God had a wife, Asherah, whom the Book of Kings suggests was worshiped alongside Yahweh in his temple in Israel, according to an Oxford scholar. In 1967, Raphael Patai was the first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter. Information presented in Stavrakopoulou's books, lectures and journal papers has become the basis of a three-part documentary series, now airing in Europe, where she discusses the Yahweh-Asherah connection. "You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe." "After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added. Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess. Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud. "The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife." http://news.discovery.com/history/god-wife-yahweh-asherah-110318.html
I have seen Dogma - and it is pretty clear that God is a woman. So, if she had a wife some people are going to roast in hell for their homophobia! Also - based on Dogma, God is Canadian.
This explains why God hides in his room so much that people wonder whether he exists. He only comes out when she yells at him to mow the lawn.
I'm not sure how she makes the leap from "Hebrews worshipped Asherah in the Temple in Jerusalem" (they did, and it's written in 2 Kings 21:7, among other places) to "this means God had a wife, b/c I found it on a Canaanite inscription". I mean, it's like someone from the year 4010 finding a few pages of a Dan Brown paperback and saying that those findings invalidate the teaching that Jesus is the Son of God and that the "hidden truth" of the Bible is that he was a regular guy married to Mary Magdalene. Whether you think that's the case or not (or couldn't care less), I'm skeptical of "theologians" who look for "hidden truths" in the Bible, and then saying that those hidden truths invalidate the plain text (like in Isaiah 44, where it's pretty explicit that other gods--little g--were being worshipped, but that Yahweh was alone as the only "real God"). Though there's something to be said for opening a small porthole for cultural curiosity into the Bible. It's good news to me if more people are reading it.
