Women †Giving Life to the World and the Gods :: Philosophy Essays

Women – Giving Life to the World and the Gods Artemis, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Isis, Anahit, Astarte, and Minerva were all names attributed to the Great Goddess at the temple-city of Ephesus. It was in this city in the year AD 431 that a council of the Christian church was held to determine and make law on the subject of the Mother of the Christ, Mary. During the five centuries since Christianity’s birth the matter as to whether Mary’s conception had literally been of God remained unsettled. Some believed that it was indeed a virgin birth while others held that Christ was a normally conceived child who had become "endowed by God upon baptism in the river Jordan" (Campbell 60). In the year AD 431 in the Near East in the city of Ephesus, greatest of the Great Goddess’s temple-cities, Mary the mother of Jesus Christ was lawfully acknowledged to have been literally impregnated by God. It was then that she was formally proclaimed Theokotos, or God-Bearer (Campbell 60). The concept of the Virgin Birth is not isolated to this one explicit utterance made in Ephesus. It permeates every mythology and religion known to man. In Teutonic myth all of the Valkyries and Heroes were children of the gods in the mortal strain. In Greek and Roman mythology the figure of Zeus (or Jupiter) sired several children by mortals, with Perseus and Hercules being two of his more illustrious sons. In fact, virgin birth was so common that the British usurper Vortigern (of the Authurian mythos), in an attempt to make his troublesome collapsing tower remain standing, was advised by his astrologers to find a child " born without a mortal father" with whose blood he could bathe his tower’s cornerstone. So Vortigern sent messengers throughout the land to find one, as though such children were in abundance. They returned with Merlin, who was indeed the son of no mortal father (Bulfinch 389). In the Bible, too, we can find other instances of virgin births (or facsimiles thereof). Isaac was the son of Abraham’s wife, Sarah, who was far past the age of child- bearing (Genesis 17:16- 19, 18:9- 15, 21:1- 2). The famous Samson was the son of Manoah’s unnamed wife who had never before given birth to a child (Judges 13). The most curious of these, though, is the reference to Emmanuel: "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us" (Matthew 1:23). Women – Giving Life to the World and the Gods :: Philosophy Essays Women – Giving Life to the World and the Gods Artemis, Ishtar, Aphrodite, Isis, Anahit, Astarte, and Minerva were all names attributed to the Great Goddess at the temple-city of Ephesus. It was in this city in the year AD 431 that a council of the Christian church was held to determine and make law on the subject of the Mother of the Christ, Mary. During the five centuries since Christianity’s birth the matter as to whether Mary’s conception had literally been of God remained unsettled. Some believed that it was indeed a virgin birth while others held that Christ was a normally conceived child who had become "endowed by God upon baptism in the river Jordan" (Campbell 60). In the year AD 431 in the Near East in the city of Ephesus, greatest of the Great Goddess’s temple-cities, Mary the mother of Jesus Christ was lawfully acknowledged to have been literally impregnated by God. It was then that she was formally proclaimed Theokotos, or God-Bearer (Campbell 60). The concept of the Virgin Birth is not isolated to this one explicit utterance made in Ephesus. It permeates every mythology and religion known to man. In Teutonic myth all of the Valkyries and Heroes were children of the gods in the mortal strain. In Greek and Roman mythology the figure of Zeus (or Jupiter) sired several children by mortals, with Perseus and Hercules being two of his more illustrious sons. In fact, virgin birth was so common that the British usurper Vortigern (of the Authurian mythos), in an attempt to make his troublesome collapsing tower remain standing, was advised by his astrologers to find a child " born without a mortal father" with whose blood he could bathe his tower’s cornerstone. So Vortigern sent messengers throughout the land to find one, as though such children were in abundance. They returned with Merlin, who was indeed the son of no mortal father (Bulfinch 389). In the Bible, too, we can find other instances of virgin births (or facsimiles thereof). Isaac was the son of Abraham’s wife, Sarah, who was far past the age of child- bearing (Genesis 17:16- 19, 18:9- 15, 21:1- 2). The famous Samson was the son of Manoah’s unnamed wife who had never before given birth to a child (Judges 13). The most curious of these, though, is the reference to Emmanuel: "Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us" (Matthew 1:23).