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Carolyn Goodman Plampin http://home.netcom.com/~cplampin

Series-Subjects Relevant to an Informed Opinion about Christian Women in Ministry

ANCIENT GODDESS RELIGION

First created in January, 1996, Revised January 10, 2007

Baptist Women in Ministry http://www.bwim.info/index.php/welcome
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Questions, comments, or suggestions
of bibliography or sites to include may be sent to
Carolyn Goodman Plampin
Coordinator Subjects Relevant to an Informed Opinion
1220 Vienna Dr., #504
Sunnyvale, CA 94089-2007
(408) 734-5141
Master of Teaching, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil, March 20, 1968
Master of Divinity, Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, June 2, 1978
Missionary to Brazil of the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1957-1988
Academic dean (without title) and professor, Instituto Biblico Batista, A.B. Deter and
Seminário Teológico Batista do Paraná, Curitiba, 1959-1979
Academic dean and professor, Seminário de Educacao Crista, Recife, 1980-1986
e-mail: cplampin@ix.netcom.com

CONTENTS

ATTRIBUTION OF SEX TO GOD

THE SYMBOLIC MEANING OF SEX

For untold millenniums people conceptualized and worshiped God as female. This religion "existed and flourished in the Near and Middle East for thousands of years before the arrival of the patriarchal Abraham, first prophet of the male diety Yahweh. Archaeologists have traced the worship of the Goddess back to the Neolithic communities of about 7000 B.C., some to the Upper Paleolithic cultures of about 25,000 B.C. From the time of its Neolithic origins, its existence was repeatedly attested to until well into Roman times," so says Stone, pp. 9-10. This ancient Goddess religion was finally suppressed. "The eastern Emperor Justinian, who himself could neither read nor write, closed the oracle (Delphi) and the schools of philosophy in Greece in 529 A.D., after which indescribably tragic date there were no more educated women in Greece for well over a thousand years, ergo, no more priestesses" so says Goodrich, p. 203. For what it meant to be a pagan priest see Plutarch, who was roughly contemporary with Paul. For how ancient women were losing status see Aeschylus and Sermonides.

This religion has left profound marks on the Judeo-Christian thought about women, especially because of the prolonged and bloody battle to exerminate it. There are many examples of this in the Old Testament, such as Elijah's confrontation of the 450 prophets of Baal but not of the 400 prophets of the Asherah (I Kings 18:19-46), and Jehu's slaughter of the prophets, worshipers and priests of Baal (II Kings 10:18-28). Instead of just rejecting the pagan theology, Christian thought has rejected woman, sexuality, and marriage.

Two of the subjects that need to be studied urgently are the influence of the reaction against the pagan religion on our understanding of the attribution of sex to God and the symbolic meaning of sex.

ATTRIBUTION OF SEX TO GOD

In the Goddess religion God was conceptualized as female and women were priestesses and representatives of the goddess. Judeo-Christian thought made God male and men priests and representatives of God. It was not because women were considered weak and unintelligent that they were repressed, but because they had powerful voices in the pagan religion. The argument that women were weak and unintelligent was developed later in order to justify repressing women. To say that God is like a father or like a mother is biblical. Those who think that it is correct to call God father, but not to call God mother, must understand that you ere in the exact same measure when doing either one if you have in mind attributing maleness or femaleness to God.

From the Jewish point of view, Patai says it very well:

As for God, He is not merely the One and Only God, but also eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, aphysical (and therefore invisible), inscrutable, and imcomprehensibe, as well as just, good, compassionate, merciful and benevolent. Since, being pure spirit, he is without body, he possesses no physical attributes and hence no sexual traits. To say that God is either male or female is therefore completely impossible from the viewpoint of traditional Judaism. As Maimonides, the greatest medieval Jewish philosoipher, put it, "God is not a body, nor can bodily attributes be ascribed to him, and He has no likeness at all."

Yet one factor, a linguistic one, defied all theological repugnance to the attribution of bodily qualities to God. It is in the nature of the Hebrew language that every noun has either the masculine or feminine gender (except a very few which can take either). The two Biblical names of God, Yahweh (pronounced, out of reverence for its great holiness, as "Adonai" and usually translated as "the Lord") and Elohim (or briefly El: translated as "God") are masculine. "He" when a verb describes that He did something or an adjective qualifies Him, they appear in the masculine form (in Hebrew there are male and female forms for verbs and adjectives). Thus, every verbal statement about God conveyed the idea that He was masculine. Most people, of course, never stopped to think about this, but every Hebrew-speaking individual from early childhood was imbued with the idea that God was a masculine deity. No subsequent teaching about the aphysical, incomprehensible or transcendental nature of the deity could eradicate this early mental image of the masculne God.
Patai, THE HEBREW GODDESS, pp. 21-22.

THE SYMBOLIC MEANING OF SEX

1. In the goddess religion sex was believed to be a way of getting in touch with the divine. The sexual relations of the high priestess were rigidly controlled as it was believed that she passed divinity to the man with whom she had sexual relations and that he could, in turn, pass this on. In order to avoid this, in earlier times he was killed but the more humane method of castration evolved.

It is well known that some of the goddess priestesses were assigned to the task of having sexual relations with men who came to the temples to "sacrifice" and gave an offering for this "sacrifice." This was such a marked part of the pagan worship that apostacy in the Old Testament was called "prostitution" and "adultery." In the New Testament, Paul says: "Do do not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, 'The two will become one flesh'" (I Cor. 6:15-16).

However, there was a great dicotomy of thought on the part of Christians about sex in the pagan religion, in that it was rejected for its sexual licence on the one hand and admired for its virginity on the other. The Vestal Virgins of Rome are examples of virginity which was thought to be a subject of national security, so much so that they were buried alive for breaking their vow of virginity. Christians adopted two attitudes: rejection of sexual license and acceptance of virginity as a way to serve God. Many treatisies were written in the early church on virginity for both women and men, and the Roman Catholic church continues vows of chastity for nuns and priests today.

2. In the goddess religion power and position were passed by inheritance from mother to daughter. The daughter of the high priestess became the high priestess. The temple was the seat of religious and civil government. Jezabel is an example of a daughter whose mother was the high priestess of Sidon. Judaism evolved the priesthood from the family of Aaron and their servants from the family of Levi. Regulations concerning the high priest included: "A widow, or a divorced woman, or one is is profaned by harlotry, these he may not take; but rather he is to marry a virgin of his own people; that he may not profane his offspring among his people: for I am the Lord who sanctifies him" (Lev. 21: 10, 14-15). The patriarchal family system was evolved in Grego-Roman and Judeo-Christian thought. Today it is common to believe that men have always been in charge when patriarchalism developed in Jewish and Greco-Roman history, and, as has been noted, written "history began at Sumer" some twenty-five centuries before.

3. For pagan women, in some places and some times, the first sexual experience was to be in a temple and dedicated to the goddess. Judeo-Christian practice demanded virginity of women. However, the book of Hosea needs to be restudied to see what light it sheds on how to deal with women who were called "prostitutes" but may have been "priestesses" or women who had dedicated their sexuality to the goddess. The loss of virginity would have had theological implications.

4. For pagan men, in some places and some times, castration was the way in which they dedicated themselves as priests of the goddess. The "Galli" of Cybele and Attis in Asia Minor are examples of this. Godwin says: "The Emperor Domitian in the first century AD made castration a capital crime, but did not succeed in preventing the practice any more than Hadrian, who tried to prohibit circumcision; a symbolic substitute used by ancient Egyptians and Arabs as well as Jews" (p. 20). Plutarch tells what a priviledge being a priest of the goddess was. We need studies of the eunuchs in the ancient world to help us understand what men received in exchange for castration and how vows of chastity relate to castration and circumcision.

A serious study of this religion needs to be undertaken in Christian colleges and seminaries in order to separate Christocentric teachings from reactions to the pagan religion.

Bibliography on Ancient Goddess Religion

Dawson, Patsy Rae. Why God's People Make the Best Lovers. http://gospelthemes.com/lovers.htm

Gimbutas, Marija. THE GODDESSES AND GOD OF OLD EUROPE, 6500-3500 B.C., MYTHS AND CULT IMAGES. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982.

Godwin, Joscelyn. MYSTERY RELIGIONS IN THE ANCIENT WORLD. Cambridge: Harper and Row, Publishers, San Francisco, 1981.

Goodrich, Norma Lorre. PRIESTESSES. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1989.

Hayter, Mary. "Part One: Sexuality in God and the Nature of Priesthood," pp. 5-79 in THE NEW EVE IN CHRIST, The Use and Abuse of the Bible in the Debate about Women in the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987. Monagan, Pat. A Goddess Bibliography. http://www.iit.edu/~phillips/personal/basic/goddess.html

Ochs, Carol. Behind the Sex o God, Toward a New Consciousness -- Transcending Matriarchy and Patriarchy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1977.

Patai, Raphael. THE HEBREW GODDESS. New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1967.

Plurabelle, Anna Livia. The Book of the Goddess. http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/bog/bog00.htm

Plutarch. "On Isis and Osiris," in Grant, Frederick C., ed. HELLENISTIC RELIGIONS, THE AGE OF SYNCRETISM. The Library of Religion, Vol. II. New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1953, pp. 80-95.

Sermonides Amorgos (4th Century B.C.). "The Greatest Ill That Zeus Hath Made," in Kaplan, Justin, ed. WITH MALICE TOWARD WOMEN. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1952, pp. 14-18.

Shlain, Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image http://www.bodhitree.com/lectures/Shlain.html

Stone, Merlin. WHEN GOD WAS A WOMAN. New York: The Dial Press, 1976, also New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.

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