The Queen of Heaven?  🔗 **Source:** [The Queen of Heaven?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt16_25Irx8) > [!note]+ Document Notes > --- > tags: [queen-of-heaven, ancient-near-eastern-religion, biblical-scholarship, deuteronomistic-history, goddess-worship] > author: Dan McClellan and Dan Beecher > source: Data Over Dogma > reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt16_25Irx8 > date created: 2026-07-27 > --- > > [!info] Generated analysis — not the author's words. Sections below are machine-written > > from the captured source. Only text inside `> [!quote]` blocks is verbatim from the author. > > Do not quote or attribute any other line to the named author. > # 🏷️ Title: The Queen of Heaven? > ## 🧭 Table of Contents > - [📝 Summary](#-summary) > - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) > - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) > - [📚 References](#-references) > - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) > - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) > - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) > - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) > - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) > - [❓ Questions](#-questions) > - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) > - [💡 Implications](#-implications) > - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) > - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) > - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) > - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) > - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) > - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) > ## 📝 Summary > - Dan McClellan (a biblical scholar) and Dan Beecher (his podcast co-host) work through the "Queen of Heaven," a title that appears twice in the Hebrew Bible (Jeremiah 7:16-18 and Jeremiah 44:17-19, 25) as a deity Judahite households — men, women, and children together — made cake offerings and libations to, and that Jeremiah condemns as provoking Yahweh's anger. > - McClellan rejects the popular scholarly identification of the Queen of Heaven with Asherah (Yahweh's consort in the epigraphic record, e.g. Kuntillet Ajrud) and instead argues, following Susan Ackerman's *Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Served Them*, that the title better fits Astarte/Ishtar — a West Semitic war-and-fertility goddess associated with the heavens, stars, and horses/chariots. > - The larger argument: Jeremiah's condemnation is not a timeless moral verdict but a snapshot of a live, decentralized, gender-inclusive "family religion" that Josiah's late-7th-century cult-centralization reforms (and the Deuteronomistic literature that rationalizes them) worked to criminalize, along with Asherah worship and ancestor veneration — and that this centralization also stripped women of their direct cultic role, routing worship through male-controlled, temple-based intermediation. > - Key stakeholders: biblical scholars debating Asherah-vs-Astarte identification; feminist/gender historians of ancient Israelite religion (Ackerman, Merlin Stone, William Dever); lay audiences who use Jeremiah's condemnation polemically against Catholic Marian devotion ("Queen of Heaven" as a title for Mary); and, per the cross-reference context this note sits in, contemporary NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) spiritual-warfare movements that have repurposed "the Queen of Heaven" as a living territorial demonic entity rather than a historical ANE deity. > - Risks and tradeoffs: casual conflation of the biblical Queen of Heaven with either Asherah or the Catholic Marian title produces bad theology and worse history; the episode itself flags the "When God Was a Woman" thesis (total prior matriarchy, suddenly overturned) as popular but overstated. > - Bottom line: the text sides with the people who lost — Jeremiah's condemned family cult is read here as a richer, more communally embedded religious practice than the reform literature that replaced it, and its erasure tracks a broader shift from household religious agency (especially for women) to male-mediated, centralized institutional control. > ## 📖 Main Content > - **Two "Queens of Heaven."** The hosts open by disambiguating a term used two different ways: (1) Mary, mother of Jesus, as "Queen of Heaven" in Catholic (Orthodox adoption left uncertain) tradition, reasoned analogically from Jesus-as-king to Mary-as-queen-mother; and (2) the pre-Christian ancient Near Eastern deity condemned in Jeremiah. The episode flags that sense (2) gets weaponized against sense (1) — used "as a bludgeon to beat up... Catholics" — a conflation the hosts treat as a category error worth untangling rather than adjudicating theologically. > - **The Jeremiah texts.** Jeremiah 7:16-18 has God (through Jeremiah, stationed at the Jerusalem temple gate) forbidding intercessory prayer for Judah because "the children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven." Jeremiah 44:17-19 and 25, set among Judahite refugees in Egypt, has the people explicitly defending the practice: they prospered under Queen-of-Heaven worship and suffered "famine" and "the sword" once they stopped, and the women insist their husbands were complicit in "cakes for her marked with her image." God's closing line in verse 25 — keep making your vows and libations — is read as bitter, sarcastic acquiescence: permission granted precisely so the audience watches the promised consequences land. > - **Theodicy as literary motif.** McClellan situates both passages inside a standard ancient West Asian rhetorical strategy for explaining military defeat without conceding your patron deity is weak: the god didn't lose, the god *left*, disgusted by the people's unfaithfulness. He cites the Mesha (Moabite) Inscription (~850 BCE), where King Mesha explains Israelite domination of Moab as Chemosh's anger at his own land, as a structural parallel. Applied to Judah: the exile isn't Babylon's military superiority, it's Yahweh's abandonment, provoked by (among other things) Queen-of-Heaven worship. This reframes Jeremiah's condemnation as retrospective theological damage control for a national catastrophe, not a spontaneous ethical judgment. > - **Why not Asherah?** The obvious candidate for "Yahweh's queen/consort" is Asherah, given the well-attested Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions blessing "by Adonai and by his Asherah" and epigraphic pairings of male-and-female divine figures. McClellan concedes this is a live scholarly position but argues against it, preferring Astarte — the West Semitic form of Mesopotamian Ishtar, rendered in the Hebrew Bible as the deliberately garbled, feminized-plural "Ashtoreth" as a polemical flattening device. Astarte is independently attested as "Lady/Queen of Heaven" (Akkadian *kalat šar šamê*, "bride of the king of heaven," a title also applied to Ashratu/Ashratum), tied to stars, war, horses, and chariots, and — critically — tied in inscriptions to bakers producing offering cakes for her, which lines up with the Jeremiah 7 detail about women baking cakes stamped with her image or symbol. > - **Family religion vs. state religion.** The episode's structural argument: Jeremiah 7's Queen-of-Heaven cult is explicitly domestic — a whole-household ritual happening at home, not "downtown at the... super temple." McClellan connects this to a scholarly consensus (citing his own book, *Adonai's Divine Images*) that pre-exilic Israelite religion included widespread "family religion": ancestor veneration, shared meals with the dead at mortuary shrines, and worship of deities beyond Yahweh alone, organized at the household level and largely outside priestly/temple control. > - **Josiah's centralization and its costs.** Around 622 BCE (2 Kings 22), Josiah's reforms — textually justified by the sudden "discovery" of a law scroll in the temple — removed the Asherah pole from the temple, executed "illegitimate" priests, and (per the Deuteronomistic literature, itself later theological rhetoric rather than a clean historical record) banned worship that did not run through Jerusalem. McClellan reads this as simultaneously religious *and* political centralization: it didn't just narrow which deities were legitimate, it moved cultic authority away from households — and specifically away from the women who ran the domestic rites — into a male priesthood requiring pilgrimage-based, temple-mediated participation. The direct, materially productive religious role women held (baking, shaping, offering) is described as effectively erased. > - **Timeline and cont [00:00:00] [music] >> Hey everybody, I'm Dan McLellan. And I'm Dan Beecher. This is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan, in your in your Cosby sweater? >> [laughter] >> Just trying to trying to represent, huh? I'm getting it Let let's not bring Cosby into it. That's [laughter] I That's not That is a tarnished reference now. >> Yes, yes. >> But But I I am enjoying >> a that's a T-shirt. All right. It is a T-shirt, but it it has a very '90s sweater vibe to it. So, I I do appreciate you bringing it up. Thank you. >> Um Yeah, things are good. Things are good. To- Today we're we're getting into [00:00:48] it. We're We're going to dive into a what's that or perhaps a who's that Mhm. which is the Queen of Heaven. Yeah. >> even know Did you know it had a queen? Heaven? Well, there there are a couple of different ways that that is used, and we're talking about the earlier way Okay. >> used, yes. >> into it. Yes. Right now, let's just go into what's that. >> [music] >> Okay. So, the Queen of Heaven. Mhm. Not the Queen of Hearts. No. >> But the Queen of Heaven You say it could be used multiple ways. Yes. [00:01:34] Wha- What are the What are the different Now, the one that you had me look up is the one that that is mentioned a couple times in the Book of Jeremiah. >> What's the other way? Let's start with the other way, and then we'll get to Jeremiah. Well, the other way is that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is can be referred to as the Queen of Heaven. I think that's primarily in uh within the Catholic tradition. I don't know if the Orthodox tradition adopts that title as well. I I can't imagine they do, but um yeah, this is a one of the titles that is uh that is attributed to Mary based on the notion that Jesus is the king and Mary was uh his mother, so she is >> So she should be by rights the queen mother of heaven. Yes. Well, and and [00:02:24] queen mother is is a title that is like closely associated with that. Like when people talk about her as the queen of heaven, they will explain she's the queen mother, so Yeah, I I did bump into that uh when I was looking into this. I also bumped into people being uh using that as a bludgeon to beat up uh Catholics and point out how dumb they are cuz the queen of heaven is bad. >> is condemned in in the book of Jeremiah, yeah. And therefore uh they should they they should be ashamed of themselves. So let's dive over to Jeremiah. Yeah. Yeah, let's uh so we're going to start in Jeremiah 7. There There are several more references if we go into uh Jeremiah 44. And and we'll we'll read some of those uh in a little bit. How many more references? I think three more [00:03:12] references just in Jeremiah 4 No, four more references just in Jeremiah 44. But starting in Jeremiah 7, uh I'm going to start in verse 16. Uh and and the people of Judah are getting harangued here. >> Yeah, uh is this Jeremiah Jeremiah himself? Is that whose voice is is doing the haranguing? Well, the the chapter begins, "The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, stand in the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word." So is the the Lord's house are we talking about the temple? Yes. Not not the summer home. Not >> Not the place in the Poconos. It can mean different things, but okay. >> [clears throat] >> The Lord So so Jeremiah has has posted up at at the the the door of the temple, and he is now hollering in about how bad [00:04:03] everybody is. Yeah, [clears throat] and and in verse 16 he starts, "As for you, do not pray for this people. Do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede for me with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven, and they pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger." So, this is obviously God speaking through Jeremiah saying, "Hey, I um not having this." Yeah. And then >> Don't don't ask me for help for them. They're making cakes, those jerks. Yeah, [00:04:52] when they know I prefer muffins. Right. Yes. So >> I am on a diet, you guys. >> Rude. Um and then we get This is repeated. Jeremiah 44, we have three verses in a row, verses 17, 18, and 19. And here we're This is talking about Egypt. This is um And these are diaspora folks in Egypt. Instead, we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven, and pour out libations to her, just as we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food and prospered and saw no misfortune. But from the time we stopped making [00:05:40] offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine. And the women said, "Indeed, we will go on making pouring out libations to her. >> [snorts] >> Do you think that we made cakes for her marked with her image and poured out libations to her without our husbands being involved?" And you know, guys are probably like, "Don't bring me into this. Oh, dude, don't throw me under that bus. He's already mad enough already. had to bring me into it. And then down in verse 25, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, "You and your wives, cuz you brought the the husbands into it, have accomplished in deeds what you declared in words, saying, "We are determined to perform the vows that we [00:06:28] have made to make offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out libations to her. By all means, keep your vows and make your libations." So, God is is kind of saying, "Yeah, keep on doing it. See what happens. By all means. See what happens. Yeah. So, So, there we have it. The the the Clearly, there was a practice. I mean, this is Jeremiah, I think you've mentioned a bunch of times, was into putting the kibosh on a on a bunch of different practices that were already in play, that were happening. >> Yes. We have we have a lot of this in this period. So, this is this is stuff being written [00:07:16] um right at the time of the exile and and during the exile, and maybe a little before depending on when you think Jeremiah was written. Cuz Jeremiah begins before the exile occurs. But, um basically, the we're coming up with explanations for how the the exile could have happened. How could a foreign nation have come in and violated our autonomy and come in and destroyed the temple, and forcibly migrated so many Judahites uh over to uh Mesopotamia. And the idea is, "Oh, well, it must have been punishment." And this Right. Our Our God must have abandoned us Yeah. to to our captors. Yes. And And this is a classic uh literary motif, [00:08:04] rhetorical motif, in ancient uh West Asia. Cuz you see it in in Babylonian writing. You see it Like the the Moabite uh the Mesha Inscription from like 850-ish BCE. There's uh There's a part where King Mesha is trying to account for why uh Moab was allowed to be a vassal to the nation of Israel, why Israel was allowed to um to subjugate them. And he says it was because Chemosh was angry with his land. Which is Which is basically the same argument. Our patron deity got mad at us. And was like, "Just for that, I'm making you a vassal to this other nation over here." And so the same thing happens uh in ancient Israel and Judah. Um we've got, you know, every time that somebody's cult statue was stolen, Mhm. [00:08:54] the rationalization, cuz you don't want to just be like, "Well, I guess that god actually sucked." >> You You want to maintain the belief that this god has power and is your patron. So you go, "Oh, well, this god uh it uh this god fled the temple and fled the statue not out of fear, but because they're they're disgusted by us. And that is what allowed That's what facilitated the destruction of the temple and um the uh the violation of the integrity, the sovereignty of our land. So So yeah, it's >> I'm just going to say I You're talking about them taking the uh the icons or whatever out of It just It just sounded a little bit like a frat uh a fraternity stealing the >> the other team's mascot or something. But I I mean I don't mean to >> Yeah. [00:09:40] I don't want to diminish it, but I kind of has that vibe. But yeah, yeah, that that is kind of what what's going on. And because it's you know, it's something that's larger than the building, it's larger than the than the statue itself. It's it's the notion that this represents what holds us together as a people and establishes our identity and all these things. And and I write about that in my book, Adonai's Divine Images, that that the notion that oh, well, God's not actually in the statue, God's actually up in heaven. You can't you know, and don't make divine images. A lot of that is is kind of damage control. Mhm. Well, if they can if they can just run off with our statue, maybe we need to find a way to have God with us without a statue. >> Right. God doesn't >> they can't this can't happen again. Because God because because God did live [00:10:28] in the statue. God was the statue or was was directly associated therewith. >> Yeah, yeah. And um and so you you had ways to to rationalize it, but then you also get this renegotiation going on. But anyway, one of the pre-exilic things that's uh that became very very unpopular around the time of Josiah is uh a you could say a queen of heaven, you can say Adonai's consort, partner, or wife. And and we've talked about this before with Asherah, the Israelite goddess. And there are some scholars who think that that the Queen of Heaven is a reference to Asherah. But I'm going to say it's not. Okay. I had wondered that. I did I did delve into that a little bit, and it did seem like it was a controversial question. [00:11:16] And and definitely not a a slam dunk by any means. >> No, not not a slam dunk. I think it's probably not Asherah. And we we get Asherah like we have explicit connections between Asherah and Adonai. We have inscriptions. Uh the Kuntillet Ajrud uh inscription uh inscription >> I've seen that there is uh an an inscription on a t-shirt that >> I've seen multiple times. >> Yes. That uh it's it's actually uh printed on the t-shirt, not inscribed, but it is a [laughter] it is an image of a of an inscription. Yeah, but but it talks about blessings by Adonai and by his Ashura. And we have a a couple of different inscriptions that make reference to that. And even have a drawing of the male and female divine figures. Um and you do have in ancient [00:12:04] Akkadian, you do have Ashura referred to or uh Ashratu or Ashratum is is how she's referred to in Akkadian. She's referred to as Kalat Shar Shamay, which would be bride of the king of the heavens. Mhm. >> So so there's a sense in which Ashura could be the queen of heaven, but I think there's a there's a closer connection to make. Uh but but first um one of the things that uh we've talked about how in in the past, we've talked about how uh Josiah likely criminalized, vilified, demonized Ashura and Ashura worship. And there are a lot of scholars who think this is part of a broader kind of cult centralization where we're doing away with um not just worship of other deities, [00:12:53] not just worship of God's wife, but even like ancestor worship. And even what what scholars these days refer to as family religion. Because notice something interesting about uh the passages that refer the first passage in uh in Jeremiah 7, "The children gather wood. The fathers kindle fire, and women knead dough." This is something that involves the entire family. This is a This is a domestic practice. Right. And this is this is not something that's going on downtown at the, you know, at the super temple. This is something that's going on in in people's individual homes. And we have all kinds of evidence for for this family religion going on in [00:13:42] pre-exilic Israel where people [clears throat] are doing their own thing. And this seems to be one of the things that falls under the knife with Josiah's cult reforms. Right. And so it's it's not just the the feminine divine that is cut out. It's also other deities. It's also probably ancestor worship cuz a lot of the a lot of the domestic family religion is probably you know, you have you go to your mortuary temple and you share a meal with your deceased ancestor. That's worship. Yeah. And in Deuteronomy, again, the the project of Deuteronomy in in the opinion of a lot of scholars, myself included, began under Josiah as as his vehicle for accomplishing to some [00:14:29] degree this this cult centralization. But to to so I say to some degree because a lot of what's in the in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic literature is later rhetoric. It's not an accurate accurate reflection of what was going on on the ground, but um there's even a part in Deuteronomy which says if you're bringing a food offering to Adonai, it cannot have been shared with the dead. Mhm. So like they're making pretty explicit um they're pretty explicitly they're coming after a lot of domestic religious practices and worship, ancestor worship, and >> [sighs] >> the Queen of Heaven. And I'm going to argue and there's a there's a phenomenal book on this um by um a a wonderful scholar named Susan [00:15:16] Ackerman. And it's called Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Served Them. Which is which is all about the worship of of uh uh gods on the part of uh female clergy, priests, and things like that, as well as goddesses. And she makes what I think is the best argument for identifying the Queen of Heaven as Astarte. Okay. Astarte is not Asherah. As- Astarte would be the West Semitic equivalence of the East Semitic deity Ishtar. I was going to say that I I was going to I I I am smart enough that I I did think of that. That that >> that those those sound familiar enough >> familiar, yes. and and sound uh linked enough that that they sound like they could be [00:16:03] the same thing or a version of each other. Yeah. So, we have um Ishtar is is is Astarte in uh in the West Semitic world. And so, in the Bible, we have Ashtoreth as one of the ways one of the it's kind of a a demonizing um pejorative way to refer to um Astarte by making it feminine plural as a way to kind of um abstract what's going on here. Uh but >> Your various Astartes. Uh that that's one of the ways to understand it. but she is uh the Lady of Heaven. She is Queen of Heaven. Mhm. Uh in some places, she is associated with the heavens, with [00:16:51] the stars. Um she is associated with a bunch of other deities in the Greek world that are associated with heaven uh and the stars. Uh we also have her um associated with war. So, uh you'll you'll notice that one of the things that the people who are worshipers of the Queen of Heaven say is once once we stopped worshipping her, the famine happened. Uh the the land's fertility failed us, but also we've been subjected to violence and we are no longer at peace and we are not prospering. And so, it could be that we have lost our our patroness uh who who, you know, insures that we are protected. So, um Astarte is is mistress of horses, lady of the [00:17:40] chariots. Uh this is one of the ways she's represented as uh as, you know, battle-worn, battle-tested. But, also we have some inscriptions that talk about um bakers who baked basket of baskets of for Astarte, the queen. So, um one of the things that the women do, uh according to the passage, is make cakes for the queen of heaven. >> Yeah. And these might be uh they're probably like raisin cakes. Mhm. Um is what is what a lot of scholars suggest is is going on here and they probably would have been uh they probably had some kind of form, some kind of mold uh that that the dough would have been in that would have made [00:18:28] it so when they baked, they took a shape that included either it was a like shaped like a a goddess or there was some kind of symbol that was baked into it that would have represented uh Astarte. And so, uh and and the interesting thing about that is what are the what are the men of the household doing? They're gathering wood, they're building a fire. The women are the ones actually engaged in the material production of of the actual uh offering, the means of worship. So, this would be a cult that was focused on the labor of women and was something that was primarily mediated uh by the uh by women. So, uh >> I I think Ackerman makes a a wonderful case for understanding Astarte as the [00:19:17] Queen of Heaven. Um and this would also be one of the things that fell under the axe as a result of uh not just of Josiah's reforms, but probably if Jeremiah's being written during the um during the exilic period, being written in a time when when the Judahites who are away in exile are more directly exposed to the worship of Ishtar, which is probably going to be a lot more prominence in Mesopotamia. >> So, they're they're in the lion's den um and getting exposed to that kind of stuff. And so, it's it's probably going to be a lot more attractive, the worship of Ishtar. Give me the sorry, uh Josiah, give me the time frame of Josiah [00:20:05] and and sort of overlay it on on the Jeremiah time frame that we're discussing. >> there's probably if um and I my late 7th century BC history I need to bone up a little bit on, but but there's probably a overlap between Josiah uh and Jeremiah. So, he reigned from 648 and I I want to say it was in a battle with the Egyptians and Neco maybe, not the wafer, but the Pharaoh. Um I think [laughter] uh like 609 BCE uh was was when Josiah died, uh was killed in battle, and then Jeremiah uh I'm pretty sure starts in um like 25 years before that, like the last quarter of the 7th century, [00:20:53] uh and then is writing into or at least is represented as writing into the exile. But again, Jeremiah it feels like it feels like what's happening uh as I I those passages in Jeremiah, it feels like these are just accepted practices that he is decrying. Like everybody's kind of doing it. Everybody's into you know, making these cakes for the Queen of Heaven. And he's saying, "Hey, we shouldn't be doing this." And then by the time we get to Josiah, he's like, "No one's going to do it." And he commands it and and it's not no longer just being decried. It's like we're going to kill everyone who who who goes against us on this. Yeah. Yeah, and and you've got in the And and again, parsing apart the the [00:21:42] Deuteronomistic literature that is later rhetoric versus what might have been Josiah's actual um cultic reforms, you you've probably got vilification of precisely this kind of stuff. One of the things that you've got in in the uh books of Kings is you got a description of Josiah taking an Asherah pole out of the temple, Mhm. which indicates there was an Asherah pole. The worship of Asherah alongside Adonai, the God of Israel, was taking place in the Jerusalem Temple. And, you know, the way the story is told, uh Josiah, 2 Kings 22, Josiah's just just bopping along doing his thing and then suddenly somebody shows up and goes, "Hey, we found this book of the [00:22:30] law and turns out we've been getting it all wrong." >> Um and then he's like, "Oh, shoot, the the um the Asherah pole's got to come down. That was my favorite thing." Um Meanwhile, Josiah is like, "And the book's in my handwriting. That's weird. How did that [laughter] happen?" Um and you know, they take all that stuff out and they grind it to dust and they burn it uh in the Valley of Kidron and uh and then the priests are all the the illegitimate priests are also put to death and and there there's a lot of violence that that goes on at least the way the story is told in in Second Kings. The degree to which that's historical we don't know for sure. I'm I'm sure there was some pressure put on folks but [00:23:18] but I think it is it is interesting that how the Queen of Heaven is is kind of one of the one of the representatives of an earlier time when there was more and broader worship going on where piety could be directed at a variety of different deities even on an individual household basis and and that was all taken from people. Yeah. And then after that you could only worship adequately properly if you took sacrifices or offerings down to Jerusalem. And if you didn't live anywhere near there and you couldn't afford to to make that pilgrimage. I mean you were kind of you were kind of cut off to some degree. So I and [00:24:05] I'm I'm one of the people and you know, I get called a heretic for this kind of thing all the time but but I'm one of those people who is sad for the loss of that old-timey religion that probably made the the relationship with with the God of Israel and and the family of the God of Israel a lot more meaningful to individuals and households back in the pre-exilic period before this this king decided to um um you know decided to get rid of all of that and and make it so you weren't allowed to Yeah. to worship that way. So it's I I think that the the point I want to make is that as you said, this was just something that was going on. This this was not something that was considered problematic for probably centuries Right. [00:24:52] >> until somebody was like time to tighten up the belts god wise anyway and um you're not allowed to do that anymore. And oh, by the way, we're going to vilify and demonize you for ever having done that. Well, and it's not just about centralizing uh the God worship, right? This is about centralizing power and and structuring power so that it so that it becomes so that you have to get your salvation, your your I salvation such a New Testament phrase. >> Yeah, yeah. But you have to get >> of some kind. >> Yeah, yeah, you have to get your your your holy intercession through us, through me. Like, you can't You can't just bake a cake in your house, [00:25:39] uh get the whole family involved, and feel uh like you you know, feel like you've done something holy, and feel like you've done something uh that to benefit yourself. Yeah. You don't get to benefit you. I benefit you. Yeah, and and all of my representatives, who are all, by the way, men. Right. So, the the women the the the role of women, the direct role of women in in worship, is is just disintegrated. It's gone entirely. The the mother in a household no longer gets to play that direct role, no longer gets to participate directly, uh and is now an NPC for all intents and purposes, uh when it comes to the worship of the God of Israel. The only way you get to do it is is through a [00:26:27] man. Yeah. So, yeah, there there's a there's there are some folks out there. There's a book I shoot, I I think it was called When God Was a Woman. Um and it was >> [sighs and gasps] >> Merlin. I know the guy's first name or or the person Oh, shoot, now I forget who wrote it. You keep talking and I'll look it up. Okay, um but I think I'm pretty sure it's called When God was a woman. Merlin Stone, yes. And and there are an awful lot of people who who take that book and and treat it as as accurate. And and the book is basically making the claim that that religion was basically thoroughly matriarchal. And and then one day it was all just entirely overturned. And they were like, [00:27:14] "We're not going to do the matriarchal anymore. We're just going to turn it over and we're going to make it all patriarchal." And there and there's a sense in which the role of women was was significantly marginalized and downplayed and and overturned. But it was not the case that it was the opposite up to Josiah or or any Israelite. The the patriarchal nature nature of of worship was had preexisted the the land of Israel, the nation of Israel, the the Hebrew language by many many generations. Right. Uh but there was a role for women in that a central role in particular when it comes to folks like Astarte and Asherah and Anat. And there were other deities as well, uh goddesses that were involved in this. [00:28:01] But but yeah, I think Jeremiah represents uh we get a little peek at a little bit of family religion going on that that unfortunately at least from my perspective, it's going to be fortunate for I think the overwhelming majority of the people who who are reading the book of Jeremiah. But unfortunately in my opinion, uh we lost some of that uh old-timey family religion that probably I think probably went a lot further towards kind of generating a sense of community and belonging uh for all the members of the household than uh than what we were left with. I yeah, I think that that's a that I the fact that Jeremiah literally describes you know, the kids gathering the wood, [00:28:50] dad building the fire, mom making the cake. Literally describes a really heartwarming scenario, a scene sets a scene. And then it's like, "And it's bad." >> Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy to me. I think that I I'm but I'm really grateful that the author actually did write that whole scene out because I think that it gives us a little slice of life, a little a little peek in the window of just sort of a standard household where they might be doing this sort of thing. Yeah, and and I highly recommend uh Susan Ackerman's work for anybody who's interested in learning more about this and particularly her book Gods, Goddesses, and the Women Who Served Them. Um the it's a um [00:29:38] it's a great book. It is a little technical, um but uh if you'd like to learn more about what's going on there, that's one of Also, uh there's a book by uh Bill Dever, William Dever, called Did God Have a Wife? Now, that's not about Astarte, that's not about the Queen of Heaven as as I'm representing it, that's about Asherah, but that goes in into what what Dever calls folk religion. Mhm. Uh as as opposed to like official state religion. And and that's that's kind of a false dichotomy, but um uh but I think that's a that's a helpful book as well. So. >> Yeah. Well, that's it for the Queen of Heaven. Alas, she has been dethroned. Sad days uh for her and for us. I think it would be great if she were allowed to [00:30:27] continue, as you said. Um but there you have it. If you would like to become a part of keeping us going and also get access to an early and ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma and just uh and just feel real good in your heart. You can go and be a patron over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma. You can also gain access to our bonus content that happens every every week. That's just for our patrons. So please feel free to head on over there and just break off just a little bit of your coin for us. That's always a nice thing to do. Thanks so much to Roger Gaudi for editing the show. Thanks to JJ for being our [00:31:14] producer and we will talk to you again next time. 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