posted on Apr, 6 2006 @ 07:25 PM
Originally posted by Nakash
No, YHVH had his footstool on the temple, and his home in heaven (Biblical paraphrase). [...]. Astarte/Ishtar was never a Jewish deity
Actually, the bible seems to make it pretty claer that the isrealites and hebrews worshipped a bunch of gods. The ammonites, famously, worshipped
Moloch, and we can take that perhaps as a loss in faith of YHWH. However, they
also worshipped baal and asherah. Baal's preists were wipped
out by the yhwh preists through a trick (then their holy site was made into a public toilet), and his cult statue never made it into the Temple.
But asherah wasn't attacked in that same episode, and her idol was placed in The Temple, by Solomon. Also, the Brazen Serpent from Moses days was
kept in the temple, and the people came to worhsip it by burning incense at its base, much like we scene in other eastern religions today.
It was only on the occasions where a really brutal and intolerant yhwhist reformer came into power that the worship of the other gods would become
persecuted, their churches desecrated and forced to convert/reform. IOW, the jews had to be constantly forced to give up their goddess and other gods
that they worshipped, like the wise Solomon, alongside jehovah.