What if the figure of Jesus had been born a female, with the assumption that they still attempt the life path of the historical Jesus?
Im pretty sure human spontaneous pregnancy is impossible, regardless of the gender of the child.His claim to divinity is undermined neigh immediately since spontaneous births are possible if the end result is a girl (medical science for the lose?). Beyond that, Jesus is Jesus is Jesus.
If anybody like Peter still gets his paws on the thing, whoever was Shesus' Magdalene would probably be shown as the leading inspiration for the whole thing and the one true inspiration for what Shesus, dumbfounded by her female nature, would not have been able to accomplish.I suppose a more interesting response on my part would be to ask the question: How can we get a female Jesus to lead the life of biblical Jesus. And, accepting that we can't recreate it perfectly, what are the likely changes/compromises and their impact.
On the plus side, assuming we can get the whole temptation/betrayal/crucifixion/resurrection story to be canon, it breaks the streak of women always succumbing to temptation depicted elsewhere in the Torah. (Eve, et al.)
A side note, I have an unfounded gut reaction that the people of the time would be too sexist to accept a 'daughter of god', so I suspect the title 'child of god' may be more common. If this wild guess is true, that could have a lot of implications.
Im pretty sure human spontaneous pregnancy is impossible, regardless of the gender of the child.
It seems like there are two separate questions here. WI the biblical account stayed the same but with a Shesus. OR, WI Jesus was born female. Boarding on ASB in the first case, and obscurity is likely in the second.
I suppose a more interesting response on my part would be to ask the question: How can we get a female Jesus to lead the life of biblical Jesus. And, accepting that we can't recreate it perfectly, what are the likely changes/compromises and their impact.
I'd start by trying to identify positive female characters from the Torah as a role model. Im running up against my own ignorance here, but the only one I can think of is the Queen of Sheba. Starting off as a powerful political figure would undermine the whole champion of the downtrodden angle, but i'm not sure how else to make Shesus be taken seriously. Maybe a powerful patron among the local priesthood? But any Rabbi that supported her would likely lose influence quickly. Roman support would undermine her credibility. Im not sure if the Parthians would bother, and it probably wouldn't help anyways.
On the plus side, assuming we can get the whole temptation/betrayal/crucifixion/resurrection story to be canon, it breaks the streak of women always succumbing to temptation depicted elsewhere in the Torah. (Eve, et al.)
A side note, I have an unfounded gut reaction that the people of the time would be too sexist to accept a 'daughter of god', so I suspect the title 'child of god' may be more common. If this wild guess is true, that could have a lot of implications.
I could be incorrect but isn't the Torah just the first five books of Christianity's Old Testament? If you were to look at prominent women not just listed in the Torah then there are a few more, such as Deborah, Esther, and Ruth.I suppose a more interesting response on my part would be to ask the question: How can we get a female Jesus to lead the life of biblical Jesus. And, accepting that we can't recreate it perfectly, what are the likely changes/compromises and their impact.
I'd start by trying to identify positive female characters from the Torah as a role model. Im running up against my own ignorance here, but the only one I can think of is the Queen of Sheba. Starting off as a powerful political figure would undermine the whole champion of the downtrodden angle, but i'm not sure how else to make Shesus be taken seriously. Maybe a powerful patron among the local priesthood? But any Rabbi that supported her would likely lose influence quickly. Roman support would undermine her credibility. Im not sure if the Parthians would bother, and it probably wouldn't help anyways.
On the plus side, assuming we can get the whole temptation/betrayal/crucifixion/resurrection story to be canon, it breaks the streak of women always succumbing to temptation depicted elsewhere in the Torah. (Eve, et al.)
A side note, I have an unfounded gut reaction that the people of the time would be too sexist to accept a 'daughter of god', so I suspect the title 'child of god' may be more common. If this wild guess is true, that could have a lot of implications.
As an alternative to "Shesus", perhaps "Sarah", meaning princess (albeit already biblically used).
The issue is that a female Jesus would completely flip the path of the historical Jesus. Jesus IOTL was a figure in the inside of the social system helping those left on the outside of the social system. Female Jesus (Shesus?) would be an outsider trying to move in. In the end, just by the nature of the times, Shesus would more or less be forgotten as some random mystery cult leader within Judaism.
His claim to divinity is undermined neigh immediately since spontaneous births are possible if the end result is a girl (medical science for the lose?). Beyond that, Jesus is Jesus is Jesus.
I suppose a more interesting response on my part would be to ask the question: How can we get a female Jesus to lead the life of biblical Jesus. And, accepting that we can't recreate it perfectly, what are the likely changes/compromises and their impact.
I'd start by trying to identify positive female characters from the Torah as a role model. Im running up against my own ignorance here, but the only one I can think of is the Queen of Sheba. Starting off as a powerful political figure would undermine the whole champion of the downtrodden angle, but i'm not sure how else to make Shesus be taken seriously. Maybe a powerful patron among the local priesthood? But any Rabbi that supported her would likely lose influence quickly. Roman support would undermine her credibility. Im not sure if the Parthians would bother, and it probably wouldn't help anyways.
On the plus side, assuming we can get the whole temptation/betrayal/crucifixion/resurrection story to be canon, it breaks the streak of women always succumbing to temptation depicted elsewhere in the Torah. (Eve, et al.)
A side note, I have an unfounded gut reaction that the people of the time would be too sexist to accept a 'daughter of god', so I suspect the title 'child of god' may be more common. If this wild guess is true, that could have a lot of implications.
Patriarchy most definitely has its ways and means! As the above examples of the transformation of plainly Goddess-related stuff into obscure corners of complex and glossed over dead narratives would show. A reworking serviceable to patriarchy is a possibility, though one might ask why shouldn't something more serviceable to such a purpose--a Romanized Zoroastrianism, or Buddhism, shove it aside? If we work with Option 1, She-Jesus really is who She says She is, the problem is explained away as that the true religion can be perverted and entombed but not forgotten. Otherwise it is more problematic, unless one supposes that the paradox itself is what is valuable and useful to the secular leaders.If anybody like Peter still gets his paws on the thing, whoever was Shesus' Magdalene would probably be shown as the leading inspiration for the whole thing and the one true inspiration for what Shesus, dumbfounded by her female nature, would not have been able to accomplish.
On the other hand, if it gets some momentum, it could get even more powerful, equating the status of women and the one of slaves, both of which were major early supporters of the Faith if I recall
This could slow spread among men, but then again you had things like the cult of Isis so who knows?
Any female prophet will make little headway in the patriarchal world of the past. At best she will be a minor holy woman or priestess with a very small following.
Unless your going full on ASB and Lady-Jesus is in fact the daughter of God capable of performing actual miracles.
There were also Esther and Judith, both are revered Jewish heroines remembered for, one way or another, standing against foreign oppressors to safeguard the welfare of their own people. I believe that they represent better the ideal of Jewish women as "national" (in the sense of "Jewish people" against "gentiles) than the Queen of Sheba, who I belive was not actually Jewish. There were others in more peripheral (i.e. wives or daughters) roles.
But the analysis you presented is very interesting, I agree with it wholeheartedly.
Perhaps a way to "Shesus" to work out is to emphasize the confusion between the religious/apocalyptic teaching of Christ with the idea of a an earthly national warlord, the "Messiah" (who in the archaic sense of the term, before Christianity, was more likened to a political and social hero than a prophet). I mean: nowadays Jesus is better remembered as a prophet and a religious leader who promised otherwordly salvation than as a resistance leader against the Roman domination, but perhaps Shesus might distinguish herself exactly by virtue of being a political opponent of the Romans and the Pharisees - this doesn't means necessarily an armed opposition, it could be a form of proto-civil disobedience mixed with a religious revivalism, insisting on puritanical reading of the Mosaic creed, and so forth. In the end, I guess the Romans would simply get rid of her, perhaps not by crucifixion, but simply by enslavement or something like that.
We can never forget that the Jews - despite domestic divisions, dynastic strife (you can read about the bloodfest that was the Herod rule) and religious troubles since the conquests of Alexander and the introduction of Hellenism - were prone to accept a political unifier to resist the foreign rule. The Maccabees had done it, so did the leaders of revolt against Nero, and then later, Simon bar Kokhba during Hadrian's reign. I'm not sure how "Shesus" would fare against the might of the Roman Republic, but I suppose that her "word" (if she indeed assumes a an universal prophetic/apocalyptic inclination, much like OTL Jesus) will spread more vividly if she is remembered as a Jewish leader than simply as a woman who tried to teach the poor to pray.
This is another point that would need to be addressed: Jesus OTL was a rabbi IIRC, and despite his rather demagogic approach to his followers, being seen as a man of the people, he was educated. Shesus might not follow the same path, as I doubt that women were allowed to study the Torah at the time, much less be tolerated in arguments with scholars in synagogues. So, Shesus might not attract a number of followers, perhaps, unless she associates herself with other religious preachers, such as John the Baptist. I guess by now the comparison with Joan of Arc is inevitable... a woman would only be respected if she presented herself as a formidable leader, something Jesus himself never had to do because he was somewhat respected as a member of an intellectual strata.
A disclaimer: I'm using the term "nation" with a grain of salt, of course, but I guess it applies better to the Israelites/Hebrews during Antiquity better to any other ethnic groups, since the Jews themselves saw themselves apart from the other peoples.
That is a monster of a post, but in a good way!"Sarah" as a Joan of Arc sort of figure...this might have possibilities indeed! Especially if a massive Jewish revolt that persists for years as drastic as the eventual OTL Massada rebellion does happen and is well known to all history.