The Woman and Female Deity
This study raises a plethora of inquiries circles around the notion of ‘inversion’. This term connotes conscious and pre-meditated transformation shaped after consequential purposes. Has history truly witnessed ‘masculine inversion’? has there truly been a matriarchal system, wherein the female enjoys dominance and controls all life aspects, i.e. as a ruler on earth and a great goddess in heaven? Was there a correlation between the central status of female in mythology, on one hand, and her unique position in real life, on another? More significantly still, has this ‘inversion’ eventuated a sexist hierarchical discrimination, and has it generated the legislation of sexuality, starting from forcing monogamy over women, institutionalizing prostitution, down to transforming the female’s social role upon biological and religious justifications; the thing that led eventually to the relegation of woman from societal participation and sharing the male in the creation of life and future? Why did the female transform from a goddess in heaven and the matron of sacredness on earth into a ‘devil-hidden-under- soft-skin’ being trying to deprive the male of immortality?
This study attempted to attend objectively to the absolutized essentialization of the female’s historical responsibility behind the ‘original sin’ belief. For centuries, this claimed responsibility confirmatively consecrated the female’s enslavement and inferiority as a price for the salvation of humanity. By studying this aspect, this book endeavors to open the door widely before further and broader studies that can re-exegete the history of the female in order to vindicate her and bring her back into the center of the circle of action, influence and decision-making on the basis of the belief in the female’s full and equal partnership with the male in advancing a civilization the center of gravity of which is the life of the human being
Maiadah Kiali: a Syrian researcher in the history of religions and ancient civilizations..
Najib George Awad: (Prof. Dr. Phil; Dr. Theol. Habil.) a Syrian-American Academic scholar, author and translator. He is an Associate Researcher at the International Center for Comparative Theology and Social Issues at Bonn University Germany.
محتــوى الكتـــاب
