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Title: When God Was a Woman (Harvest/Hbj Book) by Merlin Stone ISBN: 0-15-696158-X Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: May, 1978 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.37 (43 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: intelligent and important work
Comment: The history of our society, our religions, and our gender roles is vital to understanding ourselves and our world. Things are not the way we have been told they were. The truth may well shock and anger you.
We are becoming used to conspiracy theories and revisionist history surfacing in an almost constant stream these days. Much real history has been destroyed or distorted, and much we simply never knew. Spin doctors throw an immense amount of PR garbage in our faces to try and manipulate us into their camps. It is difficult to know whom to trust, particularly regarding emotionally loaded issues like religion and sex.
Merlin Stone has written a very good book about the history of gender roles in Western society and the part religion plays in forming these roles. She also gives us insight into the nature of laws regarding sexual behavior and marriage, a subject of considerable interest right at the moment.
The book is very well documented with quotes attributed and citations listed in the bibliography. While the subject of populations in remote historical times can be quite dry when treated in detail, Stone manages to mantain a high degree of academic depth while remaing very readable and accessible.
The book is well organized and leads one through the evidence to her very rational conclusions. She draws on vast amounts of archelogical and historical data, and her arguments are convincing. The information in this book correlates well with information I have seen from other sources in my investigation of why religions and governments put so much time, money, and energy into criminalizing sexual behavior.
The basic theme of the book is that gender roles, the nature of sexual expression, and the rights of women changed drastically when the Aryan-driven patriarchal religions took over in the Middle East. While we have been told that this was an inevitable "progression" as we moved to a "modern" society, the truth is that it was more a matter of physically superior forces destroying any opposing points of view. The changes studied here were not the progress of people thoughtfully moving to new ideals, but of vanquished peoples crushed by violent and greedy religious fervor. The evidence, even from the religious sources themselves, is undeniable. The bias in favor of the triumphant religious structure is shown to still exist today and to reach even into the halls of Science, which exists supposedly to free us from superstitious nonsense.
This is not a book about male-bashing, nor does it promote a particular feminist stance. Stone is not as strident as I sound in this review, but very logical and even-tempered. The conclusions and information in this book shed light on oppression and global violence that effect us all; male, female, or otherwise. When you see that sexual laws and supposed "morals" are actually twisted excuses for oppression and control, it might open your eyes to a new understanding of the debates about sex and marriage happening as I write this (March 2004). I sincerely hope so. We must grow beyond the twisted neuroses of sexually maladjusted, oppressive superstition if we want to make the Earth a safe, warm, loving home for all. Read this book if you want to grow in your understanding of our history, our present, and our future.
Rating: 5
Summary: God: The Mother
Comment: Modern Christianity, Judaism and even Islam, have long regarded God as a man. In the wake of the Women's Liberation Movement, new waves of thought on the subject have come forward. It's not fair to blame feminists for delibarately revising and rewriting the Bible to appeal to liberated women of today's 21st century Western world The truth of the matter is that for centuries men have taken advantage of the fact that only men wrote the Bible and attributed maleness to God. The Bible on the whole is gender-biased and sexist. Women in the Bible are either submissive and obedient (like Sarah, Abraham's wife who called him "My Lord") or virtuous women like Mary, Jesus' mother or the wanton, decadent and "evil" women like Jezebel, Delilah or Eve, who by empowering themselves met with a dire fate. There is never much to say about "The Bride" who is in fact Mary Magdalene, who is re-cast as a prostitute in the New Testament. But Mary Magdalene, who was either Jesus' wife or a very special female Apostle, wrote her own Gospel which never made it to the Bible curiously enough. The Roman Catholic Church did all it could to alter the Bible, changing names and lingusitics so as not to reveal the importance of God's female half, the Goddess.
In Kabbala tradition, the Goddess is the Shekinah, or the Latin Sophia "Wisdom". She is the Holy Spirit and the source of inspiration and wisdom for God himself. In the early days of Judaism, when the Israelites wandered the desert like nomads, the practice of male-and-female union sexual consummation for fertility and for divine inspiration was very common. But the Bible omitted this later on so as not to disclose the Shekinah. This information has resurfaced in many ways. The best-selling book "The DaVinci Code" re-inforces the value and spiritual significance of The Goddess. There is no need for feeling bad about it. The truth is that God has to have a female side. Everyone does really. We are male and female in spirit though male and female individually in physical body. The female side is the nurturing Mother. For this reason we call Earth "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature"- for she nourishes the life that lives upon it, animal and human. The reason more women are spiritual and more active in Church is the same reason that God's female half is equally as strong. This book is helpful in its detail about the Goddess worship of ancient Israel and the Middle East. It's living proof that at one point...God was a woman. Think about it. He has to be both male and female because we are either male and female. How can a single male God even fathom the females in his creation ? He would only relate to the males. He has to be both male and female in order to adequately rule over and look after all of his creation. This book was really a blessing, even for a former Christian like myself. Merlin Stone writes well and convincingly, eventhough this book was made in the early 70's. Perhaps this is why this book is so passionate in its theme. At that time in America and other parts of the West, the Women's Lib movement and the rising growth of feminism was much stronger than it was today. I hope some day men can let go of their male egos, not feel threatened by powerful women and share the fruits of labor and the government with women. What is in store in the future for able women ? The first and hopefully not last female President ? Female Pope ? The possibilities are endless.
Rating: 1
Summary: Tunnel-Vision at its worst.....
Comment: Before I was even done reading the first chapter I knew that
this was going to be a "man-bashing" book. First, I would
like to state for the record that I am a Pagan and view the
gods as both male and female and hold the Goddess as
first among equals. That said, this book does nothing
for me. Merlin Stone kept getting on the case of "other"
writers being too biased....HELLO! This is one of the most
biased books I ever read. If the distant past was really like
this for men, can you blame them for invastion? This book
says men were these weak, castrated, inferior shadows
who had no rights and were treated like second-class
citizens- they had no right to worship, they were godless,
misfit step-children.....the really sad part is that some
women think this is as it should be. Two wrongs do not
make a right! We must see the Divinity as both Male and
Female - through balance we will grow and learn from
each other.
Peace
Obiwan
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Title: The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future by Riane Eisler ISBN: 0062502891 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 September, 1988 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Great Cosmic Mother : Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth by Monica Sjoo ISBN: 0062507915 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 May, 1987 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Language of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas, Joseph Campbell ISBN: 0500282498 Publisher: Thames & Hudson Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker ISBN: 006250925X Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 30 November, 1983 List Price(USD): $34.00 |
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Title: The Living Goddesses by Marija Gimbutas, Miriam Robbins Dexter ISBN: 0520229150 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 12 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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