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Summary: It is the truth about how all civilization began by women.
Review: It should be a viewed as a bible by all women, passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter to granddaughter. It is the truth about women. The real truth. It is documented and researched with biographies and references right in the book. Each fact can be looked up. Every women on the face of this earth should read this book. I am giving this book to each of my daughters and my granddaughter for Christmas presents. I could not give them a greater gift. Merlin Stone is wonderful, she will answer every question that has been left in the dark far too long. If you are a woman, you owe it to yourself to know the truth. For the truth will set you free. Read this book or perish in the dark. Thank you with all my heart Merlin Stone.
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Summary: God as a man never made any sense!
Review: It's a shame that we can't get back to the roots of true worship. Men created a male god because they couldn't handle the idea of being inferior. This should be required reading for all teenage girls.
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Summary: Goddess Religion is history, not just faith
Review: It's true that Merline Stone is not a professional archaeologist, but she has researched sources for us and this book is a great starting place for the lay person interested in what ancient religious life was really like. For people who have been so indoctrinated to believe that men have always ruled and that way it natural, this is an eye-opener.
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Summary: The Goddess and What Happened Next
Review: Merlin Stone pulls no punches that her story has a point of view. The more you buy into a literal interpretaion of the Bible, the more antagonistic this book is. However, for armchair anthropology, this isn't half bad. The fact that she often uses patriarchal sources to prove her point is a bonus. While many may argue with the way things are said, Stone presents some undeniable facts; I was trying to poke holes in her theories and had a good deal of trouble most of the time. Early Judaism wasn't pretty, and what's happpened to women since the Indo-Aryan invasions isn't either. Read this book first and then *The Chalice and the Blade* by Riane Eisler to get a good picture of the history of sexual politics.
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Summary: A Startling and Well-Researched Book.
Review: Merlin Stone's book presents the reader with information long suppressed and denied by Western culture: the hidden roots and history of our spiritual past, a time in which the Female had a much greater role than it does in current Western faiths. She provides a tremendous amount of support for her claims; one can only look to her voluminous bibliography to see that thorough research was a top priority. But be warned: it is easy to want to categorically deny her conclusions simply because they are suprising and unheard-of (though not unfounded). My only complaint is that the book is written in a very dry fashion; perhaps I wish, too, that Ms. Stone had allowed for greater cultural breadth (though it is impossible for her to delve any more *deeply*) in her studies. All the same, this was an extremely useful and enlightening book.
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Summary: An enlightening though minor body of research on the Goddess
Review: Merlin Stone's book was neither my first nor last enterprise into Goddess research. While "When God Was a Woman" is refreshingly readable, its conclusions do fall into the same trap as do those it is attempting to dismantle: preaching a thealogical paradigm. However, Stone is definately defending a point-of-view, and she does weave a compelling argument. I believe that it is safe to say that her technique is quite intentional. I give this book only three stars, not because of what it says or how it says it, but rather because her work pales in comparison to that of other researchers, writers, and thinkers. For example, Marija Gimbutas's work (though much less accessable) is nonetheless more solid. "When God was a Woman" is incredibly enlightening, however, and it added to my growing knowledge of pre-judeochristian culture. Of course, every author has a pet theory; keep in mind that that is what most of this is--a small but growing body of theory. Read it, yes. But don't consider it the "Bible" of the Goddess.
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Summary: An enlightening though minor body of research on the Goddess
Review: Merlin Stone's book was neither my first nor last enterprise into Goddess research. While "When God Was a Woman" is refreshingly readable, its conclusions do fall into the same trap as do those it is attempting to dismantle: preaching a thealogical paradigm. However, Stone is definately defending a point-of-view, and she does weave a compelling argument. I believe that it is safe to say that her technique is quite intentional. I give this book only three stars, not because of what it says or how it says it, but rather because her work pales in comparison to that of other researchers, writers, and thinkers. For example, Marija Gimbutas's work (though much less accessable) is nonetheless more solid. "When God was a Woman" is incredibly enlightening, however, and it added to my growing knowledge of pre-judeochristian culture. Of course, every author has a pet theory; keep in mind that that is what most of this is--a small but growing body of theory. Read it, yes. But don't consider it the "Bible" of the Goddess.
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Summary: In The Beginning...God Was A Woman
Review: Merlin Stone's groundbreaking work must have turned heads when this book was published in the 70's. By then, the feminist movement for Women's Liberation begun in the late 60's was already established. Merlin Stone exhausted herself searching for the historic sources, all accurate, to present the actual reality of the suppression of the female principle as God. For fundamental and conservative Christians, Jews and Muslims, the idea of God being a woman or a male god having woman functions is blasphemous. But is it ? Merlin Stone makes a strong point, stating her case with sufficient evidence. The Bible was written by men. The early patriarchs of the Jews wrote in masculine terms, convinced that there had never been a Goddess and that God had always been male. This was advantageous for men politically as well as socially. Empowered by the belief that a male God favored men as the superior creation, they abolished any female worship. The Old Testament is chalk full of prophets and king-warriors destroying the idols of Asherah and Astarte. The women of ancient Israel were obligated to live a life of subjugation to a man- first, her father and then a husband. She was condemned to death by stoning for a single act of adultery but the man could have as many wives and concubines and sex with other women eventhough he himself was married. There are very few strong heroines in the Bible, and even Queen Esther used her "sex appeal" not her brains to win the heart of the Assyrian king and save her endangered people from a holocaust. Jezebel, simply for worshipping foreign gods, was brought to a terrible death. The truth of the matter is that originally the Mother Goddess (Creatress of the world, taking forms of birds (later to become in Gnostic tradition as the Holy Spirit Chokmah or Sophia in the form of the dove) was once revered and worshipped as one deity who ran the world. The Paleolithic people traced lineage and provided inheritence from the female line- the mother's line. Matriarchy was suppressed when men, mostly powerful warriors and hunters of the Indo-European race, suppressed worship of the Goddess (or goddesses plural) and brought about political change, empowering men. This still holds true today. The Indo-European men may long be gone, but they planted the seeds that have grown to this day. It seems there will never be a female President. When a woman is powerful, a man feels threatened when he should feel so. He should share the power equally with able women. Martha Stewart for example, after the scandal of her fraudulent business dealings, was completely crushed by a media frenzy, men eager to see her in jail simply because she was a powerful woman in the world of business. There are many men who resent the Iron Maiden, Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of England. And let's not forget what happened to Joan of Arc. When a woman is empowered as much as a man, whether it be in athletics, military, politics, etc. she is dubbed a witch, a harlot, a number of things simply because women are not treated as equals to men. To this day, men like to think that women are "almost" as good as they are, but never equally as good. When the male and the female principle lovingly hold hands in equality and fairness and the two forces are balanced, perhaps the world will be a better place. This books should reawaken the spirit of Women's Liberation and bring about a new consciousness to religion worldwide. Remember... women are not superior to men, but they are not inferior in any way either. We are equals..equals in the forming of a better world.
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Summary: God: The Mother
Review: Modern Christianity, Judaism and even Islam, have long regarded God as a man. In the wake of the Women's Liberation Movement, new waves of thought on the subject have come forward. It's not fair to blame feminists for delibarately revising and rewriting the Bible to appeal to liberated women of today's 21st century Western world The truth of the matter is that for centuries men have taken advantage of the fact that only men wrote the Bible and attributed maleness to God. The Bible on the whole is gender-biased and sexist. Women in the Bible are either submissive and obedient (like Sarah, Abraham's wife who called him "My Lord") or virtuous women like Mary, Jesus' mother or the wanton, decadent and "evil" women like Jezebel, Delilah or Eve, who by empowering themselves met with a dire fate. There is never much to say about "The Bride" who is in fact Mary Magdalene, who is re-cast as a prostitute in the New Testament. But Mary Magdalene, who was either Jesus' wife or a very special female Apostle, wrote her own Gospel which never made it to the Bible curiously enough. The Roman Catholic Church did all it could to alter the Bible, changing names and lingusitics so as not to reveal the importance of God's female half, the Goddess. In Kabbala tradition, the Goddess is the Shekinah, or the Latin Sophia "Wisdom". She is the Holy Spirit and the source of inspiration and wisdom for God himself. In the early days of Judaism, when the Israelites wandered the desert like nomads, the practice of male-and-female union sexual consummation for fertility and for divine inspiration was very common. But the Bible omitted this later on so as not to disclose the Shekinah. This information has resurfaced in many ways. The best-selling book "The DaVinci Code" re-inforces the value and spiritual significance of The Goddess. There is no need for feeling bad about it. The truth is that God has to have a female side. Everyone does really. We are male and female in spirit though male and female individually in physical body. The female side is the nurturing Mother. For this reason we call Earth "Mother Earth" or "Mother Nature"- for she nourishes the life that lives upon it, animal and human. The reason more women are spiritual and more active in Church is the same reason that God's female half is equally as strong. This book is helpful in its detail about the Goddess worship of ancient Israel and the Middle East. It's living proof that at one point...God was a woman. Think about it. He has to be both male and female because we are either male and female. How can a single male God even fathom the females in his creation ? He would only relate to the males. He has to be both male and female in order to adequately rule over and look after all of his creation. This book was really a blessing, even for a former Christian like myself. Merlin Stone writes well and convincingly, eventhough this book was made in the early 70's. Perhaps this is why this book is so passionate in its theme. At that time in America and other parts of the West, the Women's Lib movement and the rising growth of feminism was much stronger than it was today. I hope some day men can let go of their male egos, not feel threatened by powerful women and share the fruits of labor and the government with women. What is in store in the future for able women ? The first and hopefully not last female President ? Female Pope ? The possibilities are endless.
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Summary: Not Your Father's God!
Review: Ms. Stone's book continues to be printed, bought and read because she has done a marvelous job bringing together archeological discovery with religious insight, creating a picture of the evolution of God that turns Monotheism on its ear. She suggests that when human beings first began to acknowledge a higher, creative power, that they recognized that power as belonging to the female principle. The first part of the book dedicates itself to the sketchy, distant archaic world that initiated the worship of the Goddess. In time, however, the male principle pushed aside and eventually crushed the worship of the female divinity, and replaced it with a Father God who was responsible for all creation. Now the Male Principle is perceived as the ultimate creative force in the universe, somewhat of an obvious paradox, but one we have bought into for thousands of years. With the tools she develops through an understanding of the rise of Male dominion, she takes a fresh look at the story of Adam and Eve, and comes to some startling conclusions. Could the story have in fact been a carefully contrived myth with little more than a political agenda? Read it and find out. The book is a little tedious at the start, as Ms. Stone spends considerable time laying the groundwork. In the first 50-60 pages you'll find yourself saying, "All right! I got it!" Then it picks up from there, and the conclusions are well worth the tedium at first (however, that's why I give it only 4 stars).
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