That phallicism was an important element in Baal and Asherah worship is well known to scholars, and will be made clear to discerning readers. The frequent allusion to "groves" in the Authorised Version must have puzzled many a simple student. The natural but erroneous suggestion of "tree worship" does not fit in very well with the important statement (2 Kings xxiii. 6) that Josiah "brought out the grove from the house of the Lord."** A reference to the Revised Version will show that this misleading word is intended to conceal the real nature of the worship of Asherah. The door of life, the conventional form of the Asherah with its thirteen flowers or measurements of time, is given in fig. 3.
* The "Baal" was afterwards taken out of all such names of
places, and instead of Baal Peor, Baal Meon, Baal Tamar,
Baal Shalisha, etc., we find Beth Peor, Beth Meon, Beth
Tamar, etc.
** Verse vii. says, "he brake down the houses of the
sodomites that were by the house of the Lord, where the
women wove hangings for the grove." A reference to the Revised
Version shows that it was "in the house of the Lord, where
the women wove hangings [or tents] for the Asherah." See
also Ezek. xvi. 16.
This worship certainly lasted from the earliest historic times until the seventeenth year of Josiah, B.C. 624. We read how in the days of the Judges they "served Baalim and the groves" (R.V., "the Asheroth"; Judges iii, 7; see ii. 12, "Baal and Ash-taroth.) We find that Solomon himself "went after Ashtoreth (1 Kings xi. 5) and that he builded the mount of corruption (margin, i.e., the mount of Olives) for that "abomination of the Zidonians" (2 Kings xxiii. 13). All the distinctive features of Solomon's Temple were Phoenician in character. What the Phoenician temples were like Lucian tells us in his treatise on the goddess of Syria. The great pillars Jachin, "the establisher," and Boaz, "strength"; the ornamentation of palm trees, pomegranates, and lotus work; are all Phoenician and all phallic. The bells and pomegranates on the priests' garment were emblematic of the paps and full womb. The palm-tree, which appears both in Solomon's temple and in Ezekiel's vision, was symbolical, as may be seen in the Assyrian monument (fig. 4), and which finds a place in Eastern Christian symbolism, with the mystic alpha and omega (fig. 5).
The worship of Astoreth, the Assyrian Ishtar, and Greek Astarte, was widespread. The Phoenicians took it with them to Cyprus and Carthage. In the days of Abraham there was a town called after her (Gen. xiv. 5), and to this day her name is preserved in Esther.
It is she who is called the Queen of Heaven, to whom the women made moon-shaped cakes and poured libations (Jer. vii. 18, xliv. 17.) Baal represented the generative, Astoreth the productive power. The pillars and asherah, so often alluded to in the Bible, were the palm-tree, with male and female animals frolicking around the tree of life, the female near the fleur de lis and the male near the yoni. Tall and straight trees, especially the palm, were reverenced as symbols. Palm branches carried in procession were signs of fruitfulness and joy.
Bishop Colenso in his notes to Dr. Oort's work remarks, "It seems plain that the Ashera (from ashar, be straight, erect) was in reality a phallus, like the Linga or Lingam of the Hindoos, the sign of the male organ of generation."**
* The Worship of Baalim and Israel, p. 46.
** Asher was the tutelary god of Assyria. His emblem was the
winged circle.
There can be little doubt on the matter in the mind of anyone acquainted with ancient faiths and the inevitable phases of human evolution, We read (1 Kings xv. 13, Revised Version), that Maachah, the queen mother of Asa, "made an abominable image for an Asherah." This the Vulgate translates "Priape" and Movers pudendum. Jeremiah, who alludes to the same thing (x. 5), tells that the people said, "to a stock, Thou art my father, and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth" (ii. 27), that they "defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and with stocks" (iii. 9), playing the harlot "under every green tree" (ii. 20, iii. 6, 13; see also Hosea iv. 13). Isaiah xvii. 8, alludes to the Asherim as existing in his own days, and alludes to these religions in plain terms (lvii. 5—8). Micah also prophesies against the "pillars" and "Asherim" (v. 13, 14). Ezekiel xvi. 17, says "Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels, of my gold and of silver, which I have given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them." The margin more properly reads images "Heb. of a male" [tsalmi zachar], a male here being an euphemism. As Gesenius says of the metaphor in Numbers xxiv. 7 these things are "ex nostra sensu obscoena, sed Orientalibus familiaria."
These images are alluded to and prohibited in Deut. iv. 16. It is thus evident that some form of phallic worship lasted among the Jews-from the earliest times until their captivity in Babylon.
It is a most significant fact that the Jews used one and the same word to signify both "harlot" and "holy." "There shall be no kedeshah of the daughters of Israel" (Deut. xxiii. 17) means no female consecrated to the temple worship. Kuenen says "it is natural to assume that this impurity was practised in the worship of Jahveh, however much soever the lawgiver abhors it." It must be noticed, too, that there is no absolute prohibition. It only insists that the slaves of desire shall not be of the house of Israel, and stipulates that the money so obtained shall not be dedicated to Jahveh. That this was the custom both in Samaria and Jerusalem, as in Babylon, may be gathered from Micah i. 7, and Hosea iv. 14.
Dr. Kalisch, by birth a Jew and one of the most fair-minded of biblical scholars, says in his note on Leviticus xix. 29: "The unchaste worship of Ashtarte, known also as Beltis and Tanais, Ishtar, Mylitta, and Anaitis, Asherah and Ashtaroth, flourished among the Hebrews at all times, both in the kingdom of Judah and Israel; it consisted in presenting to the goddess, who was revered as the female principle of conception and birth, the virginity of maidens as a first-fruit offering; and it was associated with the utmost licentiousness. This-degrading service took such deep root, that in the Assyrian period it was even extended by the adoption of new rites borrowed from Eastern Asia, and described by the name of 'Tents of the Maidens' (Succoth Benoth); and it left its mark in the Hebrew language itself, which ordinarily expressed the notion courtesan by 'a consecrated woman' (Kadeshah), and that of sodomite by 'consecrated man' (Kadesh)."
The Succoth Benoth in 2 Kings xvii. 30, may be freely rendered Tabernacles of Venus. Venus is plausibly derived from Benoth, whose worship was at an early time disseminated from Carthage and other parts of Africa to the shores of Italy. The merriest festival among the Jews was the Feast of Tabernacles. Plutarch (who suggests that the pig was originally worshipped by the Jews, a position endorsed by Mr. J. G. Frazer, in his Golden Bough, vol. ii., pp. 52, 53) says the Jewish feast of Tabernacles "is exactly agreeable to the holy rites of Bacchus."* He adds, "What they do within I know not, but it is very probable that they perform the rites of Bacchus."
* Symposiacs, bk. iv., queat. 6, p. 310, vol. iii.,
Plutarch's Morals, 1870.
Dr. Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on 2 Kings xvii. 30, gives the following:—"Succoth-benoth maybe literally translated, The Tabernacle of the Daughters, or Young Women; or if Benoth be taken as the name of a female idol, from birth, to build up, procreate, children, then the words will express the tabernacles sacred to the productive powers feminine. And, agreeably to this latter exposition, the rabbins say