God has a wife?

[bags123]

According to modern biblical archeology,.....the Jews of King Davids, and Solomons time believed that God had a consort,...or wife. The Shekinah, was believed to be worshiped as a "Mother" figure. She blessed the wedding bed of any newly married couple,...and even today among the Hasidim she is given
recognition. As a Christian myself,...I've often wondered about the significance of "The Holy Spirit" part of the Trinity. Evidently it has a direct correlation,
to God's better half,...the Shekinah,...but any reference to her femininity has been erased to favor the more patriarchal views of the Church. Interesting how
religious beliefs can be edited over time by the prevailing politics.

[preston]

I remember when all my hippie friends suddenly got religion.

This would have been about 1971.
The living room religion culture ... where smoking pot and listening to music was replaced with prayer meetings shepherded by self-anointed new age cult-meisters.

I had come to view religion in much the same light as I did the counter culture movement of the 60's.
A manufactured control mechanism whose primary purpose was to socially engineer people ... while causing schisms within society that could be exploited by the people running the show.

My own personal experience has been that the most "religious" people are often the least spiritual.
While my own spiritual growth has benefited from the study of our world's religions ... most of the people I know have ended up bogged down in the rituals of religion ... the control side of religion.

Attempts to characterize or define what God is or isn't should be viewed with the same scrutiny with which we view all doctrines ... whether religious, political or scientific.

It's a bit of an overreach to think that one could ever truly know God by following the dictates of someone claiming to have God on speed dial.
I suspect that God and the universe are one and the same ... vast beyond our capacity to understand from our current vantage point.

[MJPease]

Very well said Preston!

[bags123]

My own spiritual journey started by being reared a Christian, then falling away entirely. I've always been interested in religions and their various traditions.
I have great respect for anyone who makes an effort to live their lives in accordance with their own beliefs, and expect the same courtesy from anyone else regarding mine. I realized about 20 years ago, that declaring myself a follower of Christ, as I saw him,... automatically alienated me from any of the so called churches. The sum total of his teachings can be summarized by the Golden Rule; "Treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated" . Of course I'm not perfect, I swear, drink beer, and smoke a dooby once in awhile, but I try my best to be there when my family, or friends need me. I've had a great life
so far, with many blessings throughout,...but I don't think they were always predicated on me walking the straight and narrow path. It's been pretty wide at some points,...and that's given me the opportunity over time to find a nice comfortable relationship with Jesus,...that he and I both enjoy I hope.

[preston]

The wife / consort thing fits in with Catholic teaching of the Virgin Mary.
Though with the Holy Trinity ... they kind of turned it into some weird semi-incestuous thing that no one really understands.

When you consider the recent outing of the Catholic Church for it's history of sexual abuse .... one might wonder if the Virgin Mary was actually a symbol of that pedophilic leaning.

Sex always seems to rear it's ugly little head when religion gets too big for it's britches.
In that sense they are no different than any other organized power structure.

Access to virgins has always been one of the perks of wealth and power ... but I think having a religion organized around a God who impregnated a virgin so she could bear a son who would then be ritualistically sacrificed back to his father ... all to tell us to "Treat your neighbor the same as you yourself would like to be treated" ... is more of a warning than a selling point.

[LadySaturn]

Actually Bagsy boy, Shekinah isn't the wife of Yahweh. It's not even a female goddess as some would have you believe. The mix meaning of Shekinah has nothing more to do with than basic mix up of language and a few myths. While something in Hebrew might mean one thing it can mean something totally differently in English. Shekinah actually comes from the Hebrew verb Shakan which means to inhabit, dwell, rest, etc. The whole Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown I believe is to blame mostly for furthering this whole Shekinah misinterpretation. However, he mostly got his information from bits and scraps of skewed information. So he can't totally be to blame. Some medieval Jewish philosophers had their hand in twisting the original concept of what Shekinah was let alone the meaning. Can't blame them either though, seeing as they were doing what they thought was best at the time.

Basically what it boils down to is that Shekinah or Shakan describes someone's dwelling such as God's. And it is believed that in Judaism Shakan or Shekinah is used to describe the presence of God among the people. And is also used in most religions such as Christanity but instead of saying Shakan or Shekinah we say that the Lord dwells within us or that God's presence is in the room, etc.

[Eternum 1]

Dualism in projections of the divine is not unusual. Every culture except those that eliminate the idea of a supreme being and reject the notion of a single galactic overlord have multiple avatars of the divine to explain the reasons behind a omnipotent omniscient being behaving in such a schizophrenic manner.

Bottom line, in my view is that philosophy or it's superstitious cousin religion, evolves over time. The current model, including my beliefs and everyone else's will be considered quaint and subject to re-design sometime in the future.

And it really doesn't matter how you or I perceive the divine. As a old Semitic being with a big dick and a wife or a demon named Kali wed to Shiva. I perceive that much of early Christian theology was borrowed from India; there's just too much similarity to be coincidence. One thing I do find hilarious is European orthodox images of Jesus being blonde and blue eyed. Now that really would lend basis to a paternity issue for Joe and Mary.

I think God is whatever we choose Always has been. Always will be.

[MJPease]

I've got the entire religious thingy figured out already, it's no big deal. I'll tell you all about it someday. I thought Jesus liked to hang around with hookers. Mary Magdelin was one of them I think.

[Eternum 1]

Magdalene was the 13th apostle and enjoyed precedence over the others according to the gospel of Thomas. She also preached the word (sacrilege among other theists after the council of men decided it so) and is one symbol of the movement to allow women to become priests in the catholic church. When you consider she was the first to whom a resurrected Christ appeared, you may wonder why the church has worked so hard to call her a whore while elevating in status a so called (virgin mother). The doctrine of perpetual virginity followed by orthodoxy ignores the issue of Jesus having siblings such as brother James (who presided over the Jerusalem church as it's Rebbi) as well.

Course, the issue of inheritance may have something to do with it. In early Christianity pastors passed the mantle and church property onto their children. The church's legitimising of a club for men only guaranteed the church would inherit the property, leaving the priests dependent on the whim of the hierarchy. (and ultimately to the homosexual paedophilia crisis of today)

[bags123]

I watched an interesting documentary on Constantine the Great last week. Eusebious, an early church father, was one of Constantine's chroniclers evidently,...and many of the stories regarding Constantine's miraculous vision of the cross before his battle with Maxentius may be pure fantasy. The film makers actually received permission to closely examine Constantine's Arch across from the Coliseum in Rome, which celebrates his victory that day. Oddly,....there's not one reference to the cross or Christianity on any of it's inscriptions or reliefs. Perhaps Eusebious fudged alittle on the details when he rewrote the story later on
They did however find many signs and symbols that are part of another religion popular especially among upper class Roman officers of their day,...Mithraism. Did Constantine convert to Christianity due to his vision of the cross before his victorious battle as we've been told, or was Constantine a Pagan who saw the organization of the church as an excellent system to indoctrinate his empire to his own world view. Or,...did Constantine, a follower of Mithraism, also note the spread of Christianity among his soldiers, and combine aspects of Mithraism and Christianity together to form his own blend?

[bags123]

The wife / consort thing fits in with Catholic teaching of the Virgin Mary.
Though with the Holy Trinity ... they kind of turned it into some weird semi-incestuous thing that no one really understands.

When you consider the recent outing of the Catholic Church for it's history of sexual abuse .... one might wonder if the Virgin Mary was actually a symbol of that pedophilic leaning.

Sex always seems to rear it's ugly little head when religion gets too big for it's britches.
In that sense they are no different than any other organized power structure.

Access to virgins has always been one of the perks of wealth and power ... but I think having a religion organized around a God who impregnated a virgin so she could bear a son who would then be ritualistically sacrificed back to his father ... all to tell us to "Treat your neighbor the same as you yourself would like to be treated" ... is more of a warning than a selling point.

You always look at everything in such a pragmatic, cynical, overly rationalistic, way my friend. I don't think one has to be stupid to believe in miracles, and the mysteries of God will always be beyond all of our understanding. What makes anybody think that man's current understanding about anything is correct? It's just that,...our current understanding. Not that long ago we thought the world was flat. 110 years ago,..the Wright Brothers flew for the first time. Supposedly,...an impossible task according to some papers writing before their success. Given that we witness man made miracles today almost on a daily basis,....why is it so far fetched to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus? Especially living in a world where it's possible to become impregnated without having intercourse? Just wondering

[Eternum 1]

The word that was later translated to mean "virgin" in the original Hebrew and Koine Greek means: "a woman of child bearing age". Mary was married and no virgin in our modern sense of the word. The reason, necessity produced for a so called "virgin birth" in later doctrine was to explain how a woman could be impregnated by someone other than a husband without committing adultery.

If people bothered to check they would have found the old Gods committing this sort of hanky panky all the time. Hence the demi god children of ancient Greece. Zeus sometimes took the form of a swan to diddle women (a rather disturbing image).

It was important to establish Christ's divinity in order to pass his authority on to the church. It is notable that even in myth, Rebbi Yeshua Ben David never claimed divine status nor was he interested in saving Gentiles from Sheol (a rather bizarre notion all around).

[bags123]

The word that was later translated to mean "virgin" in the original Hebrew and Koine Greek means: "a woman of child bearing age". Mary was married and no virgin in our modern sense of the word. The reason, necessity produced for a so called "virgin birth" in later doctrine was to explain how a woman could be impregnated by someone other than a husband without committing adultery.

If people bothered to check they would have found the old Gods committing this sort of hanky panky all the time. Hence the demi god children of ancient Greece. Zeus sometimes took the form of a swan to diddle women (a rather disturbing image).

It was important to establish Christ's divinity in order to pass his authority on to the church. It is notable that even in myth, Rebbi Yeshua Ben David never claimed divine status nor was he interested in saving Gentiles from Sheol (a rather bizarre notion all around).

I'm not saying I believe or disbelieve in the story of Jesus divine birth,...only that it's just as plausible to believe that a virgin could have had a seed planted within her and borne a son, as saying one believes in some of the New Age mysticism that's everywhere in our area. It's like trading one myth for another. I"ll just stick with the one I've got for now.

[Eternum 1]

We are in agreement there my friend, although it is interesting you use the word 'seed' for that is what the ancients believed at the time. Man supplied seed and woman was either a fertile or barren field to have that 'seed' planted in. That women supplied ovum and mitochondrial DNA was beyond the ken of such metaphysics.

I currently follow, as you may know, a sort of Panentheism with pagan shades. As in some of the gnostic gospels; I see the divine everywhere and not restricted or limited to a dualist monarchy of our ancient understanding. The Princes of the church and of Heaven have no relationship to my 21st century views nor does a imaginary hierarchy of battle angels and demons spun as a tale out of some rat infested monastery; likely concocted during hallucinations of monks eating mouldy grain while hiding from the bubonic plague.

The avatar of the divine be it earth based (pantheism), pantheon based (wicca, paganism) orthodox Abrahamics (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is a matter of personal identity or more likely cultural immersion and is in my view equal one to the other as long as other views including atheism are respected as a matter of choice and allow each individual the freedom to journey, as one chooses, through life.

It's the people who would repress others for their beliefs and would force their own into the political arena that should be stopped in their tracks. Such proselytizing is anathema to spirituality in my view. I see no such problem with mystical Christian beliefs such as yours or Kabballah in Judaism or Sufi Islam. The more orthodox though, have some historical issues that they dealt with and still deal with rather poorly.

[bags123]

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