Beekeeper
10th July 2010, 09:05 AM
When God was a Woman by Merlin Stone, Harcourt Inc, 1976..
Archaeology is one of those sciences that are constantly reviving. Like other areas of human endeavour, archaeology is vulnerable to human prejudice and suppression because, I guess, human beings will always have agendas. Merlin Stone, no doubt, has hers but it’s one that I’m open to and found at least partially encouraging as a woman. Further, she is very persuasive as she criticises the scholarship prior to the publication of her book in 1976 and the tendency of male scholars to gloss over the importance of the goddess figures and to endorse patriarchy.
In her book, Stone contends that the goddess religion reigned in the Near and Middle East for millennia and that the goddess was worshipped not just as a fertility symbol but as the wise creator and source of order and civilization. For instance, in India, the Goddess Saravasti was honoured as the inventor of the alphabet while in Sumer the Goddess Nidaba was said to have been the first to inscribe clay tablets with writing. In Mesopotamia, the Goddess Ninlil provided Her people with understanding of agriculture, while female deities were extolled almost universally as healers. Goddesses also presided over hunting and the military arts, gave divine revelation and were dispensers of law and justice. Subsequently, the myths and legends of these societies revering the deity for her wisdom, power, courage and justice, moulded societal perceptions allowing ancient women to serve as physicians, hunters, warriors, priestesses, oracles and judges.
Clearly, something happened then to bring about the suppression of the feminine, a power that has only begun to re-emerge in recent centuries. Stone postulates that the gradual decline in female status and freedom came as a result of the influence of consecutive invasions by Indo-European tribes from the North. It is her contention that these tribes infiltrated the Hebrew people and were represented as the Levite priestly class. She draws on considerable Biblical reference to support the ongoing campaign to suppress the goddess religion and impose Yawehism in its place. She discusses, particularly well I think, the creation of the Eden myth with that end in sight and the far-reaching implications of that myth.
The connection between the Goddess and the symbol of the serpent in the Paradise myth is convincingly elaborated in Stone’s text. Further, she explains the link between the Sycamore Fig tree (or Black Mulberry), with its red fruit that may have been consumed as a kind of sacrament, and the Goddess. Such trees, or asherah were planted alongside the altars or shrines of the goddesses. In one tradition, the tree, known as the Living Body of Hathor on earth, was said to give eternal life. Thus, we get the components of the myth: a snake in the garden and forbidden fruit on a tree. The authors of the myth add the idea that when consumed the fruit gives the knowledge of good and evil, in particular, sexual awareness, as we see with Adam and Eve discovering their nakedness and covering their private parts with fig leaves.
Stone explains that priestesses participated in sacred sex in the temples of the goddess* and that, as society was matrilineal, the father of a child was not as important as its mother, from whom it took its identity and inherited its wealth. She creates a portrait of the temples as the centre of communities, with the High Priestess as very powerful because she represented the deity. Societies were apparently run by groups of male and female elders, while women administered the temples and the surrounding farmlands, providing food for the community, and men looked after children the weaving. Monogamy was not an expectation placed on women, at least not in the temples.
Stone takes objection to the tendency of scholars to identify priestesses in the Goddess’ temples as “sacred prostitutes,†seeing this as a patriarchal contamination of what these women really were and how they perceived their role. She feels that the Indo-European invaders wished to take and maintain power but found it very difficult to do so in these Goddess-worshipping cultures. She references the mass slaughters of these people of Canaan by the invading Hebrews in the Old Testament and also the keeping alive of their virgin daughters to be forced into marriage to the Hebrews. (The Hebrew men, of course, were permitted harems of up to 50 wives and concubines). This leads her to speculate if the ongoing re-emergence of the Goddess religions was partially linked to these women and if the Bible accounts exaggerated when they talked of total annihilation; if, instead, some of these suppressed peoples lived on to continue their religious practices. There were, of course, cities the Hebrews had not conquered that continued their religious practices and the Hebrews themselves had a tendency to return to the old religion when things weren’t going well. Occasionally, also, Hebrew leaders were not adverse to marrying High Priestesses of the Goddess religion and converting to their practices, as attested in the Old Testament.
So, the Levites facing the challenge of imposing a single male deity, patriarchy and a system of patrilineal descent, used myth to demonise, control and silence Woman. The myth of Adam and Eve decreed Male sovereignty over Woman who had, according to the myth, initially been made from his rib as his helpmate and to keep him company and had subsequently led him astray. He, it seemed, was made in God’s image, she a lesser creation. Stone sees the creating of “original sin†and making the sexual act evil as part of the agenda to suppress Goddess culture,
Without virginity for the unmarried female and strict sexual
restraints upon married women, male ownership of name and
property and male control of the divine right to the throne could
not exist. Wandering further into the Garden of Eden, where
the oracular cobra curled about the sycamore fig, we soon
discover that the various events of the Paradise myth, one by one,
betray the political intentions of those who first invented the myth.
(p.218)
If you like this kind of research, I recommend Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman, as an interesting, cogent, apparently well-supported text. I imagine that, by now, some of her claims have been refuted by other scholars and, as I read, I sensed omissions and delays that were, I suspect, geared towards creating an impression that life under the Goddess was better for all. If you are a woman who was raised on Christian, Jewish or Islamic Scripture and subsequently rejected much of it, you may find the information in this book somewhat liberating. It goes nicely with CW's recent link (http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=20878) , which I was part way through before my connection failed.
*Lilith, in a Sumerian fragment, was described as the “hand of the Goddess Inanna†who was sent to gather men from the street and bring them to the temple. She later appeared in Hebrew Mythology as the first wife of Adam, who refused to submit sexually to him. Later, she became the demon who impregnated her self with the spilt sperm of men, their demon offspring subsequently plaguing them upon their deaths.
Archaeology is one of those sciences that are constantly reviving. Like other areas of human endeavour, archaeology is vulnerable to human prejudice and suppression because, I guess, human beings will always have agendas. Merlin Stone, no doubt, has hers but it’s one that I’m open to and found at least partially encouraging as a woman. Further, she is very persuasive as she criticises the scholarship prior to the publication of her book in 1976 and the tendency of male scholars to gloss over the importance of the goddess figures and to endorse patriarchy.
In her book, Stone contends that the goddess religion reigned in the Near and Middle East for millennia and that the goddess was worshipped not just as a fertility symbol but as the wise creator and source of order and civilization. For instance, in India, the Goddess Saravasti was honoured as the inventor of the alphabet while in Sumer the Goddess Nidaba was said to have been the first to inscribe clay tablets with writing. In Mesopotamia, the Goddess Ninlil provided Her people with understanding of agriculture, while female deities were extolled almost universally as healers. Goddesses also presided over hunting and the military arts, gave divine revelation and were dispensers of law and justice. Subsequently, the myths and legends of these societies revering the deity for her wisdom, power, courage and justice, moulded societal perceptions allowing ancient women to serve as physicians, hunters, warriors, priestesses, oracles and judges.
Clearly, something happened then to bring about the suppression of the feminine, a power that has only begun to re-emerge in recent centuries. Stone postulates that the gradual decline in female status and freedom came as a result of the influence of consecutive invasions by Indo-European tribes from the North. It is her contention that these tribes infiltrated the Hebrew people and were represented as the Levite priestly class. She draws on considerable Biblical reference to support the ongoing campaign to suppress the goddess religion and impose Yawehism in its place. She discusses, particularly well I think, the creation of the Eden myth with that end in sight and the far-reaching implications of that myth.
The connection between the Goddess and the symbol of the serpent in the Paradise myth is convincingly elaborated in Stone’s text. Further, she explains the link between the Sycamore Fig tree (or Black Mulberry), with its red fruit that may have been consumed as a kind of sacrament, and the Goddess. Such trees, or asherah were planted alongside the altars or shrines of the goddesses. In one tradition, the tree, known as the Living Body of Hathor on earth, was said to give eternal life. Thus, we get the components of the myth: a snake in the garden and forbidden fruit on a tree. The authors of the myth add the idea that when consumed the fruit gives the knowledge of good and evil, in particular, sexual awareness, as we see with Adam and Eve discovering their nakedness and covering their private parts with fig leaves.
Stone explains that priestesses participated in sacred sex in the temples of the goddess* and that, as society was matrilineal, the father of a child was not as important as its mother, from whom it took its identity and inherited its wealth. She creates a portrait of the temples as the centre of communities, with the High Priestess as very powerful because she represented the deity. Societies were apparently run by groups of male and female elders, while women administered the temples and the surrounding farmlands, providing food for the community, and men looked after children the weaving. Monogamy was not an expectation placed on women, at least not in the temples.
Stone takes objection to the tendency of scholars to identify priestesses in the Goddess’ temples as “sacred prostitutes,†seeing this as a patriarchal contamination of what these women really were and how they perceived their role. She feels that the Indo-European invaders wished to take and maintain power but found it very difficult to do so in these Goddess-worshipping cultures. She references the mass slaughters of these people of Canaan by the invading Hebrews in the Old Testament and also the keeping alive of their virgin daughters to be forced into marriage to the Hebrews. (The Hebrew men, of course, were permitted harems of up to 50 wives and concubines). This leads her to speculate if the ongoing re-emergence of the Goddess religions was partially linked to these women and if the Bible accounts exaggerated when they talked of total annihilation; if, instead, some of these suppressed peoples lived on to continue their religious practices. There were, of course, cities the Hebrews had not conquered that continued their religious practices and the Hebrews themselves had a tendency to return to the old religion when things weren’t going well. Occasionally, also, Hebrew leaders were not adverse to marrying High Priestesses of the Goddess religion and converting to their practices, as attested in the Old Testament.
So, the Levites facing the challenge of imposing a single male deity, patriarchy and a system of patrilineal descent, used myth to demonise, control and silence Woman. The myth of Adam and Eve decreed Male sovereignty over Woman who had, according to the myth, initially been made from his rib as his helpmate and to keep him company and had subsequently led him astray. He, it seemed, was made in God’s image, she a lesser creation. Stone sees the creating of “original sin†and making the sexual act evil as part of the agenda to suppress Goddess culture,
Without virginity for the unmarried female and strict sexual
restraints upon married women, male ownership of name and
property and male control of the divine right to the throne could
not exist. Wandering further into the Garden of Eden, where
the oracular cobra curled about the sycamore fig, we soon
discover that the various events of the Paradise myth, one by one,
betray the political intentions of those who first invented the myth.
(p.218)
If you like this kind of research, I recommend Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman, as an interesting, cogent, apparently well-supported text. I imagine that, by now, some of her claims have been refuted by other scholars and, as I read, I sensed omissions and delays that were, I suspect, geared towards creating an impression that life under the Goddess was better for all. If you are a woman who was raised on Christian, Jewish or Islamic Scripture and subsequently rejected much of it, you may find the information in this book somewhat liberating. It goes nicely with CW's recent link (http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=20878) , which I was part way through before my connection failed.
*Lilith, in a Sumerian fragment, was described as the “hand of the Goddess Inanna†who was sent to gather men from the street and bring them to the temple. She later appeared in Hebrew Mythology as the first wife of Adam, who refused to submit sexually to him. Later, she became the demon who impregnated her self with the spilt sperm of men, their demon offspring subsequently plaguing them upon their deaths.