Originally posted by DelayedChristmas
Originally posted by windword
reply to post by DelayedChristmas
There's something in the Talmud, I think, about the "Mother of Heaven" or the "Queen of Heaven".....not sure her title. God kept her from the
sight of mankind so that they wouldn't blaspheme her.
I guess he's very protective and jealous of her reputation.
I'll see if I can find more on this.
Oh, I read online that the book of Jeremiah references twice the "Queen of Heaven," and both references have to do with Israel suffering for
provoking God by not following the commandment to worship graven images. As you can tell by my previous posts, I think Asherah was blasphemous to the
real Mother and Father did not appreciate this. What is your take?
biblia.com...
biblia.com...
Yeah, I saw those scriptures when I was searching for that information I had seen. I still can't find it, and I'm beginning to think that it was a
apologetic letter from a Jewish scholar addressing Talmudic practices that seemed unethical to the layman.
I agree that one could assume that Yahweh was appalled by the imagery and practices that the peasants used to honor his supposed wife.
I think it's important to remember that Abraham was the one who introduced the concept of one god and only one god. I think that this was a tough
pill for the average Hebrew to swallow. The idea of one god is a very metaphysical and deeply intellectual concept.
The Hebrew people were influenced by Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian religions that were all polytheistic. Old habits are hard to break. There
really is no reason to believe that Yahweh was the ONLY god, but that he was one of many.
Jealous Yahweh would have no god before him, but I don't think that honoring other spiritual entities was considered a crime, as long as you
subscribed to Yahweh as the highest. There is a lot of evidence in the book of Jubilees and in Enoch that "angels" of nature were to be honored
also. Angels appear to Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Mary and Jesus, among others.
And the angel of the presence spake to Moses according to the word of the Lord, saying:
Write the complete history of the creation, how in six days the Lord God finished all His works and all that He created, and kept Sabbath on the
seventh day and hallowed it for all ages, and appointed it as a sign for all His works.
For on the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before him -the angels of the
presence, and the angels of sanctification, and the angels [of the spirit of fire and the angels] of the spirit of the winds, and the angels of the
spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices and of the thunder and of the
lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring and of autumn and of summer and of all the spirits of his
creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, (He created) the abysses and the darkness, eventide nd night>, and the light, dawn and day, which
He hath prepared in the knowledge of his heart.
www.pseudepigrapha.com...
Remember when the angels visited Lot, and the men of the city "wanted" them. They appeared to be human. It's easy to make the leap that many of
these idols were actually images of these beings who did interact with humans in biblical times. And, that some of them may have appeared in female
form.
Yahweh himself, who is said to have dictated the law to Moses, may very well have been an angel and not the "Most High God" that the angels served.
So maybe jealous Yahweh felt that goddess worship was vile, but I don't believe it to be an intrinsically evil practice.
As a matter of fact, I don't see how any religion can be considered to address the whole of existence without address the duality of male and female
aspects of life. Yahweh seems to want to diminish, even oppress the feminine aspects of spirituality. That just can't be healthy!
