When God Was a Woman

When God Was a Woman is the U.S. title of a book (©1976 ISBN 0-15-696158-X) published earlier in the U.K. as The Paradise Papers. Written by artist and art history professor Merlin Stone, it is a study of how the Hebrews so despised the goddess religions they found in Canaan when they invaded it, as the Bible tells, that they not only tried to wipe it out (largely by trying to kill everyone who practiced it -- what is today labeled "genocide"), but they also shaped Judaism to, literally, demonize its principles, especially those involving matriarchy, icons and snake handling, and fertility rites:

"If your brother or son or daughter or wife or friend suggest serving other gods, you must kill him, your hand must be the first raised in putting him to death and all the people shall follow you" (Deut. 13:6).

"If the inhabitants of a town that once served the Lord your God, now serve other gods, you must kill all the inhabitants of that town" (Deut. 13:15).

Stone shows how many of the tenets of Judaism, and therefore of Christianity, arose as a direct reaction to the religion practiced in Canaan when the Hebrews arrived, which she dates to 1300 to 1250 B.C. She then raises some of her own theories, identified as such, drawn from the historical evidence. Many Jews and Christians who have read the book say they were surprised to have learned so much about the roots of their own religions in what they expected, from what they had heard about it, to be a feminist diatribe. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and other scholars of ancient cultures have been less enthusiastic about the book, which is not surprising given that it takes them to task for imposing their own views on the historical evidence, but in general they have taken issue with the conclusions Stone has drawn about the societies that produced them, not with her exposition of what the relics we have are.

External link to Sunshine for Women page: When God Was a Woman