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BrklynLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-30-06 10:54 PM
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When God was a Woman
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RoyGBiv Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-30-06 11:00 PM
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1. Good book, btw ...

I recommend it.

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BrklynLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-30-06 11:08 PM
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2. Yes. I could not put it down.
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Kipling Donating Member (929 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-31-06 06:08 AM
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3. Most pagan religion had an Earth Mother and a Sky Father who were equal.
There was never - by and large - really a time when women ruled society and religion as men did for most of Western history.
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Geoff R. Casavant Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-31-06 11:09 AM
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4. There are tantalizing clues
in Genesis that there was once a female counterpart to Yahweh.

To wit: "Let us make man in our own image." I've often wondered, why would Yahweh have to announce that, instead of simply saying ,"let it be so," like He did with everything else? Then it occurred to me, that almost all human activity could be completed by a single person, given enough time and the proper tools. One person could build a house, or a boat, or farm a hundred acres, if only given time and tools. But the one activity that absolutely requires two people is the conception of a child. So Yahweh is discussing family plans with a counterpart.

Nor can the references to "us" and "our" be seen as the "Royal We." I am not aware off the top of my head of any other reference in the Bible where Yahweh uses the Royal We.
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Warpy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed May-31-06 02:28 PM
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5. Are you talking about the transition from Elhoistic to Yahwhistic?
The first part of the story, the creation of everything up to the ridiculous garden, was done by the "Elohim" or gods, plural. This whole bit is fairly poetic and seems to have been largely cribbed from Babylonian mythology.

There is an abrupt transition when the garden is created and the prose starts to get a little clumsy, and that's where Yahweh appears all by himself, and he hogs the whole show after that.

Funny, I've always thought the whole thing problematic on so many levels. For one thing, the garden is a pen for pets. For another, Yahweh lies to Adam when he says the fruit will kill him: it doesn't. For another, Eve is never told to forego the fruit, apparently females can withstand the knowledge of good and evil perfectly well and it's only when a male decides he wants it for himself that the trouble starts. Then there's the snake, who tells the absolute truth to Eve, that the fruit will give her knowledge and that it won't kill her. Who's the real villain here?

Also, when they are kicked out of the wildlife refuge, pet cage, whatever, they go to dwell in the land of Nod, where they presumably found spouses for their children. Either that, or Eve was remarkably fecund for a very long time and not picky about bedding her children. I guess that's where the allegorical part comes in, even for the literalists.

Then there was Lilith, someone who exists mostly in oral history, that first proposed mate in the pet cage who spurned the weakling Adam because she didn't feel she ought to be subordinate to such a poor creature.

It's fun to play with on an intellectual level, but I wouldn't want to base a religion on it.
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Katherine Brengle Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-02-06 05:29 PM
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6. I took this book out of the library years ago and never returned it...
my bad.

It is a great book.
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bloom Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-06-06 10:29 AM
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7. I got the book the other day
Edited on Tue Jun-06-06 10:30 AM by bloom
It's good for destroying/deconstructing the myths.


Screaming Into the Void has a good post today about fairy tales (seems like a similar thing)

Who Offers the Poison Apple?

http://amananta.wordpress.com/2006/06/06/who-offers-the-poison-apple/
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