"....the most prominent among them being Yahweh’s wife, the goddess Asherah. The biblical writers cannot help but reveal that she was worshipped alongside Yahweh in his temples in Jerusalem and Samaria, while inscriptions dating to the eighth century BCE attest to worshippers seeking blessings from ‘Yahweh and his Asherah’ "
God: An Anatomy, by Francesca Stavrakopouloup, p. 24.
"Her state cults waned in the aftermath of the Assyrian assault on the kingdom of Israel’s capital, Samaria, in 722 BCE, and the later Babylonian destruction of Judah’s Jerusalem temple in 587 BCE." God: An Anatomy, by Francesca Stavrakopouloup, 152
"...more accurately understood as a radical form of pantheon reduction: Yahweh lost his wife, while other members of his divine council were downgraded from deities to minor divine beings..." God: An Anatomy, by Francesca Stavrakopouloup, 152
Through the centuries, YHWH took on feminine aspects of his former consort such as wisdom and the coming of the Sabbath.
