Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Serve Them

In her own words, the work of Susan Ackerman is marked by a keen interest in the “outliers and even the renegades of ancient Israelite religion: those ancient Israelites whose religious beliefs and practices the biblical writers either ignored (at best) or, more often than not, denigrated” (11). Gods, Goddesses, and the Women who Serve Them represents a collection of ten essays from the trove of Ackerman’s publications across the last thirty years that focus on this theme.

The essays are arranged in four movements. In part 1, Ackerman considers the extent to which several ancient Near-Eastern (ANE) goddesses—namely, the “Queen of Heaven,” Asherah, and Tiamat—influence the portrayal of key women in the Hebrew Bible. In the second part, she looks at the offices of priest and prophet in ancient Israel according to the biblical account, questioning the absence, or at least rarity, of women serving in those roles. Part 3 examines the (religious?) role of the so-called “queen mother” (the mother of the reigning king) in Israel and among its neighbors. Finally, part 4 represents an exhibition of women’s cultic participation in Israel and especially its developments around the turn of the 6^th century BCE. While the threat of Babylonian invasion is often posited to explain the apparent desertion of Yahweh worship at that time, Ackerman speculates how the Josianic reform may have also encouraged women to search for “more meaningful venues of religious expression elsewhere” (325). Ackerman not only hopes to make her contributions more accessible with this volume, but she also updates several of her arguments (and bibliography), which I outline below.

In “Asherah, the West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving?” Ackerman suggests that the Canaanite mother-goddess Asherah may have also represented the patron deity of textile production in the West Semitic pantheon. In a recent monograph, Theodore J. Lewis challenged Ackerman’s suggestions, proposing instead that the Ugaritic goddess Athtart occupied that role (The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity, Oxford University Press, 2020). In this updated version, Ackerman offers a postscript in response to Lewis’ critiques. Turning to several Sumerian myths, Ackerman demonstrates that textile production was considered a “multi-dimensional phenomenon,” where the crafts of spinning/weaving of the material, on the one hand, and the fecundity of the animals used to produce the material, on the other, each held associated deities (53). In that case, Asherah and Athtart are not mutually exclusive, and their associations to textile production may be better suited according to a similar multi-dimensional paradigm (56).

In “Why is Miriam Also among the Prophets? (And Is Zipporah among the Priests?)” (originally in JBL 121, 2002), Ackerman addresses the seemingly anomalous nature of the biblical designation “prophetess” (nĕbîʾâ) ascribed to four women: Noadiah (Neh 6:14), Hulda (2 Kgs 22:14), Deborah (Judg 4:4), and Miriam (Exod 15:20). During periods of socio-political destabilization, women could more readily (though temporarily) be conceived as holding power and authority (religious or otherwise). But this is problematic in the case of Miriam, since the real social conditions of that account are inaccessible to the modern reader (Ackerman does not consider the exodus narrative to depict “actual moments within Israelite history,” [74]). Accordingly, Ackerman turns to the rite-of-passage model of Victor Turner to frame the Egypt and wilderness sections of Exodus as a “liminal period,” which shares many similarities with the periods of social destabilization described above (96). Miriam, she concludes, could be a prophetess because in periods of liminality “the gender conventions that more usually restrict women from holding positions of religious leadership can be suspended” (100). By the same token, Zipporah (Exod 4:24-26) may have been afforded a similar lot during a liminal period in the life of Moses; there, however, Zipporah acts in a priestly rather than prophetic fashion.

As an update to this essay, Ackerman brings in the work of Caroline Walker Bynum, who improves upon Turner’s model by attending to the fact that many of his markers of liminality, which are necessary for the right-of-passage sequence, are in fact normal (not liminal) for women throughout history. What happens to such women during liminal periods? Bynum suggests that both women and men experience “reversals” during a liminal time, but, in contrast to men, who experience debasement and lowering of power or status, women move up into positions of power, wealth, and status. In that light, Miriam’s prophetic role represents not the dissolvement of social identity during liminality (Turner’s “antistructure”) but instead a required reversal of ordinary social conventions (100, emphasis original).

In “The Queen Mother and the Cult in Israel,” Ackerman considers what religious responsibilities may have been assumed by the queen mother in the pre-exilic kingdom of Judah. Ma’acah set up an idol of Asherah in the precincts of the Jerusalem temple (1 Kgs 15:13), and queen-mothers like Ma’acah “devoted themselves to the goddess Asherah as part of their official duties” (151). Ackerman’s thesis rests on the suggestion of Albrecht Alt and F. M. Cross that in the Judean (though not Israelite) view of kingship, the monarch was the adopted son of Yahweh (167). It follows that the consort of Yahweh, Asherah, should serve as the surrogate mother for the king, which has significant implications for the duties of the queen-mother (168). Thus, queen mothers held an official (religious) role in the palace, and the responsibility to help determine the royal succession was carried out in devotion to Asherah. Ackerman maintains this thesis in the present volume, though she has removed a supporting argument from philology on the name of Nehushta, the queen-mother of Jehoiachin (2 Kgs 24:8).

Finally, in “The Queen Mother and the Cult in the Ancient Near East” (originally in Karen L. King, ed., Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and Today, Fortress Press, 1997), Ackerman surveys the duties of queen-mothers in relation to Asherah throughout the ANE, even venturing into possible reverberations of the ideology in the Gospel of Matthew and the Marian cult of the 2^nd century CE. Similarly, Ackerman keeps much of her original conclusions, though she has removed a section on Phoenician iconography and inscriptions from her original chapter.

In all, this volume displays Ackerman’s masterful ability to animate an ancient world for a modern readership. I hope Ackerman’s essay collection, in addition to serving a convenient reference, will inspire continued research on these important topics.

Chadd M. Feyas is a PhD candidate at Asbury Theological Seminary.

Chadd Feyas

Date Of Review:

July 19, 2023