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In a September 22nd, 2002 speech to visiting Christian Zionists, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asserted, "This land is ours... God gave us the title deeds..." However, recent scholarly research, including discoveries by an archaeological team from the University of Tel Aviv, not only deconstruct the Biblical Old Testament and Torah stories upon which this claim rests, but grant previously unthinkable credence to an ancient historian's claim that the Israelites of Exodus were actually the Hyksos, and therefore of Asiatic origin.

To trace the foundations of this ongoing Biblical bonfire, we must go back to 1999.

All hell broke loose in Israel in November of that year when Prof. Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University announced: "the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander the desert, did not conquer the land, and did not pass it on to the twelve tribes". Moreover, the Jewish God YHWH had a female consort - the goddess Asherah!

His conclusion that the kingdom of David and Solomon was at best a small tribal monarchy, at worst total myth, has made enemies for him in the camps of traditional Jewish and Christian belief systems. He asserts: all evidence demonstrates that the Jews did not adopt monotheism until the 7th Century BCE - a heresy according to the Biblical tradition dating it to Moses at Mount Sinai.

Tel Aviv University's archaeological investigation at Megiddo and examination of the six-sided gate there dates it to the 9th Century BCE, not the 10th Century BCE claimed by the 1960's investigator Yigael Yadin who attributed it to Solomon. Herzog, moreover, states that Solomon and David are "entirely absent in the archaeological record".

In addition, Herzog's colleague, Israel Finkelstein, claims the Jews were nothing more than nomadic Canaanites who bartered with the city dwellers.

The team's studies concluded that Jerusalem did not have any central status until 722 BCE with the destruction of its northern rival Samaria.

However, the real bombshell is Herzog's discovery of numerous references to Yahweh having a consort in the form of Asherah. Inscriptions, written in Hebrew by official Jewish scribes in the 8th century BCE, were found in numerous sites all over the land. For Yahweh, supposedly the "One God", to have had a female consort and, of all people, the goddess Asherah, is dynamite of wide ranging significance.

The Secret Identity of Yahweh
The use of Yahweh as the name of God has always fuelled speculation and philosophical argument. YHWH, sometimes pronounced Jehovah, is taken to mean "I AM" or "I AM WHO I AM". There is also the puzzle of the rule that his mysterious real name is not to be spoken.

The identification of the goddess Asherah (Asherat) as His consort somewhere within the original Jewish faith leads to some explosive conclusions about the identity of the Jewish/Christian God of the Cosmos, the one Monotheistic God with whom we are so familiar from western religion.

But before looking at Asherah, and what she means to the identity of Yahweh, it is worth taking a look at another goddess, Ashteroth. Her significance will become evident a little later. Referred to as an "abomination" in 2 Kings, Ashteroth was an important deity in the Near East pantheons.

To the Sumerians she was IN.ANNA (Anu's beloved) and is an important character in the Sumerian Epics. To the Assyrians and Babylonians she was Ishtar; Ashtoreth was her name for the Canaanites; to the Greeks - Aphrodite; the Romans - Venus. The most important equivalent however is the Egyptian goddess Hathor, who the Greeks identified with Aphrodite. Hathor was the wife of Horus, the God of War. Hathor is identified with the symbol of the cow, and statues of her in the 26th Dynasty (572 - 525 BC) in Egypt actually depict her as a cow.

Asherah, (whose name means "she who walks in the sea") supposedly consort of the supreme god El, was also referred to as Elath (the goddess). According to the Ugarit tradition, whose clay tablets contain the earliest known alphabet, she was consort of El, and mother of seventy gods. She is also associated with Baal and is supposed to have interceded to her husband, the supreme god, on Baal's behalf, for the building of a palace - in order to grant him equal status with other gods.

In the cuniform tablets of Ras Shamrah (Circa 1400 BCE) the head of the Pantheon was El; his wife was Asherat-of-the-sea (Asherah). After El, the greatest god was Baal, son of El and Asherah. Curiously, Baal's consort is his mother, Asherah. In the Lebanon traditions Baal is equated with Jupiter.

Carvings of Asherah in Syria show her wearing Egyptian head-dress. She was also referred to later as "the cow" - a reference to her great age.

Significantly, Baalat (an important Goddess at Byblos) is depicted in carvings as having cow's horns, between which is a halo. Baalat is in fact the form of Asherah when she appears alongside Baal.

But what does this say about the identity of Yahweh? The Bible has always presented a confusing picture of Yahweh. In the light of Herzog's discoveries and conclusions that Yahweh's consort was Asherah, it deserves a closer examination.

Exodus 6:3 states "And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by [the name of] God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by my name "I AM" was I not known to them." In the King James Version, "I AM" is translated as Jehovah (Yahweh) but means the same: "I AM". The use of "God Almighty" is a traditional translation of Shaddai, thought to have meant "Omnipotent", but arguably it could be linked to the Akkadian root word Shadu, meaning literally "mountains".

And El Shaddai is only one of the versions of God described in Genesis. El Shaddai literally translated means, "God the one of the mountains", but there was also El Olam (God the everlasting one) El Elyon (God most high) El Ro'i (God of vision).

The obvious question is, why did YHWH reveal himself to the patriarchs as El Shaddai? The answer lies in the religious traditions of Canaan, where Abraham is said to have lived for a time, and which were brought to Canaan by the Phoenicians. (In turn, the root of Phoenician religious tradition is Sumer).

God-the-one-of-the-mountains has a Sumerian equivalent. ISH.KUR, the youngest son of Enlil, means God the one of the far mountains. Ishkur was also known as Adad or Hadad in Hebrew, brother of Nannar/Sin, and was the pre-eminent God of Canaan - El-Shaddai.

According to biblical scholars who focus on the "P Source" for the old testament, Yahweh as a name is first used with Moses in Exodus, and is indicative of monolatory (exclusive worship of one of many Gods) rather than monotheism. The name Yahweh can also be translated as "I am who I am", literally a way of saying "mind your own business", a way of disguising his true identity. Yahweh does not appear until Exodus and, strangely, the god Baal is entirely absent in Genesis.

(El Shaddai is still venerated in the Jewish faith in the form of the Teffilin, one of two small leather cube-shaped cases containing Torah Texts, traditionally to be worn by males from the age of 13. The Teffilin are worn in a manner to represent the letters shin, daleth, and yod, which together form the name Shaddai.)

In Exodus 33:2 it states "And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite:
33:3 Unto a land flowing with milk and honey: for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou [art] a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee on the way."