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BIBLICAL AFFIRMATIONS OF WOMAN

LEONARD SWIDLER

THE WESTMINSTER PRESS

Philadelphia

All rights reserved-no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review in magazine or newspaper.

BOOK DESIGN By DOROTHY ALDEN SMITH

First edition

Published by The Westminster Press

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Swidler, Leonard J

Biblical affirmations of woman

Includes index.

1. Women (Theology)-Biblical teaching.

2. Women in the Bible. 3. Woman (Theology)-

History of doctrines. 1. Title.

BS680.W7S97

261.8'34'12

79-18886

ISBN 0-664-21377-4

ISBN 0-664-24285-5 pbk.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Prologue: Women in the Ancient World

PART ONE

FEMININE IMAGERY OF GOD

I. FEMININE IMAGERY OF GOD-

BIBLICAL PERIOD

A. A Feminine God

B. Divine Lady Wisdom

C. The Feminine Divine Spirit

II. FEMININE IMAGERY OF GOD-

POSTBIBLICAL PERIOD

A. Jewish Feminine Imagery of the Divine

B. Feminine Holy Spirit in Christian Tradition

C. The Feminine God in Christian Apocryphal

and Gnostic Writings

III. SUMMARY: FEMININE IMAGERY OF GOD

PART TWO

WOMAN IN HEBREW-JEWISH TRADITION

IV. POSITIVE ELEMENTS IN HEBREW-JEWISH

TRADITION

A. The Status of Woman-Biblical Period

B. The Status of Woman-Postbiblical Period

V. AMBIVALENT ELEMENTS IN HEBREW-JEWISH

TRADITION

111

A. Ambivalent Models of Women-Hebrew Bible

and Apocrypha

111

B. Ambivalent Models of Women-

Postbiblical Writings

131

VI. NEGATIVE IMAGES OF AND ATTITUDES

TOWARD WOMEN IN HEBREW-

JEWISH TRADITION

139

A. Negative Images and Attitudes-Hebrew Bible

139

B. Negative Images and Attitudes-"Intertestamental"

Literature

150

C. Negative Images and Attitudes-Postbiblical Writings

154

VII. SUMMARY: WOMAN IN HEBREW-

JEWISH TRADITION

158

PART THREE

WOMAN IN CHRISTIAN TRADITION

VIII. POSITIVE ELEMENTS IN CHRISTIAN

TRADITION

161

A. The Apostolic Writings (New Testament)-

The Gospels

161

B. The Apostolic Writings (New Testament)-

Other Than the Gospels

290

IX. AMBIVALENT ELEMENTS IN CHRISTIAN

TRADITION

329

A. Authentic Paul’s Ambivalent Attitude

Toward Women

329

B. Deutero-Pauline (and Other) Ambivalent

(and Some Negative) Attitudes Toward Women

332

X. NEGATIVE ELEMENTS IN CHRISTIAN

TRADITION

339

A. Women and the Christian Fathers

339

XI. SUMMARY: WOMAN IN CHRISTIAN

TRADITION

352

STRUCTURAL INDEX

357

INDEX OF REFERENCES

373

INTRODUCTION

In the past there have been a number of discussions of women in the Bible. At times they have been flawed by an apologetic approach that assumed, unconsciously or consciously, a male chauvinist perspective. In any case, they did not have the advantage of the raised collective consciousness and new insights resulting from the recent women’s liberation movement and its interaction with religion and theology. Usually the first result of this interaction has been the leveling of criticism at portions of the Judeo-Christian tradition for its sexism. This was not difficult to do as far as having sufficient subject matter was concerned; the Jewish and Christian traditions-as the traditions of every other world religion and parareligion-are extremely sexist. The cultures from which these religions sprang were strongly patriarchal, and the religions reflected those cultures. This sexism was also true of the Bible.

All Jewish and Christian biblical scholars, save the most fundamentalistic, insist on the humanness of the Scriptures, that they are human words spoken in a particular time, place, and culture, all of which limiting factors must be understood if the inspired revelation of God’s self is to be perceived through them. Gone from modern religious scholarship is the pre-critical notion that each word of the Bible was whispered in the inner ear of the inspired writer by God; the Bible is no longer perceived as inerrantly true word by word-only the inner religious message is, whatever it may be. Consequently the way is clear to point out critically the sexist patriarchal assumptions, structures, stories, sayings, etc., bountifully to be found in the Bible. This negative, critical task was surely the first that needed to be done-as in all creative reform efforts. And it has been done significantly, though of course the critical task needs to continue: Traditio religiosa semper reformanda!

However, in creative reform, an emphasis on the positive elements is also necessary as an early second task, even as the negative critical task proceeds. This positive reform task is by no means the same as the old defensive apologetic. Rather, it accepts, presumes, the proven negative criticisms and moves on to discern the true positive values in the tradition that can be used as building blocks in re-forming the inherited religious structures, adding on to them, or indeed, building new ones from the heritage of the old.

This book is an attempt to search out the positive elements of the biblical tradition as far as women are concerned (which of course immediately means that men are concerned too); to bring them together in one place; to quote them in full (unfortunately most hurried modern persons will not reach for a Bible and look up the chapter and verse references); and to provide a context and brief commentary that will lift up their significance and implications as far as woman, her relationship to herself, to man, and to God are concerned.

The book is thought of primarily as a sort of “companion,” a vade mecum, which can be read in snippets as time and inclination allow, as one way for modern people to get into the riches of the biblical tradition and profit by its deeply human, and at times even surprisingly “feminist,” insights and values. However, this book is so designed that it can likewise be read in longer sittings so that an overview of developments can also be gained. Alternatively the book can also serve as a reference tool for those wanting to look up a “feminist” perception of certain passages or books.

Though the main purpose of this book is to present and exegete those passages of the Bible and kindred material which are judged by the author to be of positive orientation as far as women are concerned, it was felt that to do only that would project a dangerous distortion. To those readers not familiar with the negative critical work done on the Bible mentioned above, an unreal impression, an unwarrantedly positive image of the attitudes toward and status of women in the Bible would be given. To avoid that disservice to many readers, a very brief survey of the negative aspects of the Jewish and Christian biblical traditions will also be provided, as well as a discussion of ambivalent portions of the biblical traditions.

Bible is meant here in a somewhat extended sense. It includes the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, and the Apostolic Writings, or New Testament. But just as the Apostolic Writings are in many ways a commentary on or interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, so also are the Rabbinic writings (Mishnah and Talmud). Hence, they will also be dealt with here. That will bring us to around the year 500 C.E. (Of the Common Era). But just as the Rabbinic writings are to the Hebrew Bible, so also the writings of the early Christian fathers (of roughly the same time period as the Mishnah and Talmud) are to the Apostolic Writings (New Testament). Hence, they also will be treated, but in a briefer fashion since they do not carry anything like the weight of authority in Christianity that the Mishnah and Talmud carry in Judaism. The Jewish religious writings composed in the period between Old and New Testaments, namely, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, will also be covered, as well as the documents of fifth-century B.C.E. Elephantine Judaism. In parallel fashion the apocryphal New Testament and Gnostic Christian writings will likewise be investigated.

The translation of the Bible basically used throughout is usually that of the Jerusalem Bible. However, on numerous occasions its translators (and those of all other available translations as well) have, slightly or badly, missed meanings that are very important for an accurate understanding of some passages in relationship to women and men. The author himself, therefore, has not hesitated to translate many words or whole passages from the original Hebrew or Greek.

A word should be said here about the term “feminist,” which to some extent has become sloganized, positively and negatively. The term is used in this book purely in its descriptive sense. That is, a feminist is understood to be a person who is in favor of and promotes the equality of women with men, a person who advocates and practices treating women primarily as human persons-as men are so treated. Obviously men who claim to favor justice should be feminists as well as the women. This book, then, is written to help all feminists, potential and actual, female and male. To the extent that it does so, it will serve all humanity.

PROLOGUE

WOMEN IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

The land of Palestine lies in the center of the fertile crescent of the ancient Near East. The fertile crescent extended from the lower end of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the east (Sumer, in present day Iraq), up through present-day Syria and Lebanon, and down through Palestine, with Egypt and the Nile valley at its western tip. Civilization developed about the same time at the two extremities, Sumer in the east and Egypt in the west, and the status of women in both civilizations was relatively high in their early periods. Before 2400 B.C.E. in Sumer, polyandry (more than one husband to a wife) was at times practiced; some women also owned and controlled vast amounts of property, enjoyed some laws that in effect prescribed something like equal pay for equal work, and were able to bold top rank among the literati of the land, and to be spiritual leaders of paramount importance. In Egypt, during the third and fourth, and into the fifth dynasties (2778-2423 B.C.E.), when the highest level of culture of the Old Kingdom was reached, daughters had the same inheritance rights as sons, marriages were strictly monogamous (with the exception of royalty) and tended to be love matches; in fact, it can be said that in the Old Kingdom the wife was the equal of the husband in rights, although her place in society was not identical with that of her husband.

However, in the east, in the land of Mesopotamia, “Between the Rivers,” the Sumerian civilizations gave way gradually during the last quarter of the third millennium B.C.E., bowing to successive conquerors-Akkadia, Babylon, and Assyria. Here the lot of women declined drastically. For example, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (1728-1636 B.C.E.) and similar codes permitted men to repudiate their wives for any or no reason, though the woman was able to divorce the husband only for very serious cause; indeed, even if in such a case a wife were a “gadabout,” her life was forfeit: “If she was not careful, but was a gadabout, thus neglecting her house [and] humiliating her husband, they shall throw that woman into the water” (Codex Hammurabi, 143). For complete documentation on the above paragraphs, see Leonard Swidler, Women in Judaism: The Status of Women in Formative Judaism, pp. 4f.; Scarecrow Press, 1976). This general trend is confirmed by the analyses of the excavations of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Mari, where for a short period in the first half of the eighteenth century B.C.E. some women enjoyed a relatively high status.

There can be no doubt that men were culturally dominant.... A cultural bias against women is revealed by incidental disparaging remarks sprinkled throughout these texts about the weak, unheroic character of women.

In the matter of male dominance, Mari was in accord with the general Mesopotamian culture. The surprising fact, then, is not that women were regarded as inferior but that they were able to attain the great prominence that they did.

This political prominence of women in Mari and upper Mesopotamia stands in contrast both to their role in succeeding periods in Mesopotamian history and to the role of their contemporaries in lower Mesopotamia...Lamentably, the cultural standing of women deteriorated in succeeding periods of Mesopotamian history. (Bernard Frank Batto, Studies on Women at Mari, pp. 136-138; Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974)

The status of women also declined at the western tip of the fertile crescent, in Egypt, with the disintegration of the Old Kingdom in 2270 B.C.E. Eventually, however, it rose again, so that in Egypt, over the almost three-thousand-year history before the coming of Alexander the Great in 330 B.C.E., the status of women was quite high for about fifteen hundred years, corresponding with strong central governments. The periods of high status were, broadly speaking, 3000-2270 B.C.E., 1580-1085 B.C.E., and from 663 B.C.E. into the Greco-Roman period until the dominance of Christianity around 375 C.E. Thus, Jacques Pirenne could write: “We have arrived at the epoch of total legal emancipation of the woman. That absolute legal equality between the woman and the man continued to the arrival of the Ptolemies [Hellenistic successors to Alexander the Great] in Egypt” (Jacques Pirenne, “Le Statut de la femme dans l’ancienne Egypte,” La Femme. Recueil de la Société Jean Bodin, XI, 1, p. 76; Brussels, 1959). Though taking a somewhat more pessimistic view, Jean Vercoutter is in large agreement when after his extensive history of women in ancient Egypt he concludes:

If all the sources are in agreement that, everything considered, the woman in Egypt was subordinate to the man, that her duty was to please him, give him children and care for his house, it also appears that in turn custom allowed women a large freedom: they could go out freely and if perchance they owned some goods they would become the equal of the man in order to assure its management. In this sense the condition of the female Egyptian .was superior to that of the Greek, for example, and when with the Macedonian conquest Hellenistic customs and then Roman penetrated the Nile valley the female Egyptian lost many of the privileges which she had acquired little by little. It would indeed take centuries for that relative liberty which Egyptian women enjoyed to again be their lot. (Jean Vercoutter “La Femme en Egypt ancienne,” in Pierre Grimal, ed., Histoire mondiale de la femme, Vol. 1, p. 152; Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France, 1965)

When we shift our focus to the world of Hellas, we also find women enjoying a relatively high status in the early period of Greek civilization, as in the Minoan culture of Crete (3 000-1100 B.C.E.) and the Greece of the time of the Homeric poems (before 900 B.C.E.). But there too women’s status declined, reaching a low point during the Golden Age of Greece, in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.E.-though a distinction would have to be made between Athens, where women had a very inferior status, and Sparta, where they had great freedom.

But after the spread of Greek culture by Alexander the Great around 330 B.C.E. from Egypt to the Indus River, the lot of women gradually improved. We can trace a growing movement for women’s liberation with the passage of time in this Hellenistic world, so that in general women were more nearly equal to men in rights by the time of the New Testament than they had been in 300 B.C.E. Likewise, in general, greater freedom for women could be found the farther west one traveled. Naturally these are overall descriptions which admit of variations in details, but they are basically valid.

Let us look at least at some of the most important indicators of this women’s liberation movement in Hellenistic culture. In fifth-century Greece marriage was monogamous, but the husband was allowed sex with hetaerae (courtesans) and concubines. By 311 B.C.E. we find a marriage contract from the Greek island of Cos:

Contract of Heracleides and Demetria.... He is free, She is free.... It is not permitted to Heracleides to take another woman, for that would be an injury to Demetria, nor may be have children by another woman, nor do anything injurious to Demetria under any pretext. If Heracleides be found performing any such deed, Demetria shall denounce him.... Heracleides will return to Demetria the dowry of 1000 drachmas, which she contributed, and be will pay an additional 1000 drachmas in Alexandrian silver as an additional fine. (O. Rubensohn, Elephantine-Papyri, No. 1; Berlin, 1907)

Women in Hellenistic times also exercised extensive rights in the economic sphere. A woman could inherit a personal patrimony equally with her sons-buy, own, and sell property and goods, and will them to others. Indeed, in Hellenistic times there were wealthy Creek women, some of whom were greatly honored for their philanthropy. Klaus Thraede summed the matter up when be wrote: “The emancipation of the woman in private law was decisive for the development which began already in the classical period: the equalization in inheritance and property rights as well as the de facto independence in marriage and divorce” (“Frau,” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, col. 199; 1973).

Unlike the Greek (Athenian) wives of the classical period, who did not even eat with male guests when they were in their own homes, let alone go out in mixed gatherings, the wives of the Hellenistic period were quite likely to turn up at social gatherings (symposia), and women went on long journeys. Whereas earlier it was customary for only Spartan women to participate in sports, including the Olympics, women’s involvement in this area advanced in later Hellenistic times to the point where there were women professional athletes, as, for example, the three daughters-Tryphosa, Hedea, and Dionysia-of Hermesianax of Tralles, who engaged in foot and chariot races in the years 47 to 41 B.C.E. Many women pursued music as a profession. Asia Minor was known for its women physicians, though according to Pliny the Elder much of the information about these women physicians was deliberately suppressed. On the level of skilled artisans, a woman often pursued a craft similar to her husband’s, e.g., a woman goldsmith and a man armorer-or think of Priscilla, who with her husband Aquila was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3).

In an advanced civilization the key to advanced status is education; by itself it will not accomplish everything, but without it usually little will be possible. Whereas in classical Athens among women usually only the hetaerae had any kind of education, education for young girls became ever broader and more widespread throughout the Hellenistic period, and one result was that more and more wives as well as husbands were educated. In fact, in Hellenistic Egypt there were more women who could sign their names than men, and thus Hellenistic literature, particularly the novel, was written for a feminine public. Another result of the broader Hellenistic education of women was the appearance of a flood of Hellenistic women poets.

It is perhaps most of all in that discipline of the spirit for which the Greeks are most renowned, philosophy, that one can see the striving for women’s liberation. In the seventh century many women were students of Pythagoras. But by the fourth century Plato and Aristotle paid only lip service to equality for women. However, in the Hellenistic period women again took up the study of philosophy. For example, we know that one of Aristotle’s followers, Theophrastus (d. 287 B.C.E.), had both a woman disciple, Pamphile (some of whose writing is extant), and a woman opponent, unfortunately anonymous. Thereafter to some extent the Cynics also spoke out in favor of equal rights for women, and women played a prominent role in the school of Epicurus (343-270 B.C.E.), not only as disciples but even as favorite teachers.

But the philosophical school which did most to promote the improved status of women was that of the Stoics. These grassroots philosophers stressed the worth of the individual woman, the need for her education (consequently there were many women followers of Stoicism), strict monogamy, and a notion of marriage as a spiritual community of two equals. The Roman knight C. Musonius Rufus, a contemporary of Philo the Jew and the apostle Paul, discussed at length whether women should also pursue philosophy and whether daughters should be brought up the same as sons; he answered yes to both questions.

In religion and cult, women in classical Greece, i.e., during the fifth century B.C.E., experienced restrictions that were broad, but by no means absolute. There were a number of religious activities or places that they could not enter upon, as, for example, the very important oracle of Delphi or the cult of Hercules; and usually only maidens, not married women, could watch the sacred games at Olympia. Women were also almost entirely absent from, or were kept in the background of, the activities of state religion. Still, in some cults, such as those of Artemis and Dionysus, women did play a significant role.

In the Hellenistic period, however, the extraordinary popularity of the eastern cults and mystery religions and the burgeoning women’s liberation movement dramatically changed the situation. Women not only took part in these religious cults, they often did so in great numbers and often in leading and even priestly roles, as, for example, in the Eleusinian, the Dionysian, and the Andanian mysteries. The cult of the goddess Isis, which came from Egypt but spread all over the Hellenistic and Roman world, was at the beginning of its popularity exclusively a women’s cult, and even after men were admitted it still provided women with leading religious roles and justly had the reputation of being a vigorous promoter of women’s equality and liberation.

The Hellenistic world was largely conquered by the Romans a century or so before the birth of Jesus. Although it was the Hellenistic cultural world that exercised the greatest outside influence on Judaism and Christianity, the influence of Rome was also present in its own way, i.e., mostly political, legal, and military, from the time of Pompey’s conquest of Palestine in 63 B.C.E. Hence, it is proper to note briefly the condition of women among the Romans.

Behind the culture of Rome there stood the extraordinarily developed culture of the Etruscans, stretching in space from Rome up to Pisa, and in time from before the seventh into the third century B.C.E. We find in Italy, as in Minoan Crete, a civilization characterized by a preeminence of women. Everywhere women were at the forefront of the scene, playing a considerable role and never blushing from shame, as Livy says of one of them, when exposing themselves to masculine company. In Etruria it was a recognized privilege for ladies of the most respectable kind, and not just for hetaerae as in Greece of the contemporary classical period, to take part with men in banquets, where they reclined as the men did. They attended dances, concerts, and sports events and even presided, as a painting in Orvieto shows, perched on a platform, over boxing matches, chariot races, and acrobatic displays.

Women, of course, did not enjoy such a high status in contemporary Greece, nor did they in early Rome. But by the third century B.C.E., Rome moved to improve the property rights of women. Some what later in the republic, doubtless because of the influence of the Etruscan culture and the growing pressure of the women’s liberation movement in Hellenism, the condition of women improved to the point where a woman could in general marry and divorce on her own initiative and even choose her own name. During the same period the image of leading women appeared on coins-for the first time. The Roman Cornelius Nepos (d. 32 B.C.E.) even felt that the advanced status of Roman women was something to boast about: “What Roman would find it annoying to be accompanied by his wife to a banquet? Or what housewife does not take the first place in her house or go about in public?”

The status of women continued to improve dramatically under the empire. Indeed, the political activity of women of the senatorial class developed so vigorously that we find on the walls of Pompeii the names of women running for office, a definite advance over Egyptian and Greek women, who had few political rights; women were sent on imperial missions to proconsuls; the possibility of a woman consul was even discussed. Nevertheless, it is basically true to say that “only the men exercised the political rights of citizens: military service, voting at the assemblies of the people, access to magistratures” (Jacques-Henri Michel, “L‘Infériorité de la condition féminine en droit romain,” Ludus Magistralis, No. 46, 1974, p. 7).

Women were everywhere involved in business and in social life-i.e., theaters, sports events, concerts, parties, traveling-with or without their husbands. They took part in a whole range of athletics and even bore arms and went into battle.

In family affairs one would have to speak of a certain equality of the sexes in daily life. The woman’s consent was necessary for marriage; in an increasing number of marriages (non in manu) she had no obligation to obey, nor did the husband have any legal power over his wife. Speaking of this kind of marriage, one scholar noted that “the married woman without manus was without doubt the most emancipated wife in the history of law!” (Michel, “L‘Infériorité de la condition féminine en droit romain,” p. 6). From the point of view of money the pattern increasingly was one of equality and of separation. The equality of the spouses was in effect total, whether concerning the full liberty of divorce in classical law, the limiting causes of that liberty in the late empire, or the sanctions of an unjustified divorce.

Republican Rome, acting originally under the influence of Etruscan culture, took up the impulse of women’s liberation from Hellenism and carried it forward to where the empire (30 B.C.E. onward) also made it its own and continued to promote it ever further throughout the first several centuries of the Common Era. This evolving liberation of women in Roman society was expressed in the legal forum by that extremely influential Roman jurist in the second century of the Common Era, Gaius:

It would appear that there is scarcely any very persuasive reason for women of adult age to be in tutelage. For the common notion that because of the levity of their minds they are often deceived and that therefore it is fitting that they be placed under the authority of tutors would appear to be more specious than true. In fact women of adult age conduct their own business fox themselves, and in certain cases, for the sake of form only the tutor gives his authorization. Indeed, even if he refuses it he is often forced to grant it by the praetor. (Gaius, Institutes 1.190)

[Quoted in Latin and French by Michel, in “L‘Infériorité de la condition féminine en droit romain,” p. 13, who remarked, “Perhaps this text, which deserves to be better known...should figure one day in some feminist pantheon.” For an excellent overview of the history of women in Greco-Roman society, see Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity; Schocken Books, 1975.]

In sum: The status of women in the ancient world of the fertile crescent after the early Sumerian period was almost uniformly low except in Egypt, where it was early and often quite high. In the classical Greco-Roman world (after the Minoan and pre-Homerian Greek periods) the condition of women was varied, but often quite restricted, with the clear exception of Etruscan culture. It nevertheless improved, particularly during the Hellenistic period, so vigorously and continually that one must speak of a women’s liberation movement which had a massive and manifold liberating impact on the lot of women-not everywhere and in every class and at every period equally effective, of course. This improving impulse was picked up and carried forward by Rome. In fact, the general rule in this matter is that the farther west one goes, the greater is the freedom of women-though in detail there are the greatest possible variations-and that also in general there is a progression in the freedom for women according to time. Thus, as the women of Rome tended to be freer than those of Greece, who were more liberated than women of the oriental world, so also the women of the time of the Roman empire had greater freedom than those of the time of the Roman republic, and their sisters in the Hellenistic world and period were less restricted than those of Greece at the time of the Athenian empire. Due account must be taken, of course, of the unsympathetic vagaries of all human history, and the fact that in so many ways the liberation of women was long since anticipated in ancient Sumer, Egypt, Minoan Crete, and later also in Etruria.

It is in this context and under this surrounding and pervading influence that the biblical traditions, Jewish and Christian, developed.

PART ONE

FEMININE IMAGERY OF GOD

I. FEMININE IMAGERY OF GOD

BIBLICAL PERIOD

A. A FEMININE GOD

Although the Hebraic tradition early perceived God to be transcendent, beyond limitations, including sex, it nevertheless persisted in referring to God in terms and images that included sexuality. It is inevitable that this would happen, for so many things which humans value highest are found in other human beings (who normally are female or male)-such as being a knowing, loving person-that to speak of God as “It” would denigrate God. Thus the tradition often speaks of God in masculine-and feminine-images, although it also continues to affirm God’s transcendence of sexuality and all else, following the apophatic way, the via negativa, what the Hindus call the path of neti neti (not this, not that). The masculine images of God in the Hebrew Bible are well known (e.g., God as father, jealous husband, warrior). They are far more pervasive throughout the Bible than feminine imagery of God, reflecting that patriarchal, male-oriented society. But the feminine divine imagery is there too, albeit in a much lesser degree. A selection of it will be given below. In order to appreciate better the trajectory which some of the female imagery of God followed, examples of how this imagery developed into the early Christian as well as the early Jewish era will be presented below in their chronological places.

But first it would be helpful to spell out in a little detail something of the Goddess-worshiping culture that lay behind, around, and within the biblical religion.

§1. Goddess Worship

The earliest evidence we have of human religious activity in the Old World points to the worship of the Goddess-the divine would seem to have first been worshiped as female. The archaeological excavations at the upper paleolithic levels (25,000-8,000 B.C.E.) have produced innumerable female statuettes that appear to be either figurines of the Goddess or perhaps at least attempts at sympathetic magic, endeavoring to induce the fertility that all life depended on (see Edwin O. James, Prehistoric Religion, pp. 147, 153; Barnes & Noble, 1961; J. Edgar Bruns, God as Woman, Woman as God, pp. 8-10; Paulist/Newman Press, 1973). There would appear to have been no male God at this early period (see Edwin O. James, The cult of the Mother Goddess, pp. 21 f.; Frederick A. Praeger, 1959). As the paleolithic period gave way to the mesolithic (8,000-4,000 B.C.E.) and the neolithic (4,000-2,500 B.C.E.), the worship of the Goddess became even more vigorous and explicit. All of the Old World areas that cradled major civilizations (i.e., complex societies in which towns and cities, and the differentiation of culture that accompanies them, developed) show strong evidence of having initially been Goddess worshiping. That includes the Indus Valley, the Near East, Old Europe (i.e., the Balkans, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean islands), and Egypt.

The gradual shift away from total dominance of the Goddess (except perhaps with Egypt, whose history is even more complex than the others) to the participation of a clearly subordinate male God seems to have been connected with the development of animal husbandry, whence the role of paternity became apparent. There never was any question about the female’s essential role in bringing new life into the world; but the role of the male and sex was not always so obvious. Still, even at this stage the male God played a vastly subordinate role vis-a-vis the Goddess.

The role of the God, however, in a number of instances advanced to that of an equal and even that of a superior of the Goddess, apparently under the impact of waves of attacks of patriarchal, male God worshiping, animal-herding Indo-Europeans who came down out of the northern mountains, perhaps originally from around the Caspian Sea (see James, Cult of the Mother Goddess, pp. 47, 99, 138). They appear, e.g., as Hittite conquerors of Anatolia, sometime before 2,000 B.C.E., ranging eventually down into Palestine. In the second millennium B.C.E. the patriarchal father-God worshipers swept into almost all the Goddess-worshiping civilizations, from the Indus Valley on the east through Mesopotamia and Asia Minor to Old Europe on the west (see H. R. Hays, In the Beginnings, pp. Calif.; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1963). Perhaps only Egypt was unconquered by the patriarchal Indo-Europeans, though even it was dominated at times by Asian nations that were probably “carriers” of Indo-European patriarchal ideas, e.g., the Hyksos in the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries B.C.E. Marija Gimbutas describes in detail the world of the early Goddess worshipers in Old Europe and notes that “it is then replaced by the patriarchal world with its different symbolism and its different values. This masculine world is that of the Indo-Europeans, which did not develop in Old Europe but was superimposed upon it. Two entirely different sets of mythical images met.... The earliest European civilization was savagely destroyed by the patriarchal element and it never recovered, but its legacy lingered in the substratum” (Marija Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, p. 238; University of California Press, 1974).

§2. Male-God Invaders

A little should be noted about the characteristics of the God of those Indo-European tribes who over a period of centuries, perhaps starting in earnest in the latter half of the third millennium B.C.E., invaded in waves all of the existing civilizations. He was a father God, a warrior God, a supreme God, a God who dwelt in light and fire, on a mountaintop (the Indo-Europeans came from a mountainous area and perhaps originally worshiped volcanoes). He took the Goddess of the conquered nation as his heavenly consort and soon (usually) totally dominated her, as the Indo-Europeans dominated the conquered peoples. The Indo-European dead were said to dwell in “realms of eternal light,” in “glowing light, light primeval.” Their God was described as “be whose form is light.” The Sanskrit word for God, dev, literally means “shining” or “bright.” And in Iran, God-Ahura Mazda-was a great father who was referred to as the Lord of Light, dwelling on the top of a mountain, glowing in golden light; this mountain is supposedly Mount Hara, the first mountain ever created. In Greece there was the Indo-European Zeus with his fiery lightning and thunderbolts on top of Mount Olympus; the Indo-European Hittites and Indo-European-ruled Hurrians bad storm Gods with lightning bolts in their hands standing on a mountain; Indra of India, glowing in gold, holding a lightning bolt, was called Lord of the Mountains. Almost none of this was characteristic of the Goddess (see, e.g., Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman pp. 72, 114; Dial Press, 1976).

§3. Yahweh, a God of Mountain and Light

Much of the imagery connected with the Hebrew Cod Yahweh is startlingly similar to the Father of Lightning, dwelling on a mountaintop, of the Indo-European patriarchal people. Consider the following:

[And Moses said to the people of Israel:] “Do not forget the things your eyes have seen; ... rather, tell them to your children .... The day you stood at Mount Horeb in the presence of Yahweh your God .... you came and stood at the foot of the mountain, and the mountains flamed to the very sky, a sky darkened by cloud, murky and thunderous. Then Yahweh spoke to you from the midst of the fire; you heard the sounds of words but saw no shape, there was only a voice.... Since you saw no shape on that day at Mount Horeb when Yahweh spoke to you from the midst of the fire, see that you do not act perversely, making yourselves a carved image in the shape of anything at all, whether it be in the likeness of man or of woman* ... for Yahweh your God is a consuming fire.... Did ever a people hear the voice of the living Cod speaking from the heart of the fire, as you heard it, and remain alive? ... He let you see his great fire, and from the heart of the fire you heard his word.... These are the words Yahweh spoke to you when you were all assembled on the mountain. With a great voice he spoke to you from the heart of the fire, in cloud and thick darkness ... while the mountain was all on fire.” (Deut 4:9-12, 15-16, 24, 33, 36; 5:22-23)

*[In fact the Israelites did later make an image, a golden calf, a widespread image in Egypt of the Goddess.]

There are of course many, many other references to Yahweh as a pillar of fire (Ex 13:21), Father of lights (Jas 1:17), as “wrapped in a robe of light” (Ps 104:2), as one asked to “touch the mountains, make them smoke, flash your lightning” (Ps 144:5), and as a rock (Ps 18; 19; 28; 3 1; 42; 62; 7 1; 89; 92; 94); and it is on Mount Zion that he is to be worshiped, though the northern tribes of Israel argued for Mount Gerizim. Yahweh is very often imaged as a father, a warrior God who slays his enemies in battle, the supreme creator of all; and in Elephantine Judaism the goddess Anath was the consort of Yahweh (see § 5).

Exactly what connection there might be between the patriarchal Hebrews and their God Yahweh and the patriarchal Indo-Europeans and their Gods remains unclear. But whatever the direct connections may or may not be, it is clear that the stance of both patriarchal peoples and their theologies vis-a-vis the religion of the Goddess would be, and was, very similar-hostile.

§4. Hebrews Worship the Goddess

The Yahwists struggled for hundreds of years to suppress the worship of the Goddess among the Hebrews. In tracing the history of this struggle, it should be noted first that in the Land of Canaan the Goddess worship was quite diversified by biblical times, so that there were at least three names of the Goddess: Anath, Astarte, and Asherah, who were subordinate to the male god Baal. (These three were probably originally one; Asherah is the Canaanite name for the earlier Sumerian goddess Ashratum, the consort of the god Anu, who closely corresponded to the Canaanite god El-a name for God also used by the Hebrews in many forms, e.g., El, Elohim (see §22), as they were both the God of Heaven; see William F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, p. 78; Johns Hopkins Press, 1942. Astarte is related to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, and she in turn to the Sumerian Inanna.)

There have been thousands of female figurines, many of which represent the Goddess, dug up all over Palestine at pre-, early, and middle biblical levels, though little in the way of male-God figurines (see Raphael Peter, The Hebrew Goddess, pp. 58-6 1; KTAV Publishing House, 1967).

Kathleen M. Kenyon (Archaeology in the Holy Land, p. 214; Frederick A. Praeger, 1960) in writing of the Late Bronze Age states that “the Astarte plaques ... are the most common cult object on almost all sites of the period .... Tell Beit Mirsim [in Palestine] itself provides clear evidence for the occurrence of such plaques or similar figurines right down to the 7th century B.C. The denunciations by the prophets are enough to show that Yahwehism had continuously to struggle with the ancient religion of the land.” Although biblical texts give us only a glimpse of the pervasiveness of the Goddess worship among all the Hebrews, mostly by way of condemnations of it by Yahwist prophets and destruction of Goddess images, etc., by reforming Yahwist kings, it is worth outlining this history briefly to gain some sense of the implacable fury vented by the Yahwists on the Goddess worshipers.

In the time of the judges (before 1000 B.C.E.) the people of Israel stopped worshiping Yahweh and served the Baals and Astartes (Judg 2:13). Later Solomon (961-922) “worshiped Astarte, the goddess of Sidon” (I Kings 11:5). Then the prophet Ahijah said: “Yahweh the God of Israel says to you, ‘I am going to take the kingdom away from Solomon.... I am going to do this because they have rejected me and have worshiped Astarte, the goddess of Sidon’” (I Kings 11: 31-33). In the next generation Ahijah said to the wife of Jeroboam, king of Israel (922-901), that “Yahweh will punish Israel ... because they have aroused his anger by making idols of the goddess Asherah” (I Kings 14:15). Meanwhile in Judah the people “put up stone pillars and symbols of Asherah to worship on the hills and under shady trees. Worst of all there were cult prostitutes (sing. qadesh) in the land. And they imitated all the abominations of the people Yahweh had thrown out before the Israelites came” (I Kings 14:23f.). Then in Judah the next king, Asa (913-873), “expelled from the country all Temple prostitutes (qedeshim) from the land and removed all the idols his fathers had made. He removed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother, because she had made an obscene idol of the goddess Asherah. Asa cut down the idol and burned it in the Kidron valley” (I Kings 15:12f.). In the next generation King Ahab (869-850) of Israel “put up an image of the goddess Asherah” (I Kings 16:33). “At that time there were at least four hundred prophets of Asherah” (I Kings 18:19) in Israel. Under King Jehoahaz (815-801) the people of Israel “still did not give up the sins into which King Jeroboam had led Israel, but kept on committing them; and the image of the goddess Asherah remained in Samaria” (2 Kings 13:6). The Goddess cult in the Northern Kingdom apparently continued, for in 721 when Israel fell to the Assyrians it was recorded that it fell “because the Israelites sinned against Yahweh their God. ... They worshiped other gods.... On all the hills they put up stone pillars and images of the goddess Asherah” (2 Kings 17:7-10).

The Bible redactors report somewhat more favorably on the attempts at reform led by some of the kings of Judah, but in the process indicate the pervasiveness and persistence of the Goddess worship among the Hebrews. After early reforms under King Joash (837-800) of Judah it was said that the “people stopped worshiping in the Temple of Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, and began to worship idols and the images of the goddess Asherah” (2 Chron 24:18). Goddess worship obviously continued until King Hezekiah (715-687) of Judah “broke the stone pillars and cut down the image of the goddess Asherah” (2 Kings 18:4). But his own son Manasseh followed as king and “made an image of the goddess Asherah” (2 Kings 21:3). Then came the last great reform efforts before the exile, under King Josiah (640-609) of Judah, who “removed from the Temple the symbol of the goddess Asherah, took it out of the city to the Kidron valley, burned it, pounded its ashes to dust.... He destroyed the living quarters in the Temple occupied by the Temple prostitutes. It was there that women wove robes for the Asherah” (2 Kings 23:6-7).

All three of the greater prophets mention the worship of the Goddess. The oldest, Isaiah, predicts around 735 B.C.E. that when Yahweh punishes Israel the people “will no longer rely on altars they made with their own hands, or trust in their own handiwork-symbols of the goddess Asherah” (Is 17:8). At another place he adds that “Israel’s sins will be forgiven only when the stones of pagan altars are ground up like chalk, and no more symbols of the goddess Asherah or incense altars are left” (Is 27:9). Ezekiel, who traditionally is said to have been active around the time of the fall of Jerusalem a generation after King Josiah in 586, reported being shown “at the inner entrance of the north gate of the Temple an idol that was an outrage to God” (Ezek 8:3). In line with most scholarship the New American Bible notes here that “this was probably the statue of the goddess Asherah erected by the wicked King Manasseh-cf. 2 Kgs 21:7; 2 Chr 33:7, 15. Though it had been removed by King Josiah-2 Kgs 23:6-it had no doubt been set up again.” In the same vision Ezekiel reported on a sight three times more abominable, namely, at the north gate of the Temple were “women weeping over the death of the god Tammuz” (Ezek 8:14; a part of a seasonal ritual in which the death of plants in fall was likened to the descent into the nether world by the subordinate male god Tammuz, to be triumphantly restored to life in spring by the source of life, the goddess Astarte-or Ishtar in Babylonian or Inanna in Sumerian traditions).

Some years before, Jeremiah complained that the people of Judah 41 worship at the altars and symbols that have been set up for the goddess Asherah by every green tree and on the bill tops and on the mountains in the open country” (Jer 17:2-3). Later the same prophet Jeremiah was taken with the remnant of Judeans, after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586, into Egypt. He berated the people for having brought on the disaster by worshiping other Gods. Who the “other God” was is made clear by the people’s response:

Then all the men who knew that their wives offered sacrifices to other gods and all the women in the crowd ... said to me “We refuse to listen to what you have told us in the name of Yahweh. We will do everything that we said we would. We will offer sacrifices to our goddess, the Queen of Heaven,* and we will pour out wine offerings to her, just as we and our ancestors, our king and our leaders, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. Then we had plenty of food, we were prosperous, and had no troubles. But ever since we stopped sacrificing to the Queen of Heaven and stopped pouring out wine offerings to her, we have had nothing, and our people have died in war and starvation.” And the women added, “When we baked cakes shaped like the Queen of Heaven, offered sacrifices to her, and poured our wine offerings to her, our husbands approved of what we were doing.” (Jer 44:15-19)

*[Anath-Astarte was addressed as Queen of Heaven in Egypt-Patai, Hebrew Goddess, p. 55 .]

The Oxford Annotated Bible also links this Queen of Heaven with the Babylonian Ishtar and the Canaanite Astarte (likewise with the Greek Aphrodite and Roman Venus), and states that “the cult was especially popular among women, who had an inferior role in the cult of the LORD [Yahweh]. . . . The cult persisted into the Christian centuries, and features of it were incorporated by the early Syrian church in the adoration of the Virgin.” It is clear from the Jeremiah text that the women too were “priests” in the ancient Hebrew cult of the Queen of Heaven.

§5. Hebrew Goddess at Elephantine

Probably from around this time onward a colony of Jews lived at Elephantine, Egypt, an island in the Nile river, opposite Aswan, about four hundred miles south of Cairo. From their papyrus letters and documents of the late fifth century B.C.E. we know not only that the Jewish women as well as men contributed money to the Temple, and that the women could divorce their spouses as well as the men could, but also that in the Temple along with Yahu (as Yahweh was addressed there) the goddess Anathbethel was also worshiped (Arthur E. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C., p. 72; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923).

The name Anath-Bethel literally means “Anath the House of El [the God of Heaven]”-cf. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri, p. 72. Since in Hebraic culture a wife is referred to as the husband’s “house,” this name suggests that the goddess Anath was understood as the “God of Heaven’s” consort. This is further confirmed by the fact that Yahu (derived from a variant of an older spelling of Yahweh) is called the “God of Heaven” in the same Elephantine papyri (ibid., p. 114) and that Anath is often referred to as the “Lady of Heaven,” especially in Egyptian culture (see Patai, Hebrew Goddess, p. 55). Still further, the Jewish writings of Elephantine also include an oath to Yahu and to Anath, “consort of Yahu”: “He swore to Mesbullam b. Nathan by Yahu the God, by the temple and by Anathyahu” (Cowley, Aramaic Papyri, p. 148). (Alternatively, Kraeling suggests that Bethel in Anath-Bethel is simply an alternative name for Yahu, and offers reasons-Emil G. Kraeling, ed., The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri, pp. 88-90; Yale University Press, 1953.)

Moreover, it is likely that refugees from Bethel, some fourteen miles north of Jerusalem, played an important part in the development of this syncretistic worship in Elephantine Judaism, for Bethel was known not only as a place where Yahweh was early worshiped; Bethel was a place where later the Goddess was also worshiped, as indicated by the calf image there (cf. e.g., Hos 10:5-the cow, the calf, was a symbol of the Goddess, the source of life, fertility; see James, Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 8 1). After describing temples of the Goddess and of Yahweh alongside each other at Tell-en-Nasbeb in Palestine, Edwin O. James goes on to state:

This equipment suggests that it was a centre of the Goddess cult where Astarte was worshipped, probably in later times alongside of Yahweh at the neighbouring shrine, possibly as his consort. If this were so, the goddesses under Canaanite names (e.g., Anath-Yahu comparable to Yo-Elat in Ugaritic texts) assigned to Yahweh in the Jewish community at Elephantine after the Exile can hardly have been an innovation. (James, Cult of the Mother Goddess, p. 80)

§6. Goddess Worship “Suppressed”

After the return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile the public worship of the Goddess seems to have been successfully suppressed, being relegated largely to feminine manifestations of God as in the post-exilic Wisdom books’ praise of the feminine Hokmah (Hebrew) or Sophia (Greek), “Wisdom,” and the growing reference to God’s feminine Presence, Shekhinah, an Aramaic term first found after the beginning of the Christian Era in Rabbinic and Targumic writings. One of the high-cost ways this was accomplished was by the banning of intermarriage. By this time Jewish women in any case normally could not marry non-Jews; Jewish men also were not supposed to marry non-Jewish women, though in fact they did. The reason foreign wives were not to be taken is that they were seen as the source of corrupting Goddess worship, e.g., Jezebel and her worship of Asherah and Baal. This enforcement of the Deuteronomic prohibition (Deut 7:1-4) took the drastic form of the divorce and driving out by the Jewish men of their non-Jewish wives and children (Ezra 9 and 10; cf. Neh 13:23-28). Despite all the efforts, however, to eliminate the feminine dimension of the deity, it persisted in biblical writers perhaps far more than is often realized. Some examples follow.

§7. God a Seamstress

Already in the most ancient part of the Bible, the Yahwist’s story of the Fall, one finds Yahweh performing a customarily female task in Hebrew society (cf. Prov 31:10-31): Yahweh God acts as a seamstress:

And Yahweh God made tunics of skins for the man and his wife and clothed them. (Gen 3:21)

§8. God Mother and Nurse

When the Israelites in the desert complained of their problems to Moses, he in turn complained to Yahweh with rhetorical questions that by negative implication project onto Yahweh the images of a mother and a wet nurse-and this also in the ancient Elohist-Yahwist portion of the Bible.

Was it I who conceived all this people, was it I who gave them birth, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, like a beloved little mother with a baby at the breast?” (Num 11:12)

§9. God a Loving Mother

While the eighth-century prophet Hosea makes heavy use of the image of Yahweh as the husband of a faithless Israel, he also projects Yahweh in the image of a parent teaching a child to walk, healing its hurts, feeding it-all tasks a mother, not a father, normally performed in that society. Yahweh further frets and agonizes over the wayward child, but in the end declares in favor of mercy instead of deserved punishment by clearly rejecting any identification with the male-ish, meaning male, is the term used.

When Israel was a child I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. ... I myself taught Ephraim to walk, I took them in my arms; yet they have not understood that I was the one looking after them. I led them with reins of kindness, with leading-strings of love. I was like someone who lifts an infant close against his cheek; stooping down to him I gave him his food. ... I will not give rein to my fierce anger, I will not destroy Ephraim again, for I am God, not man (ish). (Hos 11: 1, 3, 4, 9)

§10. God Who Gave Birth to Humanity

In the last book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy (possibly seventh century), in the Song of Moses, God describes herself in clearly feminine, motherly imagery (if the first verb is understood in the less likely paternal sense, then an androgynous parental image of God is projected):

You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you (yiladeka) and you forgot the God who writhed in labor pains with you (meholeleka). (Deut 32:18) [Note: yiladeka almost always means “that bore you,” and only rarely can mean “begot,” as it is almost always translated-see P. A. H. DeBoer, Fatherhood and Motherhood in Israelite and Judean Piety, p. 52; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974.]

§ 11. Humanity in Yahweh’s Womb-I

In Hebrew, rechem means womb. The plural form, rachamim, extends this concrete meaning to signify compassion, love, mercy. The verb form, rchm, means to show mercy, and the adjective, rachum, means merciful. Thus to speak of compassion or mercy automatically calls forth maternal overtones. This motherly compassion is attributed to God in a number of places; it is especially striking in a passage from Jeremiah, a seventh-century prophet. After a careful, penetrating analysis, Phyllis Trible (God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p. 45; Fortress Press, 1978) provides a translation of the passage that is much more accurate and sensitive to the Hebrew poetry in general and the words related to rechem in particular. In the last line Yahweh speaks of herself with the doubly uterine words rachem, arachamennu, “motherly womb-love.”

Is Ephraim my dear Son? my darling child?

For the more I speak of him

the more do I remember him.

Therefore, my womb trembles for him;

I will truly show motherly-compassion

(rachem arachamennu) upon him.

Oracle of Yahweh (Jer 31:20)

12. Humanity in Yahweh’s Womb-II

The above passage of Jeremiah is a key one in a larger poetic structure where the very form expresses a superiority of the female over the male in that the male came forth from the female’s womb, is “ surrounded by” the female, therefore. The passage Jer 31:15-22 reaches its climax with the statement: “For Yahweh has created a new thing in the land: female surrounds [tesobeb] man.” (v.22) This “female surrounding man” has manifold referents: Rachel the mother embracing her sons (v.15), Yahweh consoling Rachel about Ephraim (vs.16-17), Yahweh proclaiming motherly compassion for Ephraim (v. 20), the daughter Israel superseding the son Ephraim (v. 2 1).

[Words of a woman] A voice is heard in Ramah,

lamenting and weeping bitterly:

it is Rachel weeping for her children

because they are no more.

[Words to a woman] Yahweh says this:

Stop your weeping,

dry your eyes,

your hardships will be redressed:

they shall come back from the enemy country.

There is hope for your descendants:

your sons will come home to their own lands.

[Words of a man]

plainly hear the grieving of Ephraim,

“You have disciplined me, I accepted the discipline

like a young bull untamed.

Bring me back, let me come back,

for you are Yahweh my God!

Yes, I turned away, but have since repented;

I understood, I beat my breast.

I was deeply ashamed, covered with confusion;

Yes, I still bore the disgrace of my youth.”

[Words of a woman-Yahweh]

Is Ephraim my dear son? my darling child?

For the more I speak of him,

the more do I remember him.

Therefore, my womb trembles for him;

I will truly show motherly-compassion upon him

[Words to a woman-Jeremiah’s comma

Set up signposts,

raise landmarks;

mark the road well,

the way by which you went.

Come home, virgin of Israel,

come home to these towns of yours.

How long will you hesitate, disloyal daughter?

For Yahweh has created a new thing in the land:

female surrounds man. (Jer 31:15-22)

As Phyllis Trible notes (God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, p. 50): “The very form and content of the poem embodies a womb: woman encloses man. The female organ nourishes, sustains, and redeems the male child Ephraim. Thus our metaphor is surrounded by a cloud of witnesses.”