Most would be hard pressed to find people unaware of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Mary, the brother to Mary, and the companion of Mary of Magdala, the woman he cared for more than his other disciples according to the gospel of Philip, one of the Nag Hammadi texts. The crucifixion of Jesus is a central belief in Christianity and the cross a principal symbol of the crucifixion and the Christian faith.
But before there was the God Jesus, there was the Goddess Asherah who many scholars say was once the consort of Yahweh, the god who would eventually ask for her destruction. According to the book of Kings, several statues of Asherah were at Solomon’s temple before Josiah, the King of Judah between 640-609 B.C. began to implement religious reforms that removed the right to worship any other Gods and Goddesses, other than the God Yahweh.
According to the Old Testament, the goddess religion of Asherah, was practiced in Jerusalem. She was known as the Queen of Heaven, the same title given to the Goddess Inanna, the Goddess Isis and Mary, the mother of Jesus. In the book of Deuteronomy, the God Yahweh instructs the people to begin the destruction of Asherah’s temples and in doing so destroy her religion and worship.
In 1976, art historian, and professor Marilyn Jacobson, also known under the pen name Merlin Stone wrote the book, “When God Was a Woman” that had been previously published in the United Kingdom as “The Paradise Papers: The Suppression of Women’s Rites”. In her book Stone lays the groundwork and begins to unveil how the tribes of Israel including Hebrews and early Christians began the destruction of the religions led by women. In her book, Stone shares that in 1928 ancient texts were discovered in an old port city in northern Syria called Ugarit. The Ugarit Texts tell us that Asherah was known as the ‘Creator of all deities’.
Dr. Marija Gimbutas, a scholar, anthropologist and archeologist would also write books claiming that the worshipping of a female deity had previously been practiced for thousands of years. Her three books, "The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe”, “The Language of the Goddess” that she co-authored with Joseph Campbell, and “The Civilization of the Goddess” written in 1991 would cause a stir among old guard male academic archeologists, as her claims of Goddess worship and female led societies would see many years of their research challenged.
But Gimbutas was not just any scholar, she came form a long line of scholars including her parents, who were members of the Lithuanian Intelligentsia. The New York Times describes her as “ a prolific scholar, the author of 20 books, including a monumental study of Bronze Age Indo-European cultures, and more than 200 articles. She has directed five excavations in Europe, reads more than 20 languages and brings to her work an extraordinary knowledge of European folklore and mythology.”
Gimbutas passed away in 1994, with her last book “The Living Goddesses” being published in 2001 with the help of Miriam Robbins Dexter, a Woman Studies lecturer at UCLA. Gimbutas’ scholarship proved that a women centred society existed in the past, and as the bible had referenced, been destroyed and supplanted by a warring patriarchal culture.
In 1990, Peter Steinfels of The New York Times explained her discovery by saying, “Dr. Gimbutas argues that between 7000 B.C. and 3500 B.C. the people of Europe lived in sedentary agricultural societies that worshipped the Great Goddess, delighted in nature, shunned war, built comfortable settlements rather than forts and crafted superb ceramics rather than weapons. The social system was matrilineal. Women headed clans or served as queen-priestesses. Men labored as hunters and builders. But neither men nor women dominated the other sex.” I love that these communities crafted superb ceramics rather than weapons.
If there ever was a clear direction to initiate the battle cry of John Lennon “Give Peace a Chance” here it was in a Goddess led culture that as Gimbutas says, “delighted in nature and shunned war”.
Suggested Reading:
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Marija Gimbutas
📖 The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images (1974)
Amazon.com Sponsored Link https://amzn.to/3MYw3Or
📖 The Language of the Goddess (1979)
Amazon.com Sponsored Link https://amzn.to/45V5i5Z
📖 The Civilization of the Goddess (1992)
Amazon.com Sponsored Link https://amzn.to/3OWMWf1
📖 The Living Goddesses (2001)
Amazon.com Sponsored Link https://amzn.to/3oJSYFb
Merlin Stone
📖 When God Was a Woman (1976)
Amazon.com Sponsored Link https://amzn.to/42sbyiO
James Carroll
📖 The Truth at the Heart of the Lie, How the Catholic Church Lost Its Soul (2021)
Amazon.com Sponsored Link https://amzn.to/3oSQ4Om
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