A Gender Neutral God/ess: Be Inclusive but MAKE NO IMAGES was the Religious Change

A Gender Neutral God/ess:

Be Inclusive but MAKE NO IMAGES was the Religious Change

BY

J. J. McKenzie

Also by J. J. McKenzie:

I Will Love Unloved: A Linguistic Analysis of Woman’s Biblical Importance

Praise for I Will Love Unloved

A daring and impressive combination of the results of a thorough grammatical scrutiny of the biblical texts with the conclusion of a feminist analysis of the often suppressed, but nevertheless clearly discernible, evidence of the role female deities and their feminine worshippers played in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. Ms. McKenzie’s conclusion that ‘woman was more important in ancient history than many people now believe,’ and that ‘a very strong thread of feminine material runs through the Bible,’ can be considered established with the publication of this book.

Raphael Patai, author of The Hebrew Goddess

© 2012 Jennifer J. McKenzie

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-9853733-0-6

QED stands for Quality, Excellence and Design. The QED seal of approval shown here verifies that this eBook has passed a rigorous quality assurance process and will render well in most eBook reading platforms.

Contents

Preface

Introduction: They Meant Bi-Gender

1. The Pluralities of Deity

2. I Am Mother; I am Father

3. Gender and Poetic Parallelism

4. ShaDdaY and Breasts

5. ELoHIM, ELOaH, ELaH, EL

6. Early Androgyny

7. The Goddess IO

8. YHWH and IA/IO

9. She is the Spirit and Wisdom, But Not the Goddess

10. The Spirit and Wisdom, She, in the New Testament

11. Beyond Androgyny–A Conjoint Deity

12. Gender Neutral

Appendix: Methods of Transliteration and Punctuation

Bibliography

Illustrations

Index

Preface

This is a book of pieces, of maybes, of possibilities. If there was an attempt to repress any expression of the feminine nature of the divine, and if that attempt has been a major factor of religion for 2000 or more years, one is lucky to find many pieces at all. I have read that the greatest religious act was to throw artifacts of other religions, i.e., statues, into the sea. I have seen evidence of religious hate in the smashed faces of the Goddess Hathor at Denedra in Egypt. I have read in Biblical Archaeology Review about the destroyed sanctuary of the Goddess in the Sinai peninsula.

Anyone who reads this book must realize those facts—the elimination of the feminine divine. I cannot here present a clear picture because many hands through many centuries have attempted to destroy it. I can, however, present some evidence, some information, and some threads of thought. Society, then, can choose to consider those facts and reincorporate the feminine dimension into their beliefs—or it can choose to turn its back and continue to shut out the feminine—a choice tragic for humanity.

While studying I discovered that biblical translations differed from each other. For instance, in the same passage one bible would say she did it and another bible would say he did it. In my book I have pointed out a number of these changes, as they alter ideas and concepts. This process of change may be seen all the way from early Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts to recent biblical translations.

Due to this discovery, I have made my own translations from Dead Sea Scroll, Hebrew, and Greek texts. When I do so, I use the following abbreviations for my translations: MT for the Hebrew Masoretic Text of the Old Testament; LXX for the Greek Septuagint; and GNT for the Greek New Testament. I have attempted to make as literal a translation as possible. I have also tried to adhere to ancient manuscript marks that indicate punctuation breaks.

To clarify the gender of different words, I have often put abbreviations in parentheses in the text. These abbreviations are: (m.) for masculine, (f.) for feminine, (n.) for neuter, and (pl.) for plural. This is an attempt to show how the early writer was using gendered words to present concepts.

I have made several translation decisions. They have to do with the Hebrew language and choices made when translating Hebrew passages into English.

The first of those choices concerns the imperfect tense of Hebrew verbs. These verbs have different forms to indicate whether they mean I will do something, you will do something, he or she will do something, we will do something, you (plural) will do something, or they will do something. When the verbs mean I will do something or we will do something the forms used are the same for both male and female. ALSO, the second person masculine singular (you will do something) and the third person singular feminine (she will do something) are the SAME form. Who this verb form is being used for can only be decided in the context of the passage.¹ There are textual instances when I believe that BOTH the masculine you and the feminine she are being referred to together and so I have translated the verb as you/she.

A second choice has to do with the pronoun HU’. This pronoun is currently being viewed as the masculine he. HOWEVER, according to Davidson’s Analytical Lexicon, "The masculine HU’ is of common gender in the Pentateuch, and signifies also ‘she’."² Thus, in many cases when I have encountered this pronoun I have translated it as the inclusive he/she.

Finally, there is the issue of the gender neutral pronoun "it." Hebrew does not have a separate form for neuter as does the later Greek language. Hebrew just has two endings for nouns––masculine and feminine (in addition to a number of nouns that are common nouns with a common ending, i.e. neither/or both genders). Translators must decide from the context of passages when to substitute "it" instead of he or she when referring to a masculine or feminine noun. Also, they must decide how to translate when a verb referring to a common noun has a masculine ending. Those decisions are arbitrary and are quite inconsistent in biblical translation.

For instance, the text in I Samuel 5:1 reads, And the Philistines took the ark of the Elohim and brought it.... According to Davidson’s Analytical Lexicon the word ark is a common noun–i.e. it is both masculine and feminine.³ The verb used with the ark has a masculine ending yet translators render that verb ending as "and brought it.... instead of and brought him.... This establishes a precedent for my use of it" in translations concerning YHWH. When I do this I will put "it" in italics.

A second example of the decision to use "it" may be found in I Samuel 5:3-4. Here a foreign deity, Dagon, is being discussed. The passage and they took Dagon and put him back in his place.... Has been translated as, "and they took Dagon and put it back in its place...." in Green’s Interlinear Bible.⁴

Many scholars object to the use of the pronoun "it" when referring to the Hebrew YHWH. However, one may argue that if "it" can be used for a foreign deity why can’t "it" be used for the Hebrew deity?

Finally, there are other abbreviations for bible translations used after some of the biblical verses. Those abbreviations for bibles and texts are: DSS, Dead Sea Scrolls; RSV, Revised Standard Version; NRSV, New Revised Standard Version, KJV, King James Version; NEB, New English Bible; JB, Jerusalem Bible; and NJB, New Jerusalem Bible.

Introduction: They Meant Bi-Gender

Man and Woman are from the creation co-equal and co-existent, perfectly equal one with the other. This fact the translators of the Bible have been at great pains to conceal by carefully suppressing every reference to the Feminine portion of the Deity, and by constantly translating feminine nouns by masculine. And this is the work of so-called religious men!⁵

MacGregor Mathers

I ask myself why? Why am I writing this book about a bi-gender, androgynous deity? My answer is: Religions are important. The many different religions are human constructs—attempts to give order, sense, and purpose to the world.

Religions are humanity’s search for truth, for reason, for meaning. No one person in any religion can prove that they have the one and only answer, but many believe that they do—then they fiercely fight for their particular beliefs.

In my previous book, I Will Love Unloved: A Linguistic Analysis of Woman’s Biblical Importance,⁶ I discussed the facts that the Hebrew/Christian religion developed in an area and time when there had been, and were, many competing religious beliefs. Also, I said that the biblical document was not an unchanged word dictated by a God. Instead, it is a document written by many hands over a long period of time. It is basically a history of the development and changes in the western world’s early religious thought. As such, it contains many ideas – some good – and some that are unacceptable today. People who cling to various of the Bible’s outmoded ideas and rules should realize that ideas have evolved and not hold themselves and others to antiquated beliefs. Such beliefs, claimed as true by one religious faction or another, are at the root of much of the world’s conflict.

I demonstrated in I Will Love Unloved that ancient beliefs and rules were not the only issues to be dealt with when using the Bible. Translations of the Bible are also problematic. I found that translations varied widely. I traced the accidental and intentional elimination of feminine material in successive translations of the Bible. Many biblical translations now in use differ widely in meaning from the text of the original authors. Because religion still plays such a large part in today’s world, distressing results of this distortion are found in how society views women and how women view themselves. While writing that book, I realized that this alteration was not limited to the role females played in biblical times. It also extends to an ongoing misrepresentation of the way the ancient Hebrews viewed their Deity. That has necessitated this current book.

I have concluded that the Bible has been used as a political document to control peoples–in particular–women. In many religions maleness seems to have won. Gods are male, He. Women are instructed to be subordinate. The general idea about the Bible today is that it is a patriarchal document about a patriarchal God with women playing minor subservient roles.

Yet, when I studied the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, the Old and New Testaments, I was excited to find that there was material about a male/female balance. I discovered a struggle to portray that gender balance between woman and man. That struggle has apparently gone on for over 5000 years. It may be found in early mythology and in the later Hebrew and Christian biblical stories. Certain early biblical authors, in their attempts to make sense of their world, had tried to include the feminine in their concepts of their Deity.

Research reveals that numerous ancient biblical writers believed their Deity to be a bi-gender Him/Her being, albeit generally with no bodily masculine or feminine attributes. Instead, one could use the terms spiritually androgynous or gender neutral to describe their ideas.

As stated in the introductory quote by Mathers, knowledge of this concept, and its subsequent cover up, is not entirely new. Yet no one has attempted a thorough study of how both the feminine and masculine aspects of Deity were expressed and what the nature of successive elimination of the feminine was.

Such a study may have two approaches: the first is to retrieve, as much as possible, the missing feminine dimensions of the Deity; the second to analyze when and why this elimination took place. The main emphasis of this book is on retrieval and discussion of feminine material—showing how it and masculine material were originally used in the description of Deity. Because of that masculine/feminine balance I am using the word Deity instead of the masculine word, God, and I began searching for the meaning and origin of the Hebrew name for their supreme being—YHWH.

Those four letters just seem to stand there on the page—unpronounceable. That is the first hurdle—how is a person to relate to or even pronounce YHWH? The earliest Hebrew language supposedly was just written with consonants––there weren’t any written vowels to make pronunciation easier. Why? Because the language was primitive—it was just beyond the stage of drawing a picture of a dog and having it stand for your pet.

Supposedly is a key word here, for four of the early letters were used as vowels as well as consonants. Three of these are in the divine name YHWH—the Y, H, W.

When the corresponding vowels are used this name is spelled IAOA, not YHWH. Now one is going to have to ask which came first—the vowel spelling or the consonant spelling—for IAOA is the name of a very ancient goddess. Her shorter name was IO.

IO was the goddess from whom the Ionian sea west of Turkey, in the area of Homer’s Troy, got its name. IO may be traced all around the Mediterranean and linked with the ancient Egyptian goddesses Neith and Isis.

IO had a son, Epaphus, who was born in a cow‘s stall—as in Jesus’ story he was born in a cow’s stall in Bethlehem.

She came from an area where there was an ancient maritime nation called Ahhiyawa (AhhiYHWH).

Her mythology and that of her son Epaphus includes belief in androgyny—a combination of the female and male. This is an exciting concept. It precludes male dominance and yet does not insist on female dominance as a replacement.

One attempt of this book is to pick up some of those mythological threads. You, as a reader, are invited to wind your way through this tangle. Much of the material is fragmentary and piecemeal. It is as if a thread was broken many times and then the pieces snarled. I’ve been trying to unravel that mess, drawing on both biblical material and other early myths. I’ve tried to lay the pieces out; some side by side; some strung together again. Some of the pieces are so little, so obscure, that at times I’ve despaired of being able to present an idea with any clarity. I feel that it is important to consider these ideas even if one is not religious in the traditional sense. Those voices of the ages were striving to impart a certain wisdom—wisdom important to realize and internalize, if the human race, male and female together, is to move forward.

I recognize that such a study may be difficult reading for those who are not familiar with ancient languages and the social and political climate of the ancient world. Yet, I hope that some of you will be caught up in what I have come to see as one of the greatest mystery stories of all time—a mystery story moreover, that had, and still has, major implications for humankind.

1

The Pluralities of Deity

So God created man in his own image.... The question may arise in the mind as to the nature of the image of God; but the answer is already given in the text, and is clear enough. ‘When the Holy One, Blessed be He, created the first man, He created him androgynous.’

Joseph Campbell⁷

I am Who/Which/What I am was YHWH’s reply to Moses when asked for a label or title. YHWH (pronounced Yahweh) was the personal name of the Hebrew/Israelite Deity who, through the translating processes of the ages, has become known to Christians as God, He. Yet, that early biblical reply conveyed neither an idea of specific gender nor of form.

YHWH’s statement was significant when one considers the cultural milieu in which the early Hebrews lived. All around them—and in their very midst—were peoples worshipping simple to elaborate pantheons of anthropomorphic goddesses and gods.⁸ Archaeological artifacts and documents silently testify to millennia of goddess and god worship preceding the appearance of the Hebrews, and their Deity.⁹

What were these Hebrews thinking—what did I am Who/Which/What I am mean? Not only did biblical writers record this statement, but they added others to it. Like:

Hear Israel:

YHWH our ELoHIM

YHWH | One.

Deuteronomy 6:4 MT

Fig. 1. Goddess Hathor holding Pharaoh Mekaura, Giza, Egypt, 2548-2530 B.C.E., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Therefore you shall be on your guard

very much for your souls;

for you did not see any form,

on the day YHWH spoke to you....

Lest you act corruptly,

and make for yourselves a carved image (m.)

the form of any figure (m.),

the shape of a male or a female.

[The] shape of any animal...

[the] shape of any winged bird....

[the] shape of any creeper...

[the] shape of any fish....

And lest you lift up your eyes to the heavens,

and you see the sun and the moon and the stars...

and you be drawn away

and bow down to them and serve them.

Deuteronomy 4:15-19 MT

Prophet after Hebrew prophet warned, harangued, and threatened the Israelite populace—both female and male—collectively and singly for worshipping known anthropomorphic goddesses and gods.

Make no images, burn the images, cut down the images, was the repetitive cry. Clearly something radical was taking place in the Ancient Near East. Centuries of religious practices were being questioned. Thus, the question of this book is: What were the Hebrews and later Christians proposing as a replacement for these anthropomorphic goddesses and gods?

To answer that, one must study the Hebrew language, early texts and inscriptions, and the Hebrew biblical document. Humans are expressive beings. When prohibitions were made about portraying Deity with handmade sculptural or pictorial objects, humans began to employ their minds. The development of the mind’s concepts may be found in written language. Which language, one soon realizes, may portray an entity in a multitude of ways without a person ever having to mold clay or stone or brass.

Fig. 2. Hittite Goddess and Child, Anatolia 15th-13th Century B.C.E., Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Deity the Hebrews strove to present through word, metaphor, simile, comparison, or allusion is an inclusive Deity made up of both feminine and masculine attributes—yet supposed to be One, a unity, and imageless.

Presenting that concept was a challenge. Individual Hebrew writers each attempted to walk the fine line between anthropomorphism and descriptions that the average human mind could grasp and meditate upon. Some attempts were relatively transparent—adopting current language for deity, but giving it a Hebrew twist. Other methods, such as using plurals, poetic parallelism, metaphor, and simile were more subtle—but also all the more exciting when comprehended.

Unfortunately, the haze of centuries passing has obscured the clarity of that early vision. In the thickening haze, translators and translations have unwittingly or intentionally wandered farther and farther from the path of the Hebrew text.

Revisiting those earlier texts and trying to trace that path anew is the aim of this book. I am attempting a comprehensive study of biblical examples portraying the inclusiveness and plurality of the Deity.

The first thing to consider is that a number of passages referring to the Hebrew Deity use plural words and word endings.

ELoHIM is Plural

In the first chapter of Genesis, the Hebrew Deity, ELoHIM, creates humanity, ADaM.¹⁰ ELoHIM is the English spelling for the most commonly used generic name of the Hebrew/Israelite Deity. It is a plural word meaning Gods (or Deities). The Hebrew writer used this plural word intentionally, for there are several other generic Hebrew words for Deity, one of which is the masculine singular EL.¹¹

After the plural ELoHIM, Deities, the author of Genesis then wrote: Let us make humanity in our likeness (m.) according to our likeness (f.).¹² The verb let us make is a first person