Monday, August 19, 2019

Thomas J. King on Genesis 49:25 and Belief in a "Divine Feminine"



The God of your father who helps you, And Shaddai who blesses you With blessings of heaven above, Blessings of the deep that couches below, Blessings of the breast and womb. (Gen 49:25 | 1985 JPS Tanakh)

Some Latter-day Saints have argued that, in light of modern Old Testament scholarship, this passage supports early belief in a divine feminine among the biblical authors. Kevin L. Barney in his essay How to Worship Our Mother in Heaven (Without Getting Excommunicated) wrote:

4. Genesis 49:25. Jacob's blessings to his sons includes an invocation to Yahweh (v. 18), followed by an invocation to El (v. 25) including the common El epithet Shaddai ("almighty") used in parallel with "El." This verse also bestows the blessings of Breasts-and-Womb, which was known as an epithet of Asherah (Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and Other Deities in Ancient Israel [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1990], 16).

In his work on the Priestly (P) source, Thomas King wrote the following which supports Barney’s claim that Gen 49:25 is evidence of belief in a “divine feminine”:

A second tradition attached to שׁדי in the Bible, distinct from that associated with storm or military imagery. The second tradition appears exclusively in relation to the compound אל שׁדי. We have already observed that the occurrences of אל שׁדי in Genesis appear in conjunction with the theme of abundance (all within PN). Koch has affirmed this phenomenon in pointing out that every occurrence of אל שׁדי in Genesis appears in conjunction with the verbs פרו ורבו (“be fruitful and multiply”) (13). In light of the same evidence, Biale understands these passages as fertility blessings (Gen 17:1b-6; 28:3; 35:11; 48:3-4). The only passage in Pcontaining אל שׁדי which does not explicitly appear as this type of fertility blessing is Gen 43:14a. Nevertheless, in relation to this verse, Biale points out the possibility that the writer may have sensed “the association between raḥaimim (mercy) and reḥem (womb)” (Biale, “The God with Breasts: El Shaddai in the Bible,” History of Religions 20 [1982]:247).



The key to understanding this tradition regarding אל שׁדי appears in the Joseph blessing of the Testament of Jacob. Genesis 49:25 not only associates אל שׁדי with a fertility blessing by attributing the term ‎שַׁדַּי by means of wordplay with the term שָׁדַיִם (breasts). This wordplay may reveal the meaning according to which the author of the blessing and the previous fertility blessings in Genesis, understood אל שׁדי, that is, “El with breasts” (Ibid., 248) . . . Some evidence suggests that the fertility blessings reflected in Genesis derive from Canaanite fertility traditions. Significant among this evidence is the description of the Canaanite fertility goddess. Asherah was depicted with prominent breasts, and the Ugaritic record contains references to “the divine breasts, the breasts of Asherah and Raḥam, a phrase noticeably similar to the biblical ‘blessings of breasts and womb (רָחַם)’” (Gen 49:25) (Ibid., 253-54). Accordingly, Biale concludes: “Hence, there is abundant evidence that the fertility tradition of El Shaddai may have originated with the Israelite interest in the figure of Asherah, the fertility goddess represented by breasts” (Ibid., 254). (Thomas J. King, The Realignment of the Priestly Literature: The Priestly Narrative in Genesis and its Relation to Priestly Legislation and the Holiness School [Princeton Theological Monograph Series; Eugene, Oreg.: Pickwick Publications, 2009], 112-13, 114)