Goddesses, Agriculture, and Religion

Paper Summary:

This paper relates that possibly modern monotheism arose not merely as a competitor with goddess worship, but as a reaction to the fundamental nature of goddess worship. The author points out that the shift to agriculture may have been made possible only through the civilizing influence of women who used their sexuality to manipulate men into settling down and, in so doing, provoked an unintentional backlash. The paper speculates that agriculture always arose from goddess worship, terminated in god worship and drifted slowly towards monotheism; therefore, some causality between these two must exist.

From the Paper:

"If women created agricultural civilization and maintained it through a regime of restricted sexuality, then there may be some sense in the old Judeo-Christian myth that Eve's own punishment would be that "thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee..." (Genesis 3:16). Male-oriented monotheism and patriarchy might both have easily arisen in this environment as a reaction not so much to Goddess worship as to overwhelming female power, which had stripped from men the easy freedom of his hunter-gatherer ways and forced him into an uncomfortable civilization. In conclusion, this scenario, though strange and removed from what one expects of history, explains why the goddess would have moved from a place of worship to a place of denigration, despite supposedly giving such gifts to mankind, and as an explanation of why monotheism might be allowed to develop."

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• Analytical Essay # 130384 : "Sustainable Agriculture and Food Production"

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