By
Cora E. Cypser
Published by
KIM PATHWAYS
Dedicated to
Mary Magdalene
and
The Presbyter Joanna
Copyright © 1987 by Cora E. Cypser.
Second Edition 1991
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number:
ISBN: 0-962577 Soft cover
For more information:
KIM PATHWAYS
16 Young Road
Katonah NY 10536
ii
CONTENTS
PREFACE vi
1.1 A Parable 1
1.2 Love One Another 2
1.3 A God-given Tool 3
1.4 Hermeneutics and Hieroglyphics 5
1.5 The Womanly Aspect of God's Love 10
1.6 Early Ideas of God 11
1.7 Men as Sole Dispensers of the Religious 15
Notes 18
2.1 Taking off the Patriarchal Glasses 19
2.2 The Feminine in Isaiah 25
2.3 Language We Use for Divinity 29
2.4 Fathers, Servants, and Bridges 31
2.5 Prophets and Charlatans 35
Notes 38
3.1 Thoughts on a Garden 39
3.2 Moses as Author 45
3.3 Literature in the Days of David and Solomon 49
3.4 Interesting People at Court 51
3.5 The Jahwist Editor 56
3.6 The Elohist Editor 59
Notes 63
Ch. 4-THE TOUCH OF A WOMAN'S HAND
4.1 Authorship of the Pentateuch 65
4.2 The Feminine Identity of the Jahwist 67
4.3 Visiting Royalty 70
iii
4.4 The Deuteronomist Editor 71
4.5 Carried Away to Babylon 78
4.6 A Little Child Shall Lead Them 83
4.7 The Peaceful One and the Beard 86
Notes 89
Ch. 5-A BLACK WOMAN SAVES THE JEWISH RACE
5.1 Laying the Ghost of Shemiah 91
5.2 The Wife of Moses 93
5.3 A Priestess of the Rite of Circumcision? 96
5.4 The Dismissal 97
5.5 Other Possible References to Zipporah 97
5.6 Prejudice Against Sons of a Black Woman 102
5.7 Zipporah as Savioress 105
5.8 Community in the Old Testament 106 Notes 108
Ch.6-THE PERENNIAL PROBLEM OF SIN
6.1 Cultural Interpretations of Genesis 109
6.2 Translating the Word "Adam" 112
6.3 Enlarging on the Peaceful Author's Theology 114
6.4 The Fall or the Rising? 117
6.5 Original Sin 121
6.6 Jesus on Adam and Eve 122
6.7 Paul and the Garden 123
6.8 Pseudo-Paul on the Garden 125
6.9 God-inspired Messages 127
Notes 131
7.1 God Sees Women 133
7.2 The Lord Has Seen My Trouble 136
7.3 Does God Hide God's Face? 138
7.4 Other Historical Roles of Women 143
7.5 A Bitter Blow 148
Notes 150
iv
Ch. 8-THE POSSIBILITY OF THE GOSPEL OF LUCY
8.1 Authorship Customs in New Testament Times 151
8.2 The Holy Spirit as Maker of Gospels 153
8.3 Names as Clues in Gospel Stories 156
8.4 Female Authorship in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark 161
8.5 The Feminine in the Gospel of Luke 164
8.6 Many Writings for Fullest Revelation 168
8.7 Lucy's Theology 168
8.8 Female Relatedness 172
8.9 Luke versus Lucy 174
Notes 175
Ch. 9-ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERY
IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
9.1 A Whodunit! 177
9.2 Disciples and Rabbis 183
9.3 The Beloved Disciple as Mary Magdalene? 187
9.4 The Witnesses at the High Priest's Palace 190
9.5 The Beloved Disciple at the Foot of the Cross 191
9.6 Mary Magdalene at the Tomb 193
9.7 The Exalted Position of Women in John's Gospel 196
9.8 The Beloved Disciple in John 21 198
9.9 Back to Whodunit? The Authors 202
Notes 206
Ch. 10-WOMAN'S POSITION IN THE FAITH COMMUNITY
10.1 The Calling of a Woman 207
10.2 Church Fathers as Church Mothers 210
10.3 Women as Servers of Eucharist 212
10.4 Problems of Joanna 216
10.5 I Timothy and Roman Household Codes 219
10.6 Growth in the Church 223
10.7 God's Intentions versus Man's Inventions 226
10.8 Don't Be Afraid 228
Notes 230
The Peculiarities of Canon Law
Definition of Ordination
Suing for and Pursuing after Ordination
Lay People and Priests
The Need for Symbols
Notes
v
In spite of the title, this book is addressed to men as well as to women. It is intended for those persons interested in coming to a deeper understanding of their faith commitment through study of the Bible. While I hope that Biblical exegetes will accept my work as a serious effort, I believe that the ordinary lay person will also be able to derive inspiration from it. In viewing the Bible as a structure to carry the love of God to humankind, I strive to show that this structure teaches the equality of the female with the male. The hope is that my book with its questioning attitude will create greater understanding and cooperation between the sexes, and further the growth of loving community in the world.
Scholars have long identified the editors of the Pentateuch as gray bearded scribes, and called these individuals the Jahwist, the Elohist, the Deuteronomist, and the Priestly authors. I discuss the possibility of some of these editors being women. I emphasize the feminine in the Adam and Eve story, and ask the reader to step back in history and empathize with the black woman Zipporah, the wife of Moses. Coming to the New Testament, I raise the possibilities of the Gospels of Mathilda, Marcia, Lucy, and Joanna. If you like resolving puzzles, inquire with me into who was the faithful disciple who stood at the foot of the cross.
The message of the Bible is that we should love one another. This means that both men and women should show consideration and respect for both women and men. Though many readers may believe that the Bible advocates patriarchy, this is not the case. It emphasizes the equality of the male and the female, of the imprisoned and the free, of all races and nations. It urges us to form loving community.
I hope that in considering my suggestions, you will broaden your perspectives, and that the men in the reading audience will become more understanding of women. Likewise, my hope for the women, is that they will be more appreciative of men.
vi
Once upon a time there was a wise ruler who had a wonderful tool. This tool enabled his subjects to live together in peace and harmony. Since this ruler was very wise, he knew what was going on at vast distances, and in a far away country he observed that the people were having problems building loving community. He thought to himself how much they really needed the use of his tool.
He called his subjects to him, and he asked for volunteers to carry this wonderful tool to the far away country. Many of them were very eager to undertake this adventure, and even his only son whom he loved very dearly, asked permission to assist in this kind deed.
It was not an easy job, but then, it seems that nothing worthwhile is really easy. They had to disassemble the tool, carefully marking how the pieces were to be joined. Then they had to carry the pieces separately along difficult roads for long distances.
You know how servants are:— some are more dependable than others. Even some of the responsible ones met up with grave difficulties. Eventually they arrived at the country, and reassembled the wonderful tool. The son had done his part well, and was able to make a most effective contribution to this generous project.
The citizens of the far away country were very grateful to the distant ruler, and attempted to make proper use of the wonderful tool. It had been reassembled in fairly good order, and most of its parts were working quite well. Some minor damage had been done in transport, a few parts misplaced, and some assembly directions garbled, but on the whole, the tool was capable of delivering loving community to all those who attempted to use it properly.
The wonderful tool spoken about in the above parable is the Bible, given to us by the wise God who created us. We can use this wonderful tool to promote loving community. In this writing I would like to use the Bible to promote, not just any kind of community, but, specifically, I would like to encourage greater understanding between the sexes. If we are to achieve a peaceful and beautiful world, such as the time of the Millennium or the
dream of Omega laid before us by Teilhard de Chardin, we must work diligently in all disturbed areas, in order to achieve maximum consideration for others. We must not be afraid to envision new possibilities of grandeur for humankind. The future is waiting for our actions of today. To bring in this future, we must act creatively and decisively.
One of the trouble spots that needs attention is the area of gender discrimination. For so long we seem to have agreed to live passively in a society that degrades and puts down members of the feminine gender. It is not just that women are given secondary status, and paid less for equal labor. Women also retaliate against men by hating men in the secret places of their hearts and by laughing up their sleeves at men's mistakes and all too human clumsiness, instead of being forgiving and encouraging.
Looking at this situation from an overview of total humanity, we can state that women as human beings have certain rights and responsibilities. Women must treat themselves with respect, and they must treat others with the respect due to others as children of a loving creator. As human beings, women must give thoughtful consideration to all human beings, and women should expect to receive similar treatment from those around them. The situation is similar for men. Somewhere humanity has gone astray; most of us don't treat each other in this fashion.
I believe that one of God's purposes in the making of the cosmos, was to promote loving community. Thus I am writing this book to further this design of God's. I have noticed that some women feel that men oppress them, and I have also noticed that some men are very bitter about the pushiness of some women. They flee from the woman. A few become celibate. Some join male clubs. They may go homosexual. What have some women done to cause such a reaction? Is womankind herself responsible for the oppression that she feels comes from men? God surely didn't plan it that way. There must be a method to encourage more considerate caring cooperation between the sexes. Even a marriage today, which should be a loving union of two, is liable to become a contest of self interests.
The religious faiths prominent in our world today urge us all forward to peace between races, peace between countries, and peace between sexes. As Christians we find that Jesus asked that we love one another. He asked for men to love both men and women. He asked for women to love both women and men. Let's try to comply. Perhaps if we examine the historical roots of the conflict, in particular through the study of that wonderful tool, the Bible, the sexes will gain more sympathy for each other. If, in examining the Bible we find that men and women are equally responsible for the formation of loving community in the world, perhaps men and women will
have renewed respect for each other and be more willing to work lovingly together in order to achieve God's kingdom on earth.
To the men, I would like to say:— Don't be afraid of women; love us. We are fifty percent of the world community, and we have a lot to offer. To the women:— Men basically want what is good. They desire peace and order. They want kind and just rules by which to play the game of life. They want to fulfill God's purposes of loving community. We must give them support in their positive actions, yet we must refrain from being overbearing. We must not be domineering authoritative mothers, but considerate women who allow freedom to those we profess to love.
Both men and women have great respect for the inspiration of God as given in the Bible. Let us turn our gaze on those collected messages from God to see if there is an obvious overall design for justice and peace between men and women, contained therein. Let us look for new ways to implement ancient wisdom. Let us listen to one another with honest concern, and perhaps we will find that we have not strayed as far from the path to loving community, as we thought we had.
When we approach religious writings such as the Bible, we immediately run into the problems of translation and interpretation. If you have ever traveled in a foreign country and tried to communicate important happenings to someone else in a foreign language, you know that there is often difficulty in getting your message across. When we read the Bible, we must realize that there are quite a few obstacles to our getting the perfect translation.
There are many different biblical translations, such as The King James Version, The Good News Bible of the American Bible Society, The Jerusalem Bible which has its roots in French scholarship, and The Way which gives a modern free translation of the Word of God. These different translations, when compared together, can give us valuable new insights into the possible meaning of God's Word. As these translations are made by humans, albeit overseen by the Holy Spirit, they do contain the human element, and sometimes the different translations are not in agreement. In cases such as these, we need further interpretation by the Holy Spirit working in a loving community, to assist us in coming to a clearer understanding of the message of God to his people.
Language misinterpretation is one problem of biblical translation. There are many others, due to editors and compilers from one culture and age misunderstanding the materials given from a previous generation. Inserts that someone believed would clarify the data, were liable to link items that should have been kept separate. Editorial notes that should have been
left on the margin, were inserted as part of the text. A wide variety of editors worked diligently believing that they were helping to bring the message of God to his people, and they did a good job, as the Holy Spirit was with them. However, the Holy Spirit can only work with each person using that individual's available knowledge of language and customs. As we are human, the translating and interpreting abilities of each of us are limited. If we work together in love, the Holy Spirit has more freedom to use all our different talents, which them allows the Spirit to give us a more enriched translation of God's Holy Word.
We revere the Bible as we believe it is a collection of words that bring to humankind, the revelation of God. God makes this revelation of Godself to humankind in different ways. had no Bible, but God revealed himself to , as I Am Who Am, as the Ground of Being for all persons. absorbed this revelation, and related it to his community. ' community passed this communication of God, on through the centuries, to us, in great part by the use of Holy Scripture. Thus we see that God uses different structures to communicate what he is like to humankind. God uses the structure of an individual man, such as . God uses the structure of a worshiping community, such as the Hebrews of the Exodus. Finally, God uses the structure of Holy Scripture.
The Revelation of God to enhanced the growth of ' community, and it also enhanced the growth of future communities. In a similar manner other persons received insight into the Being of God; these theophanies were collected, and the gathering of them likewise was effective for the building of loving community.
We can regard the Holy Scriptures as a beautiful tool given to humankind by God, to bring us closer to him, and to assist us in being more understanding of one another. If we have a valuable tool, we cherish it carefully and keep it honed and polished, so that rust or misuse will not damage it. If the tool has intricate parts, we strive to understand these mechanisms, so that we do not damage them through carelessness. Seeing that our God has been so generous as to give us this tool, the Bible, we must use it as effectively as we can. This means that we must also keep ourselves in good condition, so that we get the maximum benefit from this tool, for ourselves and for others. If we are to use a tool to best purposes, we must have a steady hand, a clear mind, and a good disposition.
In investigating the inner workings of this marvelous tool, we find that its original parts spring from many different languages. Some of its ideas were first set down in picture writings similar to Assyrian cuneiform. God's Word
to Moses on the stone tablets of law, may have been chiseled in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The Hebrews appropriated the language of the land of Canaan after their arrival there, and Hebrew became a dialect of this Canaanite tongue. After the captivity of the tribes in Babylon, the Aramaic tongue of Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, became the official language of the day. Aramaic was the day-by-day language of Jesus, but those of his time who knew the Jewish law were cognizant of Hebrew, and Greek was also spoken by people of culture in New Testament times. Aramaic targums were translated into Hebrew and Greek, and this Greek was put into Latin in the Vulgate. From the Latin, the Holy Scriptures were gradually put into our present languages.
If English is considered a sexist language because we use the pronoun he in preference to the pronoun she when a person of either sex is indicated, we must realize that Greek gives the woman even less notice. Greek verbs contain their pronoun subjects in their endings, so that the Greek word for "he sees" is the same as the word for "she sees," which is also the same word as "it sees." Using English letters, we can set down this multi-meaning word as "blepei." A translator of the Bible running across this word blepei would have to translate it as "he sees" unless some other word in the sentence gave him some clue that a woman or a sexless object was involved in the action. Hebrew has a similar system. If a prophet's name was not known to be feminine, her good words and actions may have been attributed to a male person, as a translator would be obliged to give the masculine designation in any disputable circumstances. As a human being in a particular cultural milieu, the translator would be obliged to operate within the peculiarities of his or her language.
We have the problem not only of the structure of the language, but also that of words that change and grow with the change and growth of society. Meanings that were obvious to citizens of pre-exilic Jerusalem, are lost to us in their journey across the centuries. Societal customs are much different from ours, and new interpretations of old words and phrases are automatically reflected by the translator. A word like sin that originally implied missing the mark, can take on more formidable connotations of evil with the ensuing necessity for God's wrath. The amazing thing is that the Word of God is relevant for humankind today,— that the earlier message of the creator to the created elicits a response in our modern hearts.
The translator of the Book of Ecclesiasticus writing in the year 132 BC, brings up this problem. He asks his readers to "show indulgence in those places where, notwithstanding our efforts at interpretation, we may seem to have failed to give an adequate rendering of this or that expression;
the fact is that you cannot find an equivalent for things originally written in Hebrew when you come to translate them into another language; what is more, you will find on examination that the Law itself, the Prophets and the other books differ considerably in translation from what appears in the original text" (Ecclesiasticus Foreward:18-26). In order for us to fully appreciate God's word, it becomes very important for us to know what God was saying to people back then, and how we should relate it to the circumstances of our present day living.
Each society has its own shell of protective customs that grow up around it and enable it to flourish. It has methods of war and governance. It has religious forms that have proven to be effective. It has markets and means of communication with other societies. All these devices give the society a certain mind-set, a way of looking at things, that is considered to be the acceptable way, the way of optimum safety. It becomes so much a part of that society, that the people of that society are almost unaware of the existence of this thought pattern. It is considered to be the way to do things.
In our society we tend to see everything from a patriarchal view-point. Patriarchs are venerable old men, and our society has been guided for most of its recorded history by men who were considered venerable, yet who had considerable difficulty getting along with each other, and also had the problem of keeping the women in line. How did this male dominance of society develop? Perhaps it is because all these men had mothers, and the setting aside of women today may stem from the pushiness of early mothers who loved their sons tenderly, and worried over them frantically, so that the sons could hardly wait to untie the apron strings and become their own persons in freedom.
History is given us from a patriarchal viewpoint. Battles are reported by men. Political machinations are run by men. Men don't really know what is going on (as they are only human), but they have to put up a good front and pretend that they do. Ancient kings who lost battles erected stylos that reported they had a great victory, and perhaps they really felt they were setting down the truth. The Catholic historian Richard McBrien admits that history is always written by those who have limited data and come from a faulty perspective.1 As we are all too human, we let our prejudices and our errors slip into whatever we may be writing. The astounding thing is that other people believe, repeat, and compound the error.
When we consider the information we acquire in our daily life, we notice that humans believe what they want to believe. If we smoke, we choose to believe that it won't be unhealthy for us or for those around us. If
nuclear weapons threaten the world, we believe that somehow we shall avoid a nuclear war. We try to maintain the status quo, because we believe that is where most of us operate best. We act on the premise that believing will make it so. We appropriate information that confirms us in our ego security.
Knowing that I am working against ingrained beliefs in a conforming society, I shall attempt to emphasize and clarify certain incidents and information to be found in the text of the Bible. I shall try to strip off the conjectures of others in relation to these facts. I will attempt to separate out conclusions that succeeding generations have deduced from these facts, that don't necessarily follow. Then I will propose questions about the purposes of the original author. This process doesn't make the information unhistorical or deformed. It merely cleans it up so that it can be observed from a fresh viewpoint. Please carefully consider this new viewpoint and its relationship to the total message of the Bible, before reacting angrily against change in what you may believe is sacrosanct. I may propose that a woman is the individual behind a biblical author that society has always considered to be a man. This may upset your societal beliefs, but it shouldn't necessarily be a body blow to the tenets of your faith. As God, religion, and community are equally concerned with men and women, shouldn't women have their possible share in the input of ancient religious writings? Shouldn't women have an equal share in the religious writings and the church community of today?
Jesus came that we might know the truth and be freed from our misconceptions. Others came after Jesus and built on his foundations. Down through the ages church persons have created a beautiful painting, layer over layer of vibrant colors laid over the original, so that the basic Jesus is difficult to see. If we carefully scrape away these additions, perhaps we will learn something about ourselves, and be able to see the wisdom of Jesus with greater clarity. If many of us examine God's inspirational word, and revise our responses to it, we will surely come closer to the mind and heart of God. Much thought on the subject, many revisions, concerned input, will all lead to truer output and a greater closeness to our creator.
As we all come from different backgrounds, it is highly unlikely that we will agree on every pronouncement; but if we discuss in the spirit of love and understanding, we will grow in the ability to admit that others have a right to their own opinion. There are twelve gates to the city of God (Revelation 21:12), and we all come at it from different directions. The unity of humankind does not consist in our thinking identical conforming thoughts, but in our loving and accepting one another in spite of our differences.
There are various methods of seeking inspiration from the Bible, and some of us feel more comfortable with one style then another. At opposite extremes, we have those often termed fundamentalists, who see explicit truth in every phrase, and, on the other hand, we have theoreticians who seek more for a general over-all message. Most of us would agree that if we humbly ask the Holy Spirit for guidance, we will receive enlightenment that will lead to our fulfillment, no matter what our particular method of search.
Juan Segundo, a Latin American liberation theologian, tells us about a method of biblical interpretation for our day.2 His hermeneutic advises us to re-examine our interpretation of the Bible in light of changes in present day reality, both individual and societal. Two hundred years ago, slavery was an accepted facet of life, and those who read their Bible found justification for this practice. Today in a society partially cleansed from the evil of slavery, we find our Bibles proclaiming the freedom and equality before God of each human person. The hermeneutical tool of re-examination was used to help us see the slavery situation more clearly, and it can likewise be used effectively in denuding our patriarchal system.
Another problem that we must wrestle with, is our lack of knowledge of the original language. Ancient scribes were artists who wrote with dramatic flourishes. Their work might be compared to Chinese wall hangings of today, where the artist with his pen makes each character into a carefully crafted picture. These characters can only be translated loosely. What one translator may read as, "The beautiful flowers grow slowly on the blue hill," another reader may pinpoint as, "The chrysanthemums bloom in my far away homeland." It is difficult to get closely compatible accounts of ancient material. The scribe who copies the original author is an artist in his own right. He translates the thought of his predecessor, and his interpretation of that thought can strengthen or take away from the original design. He may feel the Spirit of God urging him to add a few ideas on the subject. For this reason we have two letters of Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon reported in the Old Testament. One is in Baruch 6 and the other is in Jeremiah 29. They are similar in that one prophesies seven generations of deportment, and the other specifies seventy years. Their inspiration is from the same original letter, but this inspiration is filtered through the hand written flourishes of scribes with individual mind sets. In our search for facts we must not overlook the guiding inspiration of the Spirit working in different people at different times in history, and must give these variances proper weight in our considerations.
Most of us think that the Bible is a book that is written by males, who were inspired by a fatherly God, so that religious groups, headed by men, could lead the people to salvation. I would like to make some slight changes in the above statement. My assertion is that the Bible is a book written by human beings inspired by a mysterious First Cause, in order that humanity can see God's action across history and be inspired to participate in that action. My statement could be rewritten in many other ways, because all of us come from many different cultures, and have many different viewpoints, and each of us must express what we feel, from out of that particular person that he or she is.
I am glad that I am a woman, as being a woman has shaped my thought. Not only can I observe our society and its customs from its normal patriarchal viewpoint, but I can also investigate history and theology with the perceptions of a questioning female. Right from the start, when I related to God, I felt in God the caring love that I had experienced from the hands of the wonderful woman who raised me, who gave up things for herself, so that I might have more. For me, there is a womanly aspect to God's love, but how do most of us see God as represented in the Bible? Is our God like the warrior God of some early Hebrews, a God with vengeful designs, leading us, his people, onward, against the false gods and goddesses of wayward foreigners? Not all early Hebrews saw God this way. Psalm 101 sings about kindness and justice. Psalm 103 proclaims that God is always on the side of the oppressed. There are implications of some folk worshiping the gentler side of God, as when Rachel hides the household gods from her father Laban in Genesis 31:31-35.
Being tenderhearted and motherly, some women may even have been responsible for the quality of forgiveness being used on other human beings. Cain did not receive capital punishment for the slaying of Abel (Genesis 4:15). Could a loving mother have been behind the more forgiving sentence? Even today the quality of forgiveness, as mentioned in the Lord's prayer, is often seen as unbecoming for a male. Society seems to expect that a male should want to get even with the person who wronged him, and not want to forgive. It is felt that a man must show strength and anger or his adversary will take advantage of him. However, Jesus spoke of turning the other cheek and preached forgiveness. Our machismic society often prefers not to hear talk about forgiveness.
The Old Testament and the prophets such as Isaiah, proclaim God's mercy to God's straying people. Jesus, in the New Testament, urges us to be like God, and to have mercy for others (Luke 6:36). As God wants what
will fulfill Israel, we should want for the other human being, whatever will fulfill that person, even if that person has wronged us or is our enemy. You may say that this emphasis on forgiveness that I claim is in the Bible is a personal thing, coming out of my particular viewpoint. You may find the Bible saying that God is with the oppressed and that the oppressed should rise up and destroy the oppressor in a manly way, and that the only way to forgive the oppressor is to remove him from his position of authority, even perhaps to destroy him so that he will never again have the ability to oppress. Many read the Bible from this completely machismic viewpoint and feel God's spirit supporting them in this orientation of their lives. Being human, we are bound to have differences in opinion, but I would like to ask you to make an experiment in empathy. Try to see how the women in the Bible thought and felt. Temporarily set aside your male guided opinions, and be open to female oriented suggestions on biblical history.
Try to forget that this is a Man's World!
How did women ever let it get to be such a man's world? Was it so from the beginning? In the beginning, God made them male and female. It seems that we started off on a pretty equal footing. Perhaps the blame for the whole situation lies with God, or with our human ideas of God. After all, we make God in our own image. We don't really know what God is like; he is so far beyond our comprehension. We are obliged to describe God in words that we can understand. We speak in terms of our needs, and relate deity to whatever is most important to us at the time. The power-hungry among us, describe a God of power who will help them to rule over others. Those who need daily bread desperately, describe a God who feeds the hungry.
Away back in the dawn of history, individuals invented a God who surprised them with the liberality of the land. This deity was usually represented as a pregnant woman, a mother nature who was fecund with the goods of life. Early figurines show a female figure, broad bosomed and large bellied.3 Her arms and legs are stubs. Hunting and gathering societies related to a goddess who showed her care for them through the bounty of a producing earth. As long as there was room on the face of the earth to hunt and gather, without interfering too severely with other peoples, the goddess of the land sufficed for her true worshipers.
A fecund mother nature, however, led to an increase in people. Societies progressed, and while there still were hunting-gathering groups, some tribes settled down to agriculture, and often remained in one place. People collected in farming communities for defensive purposes, and these communities
were the beginnings of towns. Other groups figured out that it was a lot easier to domesticate their own animals, rather than being dependent on the direct generosity of nature, and became herding tribes. Of necessity, these herders and the farming communities had varying claims to the land.
The prophets proclaimed that the earth was the Lord's, and that humankind should share the land equally, but people started dividing up the Lord's property and had violent arguments about it. The need for a new type of God who let you own property and helped you to protect it, became apparent.
Not only the idea of God, but also the status of women, was changing as the scene shifted from lush forest to irrigated plain. We know that on the Greek isles, the goddess Artemis was famous for her use of bow and arrow, but the woods she hunted in so successfully disappeared under the onslaught of civilization and are barren islands today. Her twin brother god, Apollo, represented all that was pleasing in a man (from a female viewpoint). He was the god of manly youth and beauty, of poetry, music, and oracles. He was the god of healing and the stayer of plagues. We women wish that such a notion of all that is good in males, had stayed around, as opposed to the macho, muscle-bound, he-man type. (Perhaps the notion has stayed, in part, in the concept of Jesus Christ.) As time passed, Artemis became connected with the moon, and Apollo with the sun. Artemis was taken into the religion of Rome as Diana. The historical structuring of Apollo has many different threads. We find Constantine in the year 310, as a young leader of great religious toleration, praying at a shrine to Apollo in Gaul.4 Apollo promised Constantine a thirty year reign, represented by three X's, the designation of the Roman numeral 30 (XXX=30). These same three crosses were also interpreted by Constantine in a Christian manner as the crosses of Good Friday. Before his soldiers, Constantine's Christianity blended happily with the cult of light and the cult of the sun.5 It is not too surprising that when Emperor Constantine was accepted as a religious authority, Christ was seen to bear certain resemblances to Apollo, the son of the God Zeus, by the mortal woman Leto, and that we have a mortal woman Mary, being proclaimed as the Mother of God at the Council of Ephesus, in harmony with earlier Roman notions. From the idea of feminine goddesses such as Mother Earth and Artemis, we have down graded our notions of women to their being solely mortal. God the Father and God the Son are definitely masculine. Augustine, Gregory of Nazianzus, and other fourth century writers, speaking of the One Divine Nature in the unity of Godhead, help people to assume that the Holy Spirit is also a masculine quantity.6
This disadvantaged position of women in the fourth century in regards to divinity is also reflected in the treatment of the everyday woman of the time. Augustine displays abominable treatment of his common-law wife. How did women sink so low?
When the woods gave out, and the women became settled in the farming communities on the open plains, they kept their female goddesses of fecundity as can be seen in Rachel's deceit of Laban in Genesis 31:34. They had long before ceased to go hunting. There was barely enough room for the men to hunt. The men had begun to hunt each other. Farmers and herders had land disputes.
The story of Cain and Abel illustrates the problems that were arising between human beings early in remembered history. Cain was the farmer and Abel, the herder. These brothers brought their sacrifices to the Lord, and the Lord was pleased with Abel's sacrifice. To the brotherhood of men who dwelt on the earth, it must have seemed that whoever was in charge was letting the herders partake of more then their fair share of the bounty. In their disputes over land and water rights, the in-group of herders found that they had to band together to protect themselves against enemies entrenched on the soil. The herding tribes had to battle for their rights, and they needed a god to take along with them in battle. It would never do to take a female goddess. Men invented a warrior god, who would slay their enemies with the breath of his mouth. Women had a tendency to stick with their familiar agricultural and household deities.
Occasionally the women went off to war, and did battle beside the men. We do have our Joan of Arcs and our Molly Pitchers. However, for most of the women, their responsibility became to take care of small children at home. If you are a nursing mother, you are the logical person to baby sit. In sections of ancient Greece you might find women and children on the side lines of the battle, watching the show like a football game. When the contest was over, the women ran the risk of being raped and killed, and of having their children killed. They ran the same risks if they remained quietly at home, so probably felt it was better to know the results of the battle first hand.
Among the Norse peoples, there remains the legend of the Valkyries, warrior women who hovered around the field of battle, and were valiant with weaponry. The belligerent Amazon women of North Africa are described by the historian Herodotus writing in the 5th century BC.7 To be a warrior was not always forbidden to a woman, but it was a duty that was usually assigned to the males. Thus males drifted into the privileged mode. The female became the operator of the household and became accustomed to performing all the tasks connected with it. The male was often out protecting this household, and when he was at home, he was there to rest and recuperate for his next sally out into the fray.
Physical differences between human beings influenced the roles that were appropriated by men and women. Menstruating women were handicaps on hunting expeditions. Women as producers and child bearers became valuable at home. Men were valuable as protectors. The notion arose that without protective men who were willing to do battle, the tribe could not exist. Of course it was equally true that without women, the tribe could not exist, so the conclusion was that the women had to be protected as valuable property. Men have continued to have this protective notion down through history, and they often exercise this protection in a violent manner. From what are they protecting us? They are protecting us from other warlike men like themselves. One wonders if the Greek women, and perhaps Canaanite women, were nearby at the outcome of a battle, so that they could pick their next lord and master from among the winners. This game of protection was the only life style they knew, and they became accustomed to passing from hand to hand.
This protective situation is reflected up into the heavens, where we find a God who protects his people, and we get the hierarchy set up of God protecting males, males protecting females, and females protecting children. Of these children, the male children became more important. Male babies were preferred to female. Similar notions have persisted in our present day societies. Religious ceremonies developed around the male. Health reasons necessitated circumcision, and it became incorporated into worship. Puberty rites acquired religious overtones as the young male became ready to be transferred from the female realm to the holy state of the male protector of women. Before venturing out on a hunt or raid, the males would hold ceremonies, often taboo to the women, in which they would seek the protection and aid of their god. Religion became the tool of the male. Men did the circumcisions; they held the puberty ceremonies; they underwent ritual purifications before going to war. The male-god religion belonged to the men. Women with their household goddesses were relegated to the background.
This process of the denigration of women to the point where they became property, can be traced historically in the worship given to the early gods and goddesses of the Near East. At the dawn of history, the mother goddess reigned supreme. Countless centuries passed and then stories appeared of the all-powerful mother goddess who had a human son whom she crowned king and god. The sex of the tribal leader on earth, was directly connected to the concept of who ruled in heaven. The earthly king not only ruled by divine right but came to be considered as a divine being. Thus, the next step historically, was that we had an equal pair of gods, king and queen. Finally, we observe a king god and his lesser consort, or a king god and his followers, a god surrounded by hosts of angels. Women have been put completely out of the picture. Jehovah is left triumphant in his male monotheism.
There are vestigial remains of the feminine side of Jehovah's kingship that we can spot in the Bible and in Jewish lore. Thus, the Spirit of God in the Old Testament is represented by a feminine word, Shekinah. The feminine god-mother is also found in the Old Testament in an ancient re-edited section of the Song of Songs, where the crown the king wears, is spoken of as being placed there by his mother (Song of Songs 3:11). In later days the king rules by the divine right given him by a male god. This section of the Song hearkens back to an ancient festival when a male god is given the right to rule by the earth mother goddess. Some of the Psalms such as Psalm 45 are paeans appropriated from the Canaanites in their worship of king and consort divinity. Unfortunately, down through the ages, the feminine in religion and its human counterpart, the woman, have been squeezed into a corner.
We are wise enough to know in our day and age that God is beyond male and female. Our theologies admit that we are too ignorant to fully describe God, yet we are still shackled with a male priesthood, conditioned by years of patriarchal traditions who find themselves threatened by the possibility of women standing equally at their side dispensing religious sacraments. Women don't want to be threats; we want to be helpers. We are not grasping for power, but searching for a loving accepting community to serve with our abundant gifts.
The whole world has been gradually warped in its outlook regarding women. How we see God, as a male, and the supposed necessity for a celibate male priesthood, are only two signs of the disaster that early man's protection of women and early women's over-protection of the male child, has brought upon the world. What manner of world might this be, if women refused to be protected by men, and allowed men to enjoy and share in our peaceful and nurturing household tasks? What sort of world would we have if all women, Russian, Latin American, United Statian, encouraged their sons and husbands (while respecting their personal freedom) to have empathy for all of God's creation and discouraged them from accosting each other with violent words or actions! Or weapons! Or nuclear politics! Women are among the relatively powerless, and can't do much about their oppressed situation. Men are blinded by custom, and can't see how off-balance our male-female relationships are. The warping of the world in regard to women is most obvious in situations such as the burning of the brides in India.8 Even though dowry payments were outlawed in 1961, customs persist that the wife's parents should make post-marriage payments to the family of the groom, as he had taken this unwanted, financially nonproductive creature off their hands. If these payments aren't forthcoming, the easiest way to get rid of the wife is to douse her with kerosene and ignite her, as she is not free to go back to her parents' home. With this instantaneous cremation, the husband can then negotiate new dowry arrangements with another family. Neighbors, law enforcement agents, and courts all look the other way. Viewing this from another culture, we in the United States, can say self-righteously that such actions are indefensible.
What theological notions give justification to the bride-burners of India? In their culture if a woman lives a good, just life, she may be fortunate enough in reincarnation to come back as a man. If she returns as a man, she will feel justified in burning any brides she may have, whose parents negate on dowries. We think that their religious and cultural ideas need revamping. We cannot see as clearly when we turn our eyes to look at our own shortcomings.
What notions of God do we need today in our steel and concrete cities, with our apartment buildings pointing to heaven, and our rockets disturbing the virgin moon? We need a God who will explain us to ourselves, who will curb our violence, and who will help us to love and serve one another. The God of Jesus is still relevant to this task. Women as representing fifty percent of the population, should share equally with men in the worshipful service of such a God.
Jesus considered women as equal human beings with men. Jesus entered into this world situation, observed the treatment of women, and made certain statements, which some men have brushed aside lightly. Jesus called God Abba, which in his culture had the meaning of a wise older person with whom one had a loving relationship.9 He also asserted that God is love, which is a quality that is not the exclusive property of either sex. He went beyond the idea of God as a person, to the notion of God as qualities of personality, to the notion of God working in and through humanity, through his own humanity, through his own hands, as a process bringing into being, The Kingdom. God is the creator, not just of the earth and the past, but the creator process working through every present moment, to fashion The Kingdom; not a static Kingdom or a static point in time to be achieved, but a kingdom or realm or society that is a process like God, the I Am, the Always Becoming. Abraham is part of this process, with his limited view of God. You and I are part of this process, with our likewise limited views. Both male and female share in this process. God does not hold back his Spirit from one or the other.
NOTES
1 Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism Vol. II (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1980), p. 609.
2 Juan Luis Segundo, The Liberation of Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979), p. 8.
3 Merlin Stone, "The Great Goddess: Who Was She?" in The Politics of Women's Spirituality, Editor Charlene Spretnak (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, 1982), p. 10.
4 Jean Jacques Hatt, "Celtic Symbols" in The Conversion of Constantine, J. W. Eadie (New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1971), p. 34.
5 Jacques Moreau, "Syncretic Propaganda" in The Conversion of Constantine Editor J. W. Eadie (New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1971), p. 48.
6 Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism Volume II (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1980), pp. 296-298.
7 Phyllis Chesler, "The Amazon Legacy" in The Politics of Women's Spirituality, Editor Charlene Spretnak (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, 1982), p. 105.
8 William Claiborne, "India's Bride Burnings" in The Washington Post Volume I #49, October 8, 1984, p. 9.
9 Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 11. "For orientals, the word Father as applied to God, thus encompasses, from earliest times, something of what the word Mother signifies among us."
Chapter II: GOD IS PLEASED WITH HER
Lots of us wear glasses. We may think that they help us to see better, and they usually do. Our eyes may have a genetic structural deficiency, and in order to get a more comprehensive view of the world, we must resort to artificial means of enhancing our vision. This is all to the good. We are indeed fortunate that someone invented glasses, and contact lenses, and corrective eye operations.
But the problems that affect our seeing change, and some of us have had the experience of outgrowing our glasses. We get very used to them, and one day after tripping into things and having headaches, we visit the oculist, and are told that we must discard our friendly helpers, the glasses that have aided us for so long. They are no longer the glasses for us. In order to function at our optimum, we need a new pair. We are warned not to overcorrect. If the new glasses are too strong, then our eyes may get lazy, and not exercise enough, and get even weaker. For viable vision, one needs the full cooperation of one's own eyes.
Some of us are very dependent upon our glasses. What a calamity it is when we break our glasses or lose a contact lens, and don't have a handy replacement! Then we have to use our other senses. We feel things, and learn much about shapes and the workings of mechanisms. We listen carefully before crossing the street. We slide our foot up to the curb before stepping down. We glasses people can learn many interesting facts with our glasses off. In meeting people we can confess that we may have met them before, but as we can't see too well, we can ask them to oblige us with information about themselves. Going without our glasses can be an enlightening experience in certain circumstances. It can also involve a tremendous amount of frustration.
Switching from the old glasses to new glasses can open up new worlds. The student can see what the teacher is writing on the board. The driver can see the oncoming cars. The baseball player can bat the ball. We are faced with new possibilities of fulfillment in our daily lives.
So it is when we study the Bible, and realize that for centuries we have been looking at this wonderful inspirited book from a masculine viewpoint. We have studied it through the eyes of the male culture, the church fathers, and the male priesthood. We have seen everything in it against the backdrop of a patriarchal society. The patriarchal glasses are out of date. We need a new prescription. The new glasses do not need to be matriarchal; that might give us lazy and unhealthy eyes or headaches. We need a pair of glasses whose strength lies somewhere in between these two extremes. As our world grows in its understanding of itself, the Holy Spirit gives us new inspirations and deeper insights. "The times of our ignorance God winked at" (Acts 17:30), but for the fullest worship of God and the most fulfilled life, we are expected to seek God with our whole hearts. We must insure that our hearts have good vision.
We said before, that this is a man's world. Men make the decisions. Men run industry. Men fill the armies. Men build the weapons. We women live and move according to the whim of men. It's been that way for a long time, in spite of the fact that fifty per cent of the world's population is female.
When babies come into the world, half of them are girls, unless some sort of population control is used. In present day China, where each couple is advised to have only one offspring, societal beliefs are such that parents feel they will be more secure in old age if that baby is a boy. Ancient China had few qualms about getting rid of female infants. Modern China reports the births of many more males than females, and uses abortion freely. Twenty years from now in China, what will all those men do with so few women around?
If societies were less tilted to patriarchy, and religious groups showed by their words and their actions, the equality of gender, there would not be bride burnings in India, or disappearing female babies in China. The population of a nation should show an equal distribution between women and men, but due to an imbalance in power, drastic problems are created.
What are women doing about that power imbalance that contributes to the naming of us as the weaker sex, and denies us the right to use our womanly strengths of compassion, peace keeping and motherly guidance, for the good of all humanity? If we aspire to political office, we must conform to male social patterns, in order to succeed. Some women seeking a political position seem to pose a subconscious threat by their femininity, and are assaulted mercilessly by males, although a male candidate for the same position, having the same qualifications and opinions, would be considered more than acceptable. If we aspire to the Catholic priesthood, many people just laugh. This is in the United States. The position of women in Korea is even more secondary. Likewise, women in the Muslim community are given much less freedom than the men.
I look for a change in the status of women. We truly are the intellectual and physical equals of men. I should like to show that this patriarchalism in our society wasn't always as bad as it is now, but that it has been reinforced by social customs, and in these later days by writings of the prejudiced, by mistranslations of inspired words, by the reproductions of these errors by the printing press, and most recently by the mass media. Perhaps the printing of more books from a female viewpoint and non-sexist TV shows that represent women as friendly progressive intellects rather than sex objects, would do much to turn around the woman's position as second class citizen.
The great books of religion are disseminated through a patriarchal society, and interpreted from a patriarchal viewpoint. The loving consciousness of God for the human creation is to be found in the Koran and the Bhagavad-Gita, as well as in the Bible. Society believes these books are set down through the writing instruments of men, that God's inspirations are filtered through male minds, and that these filtered ideas are then translated into other languages by still other men. Society accepts these writings as coming from a male led religion. I believe that both the people who wrote and the people who interpreted and translated were guided by the Holy Spirit, but they could say only so much within the confines of their culture and understanding. They were restricted by their male vocabulary, their male supremacist ideas, and the blind spots of their times. The Spirit of God is restricted by the finiteness of the creature through which she speaks. If God speaks through a donkey, he may bray. If he speaks through a duck, he may quack. If God is reflected to us through a cracked or cloudy mirror, our seeing will be hampered by the imperfections of the glass.
This is not saying that a female mindset would reflect God's inspired word faultlessly, as all human beings have their blind spots. It is saying that perhaps a woman's viewpoint would help to get a clearer and more balanced image across. The cracks and blips on the female mirror would be in different places than those on the male mirror; if we combine our insights, we will get a better picture. These male-dominated interpretations of Holy Books have led to societies that are male-dominated. They have often led to interpretations of God as a male being, to placing man next to God, and to relegating woman to the position of temptress to sin.
Women today are questioning this outlook. We feel that the Bible doesn't really teach our inferiority. We know that God is beyond male and female, as far as the heavens are high above the earth. God is equally for the female, as for the male, and in the inspiration of the Bible, God has certainly given equal place to the female in the scheme of salvation. As an example of the importance of women, consider the elevated position of the woman in Revelation 12:1. She may be a figure of a future woman who may give birth to an idea that will bring loving community to the world. In spite of possible biblical interpretations such as this, there seems to be no example today of a matriarchally inspired Word of Divinity, and our present world does not sport any major religious group displaying true female equality.
To add fuel to the fire of the female feeling of inferiority, the Catholic fathers have inserted the feminine into religion in the person of the Virgin Mary as acquiescent and accepting. This is done to encourage Catholic women to keep in their subdued places as mothers and virgins, a difficult combination to achieve, as if to show us the hopelessness of our situation. Patriarchal interpretations of scripture imply that the male (modelling on ideas of a perfect Christ) is the superior creature to the female (giving to her the role-model of an imperfect church). Authoritarian interpreters of Deutero-Paul (a disciple of Paul writing in his name) pull out of Ephesians 5:21-33, the phrase, "so is the husband the head of his wife," as final irrefutable evidence that women must keep in a corner, not seeing that the author was not pushing for male dominance, but for loving unity. A non-patriarchal interpretation of Deutero-Paul would have Christ and the church in loving accord, serving as the model for loving accord between husband and wife. This loving unity is emphasized by the same author in Ephesians 4:2-6, and by the true Paul in Romans 15:7.
Some women seem to feel that words such as these in Ephesians, "the husband the head of his wife," are what hold them down, but I believe the Bible to be an inspired instrument of God, and think that the problem lies in ineffective hermeneutics. I am not proposing a matriarchal Bible or a matriarchal interpretation of scripture. What I am proposing is an egalitarian approach. I would like to go through the Bible and see what it is saying to all people, regardless of sex.
The Bible is doubly inspired; it is inspired in the minds of both the person who wrote, and the person who reads. We like to believe that we understand ourselves and our times, and that we have a certain relationship to God. To appreciate the inspiration of those who wrote, it becomes necessary to investigate the Bible historically, to see the problems of the times of the authors, and to try to see God as they saw God. There are many different types of literature included in the Bible, such as folk history, wisdom literature, theology, prophecy, and historical facts. We must be careful not to get our mythological theological representations confused with factual history. Learning something about the life and times of biblical authors and the writer's purposes, will help to prevent this type of confusion.
For such a long time, it seems like the Bible has been used as a document addressed to the middle-class male. For instance, Isaiah addressed himself to the average Israelite head-of-the-household who made the decisions for his family. Let's examine Isaiah quickly, and see if there are any vestiges of female undercurrents that have been neglected down through the centuries, because male interpreters were not tuned in to that wavelength. Let's not look at this perusal like I am trying to prove something. Look at it like it is a game, and that the Spirit of God is enjoying the game with us. If we pray, ponder, and search, the Spirit will be with us and open our eyes to new wonders of truth. Any prayerful study of the Holy Word, leads to greater understanding and love among God's people.
I would like to have four major types of people to enter into this lighthearted game playing with me. Some of the women readers will be very relaxed game players, for they are content to go along with our patriarchal society. They have cooperative husbands who encourage them to work at a job, or raise a family, or pass time on a golf course. They have met men who will talk to them as equals. They can find fulfillment in this patriarchal society, and they may even feel so secure in society the way it is that they would object to its change, even though change might mean more security for all women throughout the world. Another second group of women are those who have experienced oppression:— battered wives, religious sisters who have been put down by male religious, single women who are not paid as much on the job as their male counterparts, all those who have seen blatant injustices in patriarchal society. This group may play at my Bible game more seriously, even angrily. They may even reach unbalanced conclusions. A third group of readers will be men who are curious or sympathetic, and they ,too, may enjoy the game in a lighthearted manner, and may learn from it, or find themselves enriched with a new viewpoint. The fourth group may not really play my game at all, but they are the ones with whom I most want to enter into dialogue. They will pick up this book because it has been given to them, but they will be bored rapidly. They will think that what I have written is a fairy tale that is unrelated to reality. They are the true patriarchs, and they want the power structures to continue as they have for generations. They feel that what seemed to them to be the truth in the time of Isaiah is good enough for them today. I want to address myself to these people particularly. I want their considered opinions on my propositions. I don't want to threaten them; what I want is consensus. Keep in mind that we are inviting the Holy Spirit to play the game, too. In this book I am making suggestions, and I need input from all types of people in order to rethink my positions, and in order to come up with a more open idea of what the Spirit is saying to all the people of the world.
As we are playing this game together, I would like you to know that I do not feel that I am in the second group of women, the oppressed group. I am willing to show the equality I feel, and to discuss this equality with anyone. I do not feel particularly called to be an authority figure or to direct others in the forms of their religion. My desire is to serve God and humanity, by attempting to contain the message of Jesus in my imperfect words and being, by sharing holy thoughts with others, and by exposing ignored oppressions of the weaker by the stronger. I should like to bring to the fore the faults of patriarchy in our society, so that injustices are made obvious, contemplated, and corrected.
To illustrate the method I intend to use, let's open the Bible to Isaiah. How can we bring the feminine into this ancient work? What revealing questions can we ask? First we will consider authorship. Could the author of the Book of Isaiah have possibly been a woman? That may be a very foolish question, because in Isaiah 8:3 the writer mentions his wife's pregnancy. The author of that particular section of Isaiah is almost certainly a man. However, biblical scholarship tells us that the Book of Isaiah is a compilation. Many prophets before Isaiah and after Isaiah, contributed. It is written primarily by Isaiah, the prophet, and also by two other main authors, designated as Isaiah II and Isaiah III.
In the old days a prophet had disciples, but they were not called disciples; they were called sons and daughters of the prophet. (Yes, there were daughters, too!) Many women have been called to prophesy down through the centuries. The Holy Spirit is as unpredictable as the wind in choosing through whom to speak, and may pick a person of either gender. Isaiah II and III, the latter two sections of the Book of Isaiah, may well be sections given to the people of Israel from the Holy Spirit through the lips and minds of women. Chapters 40 through 55, the Suffering Servant section of Isaiah, has nothing in it that couldn't have been said by a woman. A woman is much more likely than a man, to understand the position of suffering second-class citizen. Turn to this section in your Bible and read it over, keeping in mind that this is God speaking through a woman, and see if you come up with any discrepancies. Wherever you see the word mankind, substitute the word humankind, as that was the notion in the original Hebrew. Isaiah 42:14 has God crying out like a woman in labor. This isn't a figure of speech a male author would be likely to use. Men have a certain difficulty in internalizing what is going on in a woman's mind and body at the moment of giving birth.
Isaiah 50:6 speaks of a beard, which might identify the author as a man. This particular quote in the Good News Bible goes, "I bared my back to those who beat me. I did not stop them when they insulted me, when they pulled out the hairs of my beard and spit in my face." These terms may be used to mean that the servant undergoes the degradation of nudity (baring the back), helplessness in another's power (plucking the beard), and cursing (spitting in the face). All these humiliations are borne by both men and women.
If we look realistically at the phrase, "pulled out the hairs of my beard," it does seem like a rather strange thing for one human being to do to another. The Jerusalem Bible expresses it as, "I offered.....my cheeks to those who tore out my beard." It is still a little difficult to picture an angry man standing over his enemy, wasting time by tearing out the beard of his humbled opponent. The Douay version is, "I have given.....my cheeks to those who plucked them." The greatest consensus for the original wording has to do with cheeks. Jesus may have given us the most accurate translation of this passage in Matthew 5:39, "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek, too." Jesus had the knack of making scripture applicable to both men and women.
Biblical scholars interpret the Suffering Servant in many different ways. Interpreted collectively, the Servant is either the ideal Israel of the future, or that group in Israel who represents the faithful remnant.1 Interpreted individually, the Servant is often identified with Jesus, and thus collectively with the church, or the Mystical Body of Christ. I would like to suggest that it can be compared to any oppressed group, and that it can be read by women to console them as they undergo patriarchal oppression. There can also be read into it, the saving of the oppressor group or person, by the loving, nurturing attitude of the Servant.
I can't leave the Suffering Servant without mentioning the birthing-nurturing statement of Isaiah 49:15, "Can a woman forget her own baby?" In our male-run, sex-oriented society of today, we have sadly learned that, yes, a woman can forget, especially when the initiating male steps neatly aside from his part in the matter, and insists that the woman take full responsibility for his irresponsibility and inconsideration. The author of Isaiah 49 felt motherly enough to trust that the majority of women would stick by their infants through most circumstances. This motherly attitude in Isaiah II most likely sprang from a woman's heart.
Isaiah III knows a lot about women, too. This author is credited with section 11:10-16 and chapters 13, 14, 21, 24-27, 34-35, and 55-66.2 Isaiah 13:8 talks about the pain of a woman in labor, not a comparison a man would be likely to use. In another instance the female in chapter 62 is brought out in the many names for Israel. Israel will no longer be called Forsaken or The Deserted Wife. She will be called God-Is-Pleased-With-Her and Happily-Married. Often in the Old Testament Israel is referred to with feminine imagery. Also in the New Testament, the church is called The Bride of Christ.
How are we to understand this imagery by the masculine or feminine author of Isaiah III? If we express a marriage between God and God's people, in terms of a unity of two loving friends, we are inundated with wonderful new theologies. One interpretation might be that God, as Loving Process, has taken as Helpmate in creation, God's people, who are to be partners with God in this loving process. We mustn't be afraid to envision new possibilities of responsibility and loving creativity for the human race.
Paul also saw that humankind had possibilities of entering into partnership with God and used the term fellow workers with God (I Corinthians 3:9). The thought of partnership may also be in the Book of Genesis when God has the first human name the animals. If God works in partnership, shouldn't we also strive for partnership, one with the other? Brides, women, men, children, all the people of the earth all have wonderful potential for partnership. Let's enter into loving community and help to care for God's gift of earth together. Don't complain that we are unworthy to be partners with God. Keep in mind the psychology of self-fulfilling prophecy. If someone calls a child an idiot repeatedly (or in some cases, just once), he may well turn out to be an idiot. If someone tells a child he is remarkable and creative, a partner in creation, with God, he may well turn out to rid the earth of nuclear weapons and disease. Think positively:_ God-Is-Pleased-With-Us, both men and women, all members of the human race. We are his helpmates, God's partners in the creative process of approaching the ideal in world community. If Isaiah III can see God and humanity in loving action together because of her experience of an earthly partnership, let us rejoice in her imagery and absorb spiritual energy from it.
We have not gone into the Book of Isaiah too deeply, just yet. Isaiah is merely my illustrative example of how I plan to operate. I will describe what is patriarchal, and what has been interpreted in a patriarchal manner, and then ask, "Where may we perhaps find the feminine quantity in all this?" How can we tell what is feminine from what is masculine?
Some maintain that there is no difference between the written expression of a woman or of a man, but anyone can tell that the author of these words I am writing is a female, as I give obvious clues to my identity. Biblical authors are not as open in proclaiming their gender, and often the same writing abilities and character traits can be found in both men and women. However, statistically, one finds certain qualities more prevalent in men and other qualities more prevalent in women. Females are more apt to have nurturing-birthing attitudes.3 It is easy for them to be concerned with others, as they get so much practice taking care of their children. Even if they don't have children of their own, society has so often expected them to help their brothers and their fathers and other people's children in certain household and teaching ways, that they are impressed into this nurturing character.
Males don't carry infants in a womb, and their concerns are often more egocentric. They must preserve their own body against the enemy, and secondarily protect their homes. The man goes to the battlefield or to the marketplace, and throws his ego into the conflict. If he is successful in preserving this primary individual, himself, then he usually accomplishes the secondary objective of preserving his family. Men often are seen as having to make quick decisions and having to stick by them, actions such as are necessary in battle. They may tend to think in dualisms, such as friend or enemy, good or evil. If the attack is life threatening, the decision is enemy. Retaliation is rapid. Out comes the sword, and off with his head. There is little place for shades of gray in this type of decision, and little time to talk things out. Man's need for an ordered world, inclines him to emphasize regulations and this form of decisiveness. Of course, not all men conform to this stereotyped image, which gets much of its design and is reinforced from societal pressures.
In sketching the stereotype of the average woman, we might say that women tend to be more empathetic. They often see the other person as some mother's child. They are more inclined to find time to talk things out and to get the other's viewpoint. People are neither good heroes or evil devils. They are grown children, and as we hope others will be compassionate to our children, we give our compassion to theirs. Women who find themselves confronting other women in battle or marketplace, are more likely to sit down together and talk things out. Women find it easier to write and speak with compassion. Women are more natural in the loving servant mode. Different motivations in individuals cause exceptions to these stereotypes. For example, some women seeking success in business, can be very adept at assuming a stereotypical aggressive male attitude.
These male/female stereotypes are very inadequate, but they do have a sort of statistical significance. We should not assume that every time a battle is described in the Bible, that the story is told by a male scribe. Whenever a motherly, compassionate view is in the Bible, we should hold up the possibility that this type writing is at least as likely to have originated with a woman as with a man.
I am not stating here that anyone should accept my feminine interpretations concerning Isaiah, but only asking that they be considered possibilities. I realize that this type of reconsideration necessitates a radical turn around of patriarchal mental processes and will obviously take some time to get used to. It is like substituting the word Mother for Father in the Lord's Prayer. Centuries of custom are difficult to overcome. I myself find it difficult to say, "Our Mother who art in heaven." As a suggestion to increase the amount of understanding between men and women, all of us unwillingly patriarchally-oriented souls should meditate on the Beloved Parent we address in the Lord's Prayer. We could experiment with blessing ourselves in the name of Godhead by saying "In the name of Mystery, of the Human Aspect of Divinity, and of the Spirit of Love," to see how it makes us feel and how it affects our relationships with both God and human. Most of us react against this disturbance of our accepted norms.
Jesus spoke Aramaic, and never actually used the English word Father for the God he addressed. The word abba can have female connotations as well as male. It was a term used for a beloved and respected elder, although in the society of Jesus' time, this honored individual was usually a male. Jesus further qualified the Abba in his prayer, by placing this beloved elder in heaven. A heavenly Parent is quite a bit more than an earthly parent. God is more and beyond any of the terms that we use to describe him/her, and just using him or her is a bit degrading to describe God, and might hinge on idolatry. If we go with Isaiah III and describe God as Heavenly Bridegroom, we likewise limit God, for he/she is more than bridegroom. Karl Rahner comes close to an appropriate title with the word Mystery.4 Moses has God designating Godself as I Am Who Am! (Exodus 3:14). But if humankind is going to name God and be on familiar terms with God, as spouse or child or as co-partner in the process of redemptive creation, there must be an easy child's word to use when we cry out to God. Abba as meaning the wise older person with whom we have a loving relationship, is less sexist to use than the appellation of father. God, Spiritual Being, Love are all non-sexist terms. We don't have to be bound into conformity in our God language.
God's Spirit was given the feminine connotation of Shekinah in early Hebrew. The Spirit of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs 8 is a female entity. This same wisdom is the Word of Wisdom in John 1:1. This Spirit is given a female name. In the churches of the Eastern rite, there are some under the guardianship of St. Sophia. Did you ever wonder who St. Sophia was? She is not a lady called Sophie who acted out a noble female life. She is the Holy Spirit.5 However, we know that the Holy Spirit, too, is beyond the roles of male and female. In this writing, so that I don't have a lot of he/she interjections, I may refer to the Holy Spirit (who is beyond sex roles) as she, and to God (who is beyond Father or Mother) as he just to be impartial and to keep clarity when necessary, due to the deficiencies of our language. Our patriarchal society has taken the easy way out by referring to both God and Spirit as he. As a result, we have this idolatrous notion of a male God. God is really beyond pronouns. Our language like most languages is very ineffectual in respect to Divinity, but then we ourselves are very ineffectual when we come up against Divinity. Our language is a reflection of the way we are.
Our language mirrors our patriarchal society. The majority of us accept patriarchal notions, and find nothing objectionable in having authoritative males directing the community. However, Jesus in his span on earth found fault with patriarchy. In Jesus' annoyance with the scribes and pharisees, he advised his followers to call no man on earth their father, as they had one father in heaven (Matthew 23:9). A more ideal Christian attitude might be reflected in teachers and preachers, if they did not lay down the law as authority figures, but guided gently through consensus, appealing to the Spirit of Wisdom. Paul was open to consensus on the matter of head-coverings in church (I Corinthians 11:2-16), but showed that he was a product of his patriarchal society, when he implied to his little flock of Corinthians that he was their one father (I Corinthians 4:15).
Paul displays little humility in I Corinthians 11:1 when he tells his friends that they should take him (Paul) for their model. With this self-inflated attitude, Paul drains some of the weight out of the anti-authoritarian message of Jesus. However, it is true that in Paul's advice to the Corinthians to follow his guidance they were led to a truer worship of God. Following a strong leader at that particular moment in history might have been more necessary for the good of the church, than participating in broad-minded discussions with Gnostics. We should accept that the Holy Spirit was overseeing and protecting the church through the actions of Paul.
Jesus advised us to serve one another humbly in love and to wash one another's feet. The only disciple who is recorded in the Bible for having copied him in foot washing was a woman. Possibly the only disciples who copied him in not being called Father were also women. This is logical, as there are very few people who would call a woman Father. The title Reverend often has the same stratifying connotations, as we do not ordinarily go around calling our friends Reverend. Until we become more complimentary to our friends, we should discard titles like Reverend when they apply to personalities who we do not really know, as they promote class distinctions in the religious sphere. Either all human beings should be referred to as Reverend or none. Certainly, some should not be Very Reverend, implying that others are less reverend.
The term bishop, as overseer, speaks more of a person who has certain responsibilities. The name implies a coordinator of services, though the actual office sets up a father of the fathers. If loving service were the only factor, then women who are presumably unqualified by canon law and by physique to be fathers, might seek the office of bishop, and rid this title of its authoritative overtones, by using it to coordinate loving service to their fellow human beings. We should all become loving coordinators of service to one another, and assist the oppressed and down trodden. I should like to suggest Mother Theresa of Calcutta as Overseer (Bishop) of the elderly poor of India, and organizer of services to them. Women are exceptionally unqualified to be called Father but many of them are very qualified to be loving servants, and are very expert at assisting the oppressed, having known oppression themselves.
My criticism of titles comes from the fact that they contribute to patriarchy. I am not anti-church. I believe that communities must be run in an orderly fashion to be effective, and order requires a certain amount of organization. I am pro-church, and feel reasonably comfortable in the Roman Catholic community, but I feel that the organizers and supporters of this church would reflect Christ more fully if they were less authoritarian and listened to their constituents.
People have different ideas of what church consists of, corresponding to how they are raised and what experiences they have had. Avery Dulles describes different models of church.6 He believes that some people put an emphasis on church as Word of God. Some see church as a service organization. Some see church as community. Some emphasize the sacramental nature of the church, her holiness, her utilization as a container of the spiritual. Some see church as merely a building. Some put their emphasis on the organizational structure. Some feel that without the hierarchy and the Pope, there would be no church. I believe that the Holy Spirit is versatile enough to find different structures and different means of guiding the church, for different times, and that with the Holy Spirit with us, organizational disasters may come and go. Perhaps we would do better in our loving service of others, if we had less authority (copied from the Roman emperor) and had more consensus (guidance from the Holy Spirit). Perhaps bishops and fathers should be required to listen to the consentaneous voice of those they serve, including both men and women.
One official title of the Pope which was inherited from the high priest of the Roman religion is Pontifex Maximus7 which means big bridge, implying that this man is the big bridge from earth to heaven. I feel that we need structure in our worship of divinity:— we do need bridges to heaven. But there may be other bridges than the Big Bridge and humanity will find them, especially if there is a traffic jam on the Big Bridge. Popes are human, and usually work out of the culture that they are brought up in. One has even been afflicted with insanity.8 If they are brought up in a patriarchal culture, their pronouncements will reflect that culture. If the office of Pope disappeared overnight, we would still have access to the love with which God surrounds his creation. Both women and men have been endowed by the loving Creator God with the ability to build the bridges that will help one another into the realm where God reigns.
Church leaders have frequently been cited for closing heaven to the little ones. The sons of Eli were rather imperfect channels of God's grace (I Samuel 2:12-17). Matthew 23:13 has Jesus fretting against the Pharisees, "You lock the door to heaven in people's faces, you yourselves don't go in, nor do you allow in those who are trying to enter!" Ezekiel 34 has a prophecy against the leadership of Israel, "You are doomed, you shepherds of Israel! You take care of yourselves, but never tend the sheep"(Ezekiel 34:2b). Anyone with any position of guidance in the church must continually ask himself, "Am I hindering or helping the flow of God's love to the world?"
Early Christianity didn't have a single Big Bridge. There was much discussion in the separate early communities as to whether James or Peter or even Mary Magdalene was the main leader.9 Jesus revealed much wisdom to Mary, and in the apocryphal Gospel of Mary, we find Peter objecting to the necessity of being instructed by a woman (Mary 17:16-20). This apocryphal gospel was so tilted to the equality of the female with the male, that the fathers of the church didn't appreciate it any more than Peter appreciated Mary. Thus they denied it the right of being put in the canon of supposedly authentic biblical books although there is much more that we could learn about Jesus from studying it.
As the Hebrew scholars formulated their accepted scriptures about 150 AD, the Christians, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, put together their Old Testament canon, about the same time. The New Testament canon was pieced together over the next fifty years, so that by the third century, in spite of a few local disagreements, our New Testament canon was practically what it is today. This arrangement of available literature was the best selection possible for its time. Now that biblical scholarship has reached such a high level of comprehension, I would like to suggest that we reconsider carefully all the literature of the time of early Christianity, and have a group of theological scholars, both men and women, make a further assessment, thus allowing the Spirit of God a new opportunity to give us more information on the words and wisdom of Jesus. I am not proposing a new Bible; I am proposing an augmented and enriched collection of available Jesus material, which is very possible with modern methods of literary criticism. This increased knowledge of Jesus would make for some, a wider bridge to heaven.
In discussing models of church, we must realize that as God is more than anything that we can imagine, so church is more than any set of forms with which we would tie it down. God's Word is more than a book. It is the inspiration that went into that book, and the further inspiration that interprets that book. The church hierarchy is not just a group of authority figures. It is a group of people who ask for God to guide them in their daily lives, so that they may be inspired to guide and to serve others.
Another model of church is the people who interpret God's Word as it stands in the Bible. Jesus says, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst" (Matthew 18:20). When people gather to make Jesus present through remembering him or discussing his Word, that is church. Thus it is very important to remember Jesus correctly and fully, and to have the best possible interpretations of the accepted canon and other related materials. It's possible that our understanding of Jesus' message can be enlightened by additional sources, instead of only the closed and somewhat patriarchal interpretations that would exclude some of the wisdom that Jesus imparted to the loving person who was Mary Magdalene. One of my purposes in writing this book is to try to promote awareness of such information for hearts eager to remember Jesus and his message as correctly as possible.
Early Israel heard the Word partially, from a viewpoint that was often elitist. They believed that God was with them, but not with the enemy. Today we believe that God's Word is addressed to all people. He loves us all, male and female. His Word is balm and healing for all. May the Holy Spirit guide the world to the fullest interpretations of love so that we will not feel it is necessary to have only one narrow bridge to heaven, but will find the kingdom of love realized throughout the earth.
I like to think that I also act the part of a bridge as I write this;_ that there are ways to help bridge the gap between male accented theology and the more female notion of service; that it is possible to reconcile women angry at oppressive social structures with those they see as authoritative fathers; and that by encouraging the use of consensus in mixed assemblies, solidarity will be implemented. As more of us act the part of bridges, more communication will be possible among diverse factions, and the Holy Spirit will be able to be more active in uniting the created minds that she loves so dearly.
My concern is that God's love be equally spread abroad to men and women, by men and women. I want people who are accustomed to a patriarchal and capitalistic society10 to start looking at their society from a new viewpoint. One way to enhance this viewpoint is by examining God's inspired word to men and women, the Bible, and seeing if there are clues that women played a significant role in shaping the Bible or the early church. I would also like to investigate if there are any meanings that have been overlooked in biblical passages, that would increase the love and understanding among both the male and female members of the human race. As our generous Creator seeks always to give us the fullness of loving and understanding Spirit, we will certainly be guided and encouraged in this undertaking.
I have suggested that we consider the possibility of the authors of Isaiah II and Isaiah III both being women. Do you see any glimmerings that this might be so? Have you taken off your patriarchal glasses or at least wiped them clean so that you can take a better look? That there were both male and female prophets, is attested to by Ezekiel. He rails against both kinds. First he denounces false male prophets (Ezekiel 13:1-16), and then he gives equal time to the women who give misleading predictions (Ezekiel 13:17-23).
What did these prophets look like? They may have been a rowdy crowd with drums and trumpets such as Saul met up with in I Samuel 10:5, or they may be more related to people we consider today to be mystics such as Padre Pio or Dame Julian of Norwich. The oppressed and outcast of society were more liable to turn to the ecstatic expression of religion, as opposed to the in-group of religious professionals.11 As women could be cast off by their husbands, and discarded by society, we find more women than men in prophesying groups. The oppressed and unsuccessful in the world are more likely to turn to God in their anguish than are the wealthy and powerful. Thus we find more female mystics than male, listed in the records of the Catholic church. As this male-female ratio probably held as well for ancient Israel, it is highly likely that there were more women than men in the sons or children or group of the prophets (depending on how you translate the community word in I Kings 20:35 or II Kings 2:3). A respectable woman, Huldah, is mentioned as a prophetess in the Hebrew scriptures (II Kings 22:14). Older women whose children were grown might be moved to join the prophethood. Then there were the cast-off women who due to some calamity in their lives, had no means of support, and in their anguish felt the call to proclaim the words of Yahweh to his people, and to urge justice and compassion.
All these prophets, male and female, gave forth with a tremendous output of the Word of The Lord. It was necessary to distinguish true prophets from false prophets, so that the people would know whom to believe. Often there would be a long wait before predictions came true, or were proved false. Frequently the prophet responsible didn't live to see the fulfillment of his rendering of Yahweh's Word. If we have accepted the supposition that there were many women in the prophetic groups of early Palestine, it seems reasonable to assume that many words spoken by women were preserved for posterity. However, when words spoken by women were accepted and repeated, succeeding generations of prophets and scribes would change the language to suit the custom of the day. If a credible daughter of Isaiah came up with an accepted Suffering Servant motif, a son of Isaiah might set down an expression like "plucking my beard" (Isaiah 50:6), to make the saying more understandable to his contemporaneous male-oriented society. In the Bible we may get female authorship filtered through the male, for the purpose of better instructing the privileged gender of the time.
Isaiah III who understood the pain of being called Forsaken, and the joy of being named God-Is-Pleased-With-Her (Isaiah 62:4), was very likely a woman. The pronouncements of Isaiah II also have possibilities of being of feminine origin. Just read Isaiah 53:2-4 from a feminine viewpoint:
It was the will of the Lord that this servant
grow like a plant taking root in dry ground.
She had no dignity or beauty
to make us take notice of her.
There was nothing attractive about her,
nothing that would draw us to her.
We despised her and rejected her;
she endured suffering and pain.
No one would even look at her-
we ignored her as if she were nothing.
But she endured the suffering that should have been ours,
the pain that we should have borne.
All the while we thought that her suffering
was punishment sent by God.
This scripture can be used to describe realistically the position of the oppressed female in Israel circa 500 BC or of the female in parts of Latin America, Africa, or the ghettos and prisons of today.
You have a right to your opinion on the sex of Isaiah II, and I want to reemphasize that my offering of a female gender is only suggesting a possibility. In order to search out other examples of female influence, perhaps we should move on to a pleasanter place than the harsh caves and rude huts of the prophets. Come with me to a beautiful garden! We can discuss who wrote about our first parents, and decide what made this person such an expert on the process of creation.
NOTES
1 Peter Ellis, The Men and Message of The Old Testament (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1976), p. 391.
2 ibid., p. 390.
3 Rosemary Reuther, Sexism and God Talk (Boston:Beacon Press, 1983), p. 236.
4 Karl Rahner, "The Concept of Mystery In Catholic Theology" in A Rahner Reader, Editor Gerald McCool (New York: Crossroad, 1981), p. 120.
5 Elisabeth S. Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1984), p. 133.
6 Avery Dulles, Models of Church (Garden City: Doubleday, 1974), p. 31, 43, 58, 71, 83.
7 Hans Kung, The Church (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1976), p. 596. "Pontifex Maximus was originally the title of the pagan Roman high priests."
8 Article on Urban VI, Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967). Cardinals found him so deranged that they left Rome and elected another Pope.
9 Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 18.
Also see: The Nag Hammadi Library, Editor James M. Robinson (San Francisco: Harper & Row,1977), p. 473, "The Gospel of Mary" 10:1-10.
10 Heidi Hartmann, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards A More Progressive Union," in Women and Revolution, Editor Lydia Sargent (Boston: South End Press, 1980), p. 18.
Also see: Richard Edwards, Michael Reich, Thomas Weisskopf, Editors, The Capitalist System (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), p. 333.
11 I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion (New York: Penguin, 1978), p. 127.
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four directions to the compass. Perhaps the author is telling us that wherever humankind had its start, it flowed out to the four corners of the earth. The known earth at that time went as far as Cush (Ethiopia) mentioned in verse 2:13. In this manner the author includes all the races as made by God, implying that the black race of people from Ethiopia have their origins in this same type of humanity that is represented in this legendary garden. All of us are made of the same dust of earth with the same ego tendencies, and are inspirited with the breath of the same God. The author of this story appears to be a universalist, and has neatly set down a scene in which all human beings can place themselves. The earth is barren in Genesis 2:5, but God causes many trees to grow in Eden (2:9), the most notable of which are the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. One might ask the purpose of God planting these trees if he did not intend for humankind to use them. It reminds one of the catechism question, "Why did God make me?" The answer to this question is that God made me to know, love, and serve him on earth (tree of knowledge) and to be with God in heaven (tree of life). The author of the garden story seems to be telling us that God made these trees to be associated with the humanity he had just designed. In telling us what went wrong with God's plan, the author will have to give certain human attributes to God, like authoritarianism, and annoyance at being disobeyed. The author can take these liberties as they fit in with the cultural notions of the time, and do not affect the primary message of the story. As it is a fable, we know that there is no living biological tree that imparts either eternal life or omniscient knowledge. However, readers or hearers enculturated with the wisdom of the ancient Near East knew exactly what the author was describing in the discussion of the tree of life. Like ourselves, they had meditated on life and death. They had turned some of their kings into quasi gods to make them immortal. The Egyptians believed in after life, and preserved their kings in giant food-filled tombs. At first this after life was just for rulers, then extended to the nobility, and then finally admitted for the commoner. The Babylonians did not follow this trend. For most of them, there was no after life, and thus they were more concerned with justice in the present. The Jews, living mid-way between Egyptian and Babylonian cultures, had adherents to both positions. The Saducees were a Jewish group in the time of Jesus who said there was no resurrection of the dead (Matthew 22:23-33), and even today there are Jews with this belief. The early Babylonians based their non-belief in life after death on the Gilgamesh epic which told how Utnapishtim and his wife acquired a plant |
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that would give them eternal life. Just at the moment when Utnapishtim had this gift securely in hand (or in mind), a serpent snatched the life giving plant away.2 Later Babylonians in a practical manner located their tree of life on earth comparing it with a wise king enthroned by his god, leading his people to loving community. The Babylonian king Assarhaddon3 declares, "My kingdom shall be as salutary for the flesh of men as the plant of life."4 We Christians also contain that same notion in our religion when we consider Jesus as bread of life assisting us to share in loving community. For us, Jesus is the wise leader who re-opens the way to the tree of life. A second tree that we must look at in a symbolic way is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Certain interpreters have seized on the words good and evil as having something to do with sin. For the author, the expression "knowledge of good and evil" most likely means knowing all there is to know. To know all there is to know does not specify quantities of good or quantities of evil, but merely omniscience, the knowledge of all things.5 When we talk about forbidden fruit as evil, we have missed the point. The Hebrew usage of the expression good and evil as a balance that means all things that go on in the world, is found in other places in the Bible (II Samuel 14:17 as compared to II Samuel 14:20). The serpent, a Canaanite symbol for life and fecundity, is a very controversial item in this fable. The author is of the Jewish faith, and firmly believes that God is the only God in all the earth. There are no other gods, not even lesser gods. There is no other being with supernatural powers for good or evil. The Jew is to take seriously the command in Exodus 20:3, "You shall have no gods except me." The author is not allowed to believe in a devil, yet has the problem of presenting what went wrong with the world. He is deriving his material from the folk lore of Assyria and Babylonia, which was heavy on gods and goddesses. Early Mesopotamian religion has Shaghan, the serpent god.6 In late Sumerian liturgies we find the serpent goddess Sataran.7 In Egypt the snake was both a symbol of royalty and a powerful evil god Apophis.8 In India the serpent has been a symbol of perfection and wisdom. As this is a fable, the author is allowed to introduce the serpent, but he is not allowed himself to think of this snake as personalized evil or magical power, and he doesn't want us to think of the serpent in this manner either. The author gives us freedom to interpret this serpent symbol he has introduced, but we are not to give it god-like abilities. Many interpretations have been given to it down through the centuries. It has something to do with what went wrong with the world and with humanity, after God did such a good job of creation. Philo, a Jewish contemporary of Jesus, saw |
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