**Beth Alpert Nakhai**

Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA; bnakhai@email.arizona.edu

Received: 5 January 2019; Accepted: 21 January 2019; Published: 19 February 2019

**Abstract:** Historically, those studying Israelite religion have ignored the existence of women in Iron Age Israel (1200–587 BCE). They have, therefore, accounted neither for the religious beliefs of half of ancient Israel's population nor for the responsibilities that women assumed for maintaining religious rituals and traditions. Such reconstructions of Israelite religion are seriously flawed. Only in the last four decades have scholars, primarily women, begun to explore women's essential roles in Israel's religious culture. This article utilizes evidence from the Hebrew Bible and from archaeological sites throughout Israel. It demonstrates that some women had roles within the Jerusalem Temple. Most women, however, resided in towns and villages throughout the Land. There, they undertook responsibility for clan-based and community-based religious rituals and rites, including pilgrimage, seasonal festivals, rites of military victory, and rites of mourning. They fulfilled, as well, essential roles within the sphere of domestic or household religion. At home, they provided medico-magical healing for all family members, as well as care for women and babies throughout pregnancy, childbirth, and beyond. They, and the men in their communities, worshipped Yahweh, Israel's primary deity, and the goddess Asherah, as well; for most people, these two divinities were inextricably linked.

**Keywords:** religion; women; Israel; Judah; Iron Age; domestic religion; family religion; rituals; worship; Jerusalem Temple; feminist studies; archaeology; Hebrew Bible; Old Testament; Yahweh; Asherah

European and American exploration of Ottoman Palestine in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century was fueled, to a great extent, by an interest in Israelite religion, since the Lands of the Bible were understood to hold foundational truths about what was commonly understood as the inevitable supremacy of Christianity. The whole region, from the Levantine coast to ancient Ur, was seen as the geographic and spiritual backdrop to the story of Jesus, a story that highlights exemplary acts by a number of women. How ironic it is, then, that the scholars who engaged in the study of ancient Israel felt no compunction about disregarding the existence of women within Israel's population, thereby eliminating (*inter alia*) women's engagement with religion as a topic of discussion. What this means is that most of what scholars have assumed they knew about Israelite religion is wrong, because it has excluded consideration of women (and children), that is, consideration of more than half the population of ancient Israel. It also means that almost everything known today about women's participation in Israelite religion is newly acquired knowledge. This paper considers the problems created by the exclusion of women from reconstructions of ancient Israel. It then presents a more complete reconstruction, one that incorporates both archaeological and biblical evidence to highlight the spiritual and ritual worlds of women in Iron Age Israel (1200–587 BCE).
