§-Quick questions
NSWAncient HistorySection II (Ancient Societies): Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria
Quick questions on Religious ideology and practice in Israel, Solomon to the fall of Samaria: HSC Ancient History
1short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is archaeological evidence for popular religion?Show answer
The single most important body of evidence for what ordinary Israelites actually believed, independent of the Bible's own polemic, is archaeological. At Kuntillet Ajrud, a remote way-station excavated by Ze'ev Meshel in the Sinai in the mid-1970s and dated archaeologically to around 800 BC, painted storage jars (pithoi) carry Hebrew inscriptions invoking a blessing "by Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" and "by Yahweh of Teman and his Asherah." A broadly similar formula, blessing an individual "by Yahweh...and his Asherah," appears independently in a tomb inscription discovered at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron, and published by William Dever. Scholars still dispute exactly what "Asherah" means here: a goddess acting as Yahweh's consort, or a wooden cultic pole-symbol associated with Yahweh's worship (the noun is used both ways elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible).
Have a question we have not covered?
This dot-point answer is short enough that we have not extracted many short questions yet. Read the full dot-point answer or ask Mo, our study assistant, in the chat for follow ups.