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Heavenly Mother in the Bible?
Some would argue that a reference to female deity is in the Bible, namely references to the "queen of heaven" by Jeremiah. The problem of course is that such references (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17-19, 25) are negative. Mormon apologist Kevin Barney responds to this matter with the following (see http://go.mrm.org/barney-on-biv):
Your complaint about undermining the authority of reform prophets [like Jeremiah] is where the rubber really hits the road, and I think it’s your strongest point. I knew this was going to be tough for rank and file Mormons to accept. We tend to want to read the scriptures as being univocal, without development, and if one prophet was negative on a practice then it’s a bad practice and all prophets would agree.Just recently I had to counsel with a man in another state who used to be in my ward, because his BYU attending son had learned of Adam-God. His son said in effect, Look, this isn’t a trifle, it’s on the nature of God. It’s something as important as can be. And BY as prophet taught this. So it either has to be true and the Church is in apostasy for not teaching it, or the prophets are wrong altogether and they have no authority. We’ve raised a whole generation of Saints with such linear thinking about prophetic infallibility that we can’t handle the nuances, and there really are a lot of them beyond the obvious A-G example.The truth is that the winners get to write the history, and it was those who rejected Asherah who largely redacted or wrote the OT as we have it today. There is, quite frankly, a lot of political spin in the OT. I recognize that we get really nervous when we start talking about spin in the scriptures. So I don’t blame anyone, including you, for not wanting to follow me there."
Source and Full Document
http://www.mrm.org/heavenly-mother
