The same company responsible for building a full-scale model of the Arches of Baal last year has produced a full-sized replica of the ancient Roman goddess Athena.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) used the group, the Institute of Digital Archaeology (IDA), to make a 3-D replica of Athena and recently had it on display at the United Nations headquarter in New York City.

Similar to what happened to the Baal arches, in 2015 ISIS destroyed the original statue of the goddess in a museum in Palmyra, Syria.

According to UAE, this ancient goddess was “synonymous with reason, refuge and the rule of law, all the same values on which the historic institution was built.”

However, this is only part of the story. Athena was also the Roman goddess of war and was valued for providing warfare strategy. The recreated idol actually portrays the goddess holding a spear, representative of her warrior symbolism.

Many believe Athena was simply the Roman version of the ancient Canaanite goddess Asherah, that went by various names in different cultures — Ashtoreth, Astarte and Ishtar in Assyria.

Asherah played a prominent role in Israel’s history. When King Ahab married a Phoenician princess by the name of Jezebel and took her to his palace in Israel, Jezebel brought with her 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah:

¹⁹ Now then send and gather to me all Israel at Mount Carmel, together with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of the Asherah, who eat at Jezebel’s table.” (1 Kings 18:19 NASV)

Jezebel actually set up two pagan temples in Israel, one for Baal and one for Asherah (1 Kings 16:32-33). She became one of the most evil and notorious queens in Israel’s history.

The Bible is also very clear that the worship of these ancient idols was associated with demons or evil spirits:

“They made Him jealous with strange gods;
With abominations they provoked Him to anger.
¹⁷ “They sacrificed to demons who were not God,
To gods whom they have not known,
New gods who came lately,
Whom your fathers did not dread. (Deuteronomy 32:16-17 NASV)

This passage incorporates a grammatical effect called synonymous parallelism where different words are used to portray the same idea. In this passage, ‘strange gods’ and ‘demons who were not gods’ are essentially synonymous terms. This connects the worship of the ancient gods and idols with the worship of demons.

Some suspect these two temples that Jezebel set up opened the door for evil spirits to work in Israel and gave Jezebel the power to eventually take control of God’s chosen nation.

The resurrection of Asherah may be just coincidence, but the Book of Revelation hints at what may be a reference to a female deity that will exert considerable influence in the world in the end times, both politically and economically (Revelation 17: 1; 18:3; 18:7; 17: 1-2; 17:15).

Sources:

• Pagan war goddess statue unveiled at UN as idol worship makes a global comeback: Breaking Israel News