, has left them still in need of the truth, not a naïve Utopia where all is women's supposedly unique 'strength, beauty, fertility, love, harmony, and peace'” (308-9).

This is pretty virulent stuff, coming as it does from someone who has worked hard for years to convince his colleagues in academia 1) that ancient Hebrew religion took many forms, some of them overtly polytheist, 2) that the Goddess Ashera was widely worshiped in ancient Israel, and 3) that what remains of her cultus offers a posthumous voice to the silenced women of ancient Israel.

Clearly Dever has little sympathy for “religionists” of any sort. That said, he does have a soft spot in his heart for the Goddess herself (although exactly what he means by this is unclear, to this reader at any rate). He titles chapter 9 of his book, “What Does the Goddess Do to Help?” Apparently the answer is that She gives voice to those heretofore-voiceless ancient Israelite women and “redresses the balance” in androcentric Biblical religion (311). “Appreciation of the Goddess in the history of religions should bring warmth, caring, and healing to religion, as well as joy in the sexual union ordained and celebrated by the gods,” he writes (309). Actual worship, however, apparently goes beyond the pale.

Dever's treatment of ancient Israelite religion is not unproblematic. While it is true that traditional societies, and traditional Middle Eastern societies in particular, often equate the public sphere with men and the domestic sphere with women, Dever's attribution of “folk religion” (and hence “Goddess religion”) to women and “official” religion to men seems to me to press the evidence beyond what it will bear. Was it really only women who made use of the “family shrines” (with their female figurines) that stipple ancient Israelite settlements? Did men never pray or offer there at all? The assumption that in a polytheist culture women (and only women) worship goddesses and men (and only men) worship gods is demonstrably wrong. In addition, his insistence on speaking of a (unitary) Goddess of Israel flies in the face of evidence for multiple goddesses (Anat, Shemesh, and Ashteret, in addition to Ashera) in the old Hebrew pantheon. All in all, this center simply will not hold.

At the end of the lunar month, though, Dever's disdain for the modern people of the Goddess, objectionable and unnuanced as it may be (and even in 2005, his caricature of the Goddess movement's excesses was already laughably outdated), is really only an afterthought to what is otherwise a well-reasoned and well-researched book.

And the answer to the title of said book is still a resounding “Yes.”