I have quoted from Deuteronomy in recent posts. The Book of Deuteronomy has many great teachings. We know of their validity since some of them were quoted by Jesus, such as the Shema, which was an ancient prayer recited twice daily and written on parchments fastened on the forehead or left arm. These were called phylacteries. Jesus warned against the hypocrisy of scribes and Pharisees by saying, “But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments” (Matthew 23:5). The Shema was found in Deuteronomy 6:4-9; 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37-41. Jesus quoted part of this in Matthew 22:37, as He said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” When Satan came tempting Jesus, He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3: “Man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”
But Deuteronomy was written in the 7th century BCE, specifically during the reign of King Josiah around 622 BCE. It is widely associated with the “Book of the Law” discovered in the Jerusalem Temple to centralize worship. I have written some about this “Book of the Law,” which contains the “paragraph of the king” quoted by King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon.
Deuteronomy means “second law” and is an expansion of the Jewish moral and civil law. But it comes with a cost. Some scholars believe the Book of Deuteronomy was the Book of the Law, which gets discovered in the temple by Hilkiah, the high priest. The Book of the Law is brought and read to King Josiah, who rents his clothes in disgust and begins instigating the law. I have read where some scholars have gone so far as to suggest that Josiah planted the Book of the Law in the temple to support his reforms. This all lent itself to the term Deuteronomists and started a process of “De-Christianizing” the Old Testament.
Margaret Barker, who spoke at BYU in 2003 and 2016, is a foremost Old Testament scholar, who has written much about the Deuteronomist movement and King Josiah’s reforms. She noted, “Deuteronomists favored the law (Deuteronomy 4:6), they denounced the idea that anyone could know the future, they explicitly rejected the notion of a Christ, an anointed one, and they removed the Day of Atonement from the sacred calendar.” One of their primary objectives was to centralize worship and create a strict monotheistic society. This sparked a movement to destroy rural shrines and to consolidate the major feasts to the temple in Jerusalem. Obviously, much of this was good, but much was also lost.
Margaret Barker asserts that this is how the concept of a Heavenly Mother became lost, as well as the idea of “Shekinah glory,” or the divine feminine. (You know how this de-emphasis of the feminine is a major pet peeve of mine!). The reason for the centralization of worship was to prevent worshipers from going to the “groves,” translated from the Hebrew name Asherah. Asherah was a fertility goddess known across Canaan as the “creatress of the gods,” she was the consort of the high god El (singular for Elohim). In early Israelite history, archaeological and textual evidence indicates she was also widely worshipped alongside Yahweh (Jehovah). Archeologists have found inscriptions dating back to the 8th century BCE mentioning “Yahweh and His Asherah.” Asherah poles were wooden poles or trees planted near altars. These are the “groves” mentioned in the Bible. There is also archaeological evidence that an Asherah pole existed outside Solomon’s Temple during most of its existence.
Much of the First Temple theology was erased by the Deuteronomists. In Exodus 24:9-10, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel “saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.” But in Deuteronomy 4:12 it states, “And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.” In Deuteronomy 16, all the feasts are expounded. Notably missing is Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement)—the most important of them all. Later in verse 21 it states, “Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee.”
Margaret Barker has said that the reforms of Josiah replaced wisdom with the law. Wisdom was associated with Shekinah glory considered to be the “divine feminine.” I find it interesting that in the Book of Mormon, wisdom is personified in the feminine: “How blind and impenetrable are the understandings of the children of men; for they will not seek wisdom, neither do they desire that she should rule over them!” (Mosiah 8:20).
LDS scholars have noted that the Book of Mormon restores early Israelite worship. Daniel C. Peterson published an article in Journal of Book of Mormon Studies entitled “Nephi and His Asherah.” There are several other good articles by LDS writers stemming from Margaret Barker’s research. Peterson compares Nephi’s vision of the Tree of Life to ancient Asherah types and the symbolism of sacred, life-giving trees. Nephi is shown the Tree of Life as a “sign” for the Son of God. After he asks to “know the interpretation” of the Tree, he is shown in vision “the mother of the Son of God” (1 Nephi 11:7-18). Nephi uses the adjectives of beautiful, fair, and white to describe both the Virgin Mary and the Tree of Life.
Some LDS scholars have observed that several Book of Mormon figures, such as Laman, Lemuel, and Sherem were perhaps Deuteronomists. Their constant appeal to the Law of Moses and downplaying what they call “visionary” experiences are examples. Laman and Lemuel said, “And we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses; wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people; and our father hath judged them” (1 Nephi 17:22). Sherem speaks of the Law of Moses as “the right way” and argues against converting the law “into the worship of a being which ye say shall come many hundred years hence . . . for no man knoweth of such things; for he cannot tell of things to come” (Jacob 7:7).
Perhaps, like the ephod worn by the high priest and Moses’ brazen serpent, both of which became objects of idolatrous worship, the Asherah tree may have once had its place in righteous worship.
Please see below my re-post of the Shekinah and an excellent video from Scripture Central. I forgot to mention that the name Asherah is derived from the Hebrew ashar, meaning “to be made happy.” You will recall that the fruit of the Tree of Life “was desirable to make one happy” (1 Nephi 8:10).
Asherah, the Tree of Life, the fruit, the path, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus—it’s all in the video. As a matter of fact, just skip my writeup and watch the video. (ha ha) It’s so good!!
