ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author presents a case of King Asa of Judah, who reigned from around 911 to 871 bce and wrought a violent religious revolution there, removing Asherah from the Temple and forcing his people to embrace Yahweh. He shows that his hypothesis fits the evidence reader have better than the theories that have heretofore been proposed by Biblical scholars. The Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, to which the Biblical editors often allude, has been lost or suppressed, and the Biblical text itself is often only primary source. The first king of Judah after the division of the Israelite kingdom was Rehoboam, son of Solomon and of Naamah, an Ammonite princes. Maachah grew up in a family in which incest, fratricide, and parricide kept occurring. Maachah was very powerful after the death of Abijam and clearly was “the power behind the throne” of both Abijam and Asa.
