1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Niedrigster Preis in 30 Tagen: 1,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The God-Idea of the Ancients; Or, Sex in Religion," Eliza Burt Gamble presents a groundbreaking exploration of the interconnectedness between sexuality and spirituality within ancient belief systems. The text weaves together historical analysis, feminist perspectives, and anthropological insights to illuminate how sexual symbols and rituals informed religious practices across various cultures. Gamble's scholarly prose invites readers to reconsider traditional narratives surrounding divinity and gender roles, providing a provocative examination of spirituality that challenges the patriarchal structures often found in religious discourse. Eliza Burt Gamble, a pioneering figure in the early feminist movement and an advocate for women's rights, was deeply influenced by the socio-political climate of her time. Her background in sociology and her interest in women's liberation fuelled her desire to unravel the sacred narratives shaped by male dominance. Through her research, Gamble sought to reclaim the lost significance of femininity in ancient religions, revealing how these structures have been historically marginalized. This book is highly recommended for readers interested in gender studies, religious history, and the anthropology of spirituality. Gamble's interdisciplinary approach not only enriches academic discourse but also engages a wider audience, offering a fresh perspective that is sure to resonate with those seeking a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationship between sex and religion throughout history. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Ähnliche
The God-Idea of the Ancients; Or, Sex in Religion
Table of Contents
Introduction
This book advances the unsettling conviction that how a culture imagines its gods is inseparable from how it orders the lives of women and men, tracing the rise, eclipse, and transformation of feminine and masculine divine principles to show that theology is not an abstract edifice floating above daily life but a mirror of social power, a register of reproductive anxieties, and a record of competing claims to authority—an argument that asks readers to reconsider familiar myths and rites as evidence in a long, intricate debate over the meaning of sex, creation, and the rightful foundations of human community.
Written by American thinker Eliza Burt Gamble and first published in the late nineteenth century, The God-Idea of the Ancients; Or, Sex in Religion belongs to the tradition of comparative religion and intellectual history, sharpened by a distinctly feminist lens. Emerging during an era captivated by evolutionary theories and anthropological synthesis, the book situates religious concepts within broader social development. Instead of telling a single cultural story, it ranges across ancient civilizations to examine how sacred images, laws, and narratives reflect gendered assumptions. The result is both a historical survey and a critique, attentive to ideas and the institutions they animate.
At its core, the study investigates how notions of sex, reproduction, and kinship inform the earliest images of divinity, and how those images evolve as social arrangements change. Gamble organizes her discussion around enduring symbols and practices—fertility rites, maternal and paternal titles, ritual prohibitions, domestic and civic codes—interpreting them as clues to shifting god-concepts. The reading experience is analytic and synthetic rather than anecdotal: a steady, assertive voice marshals cross-cultural examples to build cumulative pressure, inviting reflection more than spectacle. The mood is probing and reformist, seeking not to clarify how religious language shapes and is shaped by power.
Methodologically, the book exemplifies the comparative approach popular in its period, aligning materials from history, myth, law, and art to construct a long arc of development. Gamble adopts an evolutionary vocabulary to describe change in ideas about the divine, not to reduce religion to biology, but to chart patterned adaptations between belief and social organization. She reads symbolism alongside institutional practices, testing interpretations against multiple regions and eras as far as available sources allow. The prose is orderly and argumentative, building definitions, pausing for synthesis, and moving deliberately from evidence to inference in a style meant to persuade a general yet serious readership.
Several themes recur with particular force: the sacralization of maternity and fertility; the translation of household authority into priestly and civic power; the tension between veneration of generative forces and attempts to regulate them; and the enduring link between images of creation and legal control over bodies, property, and lineage. By insisting that god-ideas are social facts as well as spiritual intuitions, the work reframes debates about purity, morality, and law. It also follows the interplay of continuity and rupture, noting how new theologies often preserve older symbols while recasting their meanings in ways that legitimate emerging hierarchies.
Readers today may find the book valuable on two fronts: as an early feminist intervention in the study of religion and as a stimulus for contemporary conversations about gender, authority, and historical memory. Its questions—what do divine metaphors authorize, whom do they elevate, how do they naturalize particular arrangements—remain pressing across traditions and communities. While the scholarship reflects the sources and conventions of its time, the argument’s ambition encourages critical engagement: it invites comparison with newer evidence and methods, and it models how to ask large, connective questions about culture without surrendering to cynicism or piety.
Approached as a work of synthesis and provocation, The God-Idea of the Ancients; Or, Sex in Religion offers a searching inquiry rather than a closed system, rewarding readers who are willing to weigh interpretations, revisit assumptions, and entertain long views of change. Students of religious studies, gender studies, anthropology, and the history of ideas will find a foundation for debate and further research, while general readers encounter a lucid case for treating myths and doctrines as living social documents. The book’s lasting invitation is to read the sacred with alertness to power, and to read power with alertness to the sacred.
Synopsis
Eliza Burt Gamble’s The God-Idea of the Ancients; Or, Sex in Religion explores the relation between religious concepts and sexual differentiation across ancient civilizations. Framing religion as a reflection of social organization, the work traces how ideas of divinity emerged from observations of generative processes in nature. Using comparative study of myths, rites, languages, and archaeological remains, Gamble outlines a historical progression from early veneration of creative forces to later theological systems. The book’s purpose is descriptive: to show how symbols of sex informed worship, morality, and law, and to situate shifts in the god-idea alongside changes in family structure and political power.
Beginning with the premise that reproduction is a primary natural fact, the narrative emphasizes early human recognition of dual generative principles. In initial religious forms, creative power is associated with the Earth and motherhood, producing widespread worship of the female as life-giver. The moon, water, and soil become emblems of nourishment and periodicity. These beliefs, the book notes, arose not from licentiousness but from reverence for fertility and continuity. Sexual symbols at this stage function as explanatory devices for growth, seasons, and kinship, and the maternal figure—often conceived as a universal mother—anchors social cohesion and moral obligation within the community.
Surveying Egypt, Babylonia, India, Asia Minor, and early Mediterranean societies, Gamble identifies prominent goddesses and traces institutions associated with them. Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, Cybele, and Devi appear as regional expressions of a common theme: female sovereignty over birth, vegetation, and fate. The text links these cults to vestiges of matrilineal descent, female priesthoods, and temple economies that organized charity, education, and festival life. In this presentation, goddess worship embodies civic order as well as piety. Ritual lamentations, harvest rites, and mother-child iconography serve to dramatize dependence on the earth’s productivity and to sanction customs that emphasize kinship through the maternal line.
The analysis then turns to religious symbolism, cataloging trees, stones, pillars, serpents, doves, and conical or ring-shaped emblems as representations of generative power. Practices such as the sacred marriage, temple service by women, and rites surrounding the linga and yoni are interpreted in their original naturalistic context. Rather than equating them with moral disorder, the book situates them within agricultural cycles and communal renewal. The serpent signifies wisdom and renewal, the tree fecundity, and the paired symbols balance of complements. Over time, however, meanings change; what had signified creative continuity becomes, under new social arrangements, targets for reform or suppression.
A turning point appears with the rise of pastoral and militarized societies, which elevate sky and sun deities and consolidate patriarchal family structures. The god-idea shifts toward masculine creators, lawgivers, and warrior-kings. Myths recount victories of storm gods over earth or sea powers, reflecting altered property relations and inheritance through the male line. Phallic emblems persist but are reframed, while female figures are subordinated or moralized as consorts, virgins, or tempters. This transformation, the book argues, restructures morality: authority concentrates in fathers and male priesthoods, and sexual ethics move from affirming fertility to regulating it through codes emphasizing control and obedience.
Within the Semitic sphere, the Hebrew development receives extended attention. The emergence of an exclusive, male deity coincides with legal and ritual efforts to distinguish the community from surrounding fertility cults. Narratives of creation and transgression, especially those involving the first woman, are examined for their effect on female status and on conceptions of sin. Prophetic denunciations of sacred groves and images reveal continuing tension between older nature worship and centralized monotheism. The text tracks residual symbols—stones, high places, and covenantal signs—while outlining how monotheistic theology codifies patriarchal authority, redefines purity, and frames reproduction within a moral order governed by law.
Turning to Christianity, the book describes a synthesis that inherits Hebrew monotheism while admitting a renewed, though constrained, feminine presence. The Virgin Mother becomes a focus of veneration, softening strictly paternal imagery without displacing it. At the same time, ascetic ideals elevate celibacy and depreciate sexual relations outside procreation, reinforcing clerical authority and dualistic valuations of body and spirit. Church councils, monastic rules, and patristic writings are cited to illustrate the regulation of marriage and women’s roles. Popular devotion retains symbols of nurture and compassion, yet official doctrine largely preserves the male-centered deity and perpetuates social hierarchies rooted in earlier transitions.
In the medieval and early modern periods, the study notes the persistence of sex-laden symbols in festivals, folk customs, and heretical movements, alongside institutional efforts to suppress or redefine them. Persecutions of alleged witches and the dismantling of relic nature rites are set against gradual intellectual shifts that culminate in the Reformation and the rise of scientific inquiry. As natural philosophy advances, anthropomorphic conceptions of deity recede, and ethical thought begins to emphasize human welfare over supernatural sanctions. Gamble connects these changes to evolving views of women and family, presenting evidence that social progress correlates with restoring balance between the sexes.
The concluding chapters integrate these strands into a general thesis: religious ideas mirror social arrangements forged around reproduction and inheritance. Early reverence for the female principle gave way to male supremacy, producing theological and legal systems that limited women’s authority and reinterpreted older symbols as immoral. By reassessing ancient rites within their naturalistic context, the book aims to correct misreadings of the past and to explain the tenacity of sex imagery in faith. It closes by suggesting that modern ethics and knowledge encourage partnership rather than dominance, and that a more equitable recognition of both principles underlies durable moral and civic order.
Historical Context
Eliza Burt Gamble’s The God-Idea of the Ancients; Or, Sex in Religion (1897) is not set in a single locale but surveys ancient civilizations across the Near East, Mediterranean, and South Asia to trace shifts from goddess-centered cults to patriarchal monotheisms. Written in the United States during the fin de siècle, it reflects the ferment of the 1890s, when debates on evolution, anthropology, and women’s rights animated public discourse. Gamble’s temporal canvas spans the Neolithic through late antiquity, while her vantage point is the post-Civil War American milieu of reform and scientific controversy. The book’s comparative lens ties ancient ritual and law to modern social hierarchies concerning sex and power.
One foundational backdrop is the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution (c. 10,000–4000 BCE), which enabled settled life and the sacralization of fertility. In third-millennium BCE Sumer, cities like Uruk venerated Inanna, a major goddess entwined with kingship and fertility. The high priestess Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad (reigned c. 2334–2279 BCE), composed hymns venerating Inanna and Nanna in Ur, indicating women’s religious authority. Gamble uses such cases to argue that early complex societies frequently honored female divinities and granted women recognized ritual roles, embedding the female principle in cosmology before later legal and theological curtailments.
A second key development is the codification of patriarchal authority in Bronze and Iron Age law. The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1754 BCE, Babylon) rigorously regulated marriage, adultery, and inheritance, situating women under male guardianship. In South Asia, the Manavadharmashastra, or Laws of Manu (compiled roughly 2nd century BCE to 3rd century CE), institutionalized patrilineal descent and wifely obedience. Greek reforms such as those attributed to Solon (c. 594 BCE, Athens) affirmed the kyrios system, placing women under a male guardian. Gamble links these legal regimes to a theological shift from female to male deities, arguing law and liturgy moved in tandem to subordinate women.
Hebrew religious reforms in the late monarchic era exemplify the suppression of older female cults. King Hezekiah’s reforms (c. 715–686 BCE) and, more decisively, King Josiah’s Deuteronomic reform (c. 622 BCE) purged Asherah poles from the Jerusalem Temple (2 Kings 23:6) and centralized Yahwistic worship. The Babylonian Exile (586 BCE) and the Ezra-Nehemiah restoration in the 5th century BCE intensified textual codification and communal boundaries, reasserting endogamy and gendered norms. Gamble reads these events as the victory of a jealous monotheism over syncretic, gender-diverse practices, encoding sexual morality and lineage control within sacred law.
Classical and imperial transitions reinforced male authority while retooling sacral ideals. In 5th-century BCE Athens, women lacked citizenship and were excluded from the assembly; household seclusion marked elite norms. In Rome, patria potestas and the Twelve Tables (451–450 BCE) placed family under the male paterfamilias; Augustan marriage legislation (Lex Julia, 18 BCE; Lex Papia Poppaea, 9 CE) policed sexuality to bolster natalism. With Theodosius I’s Edict of Thessalonica (380 CE) and anti-pagan decrees (391–392), temples closed; yet the Council of Ephesus (431) proclaimed Mary Theotokos, absorbing goddess motifs. Gamble interprets Christian asceticism and Marian veneration as reshaping, not erasing, earlier gendered sacra.
The work is decisively shaped by 19th-century scientific, archaeological, and reform movements. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871) catalyzed debates on sexual selection and female biology; Herbert Spencer’s Principles of Biology (1864) extended evolutionary speculation into social theory. Gamble contests male-centered evolutionary readings, mobilizing comparative religion to argue for the civilizational centrality of the female principle. She draws on contemporaneous anthropology: J. J. Bachofen’s Das Mutterrecht (1861) posited mother-right in early societies; John Ferguson McLennan’s Primitive Marriage (1865), Sir John Lubbock’s Pre-historic Times (1865), and Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society (1877) mapped kinship and social evolution. Archaeological breakthroughs—Austen Henry Layard’s excavations at Nineveh (1845–1851), Henry Rawlinson’s cuneiform decipherment in the 1850s, and George Smith’s 1872 announcement of the Flood Tablet—opened the pantheons of Ishtar and other Near Eastern goddesses to English readers. Parallel legal and political ferment in Anglo-America provided an immediate social horizon. The Seneca Falls Convention (1848) issued the Declaration of Sentiments; movement schisms yielded the National Woman Suffrage Association and American Woman Suffrage Association in 1869, which merged into NAWSA in 1890. Territorial suffrage in Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870) signaled incremental victories; New York’s Married Women’s Property Act (1848) and Britain’s Acts of 1870 and 1882 reconfigured marital property. The 1873 Comstock Act criminalized the circulation of sexual information, sharpening the cultural stakes for a treatise on sex and religion. Gamble’s book synthesizes these streams, using ancient evidence newly legible in her century to confront evolutionary sexism and to undergird arguments for women’s civic equality.
Early modern persecutions surrounding sex, heresy, and magic serve as cautionary exempla. The Malleus Maleficarum (1487), by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, codified a misogynistic demonology. Witch trials peaked c. 1560–1630 across the Holy Roman Empire, Scotland, and France; estimates of executions range from 40,000 to 60,000. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) and confessional conflicts of the Reformation era (from 1517) tightened clerical oversight of morals, while English Witchcraft Acts (1542, 1563, 1604) and the Salem trials (1692) displayed secular-ecclesial synergy in policing female bodies. Gamble reads these histories as late echoes of theological structures that sacralized female subordination.
As a social and political critique, the book indicts the entwining of religious authority, legal codes, and sexual discipline that sustained patriarchal orders from antiquity to the 19th century. By documenting the displacement of goddess cults and the rise of male monotheisms alongside marriage, inheritance, and modesty laws, it exposes how sacred narratives legitimated unequal citizenship, coverture, and double standards in chastity and education. Its recovery of female sacra challenges Victorian norms and clerical control over sexual knowledge, implicitly supporting property reform and suffrage as restitutions of a historically suppressed principle. The work thus wields antiquity as evidence in a contemporary case for gender justice.
