Who Was Asherah? And Why Did Israel Worship Her?

Archaeologists digging in the Sinai desert found ancient Hebrew inscriptions that seem to place a goddess named Asherah right next to the name of the God of Israel. Thousands of female figurines turned up in homes and villages across ancient Judah. Scholars looked at the evidence and reached a conclusion that's spreading everywhere now: the God of the Bible had a wife, monotheism was a late invention, and the Old Testament buried the real religion of real Israelites.

So what does it all mean?