Goddesses
1. The Ubiquity of the Goddess
-a) what do you associate with goddess? - eg. Bull and vulva? - all v or w patterns all swirls?
If one interprets the data as Professor Gimbutas has, worship of the goddess is wide spread in the earliest strata. According to her theory, the evidence doe not represent discrete regional goddesses but part of a wide spread Indo European mythology that was not polytheitic but centering on one goddess, mother earth.
Gimbutas "Agricultural people's beliefs concerning sterility and fertility, the fragility of life and the constant threat of destruction, and the periodic need to renew the generative process of nature are among the most enduring." xvii
"The Goddess-centered art with its striking absence of images of warfare and male domination, relects a soical order in which women as heads of claims or queen-priestesses played a central part. Old Europe and Anatolia, as well as Minoan Crete, were a gylany [women head of clans]." xx
The goddess, according to Gibutas, was birthgiver, fertility giver influencing growth and multiplication, nourishment giver, protectress, death wielder, giver of crafts.
Tikva Frymer Kinsky ask whether the the portrayal of the goddess is a cultural projection of society. The goddess then reflects what a woman should be and female roles then become sacred stereotypes.
Gimbutas argues that the peaceful existence of the old european culture was shattered by teh incursion of the Kurgan cutlure in the 7th and 6th millennia B.C. The Kurgan came from the Volga basin and brought with them their patriarchal military culture. The archeological record indicates that there were a horse riding, armed culture. Gimbutas believes that the old eruopean culture disappeared between 4300 and 2800 B.C.
Gimbutas argued that her theory is substantiated by linguistic and mythic evidence. The Ancient Near Eastern Myths contain many stories where the goddess is usurped or surpassed by a male god.
Rhea ( Ge -- the earth) ,wife of Kronos and mother of Zeus is implicated in her own loss of power when she flees with Zeus to Crete to avoid Kronos who was in the habit of devouring his offspring so that they would not grow up and usurp him. Zeus eventually imprisons Kronos and rises to position of high god.
The Enuma Elish recounts the story of the defeat of the great mother goddess Tiamat by Marduk.
Enuma Elish (Babylonian Creation Epic)
Tiamat -- the primordial mother goddess -- and her partner Apsu give birth to many little gods. The brothers band together and disturb Tiamat by surging back and forth, and their hilarity disturbs the sleep of Apsu. Apsu goes to Tiamat and says , "Their ways are verily loathsome unto me. By day I find no relief, nor repose by night. I will destroy, I will wreck their ways, that quiet may be restored. Let us have rest!" Tiamat objects "What? Should we destroy that which we have built? Their ways indeed are most troublesome, but let us attend kindly!". But the young gods get wind of Apsu's threats and kill him.
Tiamat prepares to do battle against her offspirng to avenge Apsu. So the offspring make Marduke, a grandson of Tiamat, their champion and name him first of all the gods and king. A ghastly battle ensues. "When Tiamat opened her mouth to consume him, he drove in the Evil Wind that she close not her lips. As the fierce winds charged her belly, Her body was distended and her mouth was wide open. He released the arrow, it tore her belly, It cut through her insides, splitting the heart. Having thus subdued her, he extinguished her life."
"Then the lord paused to view her dead body, That he might divide the monster and do artful works. He split her like a shellfish into two parts: half of her he set up and ceiled it as sky, ... In her belly he established the zenith. The Moon he caused to shine..." From her dead carcass, Marduke creates the material universe and the cycles of nature that threaten always to return to their dead and inanimate origins if the gods do not keep their stations and guard creation.
The gods do not enjoy their work, so Marduke creates a man. "Blood I will mass and cause bones to be. I will establish a savage, 'man' shall be his name. Verily, savage-man I will create. He shall be charged with the service of the gods that they might be at ease!" And so humanity and gods enter into the joint enterprise of sustaining the cosmic order.
Frymer-Kinsky does not believe that this material substantiates Gimutas' conclusions about the neo-lithic materical. She argues that the goddesses were eclipsed in a long process that reflected "changes ... in many aspects of society: in the organization of the state, in the soicoeconomic system, in the concept of the nature of kingship and political authority, and in theological conceptions of the world of gods." p. 70 Her analysis of the myths of the A.N.E. suggest that roles given to female gods in the early myths become the responsibility of male gods in the later myths. The mother goddess does not belong to one culture and the male god to another.
For the student of Feminist Theology, especially in the context of a Christian College, the question of what is at stake in these two discussions is important. I believe that both are driven by a concern for the future. Human societies cannot continue to exploit nature and to wage war against each other. In our attempt to exploit nature we have arrived at a point where we can unleash its powers and obliterate ourselves.
Some Post-Christian Feminist Theologians advocate the return to the Mother Goddess and to the harmony with the earth that her worship offers. Frymer-Kinsky suggests that the ethical monothesism of the Bible requires the sort of responsibility for the earth that we desire.
In order to understand Frymer Kinsky's point, we need to back track and look at one particular goddess from the traditon, Inanna.
3. Inanna and the Israelite and Judeao/Christian Traditions
Frymer Kinsky recognizes that the Bible reflects an evolution of monotheism at the level of human understanding. Abraham and Sarah are Mesopotamians. Rachel takes the household gods when she leaves for Canaan. Idoltary is a persistent problem. Polytheism only comes to an end in biblical worship at the close of the Old Testament
But all of the roles assigned to the various gods of the Ancient Near East belong to one God. There is one exception - one goddess who hangs on and is not eclipsed and whose responsibilities are not absorbed by YHWH: Inanna -(Sumerian) Ishtar (Akkadian) Astarte-(Babylonian) Aphrodite (Greek)Diana (Roman) Asherah (Canaanite). She is named or refered to in the following passages:
Some readers who are unfamiliar with Ancient Near Eastern myths make the mistake of thinking that the offending Israelites who erect the Asherah, the sacred pole of the goddess, are trying to provide God with a consort. But Inanna is without divine partner or a husband in the patriarchal sense. She is the sexual joy of the cosmos, whose sexuality brings fertility to the land.
The Myth :
"Inanna decided to visit her Underworld sister, Ereshkigal. As Inanna passed through teach of the seven gates to the Underworld, she was compelled to divest herself of clothing, jewels, and prerogatives. By the time she reached the Underworld, she was striped of all her external goods. The Ereshkigal and the seven judges, the Anunnaki, fastened upon her the eyes of death; the expropriated her vital forces, killing her and hanging her corpse on a peg. The corpse of Inanna turned into a side of green, rotting meat.
As long as Inanna was without vitality, the mortal world followed suit. Nothing grew, and neither mortals nor animals copulated. The world was sterile.
Inanna was a goddess, however, and she was therefore able to be resurrected. After three days and three nights, Enki, the god of the waters and of wisdom, rescued her; he sent asexual lamenting spirits, the durarru and the kalaturru, down to the Nether world. They were to sprinkle the "food of life" ad the "water of life" upon Inanna's corpse. They did so, and Inanna was revived.
However, the reprieve was a conditional one. Inanna must send a substitute, a scape goat to take her place in the underworld.
Inanna departed for the upper world, accompanied by infernal spirits, to find out how her people were faring without her. She found everyone lamenting her death: everyone but Dumuzi. Inanna, angry with her consort, condemned Dumuzi to the Nether Regions." Miriam Robbins Dexter, When the Goddesses: A Source Book, Pergamon press, 1990, p. 17.
In the cults of the ANE, the king would have sexual union with the goddess to bring fertility to the land:
Iddin Daga Hymn Sumerian 1750 B.C. (Ceremony illustrated on Vase of Uruk)
In the Biblical Tradition, God creates the world to be self sustaining and regenerating; therefore, Inanna is not needed as a fertility goddess.
2) In her capacity of connection between divine and human she is also the bringer of wisdom and technologies - civilization
Eager for adventure, to test her powers, Inanna sets out to visit Enki, the God of Wisdom, who is also the God of the Waters. His city, Eridu, is located near where the fresh and salt waters meet, at the convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the Persian Gulf. Always following his feelings and instincts, Enki is the Great Shaman.
Enki and Inanna drink together. In drunken frivolity, the overeffusive host offers the treasures of his kingdom to the young queen, the fits of me, the ordering principals of civilization. The God of Wisdom gives Inanna all the knowledge necessary to rule her kingdom. His last gift is "the making of decisions," without which all the other me are useless. When the soberer Enki realizes what he has done, he wants his riches back. The dark side of his nature takes over. Possessive, jealous, and controlling, he is the malevolent shaman who withholds rather than gives.
Inanna recognizes the god's dual nature and outwits him with the help of her confidante, the priestess Ninshubur. Together , they bring the sacred me back safely to Uruk where the queen offers them to her people. The youthful "Inanna flaunted her raw feminine vitality -- her wondrous vulva." In battle with Enki her powers were tested, and "Inanna emerged a fuller woman."
Again the biblical tradition dispenses with the need for Inanna to bring civilization or creativity, this is the realm and natural activity of human beings.
3) She is associated with the "Huluppa tree"
According to Frymer Kinsky, all roles are divided between God and humanity, but ethical monotheism places great demands upon human beings. Since sexuality is not a feature of YHWH, and although human beings are made responsible for their sexuality in the biblical tradition, people seemed to find it such a power and mysterious force that they placed the responsibility on Inanna.
Frymer Kinsky argues that Inanna eventually fades from view but in the post biblical tradition, humanities difficulties with sexuality that are not addressed explicitly by the Bible leave the tradition open to other influences. In particular she points to the Hellenistic traditions of misogyny and sexual phobia (p. 213).
In a tersely written but power Epilogue (213-220) Kinsky makes a case for a recovery of the ethical monotheism of the Deuteronomic system in which "humans themselves mediate between God and nature, determining the state of the world." Her argument needs to be substantiated with a close reading of the Torah, but certain texts come to mind quickly. God commands creation to be fruitful and multiply; human beings are to participate in and to oversee that activity. The law commands God's covenanted people not to make war against the land, the land is to have a sabbatical year.