We need to bring back Asherah...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS_e33xOrVg

Now that I think about it--it was after Josiah had gone on his rampage, and destroyed everything and everyone that had anything to do with Baal or Asherah, that Judah fell to Babylon.

There was a similar situation when the Nazis put so much effort and resources into exterminating various people that they didn't have enough left over to fend off the advancing Soviet army.

When they got around to putting the finishing touches on the Old Testament, the writers were insisting on absolute monolatry, and wanted to make Asherah look bad. Yahweh could do all the evil things he wanted, no problem. Asherah was harmless. She never threatened anyone with this or that if they failed to measure up. She just ended up being the monolatrists' scapegoat.

They would have been much better off just letting Yahweh keep his Asherah.

In the bible there is a history book called judges.

It chronicles how Israel turned away from pagan gods and turned to the true living God.....but soon after got lax and returned to paganism.

It happens several times.

It really happened but it's also an allegory for how we all sin , we're all unfaithful lazy and need help.
So , because of the theme of the book I don't believe God liked this pagan god.
God liking asherah doesn't fit in with the themes of the whole bible. So I don't think it was edited.

The Bible has been stepped on like street drugs.
I’m sure people added things or removed
stuff.Human nature.

The Jewish scriptures of the old testament were preserved because they had this system of adding up all the letters in a sentence and using that number to make sure it is correct when it is copied.

Historians say that the old testament and new were preserved very well and it's the document that has the most historical accuracy because the bible has the most copies on record of any document ever.

The oldest copy of Plato goes back to about 800ad
https://www.worldhistory.org/image/1081 ... Cappadocia.

Whereas the new testament's oldest known copy is from 200ad

Actually, no, most respectable historians don’t say that. There’s a fascinating and informative course from Yale on the Old Testament that goes into insertions and sources over the centuries. I recommend watching all lectures from the beginning. There’s also a good one on the New Testament, but I’ve not watched it yet.



I also recommend reading How to Read the Bible by James Kugel. For the New Testament, anything by Bart Ehrman is good.

Still, I wonder what the male temple prostitutes were offering

The male temple prostitutes offered services such as opening that stuck lid on the jar of pickles or mowing the lawn.

That's just one of the lectures,she seems to be comparing the bible to other myths. I'll have to watch the other videos to see if she proves the scriptures have been changed.

I think female prostitutes were already around as one of the tribal elders Judah thinks he is sleeping with one.

And, here we are. A hymn to Asherah.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEpo_mVa2UY

It's my understanding that the Old Testament wasn't written down at all in the beginning. Theirs was an oral tradition. It was eventually committed to paper when it became obvious that an oral tradition spread across their entire culture, when faced with so much outside pressure (Babylonians, Romans, etc), made the oral tradition a little less reliable. Of course, then you've got to wonder what baggage the collectors, collators, and calligraphers bring to the process.

I mean, look at Norse, Irish, and Welsh mythologies. Time, distance, and factional agendas and ideologies mean we know that their stories aren't exactly what the oldies believed.

So too the Old Testament. Oral or pen, that collection spanned a long time. We see elements of polytheism and henotheism in it. Then monotheism. It would fit with the idea of the Israelis becoming monotheists (probably around the Babylonian Captivity), rather than always being so.

It's entirely reasonable to fit Asherah into their world.