Philip
Donor
Tyche is female too, isn't she?
Indeed. Given the context, I should have used the name Tyche rather than the Latin equivalent Fortuna.
Tyche is female too, isn't she?
YHWH was blamed for the fall of the kingdom and the destruction of the temple. Or at least his wrath at the Judeans' sins was blamed.Maybe Yahveh gets blamed for the destruction of the Judean State and the non-deported Judeans turn to Asherah?
A charismatic Prophet for Asherah?
Yes, but TBC I’m not talking about a masculine monotheism being reinterpretated after modern feminism has already made its mark, but a long lasting and widespread religion with a singular feminine deity from the get go.
I was going with Asherah being Yahweh's waifuMaybe combine that with Asherah as the wife of YHWH.
Excellent idea!The Fall of Judea is not enough to sate his wrath and he storms off in a huff. The prophet teaches that Asherah will protect the people, and she will restore them to the land if they are faithful. eventually their loyalty to Asherah will bring the forgiveness of YHWH as well and all will be happy in heaven and earth. They might be a way to reinterpret the covenant.
There would need to be some political and economic stability before the others return from Persia to demonstrate Asherah's favor.
@Optical_Illusion
the link you gave (description of an exposition from 2010) is not quite up to the archaeological state of research. Marija Gimbutas may actually have been closer to the mark than we thought, once again (although this_is_always surprising and borderline miraculous considering how freely she interpreted archaeological findings and other pieces of evidence, so methodologically I'm with your criticism of her approach, but she does seem to have had quite an instinct, or maybe just sheer luck).
Last year, an extensive DNA study was conducted (a short description by Lipson/Nagy/Reich can be found in Nature), and while its focus was on how Anatolian agricultural pioneers did or did not mingle with / replace Very Old European hunter-gatherers, what transpired as a small side-effect is also that, at the Varna site, DNA from Pontic-Caspian horse-breeders was found, too. So, in spite of Varna being rather early and while (iconically "Old European") Cucuteni-Tripolye was still in full swing, Varna may be one of a number of sites where Proto-Indo-European newcomers from the East established itself as a new elite in a, well, let's euphemistically call it "symbiotic" relationship with Old European agriculturalists. Thus, if the wealthy grave at Varna was a male grave, that probably doesn't say anything about wealth and gender in Old European cultures prior to the power reversal which occurred when steppe-dwellers had mastered horse-breeding and a mobile raiding-and-trading culture (of just a handful of male leaders and their gangs) to go with it.
It would need a matriarchal society to compliment the faith.
There's no evidence that decisively concludes that Asherah being worshiped as God's wife was widely practiced. The origin of this notion comes from a small temple in Tel Arad where there are two standing stones, as well as two descriptions on a jar and inscription that say "YHWH's asherah" and "YHWH and his asherah". The way these are phrased is kind of weird so it's probably referring to a ritual object called an asherah.I was going with Asherah being Yahweh's waifu![]()
Yes, but TBC I’m not talking about a masculine monotheism being reinterpretated after modern feminism has already made its mark, but a long lasting and widespread religion with a singular feminine deity from the get go.
Buddhism isn't really masculine, particularly so in the more ancient to medieval world.
Buddhisms early church had the same roles for men and women, and adopted the "feminine male" ideal from some of its rival Hindu sects. There are a number of enlightened women in Buddhist history, bodhisattvas and dharmaphalas. Buddhism has often been described as a proto-feminism of the east for its significant role in providing sanctuary to women and a theological bent that puts men and women on equal footing; female leaders in the far east often using their power to promote and invest in Buddhist temples as a bastion for women wanting to escape the various things that sucked about their world.
I'm not saying it is perfectly so. Thailand's Buddhism for instance is quite weird in that its supposed to be the most Orthodox Buddhism, yet entirely rejects its own Canon where the Buddha allows female ordination and the same rights/responsibilities as male monks.
If anything, the Buddha is kind of strange on that point. From memory, he allows transgender monks, men and women, but forbids the '4th group' quite vehemently although to this day we have no idea what he was referring to.
So whilst it would be unfair to say it is a feminine religion, its a bit odd to say that is of the more "masculine' religions.
Not really. It is centuries after the first clearly high-status burials with ornamented mace heads and sacrificed cattle on the steppes, which even Anthony associates with the emergence of cattle-raiding warbands who enjoyed great prestige and could play host/patron in what he calls the emerging Indo-European guest/host-relationships.For all we know, they may have come as humble shepherds of sorts - this is well before the kind of cultural changes suggested to lead to more militaristic societies in later Indo-European cultures on the steppe.
We'll have to look at "egalitarian" and "matriarchal" separately.But the real point of Gimbutas idea was that the presence of the figurines can tell us something about the structure of the society, that it was egalitarian or matriarchal
needs clarification. Indeed, Neolithic societies encountered by European researchers over the last couple of centuries have often been labelled as "acephalous" (especially Eastern African groups). And some of the Native American groups who come closest to being comparable to the Old European neolithic show gender roles quite different from the male-centered ones we're used to from more recent Eurocentric history - I'll just hint at the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois for one example. Among neolithic and comparable groups, there are matrilinear and patrilinear ones, matrilocal and patrilocal ones. Ones were "secular" authority is male and religious authority is female, ones where both are male, and, yes, ones where both tend to be female (regardless of whether the two branches are conceived of as separate or as being the same).Really, the more brutal blows to the idea are the general absence of matriarchy or even gender egalitarianism from Neolithic societies known to anthropology across the world
So you do agree that there were social changes? Then we're on the same page.It really just makes less sense to view the social changes through the lens of any kind of ideological or social change in human culture and gender attitudes innovated by Indo-Europeans, more than through the lens of technological change on social substrates that are pretty much for "Old Europe" like they were in every other Neolithic context.
I think we agree that we don't really know how to interpret them yet. Saying they're evidence for a matriarchal Old Europe is not solid scholarship. But neither is concluding from the Varna site that Old Europe must have been male-centered.But the real point of Gimbutas idea was that the presence of the figurines can tell us something about the structure of the society