Men, Women, and their Gods, in the Old Testament:
What the Old Testament says, about the relationship of men and women it this: Men get themselves in trouble, every time they listen to women. If the women aren't carefully watched and disciplined, they go back to worshipping goddesses, and then lead the men into temptation. Men lose their power, lose their battles, the country gets overrun by enemies, the crops don't grow, life gets hard, every time the men listen to the women. Instead, men must listen to the prophets of their male God, a stern God of justice. If they do that, following strictly every rule, God will give them prosperity and victory in battle.
17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it
all the days of your life. - Genesis 3
Delilah Tricks Samson:
4Some time later, Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in Sorek Valley. 5The Philistine rulers [3] went to Delilah and said, " Trick Samson into telling you what makes him so strong and what can make him weak. Then we can tie him up so he can't get away. If you find out his secret, we will each give you eleven hundred pieces of silver." [4] 6The next time Samson was at Delilah's house, she asked, " Samson, what makes you so strong? How can I tie you up so you can't get away? Come on, you can tell me."
7Samson answered, " If someone ties me up with seven new bowstrings that have never been dried, [5] it will make me just as weak as anyone else." 8-9The Philistine rulers gave seven new bowstrings to Delilah. They also told some of their soldiers to go to Delilah's house and hide in the room where Samson and Delilah were. If the bowstrings made Samson weak, they would be able to capture him.
Delilah tied up Samson with the bowstrings and shouted, " Samson, the Philistines are attacking!"
Samson snapped the bowstrings, as though they were pieces of scorched string. The Philistines had not found out why Samson was so strong.
10" You lied and made me look like a fool," Delilah said. " Now tell me. How can I really tie you up?"
11Samson answered, " Use some new ropes. If I'm tied up with ropes that have never been used, I'll be just as weak as anyone else."
12Delilah got new ropes and again had some Philistines hide in the room. Then she tied up Samson's arms and shouted, " Samson, the Philistines are attacking!"
Samson snapped the ropes as if they were threads.
13" You're still lying and making a fool of me," Delilah said. " Tell me how I can tie you up!"
" My hair is in seven braids," Samson replied. " If you weave my braids into the threads on a loom and nail the loom [6] to a wall, then I will be as weak as anyone else." 14While Samson was asleep, Delilah wove his braids into the threads on a loom and nailed the loom to a wall. [7] Then she shouted, " Samson, the Philistines are attacking !" Samson woke up and pulled the loom free from its posts in the ground and from the nails in the wall. Then he pulled his hair free from the woven cloth.
15" Samson," Delilah said, " you claim to love me, but you don't mean it! You've made me look like a fool three times now, and you still haven't told me why you are so strong." 16Delilah started nagging and pestering him day after day, until he couldn't stand it any longer.
17Finally, Samson told her the truth. " I have belonged to God [8] ever since I was born, so my hair has never been cut. If it were ever cut off, my strength would leave me, and I would be as weak as anyone else." 18Delilah realized that he was telling the truth. So she sent someone to tell the Philistine rulers, " Come to my house one more time. Samson has finally told me the truth."
The Philistine rulers went to Delilah's house, and they brought along the silver they had promised her. 19Delilah had lulled Samson to sleep with his head resting in her lap. She signaled to one of the Philistine men as she began cutting off Samson's seven braids. And by the time she was finished, Samson's strength was gone. Delilah tied him up 20and shouted, " Samson, the Philistines are attacking!"
Samson woke up and thought, " I'll break loose and escape, just as I always do." He did not realize that the LORD had stopped helping him.
21The Philistines grabbed Samson and poked out his eyes. They took him to the prison in Gaza and chained him up. Then they put him to work, turning a millstone to grind grain. Judges 16
The People of Israel Turn from Astarte, Back to the LORD, and win battles:
3One day, Samuel told all the people of Israel, "If you really want to turn back to the LORD, then prove it. Get rid of your foreign idols, including the ones of the goddess Astarte. Turn to the LORD with all your heart and worship only him. Then he will rescue you from the Philistines." 1 Samuel 7
Defeated Israelite's armor displyed in Goddess's temple:
8The day after the battle, when the Philistines returned to the battlefield to take the weapons of the dead Israelite soldiers, they found Saul and his three sons lying dead on Mount Gilboa. 9-10The Philistines cut off Saul's head and pulled off his armor. Then they put his armor in the temple of the goddess Astarte, and they nailed his body to the city wall of Beth-Shan. They also sent messengers everywhere in Philistia to spread the good news in the temples of their idols and among their people. 1 Samuel 31
Solomon's wives have him worshipping goddesses:
1-2The LORD did not want the Israelites to worship foreign gods, so he had warned them not to marry anyone who was not from Israel.
Solomon loved his wife, the daughter of the king of Egypt. But he also loved some women from Moab, Ammon, and Edom, and others from Sidon and the land of the Hittites. 3-4Seven hundred of his wives were daughters of kings, but he also married three hundred other women. [1] As Solomon got older, some of his wives led him to worship their gods. He wasn't like his father David, who had worshiped only the LORD God. 5Solomon also worshiped Astarte the goddess of Sidon, and Milcom the disgusting god of Ammon. 6Solomon's father had obeyed the LORD with all his heart, but Solomon disobeyed and did what the LORD hated.
7Solomon built shrines on a hill east of Jerusalem to worship Chemosh the disgusting god of Moab, and Molech the disgusting god of Ammon. 8In fact, he built a shrine for each of his foreign wives, so all of them could burn incense and offer sacrifices to their own gods.
9-10The LORD God of Israel had appeared to Solomon two times and warned him not to worship foreign gods. But Solomon disobeyed and did it anyway. This made the LORD very angry, 11and he said to Solomon:
You did what you wanted and not what I told you to do. Now I'm going to take your kingdom from you and give it to one of your officials. -1 KIngs 11
Fundamentalist King Josiah burns out the widespread worship of other gods, worship which included the "phallic Asherah pole", male prostitutes, and Astarte:
2Then the king proceeded to The Temple of GOD, bringing everyone in his train--priests and prophets and people ranging from the famous to the unknown. Then he read out publicly everything written in the Book of the Covenant that was found in The Temple of GOD. 3The king stood by the pillar and before GOD solemnly committed them all to the covenant: to follow GOD believingly and obediently; to follow his instructions, heart and soul, on what to believe and do; to put into practice the entire covenant, all that was written in the book. The people stood in affirmation; their commitment was unanimous.
4Then the king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, his associate priest, and The Temple sentries to clean house--to get rid of everything in The Temple of GOD that had been made for worshiping Baal and Asherah and the cosmic powers. He had them burned outside Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron and then disposed of the ashes in Bethel. 5He fired the pagan priests whom the kings of Judah had hired to supervise the local sex-and-religion shrines in the towns of Judah and neighborhoods of Jerusalem. In a stroke he swept the country clean of the polluting stench of the round-the-clock worship of Baal, sun and moon, stars--all the so-called cosmic powers. 6He took the obscene phallic Asherah pole from The Temple of GOD to the Valley of Kidron outside Jerusalem, burned it up, then ground up the ashes and scattered them in the cemetery. 7He tore out the rooms of the male sacred prostitutes that had been set up in The Temple of GOD; women also used these rooms for weavings for Asherah. 8He swept the outlying towns of Judah clean of priests and smashed the sex-and-religion shrines where they worked their trade from one end of the country to the other--all the way from Geba to Beersheba. He smashed the sex-and-religion shrine that had been set up just to the left of the city gate for the private use of Joshua, the city mayor. 9Even though these sex-and-religion priests did not defile the Altar in The Temple itself, they were part of the general priestly corruption and had to go.
10Then Josiah demolished the Topheth, the iron furnace griddle set up in the Valley of Ben Hinnom for sacrificing children in the fire. No longer could anyone burn son or daughter to the god Molech. 11He hauled off the horse statues honoring the sun god that the kings of Judah had set up near the entrance to The Temple. They were in the courtyard next to the office of Nathan-Melech, the warden. He burned up the sun-chariots as so much rubbish.
12The king smashed all the altars to smithereens--the altar on the roof shrine of Ahaz, the various altars the kings of Judah had made, the altars of Manasseh that littered the courtyard of The Temple--he smashed them all, pulverized the fragments, and scattered their dust in the Valley of Kidron. 13The king proceeded to make a clean sweep of all the sex-and-religion shrines that had proliferated east of Jerusalem on the south slope of Abomination Hill, the ones Solomon king of Israel had built to the obscene Sidonian sex goddess Ashtoreth, to Chemosh the dirty-old-god of the Moabites, and to Milcom the depraved god of the Ammonites. 14He tore apart the altars, chopped down the phallic Asherah-poles, and scattered old bones over the sites. 15Next, he took care of the altar at the shrine in Bethel that Jeroboam son of Nebat had built--the same Jeroboam who had led Israel into a life of sin. He tore apart the altar, burned down the shrine leaving it in ashes, and then lit fire to the phallic Asherah-pole.
16As Josiah looked over the scene, he noticed the tombs on the hillside. He ordered the bones removed from the tombs and had them cremated on the ruined altars, desacralizing the evil altars. This was a fulfillment of the word of GOD spoken by the Holy Man years before when Jeroboam had stood by the altar at the sacred convocation.
17Then the king said, "And that memorial stone--whose is that?"
The men from the city said, "That's the grave of the Holy Man who spoke the message against the altar at Bethel that you have just fulfilled."
18Josiah said, "Don't trouble his bones." So they left his bones undisturbed, along with the bones of the prophet from Samaria.
19But Josiah hadn't finished. He now moved through all the towns of Samaria where the kings of Israel had built neighborhood sex-and-religion shrines, shrines that had so angered GOD. He tore the shrines down and left them in ruins--just as at Bethel. 20He killed all the priests who had conducted the sacrifices and cremated them on their own altars, thus desacralizing the altars. Only then did Josiah return to Jerusalem.
21The king now commanded the people, "Celebrate the Passover to GOD, your God, exactly as directed in this Book of the Covenant."
22This commanded Passover had not been celebrated since the days that the judges judged Israel--none of the kings of Israel and Judah had celebrated it. 23But in the eighteenth year of the rule of King Josiah this very Passover was celebrated to GOD in Jerusalem.
24Josiah scrubbed the place clean and trashed spirit-mediums, sorcerers, domestic gods, and carved figures--all the vast accumulation of foul and obscene relics and images on display everywhere you looked in Judah and Jerusalem. Josiah did this in obedience to the words of GOD'S Revelation written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in The Temple of GOD.
25There was no king to compare with Josiah--neither before nor after--a king who turned in total and repentant obedience to GOD, heart and mind and strength, following the instructions revealed to and written by Moses. The world would never again see a king like Josiah. -2 Kings 23
Women lead the men astray, again:
15 A large number of Jews from both northern and southern Egypt listened to me as I told them what the LORD had said. Most of the men in the crowd knew that their wives often burned incense to other gods. So they and their wives shouted:
16Jeremiah, what do we care if you speak in the LORD's name? We refuse to listen! 17We have promised to worship the goddess Astarte, the Queen of Heaven, [1] and that is exactly what we are going to do. We will burn incense and offer sacrifices of wine to her, just as we, our ancestors, our kings, and our leaders did when we lived in Jerusalem and the other towns of Judah. We had plenty of food back then. We were well off, and nothing bad ever happened to us. 18But since the time we stopped burning incense and offering wine sacrifices to her, we have been dying from war and hunger. 19Then the women said, "When we lived in Judah, we worshiped the Queen of Heaven and offered sacrifices of wine and special loaves of bread shaped like her. Our husbands knew what we were doing, and they approved of it." - Jeremiah 44
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Art History (I like looking at the art, while reading the history or sacred texts of a religion)
witcombe.sbc.edu
Goddess images:
Michelango's Pieta:
kfki.hu
Adam and Eve and Lillith
witcombe.sbc.edu
Minoan Snake Goddess 1600 BC witcombe.sbc.edu
Venus of Willendorf 24,000 BC witcombe.sbc.edu
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other links
Ancient texts:
eawc.evansville.edu
Christian pacifism essay
mcauley.acu.edu.au
How historically accurate is the New Testament?
Message 18892341
Message 18890272
Societies' arbiters of truth, and Westernization:
Message 18888812
History from a Pagan's viewpoint:
free.freespeech.org |
