Quite the heroic figure, isn't he? I know if I wanted to start a religion, Abe would certainly top my list of choices, as to the one I'd pick as patriarch!

21:17  "And God heard the voice of the lad (because he's male, not female like Hagar); and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her. What aileth thee, Hagar? (Oh, I don't know, being stranded in the wilderness with my young son, no food, no water, nowhere to go, but other than that, we're having a really super day!) fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is (Heard the voice of the lad? What's Hagar, chopped liver? I can't speak for all gods, but this one's a misogynist!).
21:18  "Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation (Ever try to hold a ten-year old in your hand?).
21:19  "And god opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad to drink.
21:20  "And god was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.
21:21  "And he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran: and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt."

    There's an interesting point made by The New American Bible, published by the Catholics. Remember the story, from 2 Genesis, Chapter 16, where Hagar was so mistreated by Sarah that she ran away, but god or an angel or some supernatural creature (I can't find a consensus of agreement anywhere) told her to suck it up, go back, and take her lumps. I was sure you would.
    TNAB expresses the belief that Chapter 21 here was written by the Elohist (E) Source, while Chapter 16 was written by the Yahwist (J) Source, and that they are essentially the same story, written by the two different groups. Yes, I'll be the first to agree that they differ significantly, but as I've stressed from the beginning, this is what happens when you start out with what you might believe to be a  fact, pass it down through a few hundred generations, and then set it down in print. Further, there was ample opportunity for the Redactor to try and weave them together into a coherent tale.
    For example, Paul Bunyon may have been a real man, an above average lumberjack, but by the time the legend-makers finished with him, he had created the Grand Canyon by dragging his axe in the dirt behind him. But no one tells us that our immortal soul is in danger of eternal damnation if we decline to accept as fact, the Paul Bunyon story. Personally, I believe it.
    Also, THNB translates 21:14 from the Hebrew as reading, "Early the next morning Abraham got some bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. Then, placing the child on her back, he sent her away."
    Chapter 16:16 tells us, "And Abraham was fourscore (80) and six years old when Hagar bare Ishma-el to Abram." Chapter 21:5 informs us, "And Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Issac was born unto him." Clearly, Ishma-el and Issac are fourteen years apart, yet 21:14 states that Abraham put Ishma-el on Hagar's back, and 21:18 says god told Hagar to hold the child in her hand, which she could only do if he were small.
    Here's where things really get complicated. Both Chapters 20 and 21 were written by the Elohist (E) Source, c.850 BCE, who, having no reference material at his diaposal, assumed Ishma-el to have been very young when Abe sent Hagar packing with just a jug of water and a loaf of bread. which would explain why Hagar was able to hold the baby in her hand. It was the Priestly (P) Source (c.-722 BCE) who provided the data about Abe's and Ike's and Ishma-el's relative ages.
    The tale to follow, about Abraham and Abimelech, uses material that the Yahwist (J) Source (c.950 BCE) applied to the story in of Abe and Pharoah in Chapter 12, and which, as we shall see, he used again in Chapter 26. The E Source may have copied it directly from the J Source, since E wrote a hundred years after J, or more likely, since J wrote from the Southern kingdom of Judea and E from the northern kingdom of Israel (you'll learn about all of this, once Moses brings the Israelites out of Egypt and they finish wandering in the desert for forty years), the likelihood is greater that E wrote from the same passed-down legend from which J also drew, but the story had evolved differently between the two groups over time.
    Are you thoroughly confused yet? Wasn't it a whole lot simpler when we just believed that Moses wrote the whole thing? I guess that's the price of growing up, you kinda miss Santa Claus from time to time.
    Sorry, Hagar, your 15 minutes of fame have come and gone. Much like Lot, we never hear from her or her son again, they served their literary purpose, and that's what they were there for.
    Interestingly, followers of Islam, on the word of Muhammad, contend that Muhammad was a direct descendant of Ishma-el, first-born of Abraham, but has anyone done a scientific follow-up - I mean, other than taking Muhammad's word for it?

21:22  "And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the chief captain of his host spake unto Abraham, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest (remember those names, you'll hear them again).
21:23  "Now therefore swear unto me by God that thou wilt not do falsely by me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son: but according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me, and unto the land wherein thou hast sojourned.
21:24  "And Abraham said, I will swear.
21:25  "And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech's servants had violently taken away (Where were Abe's 318 commando-shepherds that fought off four seasoned armies?).
21:26  "And Abimelech said, I wot (know) not who hath done this thing: neither didst thou tell me, neither yet heard I of it, but today.
21:27  "And Abraham took sheep and oxen, and gave them unto Abimelech; and both of them made a covenant.
21:28  "And Abraham set seven ewe lambs of the flock by themselves.
21:29  "And Abimelech said unto Abraham, What mean these seven ewe lambs which thou hast set by themselves?
21:30  "And he (Abe) said, For these seven ewe lambs shalt thou take of my hand, that they may be a witness unto me, that I have digged this well (Abimelech gave Abe 1000 pieces of silver worth of livestock - Genesis, Chapter 20 - in exchange for the lend-lease of Abe's sister/wife, and Abe gave a few back - talk about a stand-up guy!).
21:31  "Wherefore he (Abe) called that place Beersheba ('Beer' = 'well,' not Budweiser, as some might imagine); because there they sware both of them.
21:32  "Thus they made a covenant at Beersheba; because there they sware, both of them.
21:33  "And Abraham planted a grove in Beersheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. (Would that be, "El Shaddai"?)
21:34  "And Abraham sojourned in the Philistines' land many days."

   Note that in 21:31, Abe, "called that place Beersheba," yet much earlier, in 21:14, Hagar, "departed, and wandered in the wilderness of Beer-sheba." How could she have wandered in a place by that name, which hadn't yet been given the name until 21:31? This is why you really need to thoroughly check the credentials of any applying for the position of editor, before putting them on the payroll
    Before we leave Abe and Abimelech, just another word about the Philistines, of whom Abimelech was stated in the Bible as having been a member. I told you in the last chapter that the Philistines were of Aegean origin, having migrated to the shores of ancient Palestine after their homeland was destroyed by the eruption of the volcano, Thera. I've also mentioned that Abe's birthdate falls somewhere between 2350 and 1813 BCE.
    The Philistines are mentioned over 250 times in the Bible. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Notre Dame, assures us that Philistines did not arrive until centuries after the earliest possible date for Abraham's time, placing the arrival of the Philistines at around 1200 BCE and Gerar as having been little more than a village until 800-700 BCE. Twenty one chapters into the book, and we're still groping blindly for a kernel of truth.

In Search of Mrs. God

    Amurru didn't hold much faith in abstinence. He had a wife known as Asherah, a goddess of fertility, who went by a number of names, depending on which language you spoke.
    •   Ašratum
    •   Ashratu
    •   Asherdu
    •   Aserdu
    •   Ashertu
    •   Asertu
    •   Astarte
    •   Athtart
    •   Athtarat
    •   Ashtaroth
    •   and eventually, Ishtar

    He also had a sweet little thing on the side, named Belit-Sheri, who was known as the "Lady of the Desert," a goddess who was in charge of keeping records of everything everyone did, in preparation for a final judgement - in short, she was making a list, checking it twice, and gonna find out who's naughty and nice. How much of a lady she was, was known only to Amurru.
    Some of the Ammurites moved westward, along the trade route opened originally by Sargon and reestablished by the Amurrite ruler of Mesopotamia, Hammurabi, as did Abraham, and when they did, they took their god with them, as did Abraham.
    Although there were already Amurrrites in the Cannan/Palestine area from before the Ammurite immigration into Mesopotamia, this wave of Ammurite settlers were more metropolitan, and less nomadic than their country cousins. In fact, there is a legend that arose out of Mesopotamia (where the Akkadian name for Amurru was, "Martu") - it seems (in the legend) that the daughter of another god was given an opportunity to wed Amurru/Martu, and her answer was, "I'll marry Martu." Now you might think that's an inside joke that you have to be ancient Akkadian to get, but what it meant, was that Amurru, god of the Nomadic Amurrites, was basically considered unsophisticated, but once the Amurrites began to rise within the Akkadian/Mesopotamian economic and political system, they began to acquire a greater degree of sophistication, and as they did, so did their god. The young goddess was saying that she would prefer to marry Martu, the urbane, sophisticated version of Amurru. It might have been a little funnier to the Akkadians --
    As those Amurrites who migrated westward settled in Canaan, both peoples were Semitic, their customs and languages similar, and it was easy to assimilate into Canaanite society, which they did. We earlier discussed the gods of the Sumerians, and how, after they were infiltrated by the Akkadians, the lines blurred between their various gods. The same thing happened in Canaan.
    Amurru, the god of the nomads, the Lord of the Mountain, El Shaddai, blended perfectly into the Canaanite pantheon, where the Canaanite god, "El," who also lived on a mountain, and "El Shaddai" were indistinguishable. And not at all coincidentally, the Canaanite god, El, had a wife, named - you'd never guess it in a million years - Asherah.
    According to The Oxford Companion To World Mythology (David Leeming, Oxford University Press, 2005, page 118),

"It seems almost certain that the God of the Jews evolved gradually from the Canaanite El, who was in all likelihood the 'God of Abraham'...If El was the high god of Abraham - Elohim, the prototype of Yahveh - Asherah was his wife, and there are archeological indications that she was perceived as such before she was in effect 'divorced' in the context of emerging Judaism of the seventh century BCE. (See 2 Kings 23:15)"

    There are more than 40 references to Asherah in the Bible, which time and space don't allow me to list here, but we'll note them as we come to them, I promise.
    I've mentioned William G. Dever in 2 Genesis, Chapter 13, as being a former Christian, turned atheist, and  an American archaeologist, specializing in the history of Israel and the Near East in Biblical times. He was Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson from 1975 to 2002. He is a Distinguished Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania.
    In his book, Did God Have A Wife? Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2005), he comments,

"We do not know for sure what the belief in the god Yahweh meant for the average Israelite. Although the biblical text tells us that most Israelites worshiped Yahweh alone, we know that this is not true... The discoveries of the last fifteen years have given us a great deal of information about the worship of the ancient Israelites. It seems that we have to take the worship of the goddess Asherah more seriously than ever before."

    The core of the book lies in chapters 5 (Archaeological Evidence for Folk Religions in Ancient Israel), 6 (The Goddess Asherah and Her Cult), and 7 (Asherah, Women's Cults, and Official Yahwism). These chapters describe folk religion in ancient, mainly polytheistic, Israel, which, Dever points out, was the reality in the religious lives of most people. The last two chapters (ch. 8: From Polytheism to Monotheism; ch. 9: What Does the Goddess Do to Help) sum up the book, concluding that monotheism is an artificial phenomenon, the product of most of the elite, nationalist parties who wrote and edited the Hebrew Bible that was adopted during the Babylonian exile as a response to the trauma of the conquest and subsequently enforced by the returning elite during the early Persian period. Dever also notes that folk religion and the role of the goddess did not disappear under official monotheistic Yahwism, but instead went underground, to find a home in the magic and mysticism of later Judaism.
    In essence then, Dever is saying that ancient Israel had its own Religious Right, and used the four Sources and the Redactor to get what would amount to their evangelical message across to the Jewish people, making them believe that it came from god. The Bible represented the views of the Jewish religious elite, and had little to do with the everyday lives of the Jewish people.
    Dever further commented, “Ultimately, the campaign to eliminate the goddess has failed. Asherah was buried long ago by the Establishment, now, archaeology has excavated her." Dever is quite certain that he knows who the Asherah of ancient Israel and of the biblical texts was - she was the wife or consort of the god of Genesis.

pax vobiscum,
archaeopteryx