What I Learned from Editing Wikipedia

Photo cred: Josephine Icaro

We're all doomed.

Okay, not really, although I really wouldn't wish on ANYONE to try to edit a Wikipedia page at all involving religion, politics or other controversial matters. It is dangerous territory.

It's like that time in my first-ever high school debate meet when I made the unfortunate mistake of calling the United States a "democracy," and the next girl got up and said "democratic republic" with a look so smug you would have thought she'd just won a case in the Supreme Court. Never mind that the word "democratic republic" had little to do with actually winning the debate. That's how I feel when editing Wikipedia. Everyone out there is that girl.

Information is an important, yet dangerous thing. It's why critical thinking skills are emphasized from the time we're tiny children all the way through college. You can't just take everything you read or hear at face value. Even "facts" can say different things, depending on the presenter's biases.

First, some background on why I attempted to edit a page in the first place. I am reading the Old Testament right now, namely the prophets. There are two idols these prophets are always raging against: Baal and Asherah. It's always, get rid of your Baals and tear down your Asherah poles, because Yahweh is angry. He's the one who's helped you people, so why do you go off running to other gods? In the Bible, both gods are imports from other nations.

Remember that famous story with Elijah? Okay, there are a lot of famous stories. In the one I'm thinking of, he was the only prophet of Yahweh left in the land, but he challenged 850 other prophets (450 of Baal and 400 of Asherah) to a duel of sorts. They both put sacrifices on altars and asked their gods to rain down fire from heaven to consume the sacrifices. The Asherah prophets aren't mentioned after, so maybe Elijah gathered them to just be an audience, but the Baal prophets go crazy and dance around and cut themselves and call on Baal, and he still doesn't answer. 450 of these guys, crying out for a few hours, and still no answer. But at Elijah's first request, even after drenching the wood and sacrifice with water, Yahweh rains down fire from heaven and consumes the whole thing. This is just one example of Asherah being clearly named as an idol, in the ranks of Baal, not at all related to or approved by Yahweh.

Asherah is mentioned many times in the Old Testament; if you search her name on Bible Gateway, she will show up approximately 40 times. And each time her name is mentioned, it is usually coupled with a command, like "Cut down your Asherah poles!"

I then looked up Asherah on Wikipedia to find out more about what kind of goddess she was. She was a Near East fertility goddess, check; she was imported to Israel from Canaan, check; she was the consort of El (another god who functioned as a sort of Yahweh in another nation), check; most scholars the world over now accept that she was Yahweh's consort - wait - what?

That contradicts everything I'm reading in the Bible.

Okay, you might be totally bored at this point, but bear with me. It's not just about information, but how information is presented. Read this:

"The majority of scholars the world over now accept that Yahweh had a consort...Further evidence includes the many female figurines unearthed in Israel, supporting the view that Asherah functioned as a goddess and consort of Yahweh and was worshiped as the Queen of Heaven."

First of all, there is a HUGE difference between the phrase "Yahweh had a consort" and the phrase "At one time, the Israelite people worshiped Asherah as Yahweh's consort." The first phrase necessitates that the Bible has been falsified (there is a theory floating around that Asherah was Israel's female goddess and was edited out of the Bible by chauvinist men). Since the Bible as it is now only refers to Asherah as an idol and not as God's wife, such a phrase as "Yahweh had a consort" would mean that the "editing" theory was definitely true. The second phrase (made up by yours truly) acknowledges that Asherah was worshiped as a goddess by most of Israel at one point (and the Bible already tells you that; it must have been pretty hard for Elijah being the ONLY Yahweh prophet left in the country in the above story!), but leaves room for the monotheistic Hebrew faith that we know by the famous phrase: "The Lord our God, the Lord is one."

Here is what the artifacts show and that the Bible corroborates, as far as I can tell: The Israelites worshiped Asherah, they had her buried with them, and she was known as "The Queen of Heaven" (this title is also acknowledged in the Bible, though as idolatry, and is one of the reasons Yahweh's wrath came down upon his people). Those things are true. One of the articles I read says that after the Israelites' exile to Babylon, which is what I'm reading about right now, is when their faith solidified (or re-solidified if you believe as I do that the Torah has not been edited) as monotheistic. And from the perspective of one who believes the Bible, I believe their faith became monotheistic because of all the prophets who had foreseen that Israel would go into exile under Yahweh's wrath, due to their continuous idolatry. Even after Elijah's miracles, it took exile to Babylon for them to see that Yahweh's prophets had been right all along, and that Yahweh was the one true God. Now, I don't expect people who don't rely on the Bible to trust that, but it definitely makes sense to me.

The problem is that when people spin true artifacts and evidence to suit their preconceived notions. And I don't just mean atheists. Christians do this too. It's a huge problem, and we have to let facts just stand as facts and theories stand as theories. It's like what Lee Strobel said at the beginning of The Case for Christ: The evidence may all line up and seem to point one direction, until you reexamine it closely and see that it points even more clearly in the opposite direction. We have to leave room for this and make sure that our biases don't infect our reading of historical data.

When I tried to edit part of the Wikipedia article to acknowledge that, though there many references to Asherah in the Bible, none of them are positive or acknowledge her as the genuine Queen of Heaven, someone immediately changed it back because of biblical citations (a controversial change-back given that the subject was the Hebrew people, though understandable). They also deleted my encyclopedic citation for undisclosed reasons. What's ironic, however, is that up above in the same article, someone referenced Jeremiah, and this reference has not been removed because it doesn't cast doubt upon the research of those who believe the Bible was edited.

I changed it again the other day, in such a way that I believe makes the article more neutral while still not contradicting what a source said. So far no one has touched it, but perhaps someone will have changed it back by the time you read this. If you have a Wikipedia account, read the talk page for Asherah, and you will see that I am not the first person to take issue with the unequivocal phrasing that "Yahweh had a consort." And some of those people express their reasons better than I have here.

All that to say, this is what I learned, or re-learned: Don't take everything you read at face value. Realize that people can phrase factual findings to support any conclusions they want to support. This includes even what I'm writing here. When you read something that troubles you or casts doubt, look into that claim. If you are a Christian, read the Bible and know that Book like the back of your hand. Then, even though you can't convince anyone else of anything, you can at least stand your own ground and know why you believe what you do.

Okay, that's enough. As important as this stuff is to realize, I'd rather be out learning how to live more like Jesus than writing things like this.