Contents Updated: Thursday, March 02, 2000
In the Near East, Judaism was deliberately started as a branch of the universal Persian Religion, and from it Christianity and eventually Islam evolved. The Pagan religions were suppressed and the female principle was gradually driven out of religion, and women reduced to a level inferior to men. The God, King, Priest and Father replaced the Goddess, Queen, Priestess and Mother. A woman's testimony was not considered significant in Jewish courts; women were not allowed to speak in Christian churches; positions of authority in the church were limited to men.
The Hebrews, a nomadic breed that lived in the hill country of Palestine, took to worshipping Canaanite gods and goddesses, Asherah, Baal and Chemosh, rather than their own phallic snake god represented by brazen serpents. Evidence of Yehouah as the impregnating north wind god are found in Isa 14:13; Ezek 1:4; Psalms 48:2; and Job 37:29. God's mansion was in the far north. This god was Baal Zebul, the Lord of the House, (2 Kings 1:2) whose tribe was Zebulon and who was worshipped at Mount Tabor. When Persian officials arrived in the fifth century BC to set up a temple to a universal god whose designated earthly representative and saviour of the peoples was the Persian king, they re-wrote the old myths such that the Israelites had always had only one transcendental god—Yehouah. Baal meant the Lord and old habits die hard.
The "restored" priesthood was thoroughly patriarchal, rejecting goddesses totally, even changing the names of goddesses in the ancient myths to make them into gods. Judaism seemed the quintessentially patriarchal religion after the restoration but the goddess still hovered.
The goddess appeared mysteriously as Wisdom in Proverbs where in verse 2 she is the first creation of God and assists him in the creation of everything else. None of this appeared in Genesis and Proverbs is a Hellenistic addition to the scriptures. So only a century or so after she had been expunged from the scriptures by the patriarchal schools of Nehemiah and Ezra, the goddess was easing her way back into the void they had left—as Wisdom. In Ecclesiasticus, also Hellenistic, Ben Sirach expands upon her at length. The goddess of Nature, the goddess of wisdom, kindness and caring made a small step back into Judaism.
Traces of other gods also remained. Biblical editors of all ages seem not to be too efficient, despite the workings of the Holy Ghost, and it is clear in the scriptures that before the exile the hill dwellers of Israel tried out a variety of Canaanite and Philistine gods. Since the main religions of half the world, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and all their offshoots, depend upon the religion introduced quite cynically by the post-exilic Jewish priesthood to suit the ambitions of the Persian kings, it is not surprising that there is not a proper goddess among them, though the Virgin Mary tries.
The Persian god had seven aspects called Amesha Spentas or angels, each representing a quality, and he created the world in six stages. The new Jewish god completed the act of creation in six "days" and the Jews discovered angels at the same time. Each archangel of Yehouah had a day of the week to overlook, and so there were seven! The archangel Michael was given Wednesday, the day when time was created and so, for many Jews, effectively the first day.
The Gnostic Ophites believed the true god was the god of Wednesday and was represented by a serpent. The pre-exilic Jews had worshipped a brazen serpent and it seems the main focus of their worship was the menorah, the seven branched candlestick, representing the seven days of the week. The central branch of the menorah which rises directly up from the pedestal is Wednesday, the fourth day of the week when Yehouah made the days of the week. It could not possibly be the Sabbath, the seventh day, as the Rabbis tried to pretend.
In the Ophic creation myth, Ophion, the serpent god of Wednesday, had mated with the goddess in the form of a serpent. The badge of office of mercury was a wand with two intertwined serpents, evidently mating. The Genesis story of Adam and Eve was a version of this myth deliberately adapted to depict the discarded serpent god as wicked.
The Chanukah candlestick has eight branches and was used at the winter solstice Feast of Lights. Conventional Judaism pretends that this ancient festival was introduced only in the second century by the Maccabees to commemorate the rededication of the Temple by Judas Maccabee when he freed Judaea from the Greeks.
Really, as is obvious, it was a celebration of the birth of the sun god which Yehouah was before he became hidden. The vision of Ezekiel plainly identifies Yehouah as a sun god, the fiery circle being the sun in its path through the heavens, and the four cherubs the four seasons. In Genesis 3:24, cherubs armed with the whirling sword of Yehouah, a sword of flame, guard the East gate of Eden. The Seleucid king, Antiochus Epiphanes had celebrated the birth of Zeus in the temple only three days before and Zeus who was a sky god naturally had a sun aspect which was born in midwinter.
Maccabees 1:18 suggests this winter festival was celebrated at least in the time of Nehemiah, who will have introduced it to equal the midwinter celebrations that in Persia were the birth of Mithras, another sun god. The eighth branch represents the odd day out at the end of the year which is needed to make 365 days. Thus the week at the midwinter solstice has eight days not seven.
The Persians were one thing but the Greeks quite another for Jews loyal to the god set up by the Persians. From the time of Alexander prophetic pseudepigraphs, disguised as if they were warnings from centuries before against Canaanite gods, were written warning Jews, meaning worshippers of the Persian version of Yehouah, against the gods of the heathen Greeks whom they began to favour.