Ancient Hebrew and Greek pronouns do not allow for definitive determination of gender based on grammatical grounds. Therefore, God's gender is a theological decision. The Bible remains androcentric in its subject matter, authorship and perspective. One way to measure this androcentricity is through names. In the Hebrew Bible 1426 names are mentioned and 1315 of them are men's. Only 111 or 9% are women's names. All authors identified by name are male. Biblical perspective is predominantly male. Issues pertaining to women's lives are scarce. Ancient Hebrew or Jewish culture grew out of the societies of the ancient Near East. The language and style of the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament continued the traditions of ancient Canaan. Biblical laws are part of the indigenous legal traditions of the ancient Near East. Stories of the creation of the earth, mankind, animals, and plants along with the flood recountings are similar to other non-Jewish stories. Wisdom literature in the form of prose and poetry of the Bible also shares many characteristics with other cultures similar genres. Ultimately the Jews developed their unique religious system and the concept of one God, but it was a gradual process. Current archaeological work is uncovering much of this transformation from polytheistic to monotheistic belief structure.
Scholarly and personal disagreements cloud much of the interpretation of ancient Hebrew life and Biblical narrative. For some it appears that the Jewish god Yahweh absorbed all the characteristics and functions of female goddesses. Some scholars refer to this as the hidden goddess in the Hebrew Bible. The name Asherah is mentioned forty times in the Hebrew Bible. The word Asherah in the Bible can refer both to the goddess herself or a carved wooden image, which was one of Asherah's icons. Asherah was a mother goddess identifiable with other ancient cultures' goddesses of similar names like Astarte, Ishtar and Inanna.
