The Sacred Feminine

[China Cat Sunflower]

The edit problem happens all the time. It's really irritating. For some reason the edit won't take, and when that happens you're just SOL because trying again to save your edit never works. By the time whatever the bug is works itself out the edit window has expired.

Chris

..

[bananabrain]

Originally Posted by Raksha

There’s another alternative: picking and choosing which commandments to follow and which ones to ignore.

not if you accept the concept that the 613 commandments are permanent. you can certainly deduce which ones can be *applied* or *followed* under which circumstances (e.g. shmitta, jubilee or sacrificial stuff), or which ones can *no longer be carried out* (e.g. exterminating amalek) and must therefore be considered permanently suspended, but there's a substantive difference between that and saying, on one's own authority, "i don't feel like doing that any more because it doesn't make sense to me". we said in the Torah na'aseh ve-nishm'a, "we shall do and we shall understand" - in that order. judaism is first and foremost a religion of action, not theology. first we do what we do and then we work out why it has meaning for us. but, certainly, the reform movement (but not the conservative) movement takes this position.

It isn’t necessary to see halakhah as “an integrated system.”

it is if you expect it to make sense. a cursory familiarity with Talmudic methodologies reveals that the sages triple and quadruple-checked their arguments and cases against similar ones occurring in nominally very different areas of law. thus a question of witness validation has application both in a monetary and in a capital case and the similarities and distinctions must be understood. that's what i mean by integrated.

Also, I don’t agree with the often-repeated argument that “tradition has the force of law.” That’s just a cop-out in favor of the status quo, whatever it might be. Tradition does not have the force of law!

it's not *necessarily* a cop-out. sometimes it's a question of "leaving well-enough alone" and not providing needless complication. either way this may be your opinion, but it is nonetheless an assertion rather than a definitive statement.

I’m aware that there’s a difference between what are now called the “Modern Orthodox” and the ultra-Orthodox, and also quite a bit of friction between them.

more than a bit. there is a constant power struggle and the MOs themselves are constantly torn between the need to be relevant and open to the left and the need to not be ostracised by the right. it is never easy to be piggy-in-the-middle, if you'll forgive the application of the term!

she told me those right-wing Mea Shearim fanatics have to be seen to be believed!

certainly my relatives in MS make the mind boggle.

But even though the Modern Orthodox brand of sexism isn’t as virulent doesn’t mean it isn’t still sexism.

ok, well, would it be OK if i said "the conservative brand of heresy isn't quite as virulent as the reform brand, but it's still heresy"? i mean, this is unnecessarily inflammatory and denies any positive intent or achievement and i think that is a great shame.

As problematic as some of the statements about women are, the ones about foreigners and “Avodah Zara” are even worse.

and must also be understood in the context of the perfidy of the samaritans, the murderous fascism of the romans, the intolerance of the greeks and the sectarianism of the early christians. you have to understand the nature of the sort of acts that were being objected to before you can really come to terms with quite why the sages were so down on them. the other thing is that 'avodah zarah is an umbrella term which covers a multitude of things. so practically speaking, most authorities still consider hinduism to be AZ, but not to the extent that we are allowed to discriminate against them or apply any of the stringencies that the Talmud suggests against "idolaters". for a start, there are other, contravening laws which overrule these considerations (for example, abiding by the law of the land which forbids discrimination and intolerance) and, moreover, the Talmud quite simply *isn't the last word*. consequently you even have maimonides maintaining that christianity is AZ (because of the trinity) but it is not his opinion that is followed in this matter. it doesn't mean i can worship in a church, but i can certainly go into one and enjoy the atmosphere, history, architecture and art.

what is more, there are also extremely nice statements about foreigners, just as there are some extremely rude statements about jews, particularly of the uneducated variety.

Just the fact that they are there and can be quoted makes them convenient ammunition for the anti-Semites.

you see, that's the point at which i dig in my heels and refuse to self-censor for the sake of people for whose opinions i care nothing. that was the biggest mistake of the "enlightenment", ooh, careful, let's all try and look as protestant as possible so that we fit in. well, bugger that for a game of soldiers. i'm surprised at you, linda. do you censor your own opinions for jews who disagree with you, or do you tell them to stick it up their arses if they don't like it? as for anti-semites, they would see the mere act of self-censorship as displaying that we had "something to hide". well, as the brazilians would say, p*ta m*rda c*ralho; que porcaria. i think you get my drift.

Of course nobody takes those statements literally these days except for the ultra-right religious Zionist whackos, but they are a major shonda in themselves, if you know what I mean.

i do - but it has long been a problem of all religion that if you are a loony of any stripe, you can be as selective in your interpretation as you wish. censorship won't ever help.

But from within Judaism itself, probably nothing has challenged it like feminism since the beginning of the Reform movement in the 1830s (I think).

hmm. that assumes that feminism is from within and i'm not entirely sure i agree with that, but fair enough if you believe it. you're also forgetting the furore caused by freud.

What if it should turn out that Asherah was never strictly a Canaanite goddess as alleged, and that her role as the “consort” of God was deliberately suppressed during the talmudic period?

i think it was far earlier - during the period of the judges and the first Temple period. there is also considerable archaeological evidence to show that this particular goddess was widely worshipped around the fertile crescent, going back to the worship of inanna and ishtar in mesopotamia and sumeria, so you can't say it's something that came from within judaism itself. as for the idolatry widely engaged in by the biblical israelites, this is explicitly stated in NaKh and it's what got the prophets so steamed up. the text says explicitly that the people got mixed up in the local ways of thinking about religion, undoubtedly because they were more familiar, immediate and easier to understand than the abstract conceptualisation of a Unified, Infinite Divine, which is a very tough thing to grasp when you're learning how to farm in an environment where the mr+mrs fertilisation thing is the accepted paradigm for how crops grow. i assume you've read patai's "the hebrew goddess", an excellent piece of work. though i don't agree with his conclusions, it seems pretty clear to me from all the sources that the prophets are continually frustrated with the inability of the people to prevent themselves from making the same old mistakes of religious short-circuit thinking time after time. this was always going to happen when you realise that the israelites were both unwilling and unable to get rid of the seven nations of canaan despite explicit instructions to do so, so they were still around and had an enormous influence which basically resulted in all the idolatry of the period up until the destruction of the first Temple. i don't think it's especially controversial or even (shock, horror!) unorthodox to point out something that everyone from joshua to jeremiah sees fit to criticise about the sinfulness of the people. either way, the evidence *hasn't* been re-written or censored very well!

Who were you claiming was trying to “remove the differences between men and women”? Presumably you mean the feminists. Is there some important distinction to be made between “removing the differences between men and women” and saying you believe “women want to be the same as men”?

no, i'm taking a behavioural attitude to it. i think there are important differences to how men and women like to do things - not *always* by any means, but enough to matter. single-sex groups have a very different energy to mixed groups. in education, single-sex education has been shown, for example, to result in better results, as it does in sports teams and the military. i am a great believer in the "distraction" school of thought and also in the difference between "male concentration" and "female concentration", just from my empirical experience of people. for example, men, in my experience, find women distracting. i don't apologise for it, apparently it's quite natural. that doesn't mean i think women should be "kept out of the way", but it does mean that i think the quality of output is "better", whatever that means in terms of tefillah. in my experience, single-sex groups pray a *lot* better. they have better kavvanah and it feels far more satisfying. you will notice i'm using very personal, emotional terms here. i don't claim that this is what is true for *everyone*, but it is true for *me* and for a lot of people who feel like me. in most other areas (business, for example), i feel mixed groups give "better" results. i'm aware that i don't feel all that comfortable trying to articulate how i feel about this, not because i feel it's wrong, but because i feel my language is inadequate.

You can always find women who are staunch defenders of the status quo, whatever it is. Doesn’t make ‘em feminists by a long way!

have you read blu greenberg's "women in judaism"? this is a seminal text, one by someone who is both traditional *and* a feminist. and i'm certainly *not* saying that feminism has nothing to teach us, not by a long way. i'm just saying that mixed davenning doesn't work for me!!

And while I’m on the subject, what issues has [allegedly] “removing the differences between men and women” caused in the liberal denominations? I am not aware of any such issues.

again, in my empirical experience, a lot of men feel quite excluded and superfluous, because they no longer have a space of their own. they try and compensate with men's groups, but somehow it just doesn't feel the same way. i'm also aware that my original statement is quite categorical; perhaps it shouldn't have been. i'm not retracting it, but i can't be as specific as i should be if i'm going to make a decent argument out of it. i'd file it under "vague grumblings of disquiet", which i hear from a good number of men and women in the liberal denominations.

as for the editing, do it in notepad - that's what i do. then paste it in.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Raksha]

Just the fact that they are there and can be quoted makes them convenient ammunition for the anti-Semites.

you see, that's the point at which i dig in my heels and refuse to self-censor for the sake of people for whose opinions i care nothing. that was the biggest mistake of the "enlightenment", ooh, careful, let's all try and look as protestant as possible so that we fit in. well, bugger that for a game of soldiers. i'm surprised at you, linda. do you censor your own opinions for jews who disagree with you, or do you tell them to stick it up their arses if they don't like it?

BB,

Hell no, I don't censor my opinions for the benefit of anti-Semites! On the contrary, I eat those scumbags for breakfast as soon as I spot them, both the "Storm Front" neo-Nazi types, and the "replacement theology" fundamentalist types of both the Catholic and Protestant variety, as well as the so-called "Messianic Jews" who like to pretend they know more about Judaism than I do. Chris has seen me flame their tails off on the various interfaith forums we've frequented over the past several years, so he'll vouch for me on that score!

And yet I did self-censor my earlier note. Originally that part of it was a lot longer, but then I thought better of it and deleted most of it. That's because I wasn't actually referring to gross and obvious bigotry of either the "racial" or religious variety in my reference to "anti-Semitism," but something much more subtle and disturbing. You touched on some of it in your reply, and I may be able to get into it in more depth later on.

I was going to reply to the second half of your previous note before I got to this one, but I didn't want you to think I'd ever come down harder on YOU than on an anti-Semitic bigot of any kind! It would be beneath my dignity to hang my head and keep a low profile around those creeps.

They tend to have one particular passage of the Talmud they like to trot out to prove their point anyway, and it doesn't relate to Avodah Zara.

b'shalom,
Linda

[China Cat Sunflower]

There was never any such thing as a culturally unique group of "Hebrews" who arrived from outside Palestine to displace the indigenous inhabitants and establish a pristine theology of their own making. All of the various cultural groups in Palestine in the late bronze and iron ages shared a group of syncretically linked gods who were pretty much interchangeable with minor local differences. El, and his consort- usually Astarte or Asherah, and Ba'al, El's chief executive and his consort, usually a generic female deity sometimes called Asherah as well, were the defacto executive functionaries of a pantheon which included any number of personal, family, and what one might call "middle management" gods.

Chris

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by Raksha

BB,

Hell no, I don't censor my opinions for the benefit of anti-Semites! On the contrary, I eat those scumbags for breakfast as soon as I spot them, both the "Storm Front" neo-Nazi types, and the "replacement theology" fundamentalist types of both the Catholic and Protestant variety, as well as the so-called "Messianic Jews" who like to pretend they know more about Judaism than I do. Chris has seen me flame their tails off on the various interfaith forums we've frequented over the past several years, so he'll vouch for me on that score!

Uh, yeah. I'll back that up. I've seen you turn into the human blow torch more than once!

Chris

[Saltmeister]

Originally Posted by Raksha

Chris has seen me flame their tails off on the various interfaith forums we've frequented over the past several years, so he'll vouch for me on that score!

I haven't yet been able to find an interfaith site with an online community as good as the one here at CR, but.....I haven't really been looking either. Care to list a few for me? I know CR isn't going to last forever, so......I better find an alternative somewhere.

One of the reasons for my lack of success seems to be that there's a lot of flaming in other interfaith sites. There's either a lot of rude comments exchanged by people with opposing views, or you get comments that are exclusivist and characteristic of fundamentalism. People bashing each other or disparaging beliefs that are different to their own. It just blows non-adherents away. It blows me away. I don't want to have a discussion at a site where I'm just going to be shot down. People there just seem to be undisciplined. Sometimes I wonder.....shouldn't a moderator be saying something?

Having a "democracy" and "free speech" is good and I can understand if sites don't censor or discourage bad behaviour or have standards for reasonable behaviour relaxed. But there's a point where things just run amok. I think part of the reason is that other sites often encourage debate. That usually causes problems.

Maybe I'm just used to the way things work at CR and I'm just intolerant of an interfaith culture in other sites? Is my sentiment justified? I'm a customer right? I don't believe the customer is wrong in this case. I value the experience here. This is what I want. As long as this site exists, if the experience isn't as good at other sites, I'm not compelled to go to them!!!

I've got no intention of idealising CR, if there's another site with a good interfaith culture, I might explore that one. It's just that at the moment, there seems to be a lot of flaming and rudeness in other places.

It could be that here people actually try to connect and get to know each other. Know any other sites where they do that? I'd be interested.

[bananabrain]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

There was never any such thing as a culturally unique group of "Hebrews" who arrived from outside Palestine to displace the indigenous inhabitants and establish a pristine theology of their own making.

that's a pretty categorical statement to make considering it can't possibly be substantiated. and why on earth would a group create a culture based upon a myth in which they are invading outsiders? surely it would be better to make out that they'd never left!

as for "culturally unique", the exodus group had *many* hang-overs and hangers-on from egypt with them, known as the "mixed multitude". and as for the syncretism, it's the major concern of the prophets in the period of the judges and kings.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[bob x]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

well, as the brazilians would say, p*ta m*rda c*ralho; que porcaria. i think you get my drift.

wh*re sh*t something-or-other; and pork???

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

that's a pretty categorical statement to make considering it can't possibly be substantiated.

True, my bad. Let me rephrase: There is no substantial evidence which correlates the biblical account with the archaeological record or the balance of recorded history. The Bible is many things, but history isn't one of those things.

and why on earth would a group create a culture based upon a myth in which they are invading outsiders? surely it would be better to make out that they'd never left!

That's a very good question. The real answers are far more fascinating than the mythology.

as for "culturally unique", the exodus group had *many* hang-overs and hangers-on from egypt with them, known as the "mixed multitude". and as for the syncretism, it's the major concern of the prophets in the period of the judges and kings.

There is no good evidence of the exodus, the conquest of Canaan, the period of the Judges, or any of that other stuff including the united monarchy. We know who the Israelites were, they became the Samaritans. What we're really talking about is a brief period of Judahite history which occurred much later than the Bible portends. What we have is a record of the theological propaganda from that period.

Sorry man. I know Jews, Christians, and Muslims have a lot invested in biblical psuedo-history.

Chris

[Raksha]

there's a substantive difference between that and saying, on one's own authority, "i don't feel like doing that any more because it doesn't make sense to me". we said in the Torah na'aseh ve-nishm'a, "we shall do and we shall understand" - in that order. judaism is first and foremost a religion of action, not theology. first we do what we do and then we work out why it has meaning for us. but, certainly, the reform movement (but not the conservative) movement takes this position.

BB,

I guess it goes without saying that I take the Reform position. Basically I have no use for arguments from authority, and if something doesn't make sense to me I'm not going to believe it, let alone act on it. This is the same approach I take when reading the Bible, including those passages from the prophets you referred to earlier--the ones railing against the fertility cult of the Canaanites and equating it with idolatry and sinfulness. All of that is just too arbitrary to be convincing to me. It all comes across like propaganda and a top-down attempt to impose what amounts to an official state cult on what was essentially a folk religion.

The only beneficiaries I can think of for that kind of propaganda campaign would be the Levitical priesthood. I don't know why the prophets would be involved in something like that, considering that they weren't part of the power structure. In any case it's hard to believe the female judges like Deborah would have been all that zealous about suppressing goddess worship. And we know that in the period of Joshua and Judges there were female judges and prophets. The Bible may be silent about a lot of things, but we know the role of women was much less restricted during that period than than it became later on.

I have what you might call a very "modern" understanding of idolatry. Since nobody I've ever met is actually stupid enough to worship "the work of their own hands," (a physical thing) I have a hard believing anyone was EVER that stupid, even in the earliest historical periods we have any record of at all. They were worshipping or expressing gratitude to whatever deity--or aspect of deity--that statue represented for them, pretty much the same as the Catholics and Hindus still do. I have some serious unanswered questions about that famous golden calf episode, but that's for another post.

OTOH I've run into a lot of people who are absolutely convinced that their conception of God actually *IS* God, and even people who "worship" a particular translation of the Bible, if you can believe that. There is no way of convincing these people that what they are "worshipping" and "obeying" are merely their own projections, especially not when "God" is telling them to give in to their lowest impulses. Because that sort of thing can have such horrible repercussions for their relationships with people of other religions and even other other denominations within the same religion, I take it a lot more seriously.

I think I've said enough to make it clear that I still take a very "Reform" approach to the commandments, to the Bible and everything in it. I admit that not everything I do or believe is entirely rational, even by my own standards. I still believe the Exodus story is based upon *SOME* kind of historical truth, although the account of it is heavily mythologized, and also clearly self-promoting on the part of the Aaronic priesthood. I even believe, on some level and in some way, in the revelation at Sinai--although I'm the first one to admit there is no rational basis for that. It's more of an intuitive thing with me--or maybe simply a part of the "Chosen People" mythos I'm not ready to toss on the junk pile yet?

Anyway, the more I think about it the more I wish the Jewish Renewal movement would stop using the word "postdenominational." It's overly optimistic, to the point of being a euphemism. "Nondenominational" is a better word for what they mean. Not only are the old denominational lines still in effect, they seem to be getting harder than ever these days. In fact, from what you and others have told me, there seems to be a full-blown schism developing between the Modern Orthodox and the haredim. But you'd know more about that than I do.

b'shalom,
Linda

[bananabrain]

chris,

there's no need to be patronising. "pseudo-history", forsooth. no, the bible isn't "history" in the academic sense, but in the sacred, spiritual sense. and i don't think you can necessarily lay claim to having "the real answers", as you put it, because academia doesn't deal in reality, but in probability and hypotheses - and, in this case, i think you're casting aspersions with no real cause.

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

We know who the Israelites were, they became the Samaritans.

what rot. the samaritans were an immigrant group encouraged to move to "samaria", as it became known, by the assyrians. there is ancient bad blood between us and them due to the fact that a) they attempted to sabotage the building of the second Temple and b) they changed their beliefs in order to suck up to whoever was running things at the time, so there is an ongoing argument in Talmudic times about whether they constitute proper jews or not for purposes of marriage. this argument would not be taking place if there was any doubt about who were the jews and who weren't. so, all this "the samaritans are the real jews" stuff seems to me to be constructed in order to further a most unpleasant piece of historical revisionism - of course, if they are the "real jews", then who are we? interlopers? impostors? surely the fact that the jews are the jews is proved by the fact that we're *still* the
jews and they've *always* been the samaritans. what a piece of historical calumny this is and how entirely consistent with how they were supposed to have behaved back then.

Originally Posted by Raksha

Basically I have no use for arguments from authority, and if something doesn't make sense to me I'm not going to believe it, let alone act on it.

surely one of the hallmarks of belief is that it doesn't necessarily *have* to make sense?

All of that is just too arbitrary to be convincing to me. It all comes across like propaganda and a top-down attempt to impose what amounts to an official state cult on what was essentially a folk religion.

well, it's hardly top-down if the king and court are also succumbing to the temptations of the local folk beliefs. it is interesting to see how an apparently powerless group like the prophets managed to prevail over the often institutionally corrupt priesthood and court... without popular support, too, apparently! certainly the priesthood are just as often criticised.

In any case it's hard to believe the female judges like Deborah would have been all that zealous about suppressing goddess worship.

why not, if it was wrong? is this some kind of argument based on the idea that sisters wouldn't diss other sisters, or something? that's the ethics of the playground, not of adults.

And we know that in the period of Joshua and Judges there were female judges and prophets. The Bible may be silent about a lot of things, but we know the role of women was much less restricted during that period than than it became later on.

indeed - in fact, this is one of the reasons the sages considered the buy-in of women to be crucial for getting people on-board with halakhic innovation. there are seven prophetesses listed in the tradition, or so i am given to understand. i personally blame the greeks, it all went a bit tits-up once that bunch of misogynists got their fingers into the intellectual pie - although there are even some towering later figures such as gluckel of hamelin and dona gracia mendes.

Since nobody I've ever met is actually stupid enough to worship "the work of their own hands," (a physical thing) I have a hard believing anyone was EVER that stupid, even in the earliest historical periods we have any record of at all.

i don't follow your reasoning. nobody i've ever met is actually stupid enough to think that black people aren't human beings, yet that particular piece of arrant nonsense was once a widespread popular notion.

They were worshipping or expressing gratitude to whatever deity--or aspect of deity--that statue represented for them, pretty much the same as the Catholics and Hindus still do.

hence the position of the me'iri (france, C12th) who maintained that "idolatry is not about statues" - it wasn't the statue itself that was the problem, but what people did to worship it; human sacrifice, anyone?

Anyway, the more I think about it the more I wish the Jewish Renewal movement would stop using the word "postdenominational." It's overly optimistic, to the point of being a euphemism."

you see, now you've made me crack up laughing. there have been times when i've described myself as post-denominational, but only in the sense that i'm not at all interested in having a futile argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. i think labels are important, but only insofar as they're useful. once they stop being useful, you get into "bacon bagel" territory.

In fact, from what you and others have told me, there seems to be a full-blown schism developing between the Modern Orthodox and the haredim. But you'd know more about that than I do.

hmmm... i don't know if i'd say schism exactly, i'd say it was more like a greater willingness and courage to turn round and say, look, mr beardy black-hat, you may be able to get through a daf of gemara a day, but where's your derech eretz? where's your sense of mission? and why are you sneering at *me* when it's *my* tzedaka paying for you to study when you should be earning a living? as i am fond of putting it:

rabbi akiva HAD A JOB.
rashi HAD A JOB.
rambam HAD THREE JOBS.
now GET THE HELL OUT THERE AND MAKE A LIVING, because, as it says in the mishnah, "he who does not teach his son to make a living TEACHES HIM THEFT." and, furthermore, "without Torah, there is no bread, but without bread, there is no Torah".

*bows*

ithenkyow.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[Raksha]

all this "the samaritans are the real jews" stuff seems to me to be constructed in order to further a most unpleasant piece of historical revisionism - of course, if they are the "real jews", then who are we? interlopers? impostors? surely the fact that the jews are the jews is proved by the fact that we're *still* the jews and they've *always* been the samaritans.

BB,

Wow, it looks like there's a very basic misunderstanding here! Chris was making a distinction between *Judea* and *Israel," the north kingdom, meaning his reference to "Israelites" was to be understood as referring to the people of that kingdom who intermarried with the Assyrians--and we know they did, because recent DNA tests prove it. The Samaritans show DNA evidence of Israelite fathers and Assyrian mothers. I'll see if I can track down the link where I found this information and post it here.

I don't think Chris was using the word "Israelite" in the broader sense meaning the Jewish people collectively, or implying that the descendants of Judah and Levi are *NOT* "the true Israel"! I'm familiar with the "British Israelite" garbage and similar pseudo-historical garbage and it's just that. I don't like it any better than you do, but I think you fell into a little bit of knee-jerk defensiveness there!

BTW, I have no quarrel with the Samaritans whatsoever. I also can't understand the kind of petty mindset that wants to keep a feud going for well over 2000 years! I don't care if they intermarried with the Assyrians or if they still stubbornly insist that Mount Gerazim and not Jerusalem is the proper place to worship. They are NOT going to change their minds at this late date! Even if they really did sabotage the building of the Second Temple, it's time to let bygones be bygones. We all know what happened to the Second Temple anyway.

So yeah, they are Jews--Samaritan Jews, just like they always have been. That hardly makes US imposters! WHY anyone would want to lose sleep over something that ridiculous is beyond me.

B'shalom,
Linda

[Raksha]

A quick correction to my previous post, since the editing period has expired:

So yeah, they are Jews*--Samaritan Jews, just like they always have been.

*I was using the word "Jews" in this context in the broadest possible sense, meaning "adherent of the Jewish religion." Obviously the Samaritans don't belong to the tribe of Judah, but that was my whole point! The word "Jew" usually has a broader meaning than that.

--Linda

P.S. Genetic info on the Samaritans: Reconstruction of patrilineages and matrilineages ...[Hum Mutat. 2004] - PubMed Result

[China Cat Sunflower]

Israel was a small, extended city state centered in Samaria when it capitulated to Sargon II of Assyria in 722 BCE. He deported part of the population of Samaria and conscripted other of it's inhabitants into his cavalry. He reorganized the town and made it the seat of a new Assyrian province with one of his officers as it's governor. Any autonomous integrity or sovereignty Israel may have had was systematically destroyed, but the Samaritans continued as a small highland society within the Assyrian empire.

Jerusalem was a small city of no more than 5,000 or so until Sennacherib, in the process of putting down a local rebellion sponsored by the competitor cities of Lachish and Ekron, destroyed Lachish in 701 BCE. The entire populace of Lachish was deported, and with it's competitor out of the way Jerusalem was able to extend it's influence. With Assyrian support Jerusalem eventually became the regional capital of Judah. By the mid seventh century Jerusalem had a population of 25,000 or more. In 597 Jerusalem surrendered to Nebuchadnezzar. The King and the court were deported along with most of the skilled craftsmen and intelligentsia. The city itself was just a speed bump in the Babylonians push toward Egypt. But in 588 when Jerusalem resisted, probably under the influence of Egypt, the Babylonian army laid siege to the city. Two years later the city fell, and Judah ceased to exist as an autonomous entity.

Alexander III reached Egypt in 331 and India in 336. Alexander's goal was to integrate the Persian empire and support the development of the Greek form of cities. He combined Syria and Palestine into a new Persian province with Samaria as it's capital. After Alexander had finished building Alexandria as an intellectual and political center for the eastern Mediterranean territories he deported the power elite from Samaria and transported them to Alexandria, while replacing them in Samaria with Macedonians similarly deported and forcibly resettled. This is where we first run into "Jews" outside of the Bible's narrative. And these Jews were thoroughly hellenized.

Contrary to popular mythology, Jews never resisted Greek culture. Jewish culture developed as an asiatic expression of hellenism. It embraced, and was itself transformed in its enthusiasm for hellenist humanism, universalism, and literary expression. Jewish centers of learning rivaled those of the Greeks themselves, and Jewish philosophy and discursive arts achieved a level of sophistication on a par with Greek traditions centered on Homer and Plato. This was no exclusivist, ethnocentric monotheism.

Alexander died, Greek control faded, and Palestine reverted to it's old role as a land bridge between Egypt and Asia. It once again became disputed territory between Egypt on the south and Antioch and Babylon to the north. Jerusalem in the south sided with Alexander's successors, the Ptolemies in Alexandria, but Samaria threw in with the Seleucids. In 198 BCE the Seleucids defeated the Ptolemies and assumed control of Palestine. They immediately set out to utterly destroy what remained of the Palestine-Egyptian axis in order to consolidate control over the region. But after their defeat at the hands of the Romans at the battle of Magnesia in 190, the Seleucid's control over Palestine was severely weakened and the Egypt took advantage of the situation to begin to reassert its political and economic interests in Jerusalem.

The Seleucids were naturally pissed that Egypt was once again interferring in lower Palestine, so Antiochus IV sent a punitive expedition down south to punish and arrest Jerusalem's pro-Egyptian sympathizers. The backlash created a pro-Ptolemaic uprising. The Maccabees embellished the populist appeal of their cause with nationalistically motivated anti-Seleucid violence and ethnic cleansing. This was presented in the tradition as an effort to save true custom and religion from the "outsiders." Egypt's Roman allies, who were expanding their interests eastward to control the Mediterranean shipping lanes, supported the Maccabees. With Rome's patronage, the first indigenous state over the region was created in 165 BCE. The effect of the ideological propaganda created to fuel the Maccabean rebellion against the Seleucids, that of nationalistic particularism and ethnic identification through rejection of all things Greek, as caricaturized by the hated Antiochus, essentially created a Taliban-ized version of Judaism, now recast as a theocratic, ethnically particular, exclusivist monotheism.

Chris

I nabbed off a ton of different sources to write this.

[Raksha]

Quote:

In any case it's hard to believe the female judges like Deborah would have been all that zealous about suppressing goddess worship.

why not, if it was wrong? is this some kind of argument based on the idea that sisters wouldn't diss other sisters, or something? that's the ethics of the playground, not of adults.

BB,

It is NOT the "ethics of the playground" and I'm very offended that you trivialized my position that way. I was referring to what’s likely to be true, assuming that Deborah was an actual person living at that period. Let me remind you that the name of this topic is "The Sacred Feminine." Now either there is a valid and legitimate expression of the Sacred Feminine, by women and for women, within Judaism or there is not!

Either women are just as much--not "almost" as much but just as much created in the image of God as men are or they are not. Which is it? I can't stand the apologetic line that goes something like this: "Oh yes, goddess worship and fertility rituals are natural and understandable enough, but you still shouldn't do those things because God said so. As a matter of fact, if you participate in such things you are an abomination and deserving of death. Because God said so."

That kind of an argument is just too arbitrary and authoritarian (not to mention cruel and inhuman) to be convincing, and also shamelessly self-serving on the part of MEN!

I haven't read The Hebrew Goddess which you mentioned earlier, but I"ve heard nothing but good things about it and it's definitely going on my reading list.

B'shalom,
Linda