Does God Need A Goddess? What happened to those functions that the goddesses served when our ancestors moved from worshipping a pantheon of gods and goddesses to focusing on the One God? Ancient civilizations had many gods and goddesses, each having different functions that provided ways to address the different roles and nature of men and women. Biblical monotheism was unable to incorporate all the functions of the previous goddesses, and as a result some functions were just dropped. This startling idea is the core of the scholarly and well-researched book, In the Wake of the Goddess: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth by Ms. Tikva Frymer-Kensky of the Annenberg Research Institute. She suggests that most of our information on the goddess has come from the internal experience of the writer. We cannot have the whole picture of the goddess without examining the concrete data that is available. In ancient manuscripts and recent archeological discoveries, the myths of the early goddesses show them functioning in the arts, writing, (the first written poem we have is by a woman), dream interpretation, healing, lamenting (mourning). Their major domain was the body and the areas of reproduction, fertility and sexuality. Even as Biblical monotheism began, the male gods of the pagan world had already begun to eclipse the goddesses and take over their functions in the arts. But the goddesses Inanna and Ishtar still held the power in the area of fertility and sexuality. The one God of Israel was able to absorb the goddesses' functions of healing and the fertility of the earth. He also took over their duties of shutting and opening wombs, and presiding over birth. The one function of the goddesses He ignored was that of sexuality and eros. Where ancient civilizations had Inanna and Ishtar modeling the connection between religion and sexuality, Biblical monotheism had no god or goddess to show the way toward the integration of these powerful emotions. In pagan religions sexuality was a part of the natural order and even considered sacred. In one ritual, the Sacred Marriage, sexual behavior insured the fertility of the land. Biblical monotheism's major concern in the area of sexuality was keeping it separated from the divine. Because Biblical monotheism did not address sexuality, there was a vacuum in what is an essential area of human concern. When Alexander the Great conquered Judea in 333 BCE, the Greek ideas about women began to fill that vacuum. The Greeks thought that women were inherently different from men and there was a strong theme of misogyny and anti-female throughout their belief system. Due to the Greek influence, ideas and stories that support sexist ideology and practice began to infiltrate Biblical writings. Ecclesiastes, written in the early Hellenistic period, contains the first openly misogynistic statement. Because the early Bible writings ignored this major function of the early goddesses, there has been no way to understand and integrate the experience of human sexuality. Ms. Frymer-Kensky's conclusion is that sexuality, once a function of the goddess, has become the "unfinished agenda of biblical monotheism". The immense interest in the idea of the goddess today stems in part from our need to find a way to integrate this powerful human need into the sacred. The Edgar Cayce readings' emphasis on the oneness of all life, suggests that monotheism is not an idea that originated with the patriarchy. The return of sexuality to the sacred realm could be a stepping stone toward our return, as souls, to a higher order of integration and oneness. (Digest by Raye Mathis, Atlantic University) |