andrewcriddle

Epiphanius had a somewhat lurid imagination.

He claims for example that if the rituals of the Phibionites/Borborites resulted in pregnancy then the embryo is aborted and eaten in a ritual meal.

These sort of stories are similar to modern stories about 'Satanic Ritual Abuse' and should be regarded with the most extreme scepticism.

In so far as these practices have any historical basis at all (which is IMO doubtful) they probably reflect the distortion of Manichaean ideas by other Gnostic groups and are at the earliest 3rd century CE.

(The Pistis Sophia and the 2nd Book of Jeu from the 3rd century CE appear to have heard rumours about similar obscene orgies and condemn them.)

Andrew Criddle

Aquila Pacis

Exactly. As I stated earlier this is merely a side aspect. But even if it's just rumor, legend or propaganda, the fact that Epiphanius mentions it still has historical relevance, when one has to deal with the origins of Christianity.

Aquila Pacis

Truth is always a relative thing, especially when it comes to religion, but I'll try my best to answer. First and foremost I don't believe Prager's article to be well-written. Sounds like intellectual pap to me. My gut take on God's gender is that God is not a democrat, so naturally there is need for a worsening, to decide: male or female? But let's look at what Prager writes:

I. The female ruler: this looks like male machismo, like a lot of other things he writes. Nobody wants to be ruled by a woman? Sure, Maggie Thatcher had a lot of adversaries, but for political reasons, not because she was a woman. Here in Germany we are about to elect our first female chancellor. Prager seems to be a very conservative fellow. There is numerous evidence for female rulers and godesses in history.

II. The "female" values: specifying between male and female values, virtues etc. may have been a normal practice in ancient times (see below), but Christianity changed all that. Here we are also dealing with the schizophrenic concept of the Bible, OT vs. NT. (cf. Marcion) We are dealing with two different Gods that have opposing characters. A lot of those so-called "female" virtues have been introduced by Jesus, a male god. But in general, I have the feeling that Prager tries to analyse a religious matter by utilizing what you rightly call "pop-psychological" arguments. Maybe this is the right approach. We will see later.

III. The de-sexualization: again the man speaking, the reductionist. I am deeply skeptical when people start talking about women or men per se. Unshakable categorization doesn't work with me. Sorry.

IV. The protector: every modern religion rests on three mythical columns: 1. the myth of the kingdom, empire etc., 2. the myth of the leader and 3. the myth of nature. A kingdom or an empire can have a gender (Roma was a godess too; what about Uncle Sam?), a leader and/or a god can be female (see above), and nature? Earth is the protector of man and is in most cases referred to as "Mother" Earth...there we have it: a female protector. Environmentalists often speak of "rape" when referring to pollution.

V. Submission: this argument seems to stem from the cultural context and history of patriarchal structures (see below) and might not be fitting for modern society.

Let's look at his approach, the quirky pop-psychology. This is modern-day religion, but the underlying principle is a few thousand years old. Gods have become almost invisible, not rooted in every-day life anymore. You need to change the vocabulary if you want to convey religious matters. This can rightfully be called secularization. But I would even go one step further and state that Judaism and Christianity are religions that have ALWAYS been secular. This is strongly connected to the development of media in human culture. In sharp contrast to the much younger Islam, Jews and Christians are not missionaries in the name of God, but aim at transferring information, resources and of course money. This is a "cryptotheological" aspect of secularization. Man and media. The liberal-secular form of these religions goes well with today's politics. The UN demand that every world religion respect the basic rules of the dignity of man. This is why a lot of central religious concepts of Islam, which is primarily a patriarchal religion of (male) violence, need to be discarded for Islam to reach the status of a worthy world religion. Condemning the tyrants, the Mullahs etc. is not sufficient.

Christianity and Judaism also look back on a long history of violence and male supremacy...the scripture, the written law, the codex, the dogma, woman and child owned by man. It all started with Aristoteles who labeld fire and air, the elements of technology, steel (warfare) and progress, as male and earth and water, the elements of handicraft, as female. But I would like to return to the "written religion": the invention of the greek alphabet was a means and a technology to grasp, define, create and alter the world. The birth of modern media. Around 800 BC Hesoid wrote his Theogony - the genealogy of the gods, and all of a sudden, from that point on and for all times, all gods were man-made, they were "created" and were "creators" no more. Euhemeros took to the stage as well, the rest is history. This is what I meant with Christendom and Judaism being already secular(ized) religions. (The Biblia Iudaica was written after 800 BC.) Scripture made the pragmatic approach to world religion possible. The specification of one (written) rule for all smoothed the way for monotheism: one God for all. Since then religion has been a technique of rule and domination, learned people - mostly men - transferring rules and information on faith and religious matters, but also resources and money to the group of non-learned, peasants, heathens, women and children. But this group sometimes turned the tables and extracted fundamental rule from the religion of their masters. Same with hardcore muslims today. Fundamentalism is a form of compensating one's own a-religiousness and one's inability to perceive religion as a symbolic order. Western and mediterranean religion - also as the precursor of Islam - is the instrumentalization of faith for political power and conquest, in most cases a man's playground. De-sexualization of their god, their religion, their rituals is a way of exercising power. One god for all.

But today it's slightly different. Since the Renaissance man sees himself as "modular", i.e. religion is only one part of his existence and co-exists with politics, warfare, technology, art, sexuality and new social currents etc. Christianity (and Islam for that matter) have always been technical, practical and highly adaptable religions. Nowadays we live in a society that propagates the equality of man and woman. The Bible, the Quran, the Tora, they all have room for such an interpretation, but also for the opposite. Prager says the Bible depicts God as sexually neuter. That's fine with me. There is probably a lot of written evidence to support Prager's claim. But one could also propagate the opposite. The Bible would not remain silent. With religion we are always dealing with a patchwork that is open for a lot of interpretations (and speculations). In the past de-sexualization might have been a form a exercising power. Today it's a means of keeping religion accessible for members of modern societies. Luckily our current society (equality of man and woman) would fit this scheme. (Maybe the religious de-sexualization of the monotheistic god is the reason for the development of equal gender rights? Dunno...) Prager is basically swimming with the tide while simultaneously sticking to traditions, the male god of scripture. If he discarded the latter, it would alienate many. (There we have it again: the road to fundamentalism.) Sign of the times maybe, but in a historical context it has always been like that. Monotheism introduced the invisible god, the purely mythical god as opposed to the divinized ruler. No trace of the human behind the divine form. But even Ratzinger said that one of the biggest problems of modern-day Christianity is the missing historical Jesus. A god must be rooted in real life, at least to some extent, not only through liturgy and prayer but also through his own history - as a human. Discarding the male attributes of God would destroy one of the last characteristics that actually make HIM real.

Toto

Where did he say this?

Aquila Pacis

Ratzinger is intellectually hard-boiled and as cardinal participated in many discussions (w/ Habermas et al.) and gave a lot of interviews. Many of those were TV-broadcast again after he had been elected Pope. That's where I got it from. I think the way he put it is that the people don't believe in the historical Jesus anymore. A simple credibility problem, but with far-reaching consequences as it seems.

Cross_

Woah, "lack of belief in historical Jesus" is quite different from your earlier claim about a "missing historical Jesus". Sure sounds like Ratzinger would bring down the RCC if he had stated the later.

Do we know anything about Aton's sexuality ? Maybe he's a precedent for a non-sexual monotheistic god.

Aquila Pacis

Hehe, yeah...but if you take a closer look at this Christian dilemma it seems pretty clear: people don't believe in the historical Jesus because he IS missing. What other reason can there be? Phantoms are not really suitable for worship.