Theos-Talk Archives (April 1995 Message tl00169)

Liesel -

Your feminist observations re the Bible deserve a wider audience
- there are a lot of people out there who need education!

You might like to check out Ezekiel (presumably in the prophets)
which in Xtian bibles is Ezekiel 8:14 ...

"Then he brought me to the entrance of the north gate of the
house of YHWH; women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz"

Tammuz was the son of the mother-goddess ashtaroth, astarte,
ashereh, etc., etc.  who was in her various guises THE mother
goddess of antiquity, and Tammuz can just as easily be one of the
other "sons" of the goddess in other traditions - especially
those who were sacrificed and re-born annually in the spring.

What is interesting in the Exekiel passage (helps to read it all
in context) is that the patriarchalists are complaining about
what must have been a _regular_ and in all probability _accepted_
by the local people.  So far as I can establish (though I may
need to look a little deeper) the Temple they were weeping by was
that of King Solomon! Even with what many would regard as a
re-worked scriptural text of many such, the suggestion has to be
that the Israelites of Ezekiel's day regarded such "Goddess"
activity as a normal part of their religious life.  Solomon, so
far as we can tell, with his many wives, was no angel, and it may
be that - evidence in support of this idea welcome! - his famous
Temple was built, originally, for the worship of the Goddess, and
not the later YHWH of the Israelites.

[See the writings of G.R.S.  Mead, onetime secretary to HPB, re
"Jewish" and Talmud sources which throw a different light on
Xtian material and bible versions].

Before anyone rushes in with flames - heaven forbid! - it may be
as well to mention that my doctorate comes from an Institute for
Eastern Christianity studies, and that I have been a member of
both the SBL and AAR (Soc.  of Biblical Literature and Academy of
American Religion).  :-).

BTW - my e-mail direct to you re land in Cornwall was in the hope
that you might be aware of sympathetic feminist _organisations_,
not just individual women.  Right now, it look like this land
will go out of women's hands.

Alan.