Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism by Jenny Kien

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

It can be determined that the Mother Goddess has been called by many different

names throughout the ages, be they Ashera, Queen of Heaven, Virgin Mary, Sophia

or Shekinah, to name a few.

 

In the appended book summary of " Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism " by

Jenny Kien, Universal Publishers, 2000, Kien's research goal to 'return the

feminine to Judaism' also includes her reinterpretation of the story of the

Garden of Eden in Genesis.

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi's account follows.

 

 

Some quotes from 'The Search for the Divine Mother' make reference to

Ashera/Shekinah/Holy Spirit:

 

" However, the cult of the Mother Goddess under the name of the Queen of Heaven

reappeared locally in the Jewish colonies of Egypt during the fifth century

B.C. " p.95

 

Latin name of the Virgin Mary - Coelorum Regina Queen of Heaven p.270

 

" We should also note that God revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush,

yet another manifestation of the Mother Goddess. Even in the Bible itself,

burning groves are associated with Ashera, the Queen of Heaven. " The symbolism

is obvious. Who but the Inner Mother, Kundalini, can reveal the Father?

Illumination (the Burning Bush) is given by Kundalini, making it possible to

become aware of the Spirit, i.e. the Eternal Father. " p.94

 

" The brazen serpent held aloft by Moses was a symbol of Kundalini and the

protective power of the Goddess. Later, King Hezekiah of Judea (727-698 B.C.)

realising its association with the Goddess, smashed the brazen serpent Moses had

made, and destroyed the sacred images of the Goddess Ashera (Asherove). " p.88

 

" Like Sophia, She is the primordial power at the beginning of creation:

 

'When the thought of creating the world emerged in God,

He first created the Holy Spirit,

Which is known as the glory of our god.

It is a bright flash and a great light

Which extends to all creatures...

And the wise call this great light the Shekinah.'p.105

 

copyright - Verez,Gwenael.The Search for the Divine Mother. Akademski pecat -

Macedonia, 1997.

 

 

 

Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism

Jenny Kien

Universal Publishers, 2000

 

Kien wants to return the feminine to Judaism, not by celebrating Shekinah, but

by returning Judaism to its original polytheistic roots. Kien examines traces of

the Goddess found in the Hebrew scripture, part of which forms the Christian Old

Testament, and describes process by which the Goddess may have been lost to

Judaism.

 

Tanach = Acronym name for the Jewish Bible which consists of Torah, Neviim and

Ketubim, respectively, the five books of Moses, Prophets, and Writings.

 

 

" In this book, I show that there were goddesses in the old Israelite

religion, that this religion was generally polytheistic throughout both Temple

Periods, and that it was this polytheistic religion which gave rise to many

parts of the Jewish Bible or Tanach, which forms the Christian Old Testament.

That is, goddesses are buried within Judaism and can still be found hidden in

Biblical texts. Revealing them in these texts means finding a goddess in a

living religion, in current ritual practice and within our own culture.

 

 

Revealing goddesses in the Tanach also strengthens the idea of the Divine

Woman in Christianity, and is one step in returning the female to the spiritual

imagery that has molded Western society. Finding goddesses in the bible will

enable women to reclaim these central texts and to start re-forming their

influence on our society. Reclaiming the texts will also counteract the

oppression of women that is reinforced with each conventional reading of the

Bible the world over.

 

Because of this, I feel it is necessary to search for Jewish goddesses in

the Tanach and to reinstate them in the mainstream religions based on this Book,

rather than moving with them to the modern feminist spiritually movement and

neo-Paganism. It is clear that such goddesses would be much more welcome there

but, although neo-Paganism is the most rapidly growing religion in North

American, it does not yet reach into the core of mainstream society. And this is

where I feel that deep change must be effected for our society truly to

transform itself into one that respects women. " pp. i - ii

 

 

" The first and most apparent effect of reinstating a Divine Woman at the

center of our society would be that women are honored in all their physical,

mental, and emotional and spiritual aspects. The Divine Woman serves to remind

women and men alike that women share in divinity, and that not only are women's

souls and aspirations, thoughts and feelings to be honored, but women's bodies

are also holy. The lack of a divine female figure in the monotheistic religions

has persuaded men and women, worshipping a male and sexless God, to regard women

as a " negative other, " and their bodies and sexuality as " unclean " or " impure. "

As long as Divinity is only male, women's sexuality will remain a dark and

frightening domain that needs to be bound and limited or harnessed to men's

convenience. " p. 2

 

 

" Men's oppression of women is frequently justified, in the Western world, by

the canons of the monotheistic religions, the Jewish Tanach, (which forms the

Christian Old Testament) and the Christian Bible, which contain the patriarchal

imagery and ideas that have helped mold Western culture over the last two

millennia. However, I shall show that the Tanach was written and compiled over

centuries when religion in the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel was anything

but monotheistic and when clearly female goddesses stood as consorts beside the

male God. Laying bare the goddess underpinnings releases these goddesses from

hiding and disguise, and frees them from misuse in texts that have been

formative for all aspects of Western culture.

 

Reclaiming Biblical texts by cleansing them of misogyny frees Jewish and

Christian women all over the world of the shackles put on them with each

conventional reading of the Bible. " p. 3

 

 

Regarding one god replacing another god in ancient times: " Divine struggles

generally tend to echo earthly kingship struggles. A relatively sudden change in

precedence of one god over the others usually accompanies and signals a change

of dynasty. When a usurper from outside the previous royal family takes the

throne, he is liable to avoid using the gods of the old dynasty, instead

choosing a new god as his dynastic god, who now dominates the local pantheon as

a sign of the king's power. " p. 59

 

 

" It was these conservative priestly groups who followed the Egyptian

inspired solar cults against which the prophet Ezekhiel preached:

 

.. . . and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar

were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of Jahweh and

their faces towards the east, they were bowing down to the sun in the east.

(Ezek. 8:10-12, 16). " p. 70

 

 

" As all religions in the region tended towards monotheism, Ba'alshamen and

Jahweh became much more prominent and took on more and more attributes of other

gods. Booth took on El's attributes, to become victor over chaos and creator or

possessor heaven and earth. As highest god, each now had power over the forces

of nature and became the maintainer of order, previously an attribute of sun

deities. Due to the Egyptian association of the sun with supreme kingship, the

contenders for the position of supreme god also began to take on the other solar

attributes. Thus, Ba'al and Jahweh both began to supersede the sun deity. In

addition, Jahweh began to take on Ba'al's attributes, carrying out the conquests

that had belonged to Ba'al (Isa. 51:9-10).

 

Because authority was not vested in the supreme male kingship, the goddesses

were no longer involved in authority and were gradually moved onto the

sidelines, first weakened by being relegated to " women's matters " or " family

matters, " and finally excluded. No goddess was present during the later battles

for exclusive supremacy between the male gods.

 

This struggle for dominance between Ba'al and Jahweh expressed itself in two

ways. Firstly, there was a struggle for dominance of Jahweh within the

polytheistic Judahite and Israelite religions. Secondly, there was a struggle in

Jerusalem for an exclusively monotheistic Jahweh worship. A small party of

Jahweh-worshippers arose in the ninth century BCE, who took the general trend

towards monotheism to its extreme, insisting that only Jahweh be worshipped, and

that theirs was the only god and the only truth. Historian Morton Smith has

called this group the " Jahweh-alone " party, for their struggle was not to

strengthen Jahweh vs. the other gods but the worship of Jahweh alone vs. Jahweh

with the rest of the pantheon.

 

The prophet Elijah belonged to this party, and his competitions with the

Ba'al priests may have been motivated by Ba'al becoming more popular than Jahweh

in the ninth century BCE. Elijah's incitement of the mob to murder the Ba'al

priests (I Kgs. 18:40) shows how embittered the battle against Ba'al was.

Indeed, priests of the Jahweh Temple in Judah later organized a revolt to

destroy the Ba'al temple. However, Elijah's famous magic competition with the

Ba'al priests shows that both cults used the same methods (I Kgs. 18). " pp.

71-72

 

 

Regarding the Exile:

 

" In order to preserve their religion while away from Jerusalem, they and

others especially devoted to the Jerusalem sacrificial cult made teaching and

study the backbone of their religious practice. The Sabbath, an abstention from

work every seventh day and a Jahwistic specialty, began to be used for meeting,

praying, and studying in private homes. This was the beginning of the synagogue.

The Jahweh-aloners now massively rejected the usual cult images because, they

reasoned, Jahweh manifested himself at Mt. Sinai and communicated his law

through the Word. Their rejection of the usual form of religious practice, i.e.,

temple and sacrificial cult, and the development of an abstract text study, not

only dramatically distinguished their form of Jahweh worship from all other

religions at the time but also changed the nature of Jahweh himself. " pp. 73-74

 

 

" Dietrich and Loretz summarize the stages of Jahweh's rise to dominance,

supremacy and exclusivity using Ps. 82 and Deut. 32: 8-9 as examples. First El

and Asherah were the major god and goddess, then Jahweh entered the pantheon. He

became a son of Asherah and El who was given the people of Israel as his

dominion. In the next development stage, Jahweh was set equal to El. The sons of

Asherah and El now become Jahweh's sons, and Asherah was no longer mentioned.

Finally, monotheistic corrections were made, and the 70 bene elohim (sons or

children of the goddess and god) became the 70 sons of Israel. " p. 75

 

 

" Hellenization brought a number of changes in polytheistic Jahweh worship

and, as these changes paralleled the practices of the Jahweh-aloners, they

eventually came to support their position. Firstly, polytheistic Jahweh worship,

like other religions in the eastern Mediterranean, was tending towards

monotheism, either as worship of one supreme Deity who included all other

goddesses and gods, or as worship of goddesses and gods as different aspects of

one supreme deity. Secondly, Hellenistic philosophy began to move from sacrifice

towards spiritual worship. Influenced by this philosophy, and by the important

fact for a war-ravaged country that prayer and praise were cheaper than

sacrifice, the polytheistic Jahwists also began to substitute synagogue worship

for sacrifice. The spread of village synagogues killed off the bamot in Judah

and probably in Israel. Thus, although the polytheists were dominant, their

practices and beliefs had come to resemble those of the Jahweh-aloners. " pp.

78-79

 

 

" Thus, it was under the Maccabeans and the Hasmonean dynasty that the

Jahweh-aloner position became permanently established as the official religion

in Israel and Judah. " p. 81

 

 

" Polytheistic Jahweh worship still continued until Roman times in Samaria,

Ammon, Mt. Tabor, Mt. Carmel and Hebron. Sects like the Essenes and the

Coventers of the Judean Desert (the Qumraners) followed the pre-exilic tradition

and clearly equated Jahweh with the sun, treating him either as the sun god or

as a god so powerful that he created the sun. The dominance of the Jahweh-alone

position became absolute only with the emergence of rabbinic Judaism and

Christian suppression of polytheism in the fourth century CE.

 

 

When the Jahweh-aloners gained dominance, they had the last word on

selecting texts for the canon and editing them. What we read today are the texts

which they approved, even though these texts contain parts written by opposing

parties. Morton Smith suggests that the first Jahweh-alone compilation of the

older texts in the Torah was made in the time of Amos and Hosea (eighth century

BCE), followed by massive redaction during the Exile. In the fourth century BCE,

the Jahweh-alone Levites, and the priests, who were not necessarily

Jahweh-aloners, were forced to reach a compromise, as they had to live together

in the Temple. Morton Smith regards the Torah as the great document of this

compromise because this new and official edition of sacred laws and legends

included material from both parties. The rest of the Tanach also bears signs of

later priestly editing, whereas the Levites produced Chronicles, Ezra and

Nehemiah, compilations where were edited and re-edited over long periods. " pp.

81-82

 

 

" Judaism, like all other social or cultural phenomena, is not static but has

undergone development and change throughout its long history. This change has

not been a spiritual evolution to ever higher states of knowledge or awareness,

but an historical and political evolution. " p. 84

 

 

" The centuries-long struggle of the Jahweh-aloners for supremacy, and their

final editing of the canon, explains the emphasis even within modern Judaism on

distancing itself from any form of polytheism. It is important to remember that

this devotion to one God to the exclusion of all others -- a fanaticism in times

of polytheism -- was coupled not only with the exclusion of the goddess, but

also with the exclusion of women from the cult, and that this was possibly a

driving motive. " p. 85

 

 

" The goddess Anath was worshipped in north Canaan mainly in the second

millennium BCE. Her worship spread from there to Egypt and possibly eastwards

towards the Euphrates. By the beginning of the first millennium BCE, she had

either disappeared in Phoenicia or merged completely with Astarte, who had

become prominent in the Phoenician city-states. " p. 88

 

 

" Astarte, originally a version of the Mesopotamian Ishtar, became goddess of

the cities of Sidon and Tyre in the second millennium BCE, and her worship

spread throughout Phoenicia and Philistia in the first millennium BCE.

Phoenician and Philistine traders and sailors carried her to their settlements

throughout the whole Mediterranean. Astarte was transformed into the Greek

Aphrodite in Cyprus, and she may have also become the Artemis of Ephesus.

Through this heritage, her influence has long outlived the Phoenician culture in

which she rose to prominence. In south Canaan, however, her major centers

remained on the coastal plains, and her worship did not penetrate deeply into

the hill country. Although there were shrines to her in Judah and Israel, there

is little evidence that Astarte worship ever achieved prominence there.

Therefore, like Anath, Astarte is a great Canaanite goddess but not a Jewish

one.

 

This leaves the goddess Asherah, one of the Great Mother Goddesses of the

Mediterranean, who was worshipped for close to 2,000 years. She is a goddess

older, worshipped longer and in a greater territory than any of the Greek

goddesses, yet she has disappeared almost without a trace. Few now even know her

name even though the Tanach frequently refers to her, its thundering against

" foreign gods " often directed against her. It is this thunder which tells us how

important Asherah worship was in Judah and Israel and that it is in her that we

can discover the Jewish goddess par excellence.

 

 

The Tanach reveals nothing about who Asherah was, so we must turn to

extra-biblical evidence, particularly to texts found in the old city of Ugarit,

dating predominantly from the 13th century BCE. " pp. 89-90

 

 

Here Kien relates the history and various transformations of Asherah,

remarking, " She was sufficiently important for the Roman Emperor Severus,

himself a North African, to dedicate a temple to Tannit on the Capitoline Hill

in Rome at the end of the second century CE. " pp. 95-96

 

 

" As Goddess and Creatress of the Gods, as the embodiment of the

self-renewing Life Force in the universe, Asherah peopled the universe together

with her partner, the chief god of the Ugaric pantheon, El. " Creator of

Creatures. " Her children, the gods, were 70 in number, and she was also the

mother of the Stars, mother of Yam (the Sea) and Mot (Death), mother of Shalim

and Shachar (Dawn and Dusk). As the Ewe or mother sheep, she suckled the gods

and even mortal kings. As Mother of the Gods, Asherah was considered equivalent

to the Greek and Cretan Rhea and later to Cybele, the Great Mother in Rome. " p.

97

 

 

" The story of Abraham and Issac and the tale of Jephthah's daughter suggest

that there were times when child sacrifice was not only condoned but also

performed by Jahweh worshippers. " p. 99

 

 

" Her [Asherah's] major symbol was the sacred Tree of Life. " p. 101

 

 

" The second major symbol associated with Asherah is the snake or serpent. "

p. 102

 

 

" Although I delve more deeply into the significance of the snake as a symbol

for the goddess in the next chapter, be it said here that the serpent

accompanying a goddess symbolizes her role as goddess of Immortality, as

Life-Giver and Destroyer, as Goddess of Fertility for animals and the earth, as

Protectress of Spiritual and Bodily Health, and as Giver of Wisdom and

Knowledge. Having the serpent as an attribute means that Asherah was a very

great goddess.

 

Another animal which accompanied Asherah and became one of her symbols is the

lion or lioness. Scholars write that Asherah always had a strong connection with

" the lion, " consistently failing to differentiate between lion and lioness.

Sometimes these scholars show lions in their illustrations, sometimes lionesses.

The sex of a symbol animal is usually quite important, and this is especially

true in the case of the lion and lioness. Both symbolize power, strength and

hunting prowess. The strong lion became a favorite of kings and came to stand

for power, authority and dominance. In contrast, the lioness, like all cats, was

most famous for her many offspring and her tender maternal care. Thus, the

lioness is a symbol both for power and strength and for fertility and

motherhood. In other words, she is a symbol for life itself, while the lion

stands for authority. " pp. 103-104

 

 

" In the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE), the goddess was represented as

life-giving and sexual; the pairs of animals shown with her were female/male

pairs, and she holds plants to symbolize fruitfulness of vegetation. The goddess

is vibrantly female, and sexuality is seen as the source of fruitfulness in

vegetation and in animal and human life.

 

There was a great change in the public religion of the Late Bronze Age

(1550-1200 BCE). This period included Egyptian domination and ravaging of

Canaan, continual warfare between Canaanite city-states, Hittite pressure from

the north, and, finally, the inflow and conquests of the Peoples of the Sea. In

keeping with this reality, public religion began to be dominated by more warlike

themes legitimizing power, battle and domination. Warriors, horses and chariots

were now depicted, and the male gods became warlike and political. The supreme

Egyptian male gods, Ptah and Amun, began to dominate in Egyptianizing

representations in Canaan.

 

Concepts of the fruitfulness of sexual congress and the holiness of

sexuality were pushed aside. Goddesses were depicted less frequently than the

powerful gods, apparently becoming secondary. " PP. 111-112

 

 

" Following Dietrich's and Loret'z interpretations, as Jahweh gained

dominance, he won Asherah from El as his partner. Winning the great Asherah was

probably a sign of prestige for the new god and served to emphasize his position

as chief god. Goddess and god were worshipped together and their images placed

side by side in the First Temple. However, by the eighth century BCE, Asherah

had become subservient to Jahweh, just as Tannit Phaneba'al had moved behind her

partner in Phoenicia. Asherah was now seen, in typical demotion, as a benign

mediating influence between the Great God and mortals. In this sense, she may

have been integrated into a protective symbol in the kingship ideology, the

sphinxes flanking her tree indicating that she now served to protect the king.

The Great Goddess, Queen of the Universe, had become a sexless protective

spirit, helping and protecting her master. " p. 115

 

 

" The sudden and almost complete absence of evidence for goddess worship in

the Jahweh cult in Judah at a time when goddess worship was still prevalent all

around, coupled with the few tantalizing clues that she still existed, can only

mean that goddess worship was forcibly suppressed and its traces removed.

 

This is not surprising, considering what we know of the Jahweh-aloners and

their attempts to gain power after the return from exile (Chap. 2). Their new

form of religion, developed in Babylon, had turned Jahweh into a transcendent

god with neither consort nor image -- a religion from which Asherah had been

eliminated. On regaining control of the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, the

Jahweh-aloners set about changing the public cult to fit their new religious

concepts. They were not particularly gentle about doing this; the Book of

Nehemiah records how Nehemiah used arms to enforce the Sabbath. it would be most

surprising if he had been more restrained when eliminating goddess worship. And

only a violent suppression could explain the abrupt disappearance of the goddess

from private as well as from public worship.

 

The goddess was also eliminated from the Jahweh-aloners' texts. Their

post-exilic texts thunder against her but, more importantly, the Torah was

revised so as to move her into the far distant Canaanite past. This revised

Torah became the constitution of the province of Judah in approximately 450 BCE.

Chronicles, written in the fourth century BCE, was the next step. Here, the

goddess was written out of history altogether. Jahweh took on Asherah's

creations and her 70 godly children became the 70 sons of Israel. Her children,

the stars, became the children of Jahweh, and he was called Jahweh Tsabaot or

Jahweh of the Hosts of Heaven. The world to whom she gave birth - the sea, the

morning and evening stars, her son Death - all became creations or servants of

Jahweh.

 

The elimination of the female from the Divine was inextricably linked with

the exclusion of women from active participation in cult, as there was no place

for women in the new form of Jahweh worship. The Divine Woman - goddess as woman

and woman as goddess - was no more. " pp. 119-120

 

 

" The complex symbology of the serpent derives from its biological habitus.

Firstly, its ability to shed its skin and emerge renewed is a clear cause of its

symbolizing immortality in Mesopotamia. Secondly, the serpent shows mastery over

life and death in that it survives its own production of poison, which is deadly

to others. Thirdly, a serpent biting its tail forms the never-ending circle, and

this was a common symbol of immortality in Egypt. " p. 122

 

 

" Finally, the snake must still have been important in biblical times as a

life- and wisdom- giving attribute of the goddess, otherwise it would have

needed no cursing in the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Gen. 3. And it

would not have been cursed for exactly those attributes that had always

contributed to its divinity in all the religions of the Syria-Palestine area,

such as its rapid movement without limbs. " p. 125

 

 

" More than a millennium later, rabbinical tradition also associated life and

immortality with the almond tree, perhaps because the almond is the first tree

to blossom in spring, sometimes starting even in December, and it is the last to

lose its leaves in autumn. " p. 127

 

 

" It is the menorah that commonly represents the Tree of Life, even in modern

Judaism. . . . The menorah's floral motives are clearly formulated in Exod. 37:

 

Three cups shaped like almond flowers with buds and blossoms were on one branch,

three on the next branch, and the same for all six branches extending from the

lampstand. And on the lampstand were four cups shaped like almond flowers with

buds and blossoms. One bud was under the first pair of branches extending from

the lampstand, a second bud under the second pair and a third bud under the

third pair, six branches in all. (Exod. 37:19-21) " pp. 127 -128

 

 

" Combining what we have learned about Asherah being symbolized as the Tree

of Life with the menorah as the Tree of Life, the inescapable conclusions are

that the menorah symbolized Asherah, and that it was her presence in the

tabernacle that was responsible for life-giving and nourishment. " p. 128

 

 

" In the early history of Judaism, the chief gods, Ba'alshamen and Jahweh,

competed for complete supremacy, while the goddess watched from the sidelines.

At this point, Judaism diverged from the other Ancient Near Eastern religions,

for the goddess was driven out of the cult altogether, leaving a purely male

religion. The competition between the two supreme gods continued until Jahweh

drove out Ba'al, becoming an abstract God requiring no partner and therefore

losing all sexuality.

 

There is little place in this type of male religion for women's

participation, just as there is no place for a goddess. Women were excluded from

the cult and, without their active participation, women's concerns and women's

lives were no longer themes of interest. The religion centered on men's studies,

men's needs and men's worship. The universe had became [sic] entirely male, and

the Divine Woman had disappeared. As the goddess was removed, and all knowledge

and memories of her suppressed, women's bodies were now anything but holy.

 

What can we find about women's disappearance from the Jewish cult? We need

to be obstinate, since looking at our history is a way of honoring our

foremothers, rather than writing them off or tossing them into oblivion.

Searching for our history moves us away from passive acquiescence with

patriarchal strategies of disinformation, and into active opposition. As active

participants within Judaism, looking for women's history will make it clear to

us that women were active in religion for a long time and that women's situation

in this millennium, even in this century, is worse than in earlier millennia.

Realizing this, and realizing that achieving women's rights in Judaism is

nothing new, but rather a return, may encourage us to set out sights high and to

be thankful for nothing less.

 

Looking to women's history also makes us comprehend more acutely what is

missing form the historical books of the Tanach. We find that they tell about

men's history but not women's. And this awareness is one step toward women

achieving a critical distance necessary for formulating what we want and need in

religion, what we want in religious teaching and interpretation of the Tanach,

and even how much we want to use the Tanach. Looking at women's history is one

means for women to find their way to creating what they want in their religion,

instead of it being dictated to them by men who tell them they speak in women's

name, but who speak at them and not for them.

 

The urgency of this search becomes clear when we try to formulate what we

mean by the active participation of women in cult. We can talk about

" priestesses " in English, although for the last 1,000 years have seen no

priestess in England. In Hebrew, not even the word has survived! " pp. 131-132

 

 

" Although excluded from active participation in Jahweh's temple ritual,

women certainly participated actively in the synagogues of the Hellenistic and

Roman periods. They are documents as being leaders of the synagogue and versed

in religious knowledge. There are inscriptions to women as " head of the

Synagogue, " " Leader, " " Mother of the Synagogue " or " Venerable Woman, " which are

comparable to titles given to men, and reveal women's active roles, not only as

financial donors but also in the spiritual direction of a congregation. As well

as praying together with the men, women are known to have publicly read the

megillot (scrolls, e.g. of Ester). In other words, they should be regarded as

Jewish priestesses outside the state cult, differing little in the social and

civic responsibilities from some of the Hellenistic counterparts -- the

priestesses documented in Greco-Roman and other cults in the Hellenized Ancient

Near East. These Jewish priestesses also disappeared, as women's participation

was ignored in contemporary rabbinic sources. " pp. 138-138

 

 

" Looking at Jewish history from the point of view of the Divine Woman, i.e.

the existence of goddesses and the honoring of women, sensitizes us to a play of

forces in Judaism that is not directly obvious from the Tanach. This view

reveals our pluralistic beginnings and the struggles for dominance of the

opposing groups within Judaism itself. We learn something about the religion at

the time many of the biblical texts were first written and about the political

battles setting priorities when the texts were edited.

 

For many Jews today, this background is not important, for they regard the

Tanach as timeless. What counts for them is not what the Tanach was taken to

mean at the time of writing, but what it means today. I do not deny the richness

of this approach and its immense value to those who use it, but understanding

the biblical texts is only possible when we know their background. Only if we

know what the writings meant at the time can we ever attempt to understand, why

certain emphases were set. Without this understanding, any interpretation must

be to some extent fanciful, especially when a text is written in an archaic

language and derives from a culture and religion that we really know quite

little about. By not trying to understand the text within its context and by not

insisting on taking it at face value, we run the risk of turning the text into

something that cannot be questioned whether parts could be wrong for us, or

written from a perspective with which we do not agree, or even why they were

written, our veneration of the text approaches idolatry of the word, and Judaism

adamantly condemns all forms of idolatry. " pp. 143-144

 

 

" The divine name Shaddai or El-Shaddai is also used in the tales of the

Matriarchs. It is the primary divine name used in the post-exilic priestly

traditions but derives from much older poetic sources. . . . Indeed, it has

recently bee suggested that El-Shaddai means the " God (!) who suckles: and that

this title originally derived from the " Divine Breasts of Asherah, " that is,

that Shaddai was originally one of Asherah's epithets. " pp. 152-153

 

 

Kien on the creation story in Genesis:

 

" Another place in the Torah that cries out to reveal the goddess underneath

is Genesis 3, the story of the expulsion of Adam and Hawah (Eve) from the Garden

of Eden. This text has already received much attention from feminist

theologians, whose work mostly falls into two categories: those who regard the

text as patriarchal, repressive of women and irredeemable, and those who attempt

through thorough text work to show that the text is really not as patriarchal as

it seems. These latter theologians propose that the text contains challenges to

patriarchy or that only the reception of the text, not the text itself, is

patriarchal and misogynous. Probably due to the enormous social, professional

and religious pressures within faculties of theology, none of them has made a

serious attempt to gain an historical understanding of the text or to place it

within the religious symbolism of its time. Any serious attempt to do so runs

the risk of imparting a radical new meaning to the text that would take it well

out of the framework of normative Judaism and Christianity. But this is exactly

what I shall do now.

 

The text of Gen. 3 has been reworked in many versions. It probably derives

from 13th century BCE sources and was finalized in its present form in the fifth

century BCE. Let us put this text into the context of the Israelite and the

First Temple Periods.

 

Adam names his wife Hawah or Mother of All Living Things (Gen. 3:20).

Considering what we now know about Asherah, it should be clear that at any time

in the second or early first millennium BCE, when a woman is called " Mother of

All Living Things, " the text must have something to do with the great goddess

Asherah. Indeed, even though biblical scholars are extremely cautious, Hawah's

connection with Asherah still shimmers through their analysis. In a careful

examination of the speeches in which Hawah named Cain (Gen. 4:1), biblical

scholar Ilana Pardes writes:

 

[Hawah] is endowed with traits which in pagan works characterize the creatress.

.. . [Hawah] presents herself not only as Cain's mother but also as the bearer of

Adam and perhaps even as the ex-consort of Jahweh. . . These are traces from an

earlier mythological age in which mother goddesses were very much involved in

creation.

The mother goddess, creatress and " possible ex-consort " of Jahweh can only

be Asherah, and the " earlier mythological ages " present or very recent history.

 

The causation of biblical scholars is all the harder to accept, as there is

direct evidence for a connection between Hawah and Asherah. Hawah's title,

" Mother of All Living Things, " is documented as one of Asherah's titles in

Ugarit, contemporary with the oldest sources of the Genesis text. Furthermore,

Hawah was an attested epithet of Tannit/Asherah in the first millennium BCE;

Phoenician sources call her " the Lady Hawah, Goddess. " Thus, the name Hawah was

known throughout the Mediterranean and used as an epithet for Asherah during the

whole period in which the text was written and revised. This alone must be

sufficient proof that the stories in Genesis 3 deal with Asherah under her

epithet Hawah.

 

The Garden of Eden contains tress for nourishment, but amongst them, and of

special importance, are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and

Evil. The Tree of Life was Asherah's major symbol, so not only is Asherah

herself in the story, but her major attribute stands at the center of the

garden.

 

In addition, the story includes another of her major attribute animals, the

serpent, who persuades the woman to eat of the fruits of the tree. We remember

that Asherah's serpent, Nehustan, was worshipped in the First Temple for many

centuries and that Asherah was known throughout the Mediterranean world as

Tannit or Serpent Lady. This connections between goddess and the snake is

further emphasized in the story by the name Hawah, which actually derives from

the old Semitic word for snake, although now meaning the Mother of All Living

Things. Using the name Hawah in this story is one way of emphasizing the serpent

as an animal of life and, as we saw in Chap. 4, associating the serpent with the

goddess emphasizes her life-creating and wisdom aspects.

 

Not only must we accept that the text deals with the goddess Asherah, we

must also realize that all contemporary readers of the text would have known

this. It must have been impossible for anyone in Judah up to the time of

Nehemiah in the fifth century BCE not to have thought of Asherah when reading

this text.

 

One could argue here that I have used supporting material from Ugarit and

Phoenicia to prove Asherah's presence in the Garden of Eden, and that this

symbolism may have been lost or forgotten within Judah and Israel. But there is

no evidence to support this. Firstly, there was much interchange between the

various cities and states and travelers and merchants brought their goddesses

and gods with them to worship on their journeys. Assuming general knowledge

about the names or attributes of the deities of other countries is not

unreasonable, and indeed, the writers of Kings and Chronicles appear to know

quite well who was worshipped where and how.

 

Secondly, and more importantly, as I showed in Chap. 3, Asherah was part of

the Israelite and Judahite pantheon. There is absolutely no reason to expect a

radical divergence of her worship in these regions from that in Phoenicia.

Asherah was worshipped in the major shrines of Judah and Israel, and her cult

symbol or image, the Asherah, was to be found in every bamah on every high hill

and under every green tree. An image of Asherah stood in the First Temple in

Jerusalem for more than two thirds of its existence, and worshippers in the

Temple also burned incense before her bronze serpent, Nehustan. King Hezekiah

removed both Nehustan and the Asherah from the Temple in the late eighth century

BCE, but the Nehustan remained so popular that even the Deuteronomists of the

late seventh century BCE could not abolish the practice. Instead, the attributed

the snake to Moses.

 

As Asherah and her snake had been worshipped in the midst of the people for

hundreds of years, it is impossible to imagine that readers contemporary with

the writing and editing of the text did not know that Hawah, Snake Mother of all

Living Things, was Asherah. Because this seems so obvious, I am both impressed

and puzzled by the success of Deuteronomic polemics against Asherah, even after

thousands of years. While researching this book, I found only one mention of

Hawah as an epithet of Asherah, (by S. M. Olyan, 1988) although (or perhaps

because) its revolutionary import for the interpretation of Genesis 3 must be

quite clear.

 

Once we have accepted that the serpent in Gen. 3 was one of Asherah's holy

animals, and that Hawah is a demoted Asherah, we have a dramatically new

starting point from which to interpret the Creation story. Taking the story at

face value, as it is now interpreted and translated, in Gen. 1, Jahweh is not

the Creator of a gynandric primeval being named Adam (the one made from earth),

who contains both male and female. In Gen. 2, Jahweh first creates Adam and then

later creates woman from Adam's side. In both versions of the story, as they are

now compiled, the male deity (either elohim or Jahweh elohim) is the Creator of

the woman, who is later named Hawah. That is, the story tells of the demotion of

Asherah from her role as Creatress of the universe to a human woman, herself

created by and out of a male.

 

Some feminist discussion of the creation of Hawah from Adam has centered on

the mistranslation of tsel'a as " rib, " rather than its true meaning of " side. "

Even considering the correct translation, so that the side or, in fact, half of

the man/earthling becomes woman and understanding the Hebrew term for helpmate,

ezer, as a divine helper, a superior to whom one turns for help, will not rescue

the point this text is making. It was clearly saying to its contemporary readers

that Asherah should be considered only as the Mother of Living Things on Earth,

and that she no longer is a goddess, but merely a human ancestress.

 

The rest of the story shows just as clearly that the purpose of the present

text was to negate her divine attributes. The story in Gen. 3 is about the evil

consequences of eating the fruit of the Tree, which can now be understood as

synonymous with worshipping Asherah. One could object that the tree under

discussion is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, rather than Asherah's Tree

of Life. But no god could forbid humans to eat of the Tree of Life and still

expect to find worshippers, so the only plausible alternative was to forbid the

fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This was just as effective

in the story, as knowledge of Good and Evil, or Wisdom, has always been a fruit

of the goddess and has always been associated with a female figure.

 

The snake, speaking for Asherah (or as one aspect of Asherah herself),

questions that her worship be forbidden and, indicating what her worship has to

offer, proffers its gifts to the woman. The woman takes them. If worshipping the

goddess is evil in the story, why does the woman accept? This is the perfidious

part. The story can only make its point about the dangers of goddess worship by

showing its negative consequences, in spite of its attractions. The woman must

accept so that this choice can be shown to be wrong.

 

And, indeed, Hawah's eating of the fruit leads to a display of superior

power by Jahweh, when he discovers the transgression. He curses the snake to

crawl on its belly and eat dust (Gen. 3:14-15). This was a specially significant

curse as it was also this ability of the snake to move rapidly without hands or

feet that had elevated it to a divine attribute of the goddess. Now to the

holiness negated by the expression 'eating dust. " If the attributes of a goddess

lose their holiness, so does the goddess herself. Furthermore, the enmity that

Jahweh ordains between women and the snake is a clear warning that women should

turn away from the goddess because of Jahweh's superior power. She is deposed.

 

A counter argument to my interpretation, and a frequently used explanation

of the serpent, is that contemporary versions of Mesopotamian myths viewed the

snake as a crafty and cunning thief. Scholars have suggested that the serpent in

Genesis derives directly from these sources. Yet, the long history of serpent

symbolism shows that viewing the snake as a crafty thief is a late and

patriarchal degradation (see Chap. 4), a change which could occur only in a

society where the goddesses played a small role and where there was little snake

worship. As there was still active goddess and snake worship in Canaan from the

period of the oldest sources of t he story, and in Judah for at the least the

next four centuries afterwards, it seems unlikely that this version of the snake

served as the basis for a creation story. However, the Mesopotamian myths may

have influenced later revisions of the story and may have proven extremely

useful for the goddess' opponents.

 

Continuing on with the consequences of woman's worship of the goddess. We

see these are just as dramatic for humans as for the goddess herself. Jahweh

elohim says to Hawah:

 

I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give

birth to your children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule

over you, (Gen. 3:16)

 

To Adam he says:

 

Cursed is the ground because of you; though painful toil you will eat of it all

the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will

eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat of your food

until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are

and to dust you will return. (Gen. 3: 17-19)

It is only upon the conclusion of these verses (Gen. 3:20) that Adam, now

ruling over his wife, names her Hawah. Only now, when woman is humbled, is her

true nature revealed -- a clear sign of defeat for Asherah. Her great universal

epithet, Mother of All Life, is now bestowed in a purely human context and the

universal holiness of female creation is devalued.

 

In summary, I interpret this story as showing that, firstly, women who

followed the Goddess Asherah would bring ruin upon themselves and their families

(expulsion form paradise). The gifts of the Goddess are a curse. Secondly,

Jahweh's daring to curse Hawah and the snake publicly (in the text) shows that

he has attained power over them both, that he has deposed Asherah and that she

is no longer a goddess. This interpretation suggests that the expulsion story is

really about a competition between deities, a divine version of a competition

like that between Elijah and the priests of Ba'al (I Kgs. 18)

 

This finding alone could satisfy our search for Asherah in the Tanach but,

where the texts deal with Asherah, it is worth looking in detail at the original

text. Now that we know that the story is about a goddess, we may find there is

even more to this story than we dared imagine.

 

To understand how it is possible to find a quite new reading for this well

studied text, it is necessary to understand how the present reading was

developed. It is tempting to think that there is an unbroken and unchanged

tradition of Torah reading, but this is not the case. In the third century BCE,

Greek was the language of the upper class, and Aramaic was the language of the

ordinary people throughout the Levant. Hebrew was no longer a spoken language,

and Torah interpreters were always working with an archaic language no longer in

everyday use. This, and the copyists' ignorance of Hebrew, resulted in

considerable corruption of the Hebrew texts during this period.

 

In Alexandria, the Torah was translated from Hebrew into Greek, resulting in

the version known as the Septuaginta. Many of the talmudic and later

interpretations of the Hebrew text are based on the meanings of the Hebrew words

as understood and fixed in Greek by these translators. However, the ambiguity of

unvocalized, written hebrew, particularly when it was interpreted in an entirely

different cultural context many centuries after the language has disappeared

from general use, would certainly have caused these translators grave problems.

They would have needed considerable imagination or guessing ability, for they

were writing in a period and in a state where religion had Hellenized, and the

old Canaanite goddesses, their epithets, attributes and symbols had faded far

into the background, even in their homelands. The translators' guesses, which

fixed the meaning of the Hebrew text, were most likely the obvious solutions in

the context of the misogynist Greek culture of their times.

 

Similar problems are posed by rabbinic interpretations. Many words may have

changed their meanings in the centuries between the first writing of the text

and its finalization or the commentaries on it. A typical example of such a

change in meaning between biblical and talmudic Hebrew is the word shamash,

which means sun (god) in biblical Hebrew, when the texts are full of

astralizations and remnants of sun worship. Centuries later, when the

Jahweh-alone movement had long become the sole position of Judaism and when all

polytheism had disappeared, a description of Jahweh in terms of the sun god was

unthinkable. Instead, out of the old solar attribute comes the idea of the light

serving the world and the word gained a new meaning in talmudic Hebrew, " to

serve. " This example illustrates the difficulties in interpreting texts from

past cultural periods in a language no longer in general use.

 

Leafing through standard dictionaries of biblical Hebrew reveals how

frequently a word was assigned a meaning based purely on the translator's

general understanding of a sentence. Some words are used differently in

different biblical passages and seen to have many meanings. These are mostly

variations on a theme, and the etymology of the word is straightforward, as is

its translation in the Septuaginta. But there are also many cases where a word

requires quite different meaning to fit each biblical passage in which it

appears. In other cases, a word may have no known etymology and is not used in

later Hebrew. If such a word is used only once or twice in the whole Tanach, its

meaning is often derived from the context in which it occurs and from how the

sentence was originally translated into Greek. It becomes clear that these

differing meanings and the non-etymologically justified one-off meanings may

just be the guesses of the translators and interpreters, based on the sort of

word thaw people of their culture would expect in that sentence.

 

When such guesses have been made in texts obviously concerning Asherah, it

is time to see again what the original text yields, and it is just as allowable

to guess differently. Because of this, I feel free to attempt a retranslation of

the story of the Garden of Eden, based on my interpretation that the story is

about Asherah.

 

Looking at the text of Gen. 3:16

 

To the woman, he said, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;

with pain you will give birth to your children. You [sic] desire will be for

your husband and he will rule over you.

 

The first word for pain, etsabon, is usually translated here as " the

difficulties of your pregnancy. " This word is used only three other times in the

Tanach and is translated as " bitter work " (Gen. 3:17, 5:29). However, the word

may derive from the verb, itsab, which can also mean " creation " or " forming, "

and is also used for " divine creation " . It is therefore possible to read

" creation " here, rather than " pain. "

 

Similarly, the second word for the pain of childbearing, esteb, is

translated by Gesenius, one of the classic dictionaries for biblical Hebrew, as

" a slight or offense, " " tiring work, " or " something won with difficulty. " It

means " pain of birth " only in this one place in Gen. 3:16. There is no need to

invent an exceptional meaning here since we can use the usual meaning of the

word. Finally, the word, yimshal, interpreted as meaning that husband shall rule

over wife, comes form the verb to rule or govern (limshol), but Gesenius also

translates it as " to mock " or even " to be made the same. " Taking the liberty of

ourselves inserting these alternative meanings in the text, we arrive at a quite

different verse:

 

To the woman, he said, I will greatly increase your creativity and you bearing

of children will be a hard-won achievement. You will desire your husband and he

will (be made the same, i. e. will) desire you.

We can proceed similarly with Gen. 3: 17-19, the punishment of Adam:

 

Cursed is the ground because of you; though painful toil you will eat of it all

the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will

eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat of your food

until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are

and to dust you will return.

The word " cursed, " arurah, is obviously negative and seems absolutely

unambiguous. It is this word that makes it quite clear that the text is about

punishment. And yet, scholars with Kabbalistic background have informed me that

arur may mean " to charge with energy, " that is, " charge " as the positive version

of " curse, " an old-fashioned word that is disappearing from the English

language. Replacing the curse with a charge allows us to examine the other

negative aspects of the " punishment, " and we find that these may not be so

negative after all.

 

Take " painful toil, the same word is used here as in Gen. 3:16, and here too

it can mean creativity. This leaves only " thorns and thistles " as clearly

negative. This seems unambiguous, as thorns and thistles are greatly disliked by

farmers because they multiply in corn fields, which must be specially plowed to

get rid of them. Hosea also uses overgrowth with thorns and thistles to express

the abandonment and desolation of the altars in the bamot (Hos. 10:8). But

because these are the only negatives remaining in the text, we can speculate

that they are a replacement for something else. The sort of substitution in

Isaiah 55:13 is suggestive -- " instead of thorn bush will grown the pine tree

and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. "

 

Retranslanted, and speculating with the substitution from Isaiah 55: 13,

Gen. 3:17-19 could read:

 

The earth is charged with creative force for your yield. You will be able to eat

of it all the days of your life. She will sprout pines and myrtles for you and

you will eat the plants of the field. With the sweat of your brow you will eat

this food until you return to the earth since you were taken from the earth, for

you are earth and to earth you will return.

What does this text tell us now? The woman is promised the creativeness of

bearing children, which is a hard-won but great achievement. She is promised the

gift of desiring her husband. Many of us immediately assume the desire must be

obsessive or unrequited and, therefore, a curse. Instead, it seems more of a

curse for a woman to have a man whom she does not desire, or to live a life

lacking the joy of desire. In the text, the desire is not unrequited, her

husband will desire her. Mutual desire is the gift of life.

 

What is the man promised? The promise to the man is a beautiful analogy with

the promise to the woman. As the man cannot bear, he cannot be promised the

life-giving of the woman. Instead, the earth is charged to carry out this role

for him and to be fruitful. The charge for the man is to use his creative powers

in transforming the Earth's products into food, to maintain the life that the

woman has created. The woman creates life with hard work, and the man creates

food with hard work. That these creative processes are hard work is not a curse.

All creative processes or transformations are hard work, but we usually regard

them as well-won achievements. The final verse is also no curse, for, of course,

the earthling Adam must return to the earth for he is of the earth (adamah). The

final return to one's source is a promise and not a curse.

 

I am suggesting, with this reading of the text, that what is put negatively

in Jahweh's mouth as a curse or punishment was originally a very positive

charge. However, rather than trying to redeem the text as it now stands, I m

suggesting that this passage was originally spoken by Asherah, listing all the

things she would do for her worshippers, just as we find in the wisdom texts.

That is I claim that this passage derives from an original Charge of the

Goddess. Paraphrasing it for modern use, it becomes

 

The Lady Asherah speaks;

 

Eat of the fruits of my tree

For the eyes of those who follow me will be opened

And they will know good from evil

And become godly.

 

Women I will give the gift of desire.

You will desire you lover and be desired in return.

You shall be life-givers

And your creation shall be great,

Your bearing of children hard work

For new life is a well-won a achievement.

 

Men, I charge the Earth

To provide for you all the days of your life.

So great shall be Her life-giving,

The pines and the myrtles will sprout for you

And She will give you plants of the field to eat.

Your making of bread hard work

The food that you eat a well-won achievement.

 

And this all the days of your life

Until you return to the Earth whence you came

For you are of the Earth

And so to Her you will return.

 

The biblical version of the text is a masterpiece of political propaganda.

The original Asherah text must of necessity have been known to readers as a

cultic text in which the goddess extolled her gifts to humankind. These gifts of

goddess worship are not denied in the current text, but the goddess' charge is

spoken by Jahweh instead, and he makes her gifts negative and unattractive, e.

g., turning the gifts of bearing life into a painful burden. The propaganda

value of this is obvious, for the goddess now has nothing to offer. Her very

holiness is weakened, while Jahweh has demonstrated his superior strength and

power. Asherah worshippers could probably never again approach the text

innocently, nor banish its misuse and Asherah's weakness from their minds. This

would have further weakened the goddess and while she disappeared, so did the

old meaning and only the new, perverted one remained.

 

Whichever way modern exegesis chooses to interpret this text -- feminist or

otherwise -- it must also be interpreted historically as a polemic setting

Jahweh against Asherah, as a clear attempt to show Jahweh's supremacy, and as a

warning against all the gifts of the goddess which could empower women. The

message for women about what Jahweh wants for them is clear. Because of this, I

find it hard to condone feminist religious exegesis aimed at finding positive

aspects in the present text, a text historically designed to desecrate the

goddess and thereby to subdue women. " pp. 164-178

 

" The major work of the written Kabbalah, the Sefer Zohar or Book of splendor

was written in the 13th century CE in Spain by Moses de Leon. " p. 181

 

" The history of Judaism, which I have presented here, tells us that women

have a past in Judaism, that women were involved in the religion and that they

had a goddess, that Asherah was one goddess in Judah and Israel and that, in the

First Temple Period, she was as Jewish as Jahweh. " p. 201

 

References:

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/kien.html

Sunshine for Women at http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/main.html

Notification is given here that the excerpts are copyright to Jenny Kien 2000

 

 

Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi's account of the Garden of Eden follows:

 

" So the same power has now been awakened in the Parama Chaitanya. Now this

awakening into the Parama Chaitanya is doing marvellous work which you can see

clearly. Firstly you have seen My photographs. You see My photographs, you are

stunned, you are surprised. I mean I am myself don't know what is this Parama

Chaitanya is busy with. It is so activated that all the time

it is working out to convince you people about the truth.

 

If it was so active at the time of Christ, would have been much better but it

had to be this way because human beings are the most difficult things to manage.

They have been given freedom. You will be amazed that the freedom was given to

Adam and Eve, but how it was achieved you should understand this.

 

In the Gnostics Bible it has come out, what I've been saying, that Adam and Eve,

both of them, were like pashus, animals, under the complete control of God, no

free will. They were living in the nude in the garden of Eden and would not have

known more than to eat, live like animals, just like animals.

 

Then it is the Shakti Herself took the form of a snake and went and told them

that you must have fruit of knowledge. She wanted them to evolve. That was not

the idea of God Almighty because it's quite a headache, you know, to do such a

thing. He thought what is the need to have such headaches around Me, but Shakti

knew Her own style, Shakti knew that She is capable of lots of miracles and She

can make these human beings understand the knowledge and She can really make

them knowledgeable.

 

So She said you must eat this fruit and you must try to know the knowledge. So a

new type of human race started which wanted to know what is the knowledge. You

have seen that we had all kinds of primitive people before, then they started

evolving, evolving.

 

Now I have to say that the first creation which took place, before that there

were other higher creations which were planned by Adi Shakti. So She created

Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesha and She created their lokas, their atmospheres or you

can say their abodes. In that all the planning was done, how we can make these

animals realised souls. From animals to human beings and from human beings to

realised souls. It was a very big problem. "

 

Navaratri Puja, Cabella, Italy, 27-6-1992 (Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi)