Sexual Paradox: The Jealous God

A God Whose Name is 'Jealous'

Temptation, Fall, and Expulsion from nature and sexual integration, into mortality through a Jealous God: Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions explain our origin in the Eden myth, in which Eve and then Adam are cursed for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which Eve sought rather as the wisdom of the life tree, not knowing there were two. They are banished lest they also eat of the tree of life and become as God. For their 'concupiscence' in 'knowing' one another, barred from paradise as sexual mortals by a flaming sword, woman to suffer the travail pains of childbirth and to be ruled by her husband while man to conquers nature by the sweat of his brow. (Brothers Limbourg)

"We Yolungu are a jealous people and have been since the days we lived in the bush in clans. We are jealous of our wife or husband, for fear she or he is looking at another. If a husband has several wives he is all the more jealous, and the wives are jealous of each other ... make no mistake, the big J is part of our nature" (Australian aboriginal).

It is not just perpetual jeaolusy in our human nature that permeates monotheism, but the unrelenting jealousy of God. The Old Testament, imbues God's essential nature sine qua non, by his very name, as jealousy and sexually jealous of those 'whoring' after other gods.

But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, WHOSE NAME IS JEALOUS,
is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land,
and they go a WHORING after their gods. (Exodus 34:13)

This utterly mammalian defensive emotion is a projection of primate male emotional and sexual anxiety on to the creative source itself. Jealousy is centrally sexual and the Old Testament speaks of the jealousy of God in clearly sexual terms:

And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged;
and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy. (Ezekiel 16:38)

Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;
(For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you)
lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee,
and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. (Deut 6:14)

There is clearly a paradox here, for while jealousy is also natural, although epitomized by male violence against women, it is also acknowledged to be potentially disastrous and love is supreme. In the words of the Song of Songs:

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm:
for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave:
the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it (8:6)

Nowhere are our double-standards more pronounced than in the matter of jealousy. "Thou shalt not covet". "Thou shalt not commit adultery". These two run partially counter to one another, for while covetous jealousy is regarded as morally corrupt envy, a destroyer of love and trust, jealousy is a natural evolutionary defence against the ubiquitous threat of sexual betrayal. To be jealous is to be 'zealous' of one's threatened resource in a partner. Men often display violent reactions if 'their' woman falls for another, because of the intensely felt threat of defilement to their genetic paternity. Women can afford to be more circumspect about a partner's one night stand, but become very defensive when a man might transfer his principal affections and resources to another. However the greatest double standard of all is the way in which a jealous God came to zealously rule our lives and social order. This leads precisely to the world crisis of apocalyptic proportions we continue to creep towards.

God's jealousy can have meaning only in a climate of frank polytheism, where 'He' may and does have real rivals inside and outside the immediate cultural context:

God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. ...
I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations (Psalm 82).

As we shall note, Yahweh-Adonai was originally paired conjugally with consorts Anath and Asherah. This sexual partnership is apparent in Proverbs, where God is paired from the beginning with his feminine complement, Hochmah, or Wisdom:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water.
Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth:
While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.
When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth. (8)

Wisdom is also the tree of life:

She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.
Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.
The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens (3).

Trouble in Paradise

Turning to this very mythical beginning in Genesis we find a frank double perspective running through the whole account. In the priestly sabbatical creation of Genesis 1, God in the plural 'Elohim, creates the universe from the formless deep - tohu vo vohu:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters.

in a male act of symbolic creation, dividing primal chaos through the power of speech:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good:
and God divided the light from the darkness.

Then 'Elohim creates woman and man dyadically in 'their' likeness:

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:
So God created man in 'their' own image,
in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them.

and blesses them, exhorts them to be sexually fruitful and gives them dominion over the whole of nature to subdue it and yet to replenish the Earth.

And God blessed them, and God said unto them,
Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth,
and subdue it: and have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

However, the Yahwistic author J's Edenic account has very different undertones of cursing rather than blessing, blaming the entire fall of humanity from immortality in paradise on the perfidious nature of woman. A lone God, jealous lest humanity like 'him' gain both knowledge and immortal life, casts them out of paradise, and submits woman to the rule of man.

Yaweh firstly forms man from the dust of the earth and breathes a living soul into him, supplanting a natural birth from the womb of the goddess in the patriarchal tradition, and then makes a garden of paradise for the man to dress and keep, containing at its centre the trees of life and knowledge of dark and light. After making man, God makes the animals, whom Adam names in a secondary act of symbolic creation.

In the garden God plants a dyad of two trees, the tree of life representing immortal wisdom and the tree of good and evil representing analytic knowledge. He tells Adam alone that the fruit of the tree of knowledge is forbidden:

Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Only then does he create 'woman' out of Adam's rib:

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam,
and he slept: and he took one of his ribs,
And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man,
made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

This is an inversion of the more ancient Sumerian tale in which the goddess Ninhursag allows eight forbidden plants to grow in the garden of creation. Enki eats from them and is stricken. Ninhursag relents: "To the goddess Ninti I have given birth for you". Ninti means both 'female ruler of life' and 'female ruler of the rib'.

This twist to the tale is calculated to make woman subject to man from the very beginning and indeed Adam promptly names her 'woman' because she is flesh of 'his' flesh. Neither are they non sexual because he shall 'cleave' unto her as man and wife.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh:
she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Commentators have endlessly debated how this affects the status of women. Calvin saw the Woman as merely an accession to the man, though created in the image of God, albeit to the second degree. Other commentators, consistent with Kabbalistic ideas, suggest Adam, before losing his rib, was androgynous 'human' rather than primal 'man', consistent with the third, briefest and again 'Elhoistic creation story of Genesis 5:

"This is the book of the generations of Adam.
In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
Male and female created he them;
and blessed them, and called their name Adam,
in the day when they were created".

There is a severe warning in Judges (19) that matrilineal patterns were giving way to a staunch patriliny. The concubine of Bethlehem-Judah is accused of 'whoring' by going back to live with her father-in-law for four months. When the Levite returned to claim her, the father-in-law kept saying to stay a little longer for six days, nigh on a week. When the couple left and turned in at Gibeath of the Benjaminites, men of Belial ask to 'know the man within'. In an attempt to avoid sodomy, the host offers his daughter to which they refuse. The Levite then offers his concubine. She is raped and abused all night and dies on the doorstep, while her master sleeps peacefully. He then cuts her in twelve pieces and sends them to all the coasts of Israel setting off the Benjaminite wars. These are finally resolved in moving four hundred virgins of Jabesh-Gilead to their husbands homes, capped by the abduction of the daughters of Shiloh dancing at a festival to satisfy the remaining Benjaminite men. As noted by David Bakan, the story is a glaring affront to those matriarchal traditions which expected the son-in-law to stay with the wife's family as Jacob did (Lerner R407 175).

The tale of the Daughter of Jephtath mingles human sacrifice, particularly in times of disaster with a tradition of goddess worship in the high places which lingered long after:

"Jephthah vowed unto the Lord 'If thou shalt deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house, shall surely be the Lord's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.' So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the Lord delivered them into his hands. ... And Jephthah came unto his house, and his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; And he rent his clothes, and said, 'Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back'. And she said unto him 'Let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows'. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. At the end of two months, she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year" Judges (11:30).

Hebrew Kings and the Rape of the Sanctuaries

During the era of the Kings, a period of syncretic integration with the settled agricultural Canaanites of the cities began. This was probably a consequence both of the unification of the agrarian and nomadic populations under one rule, and the somewhat more cosmopolitan perspective of the monarchs. The Jewish kings followed the tradition of ancient fertility kings. David danced before the Ark of the Covenant in the eyes of all the women to Michal's bane and disgust. Sacred kingship is evidenced again in the termination of the aged David's reign when he is unable to consort with Abishag. It is Bathsheba, who at this point entreaties the king, ensuring the succession to her own son Solomon, the son she conceived with David, as the wife of Uriah the Hittite, David's general, whom David arranged to be killed in battle. David's son Absalom had already attempted to usurp the throne by going "unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel". Absalom was hung in a tree in an aition of ritual sacrifice of the sacred king accursed, as Jesus was:

" And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance." (Deut 21:22),

Solomon, was also a sacred king who was renowned for building the Temple at Jerusalem, but equally reviled for also following the deities of his many wives and building sanctuaries to them on the high places round Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:8).

And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods.

Briffault notes: "The temple of Jerusalem was simultaneously dedicated to Yahweh and to the Queen of Heaven. The pillars Jachim and Boaz were said to stand for the sun and moon. Before it stood the Asherah".

The son of Solomon, went further and moved the image of the goddess into the Temple itself. In Samaria, Jeroboam installed golden calves at Bethel and Dan. Afterwards there was a partial removal of the idols, but it did not extend to the high sanctuaries. Ahaz again returned the equilibrium to the syncretic worship of the nations:

"and made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel. And he sacrificed and burnt incense in the high places, and on the hills, and under every green tree."

At Gezeh remains of sacrificed cows and bulls are found consistent with worship of Yaho and Hathor (Briffault R76 v3 110). At Kuntillet in the 8th century BC Yhwh gives a blessing with his Asherah, identified with Canaanite Athirat (McCarter R452 143, Maier R432). Among the Jews of Elephantine as late as the fifth century B.C., Yahweh was associated with his consort. The names of the Elohim were joined, as Anath-Yahu (Kraeling R391 88).

The worship of the Queen of Heaven continued alongside that of Yahweh through the time of the Kings until the fall of the Kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians. The colonization of Samaria was perceived by the more conservative Judaeans as a sign that the ways of tolerance of the Northern Kingdom had led to disaster. Thus in about 720 Hezekiah led a fundamentalist revision: (2 Kings 18:4):

"He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves [asherah],
and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made:
for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan".

However Jeremiah 44:16 notes the continuing popularity of the Queen in Jerusalem:

"As for the word thou hast unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not harken unto thee. But we will certainly do whatever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then we had plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and poured out drink offerings to her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword, and by the famine. And when we burned incense to the Queen of Heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did we alone make her cakes or worship her ... without our men folk?"

His passage in 7:15 is prophetic of what is to come.

"Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger? saith the Lord: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces? Therefore thus saith the Lord God; Behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched."

However again Manasseh brought the pendulum back and built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Ba'al, and made a grove (Asherah), as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them. And he made his son pass through the fire, and observed times, and used enchantments, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards: he wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger. And he set a graven image of the grove that he had made in the house, of which the Lord said ... will I put my name for ever".

But in 622 Hilkiah persuaded young King Josiah that a "hidden" text in the temple (Deuteronomy) revealed the "true faith" of the "Yahweh only" movement. This is arguably the point where 'no other gods before me' became strict monotheism - no other gods at all. Much of the Old Testament has been subsequently recomposed to portray the earlier history as monotheistic. What is very significant is that a prophetess is made responsible for the judgement:

"And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord ... and Shaphan the scribe ... read it before the king. And ... when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. And ... commanded ... 'Go ye, enquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book' ... So Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam, and Achbor, and Shaphan, and Asahiah, went unto Huldah the prophetess, wife of Shallum, keeper of the wardrobe; in Jerusalem in the college; and communed with her. And she said ... 'Tell the man that sent you to me 'Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, and upon the inhabitants thereof, even all the words of the book which the king of Judah hath read Because they have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, that they might provoke me to anger with all the works of their hands; therefore my wrath shall be kindled against this place, and shall not be quenched" (2 Kings 22:8).

In both Kings and Chronicles we find parallel accounts of the 'rape of the sanctuaries':

"[Josiah] began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images. And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence; and the images, that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and made dust of them, and strowed it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them. And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars" (2 Chron 34 4-5).

And he brought out the grove (asherah) from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people. And he brake down the pavillions of the effeminate, which were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove (2 Kings 23 3).

So we have one of the most outstanding examples in history of a self-fulfilling prophecy, for Josiah was simply carrying out the instructions 'found' so conveniently in the temple:

"These are the statutes and judgements ... Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye possessed served their gods, upon the mountain and on the high hills and under every green tree. And ye shall overthrow their alters and break their pillars and burn their groves with fire ... But unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose out of all your tribes ... thither thou shalt come. ... Take heed of thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest, but in the place the Lord shall choose in any one of thy tribes" (Deut 12:1).

Not only were the Ba'al destroyed, but so was the Asherah or grove, Yahweh's own consort. Instead of the diverse natural forms of Yahweh worship, there was only one legitimate form and one place of worship - the Temple at Jerusalem. This Yahweh-only tract has thus established Judaism in the ending of the Hebrew practice of small shrines and tabernacles dotted throughout the towns and countryside from time immemorial. Just as Marduk slew Tiamat, so the Yahweh-only movement slew the Asherah of fertility.

This coup is echoed in Exodus (34:13) with undertones of seduction of the sons of Israel:

"But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods".

Although this would sound like the sad end of the story for the Queen of Heaven, it was only to be some 36 years later that Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians and despite these attempts to expunge the weakness of whoring with the nations, the entire country was returned to being the vassal of a pagan civilization. Edom had continued to worship the Goddess and her consort, particularly in the high places such as Khirbet Tannur . With the emergence of the Nabateans, a whole stream of worship of the Queen of Heaven and her consort Duchares rose again to prominence to the east of the Jordan (Browning R92, Glueck R245).

Hosea's Plight and Jeremiah's Lament

This relationship, with a sexually jealous God, the ultimate alpha male at the head of the table of the gods, continues through the Old Testament, in repeated diatribes against whoring and harlots:

"And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more. So will I make my fury toward thee to rest, and my jealousy shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet." (Ezekiel 16:41)

Hosea in the eighth century BC took it upon himself to purchase an unfaithful wife, who thus represented the archetype of Israel, the unfaithful wife of Yahweh. "Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine. So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley" (3:1).

He is clearly siding against the whoring of the Goddess which acts to disrupt the male inheritance lines of the patriarchal supporters of Yahweh:

"Plead with your mother, plead: for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband: let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths" (2:2).

Regina Schwartz (R629) highlights the relation between pollution of the land and the image of the whore:

"In the Book of Hosea, two completely contradictory images of Israel's relation to the land are elaborated. The land is depicted as both a prostitute and a wilderness: as a prostitute, because Israel worships foreign gods; as a wilderness, to reflect the nomadic ideal of wandering over land, rather than owning it. Both metaphors depict a margin-a social one in which a woman is not an exclusive possession and a territorial one in which land is outside the boundaries of possession. One image is reviled the land as a prostitute violates the contract that Israel is the exclusive possession of Yahweh-while one is celebrated-the land as a wilderness depicts a nostalgic return to the birth of Israel. Born in the wilderness, the hope is that Israel will be reborn there. But we cannot plausibly read Hosea as a ringing endorsement of an unlanded ideal, for in the end, the period in the wilderness is cast as an interim, a precondition to reentering the cultivated land-the owned land-and when the woman is sent into the wilderness, it is hardly to acknowledge that she is not an object of possession. Instead, it is to purge her so that she can be more completely possessed".

"and I will punish them for their ways, and reward them their doings. For they shall eat, and not have enough: they shall commit whoredom and not increase: because they have left of to take heed of the Lord. Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart. My people ask counsel to their stocks ... and they have gone a whoring from under their god. They sacrifice upon the mountain tops, and burn incense upon the hills, under oaks and poplars and elms, because the shadow thereof is good: therefore your daughters shall commit whoredom and your spouses shall commit adultery. "

Yet he has Yahweh yet be tolerant for a time, in a way which later becomes lost:

"I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery: for themselves are separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots: therefore the people that doth not understand shall fall" (4:14).

Jeremiah likewise laments Israel as the unfaithful wife:

"Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown" (2:1).

"They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the Lord" (3:1).

Jeremiah makes a more specifically social warning of vengeance:

"And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also. And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom, that she defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks. ... Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord; and I will not keep anger for ever" (3:8).

Schwartz (R629) notes the frenzy of 'sexual pollution':

"The link between sexuality and land pollution reaches a frenzied pitch in the obsession with that most heinous of offenses, prostitution: "Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute; thus, the land will not be prostituted and rifled with incest" (Lev 19:29). A body/land analogy governs the rhetoric that describes women and land as possessions (of one man/deity), women and land as faithful or idolatrous, women and land as monogamous or adulterous, women and land as fertile or barren. But women and land are not only analogous; they become causes and effects in this system of monotheism/monogamy. When Israel worships a foreign deity, she is a harlot, the land is made barren, and she is ejected from the land."

She then quotes in Jeremiah (3:2) a fascinating slant on bedouin life of the times, echoing through to the Nabatea of Yeshua's times:

"Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with.
In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness;
and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness."

The second Isaiah (50:1) echoes this theme again:

"Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away".

Separatist Sentiments of the Exile

The exile brought with it a new sense of alienation and separation, as is characteristic if a small people in another culture adopt exclusive ways to protect their separateness and maintain it against the greater flux of 'foreign' ideas and genetic influences. Effectively the exile thus cemented what was to become the separatist path.

Ezekiel (8:1) writing during the exile laments at the things he suspects are going on back home in the temple:

"And I beheld and lo a likeness as the appearance of fire; from the appearance of his loins even downward fire; and from his loins even upward as the appearance of brightness, as the colour of amber. And behold the glory of the god of Israel was there. Then I lifted my eyes ... and behold at the gate of the altar was the image of jealousy. Son of man seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel do here that I should go far from my sanctuary? In the temple "he saw every form of creeping things and abominable beasts and the idols of the house of Israel portrayed on the wall round about... and there stood before them seventy men of the ancients... and a thick cloud of incense went up. At the north door 'there sat women weeping for Tammuz' ... and in between the porch and the altar 'five and twenty men with their backs toward the temple facing the east and they worshipped the sun ... Therefore shall I deal in fury : mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity."

His prescription is an elaboration of Deuteronomy:

"Then shall thee know that I am the Lord when their slain men shall be among their idols round their altars, upon every high hill, in the tops of the mountains, and under every green tree and under every thick oak, , the place where they did offer sweet savour to their idols." (Exek 7:13).

Schwartz (R629) has cutting comment:

"Ezekiel 16, the extended allegory of Israel as a whore, brings the relation between whores, exile, and monotheism (adultery, defiled land, and idolatry) into sharp focus. It is the story of a child being born and growing up wild and unloved in the field, and when she matures into puberty, of her being owned, sexually and materially, by Yahweh."

"And I passed by you and I looked on you and behold, your time was the time of love. And I spread my skirt over you and I covered your nakedness. And I swore to you and I entered into a covenant with you and you became Mine. She is now washed, anointed, dressed, wrapped, covered, and adorned with silks, fine linen, embroidery, gold, and silver. And you were very beautiful and you advanced to regal estate. And your name went out among the nations, because of your beauty; for it was perfect, by My Splendor which I had set on you."

"But then young Israel commits adultery with the nations: with Egypt, Assyria, Canaan, Chaldea - with, not incidentally, all of Israel's enemies".

"At every head of the highway you have built your high place and have made your beauty despised, and have parted your feet to all who passed by, and have multiplied your fornications. You have whored with the sons of Egypt. . . . You have whored with the sons of Assyria without being satisfied. You have multiplied your fornication in the land of Canaan."

"But this adulteress has not, strictly speaking, been a harlot, for she has not taken wages; instead, she has done all the giving, even paying her lovers for their services. "The adulterous wife: instead of her husband, she takes strangers. They give a gift to an harlots, but you give your gifts to all your lovers, and bribe them to come to you from all around, for your fornication." Presumably, Israel the harlot would be superior to Israel the adulteress, for she would receive property instead of giving her property away, and that careful distinction offers a clue that, throughout this harangue against the adulteress, the issue is less sexual morality than ownership of property. The emphasis on property is underscored by the punishment of the adulteress. She will be stripped of her garments, of her wealth; Israel win be stripped naked and then brutally stoned and stabbed"

"Because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness was bared, in your fornications with your lovers and the idols of your abominations ... therefore I will gather all your lovers with whom you have been pleased, even all whom you have loved with all whom you have hated, and I will uncover your nakedness to them, and they will see all your nakedness. ... They shall also strip you of your clothes and shall take your beautiful things and leave you naked and bare ... and they shall stone you with stones and cut you with their swords."

Schwartz sums up the situation: "Monotheism, then, is not simply a myth of one-ness, but a doctrine of possession, of a people by God, of a land by a people, of women by men".

I will give them a different heart so that they will always fear me. ... I will make an everlasting covenant with them; I will not cease in my efforts for their good, and I will put respect for me into their hearts, so that they turn from me no more. (Jer 32:39)

Ezekiel continues in this vein concerning cultural pollution (20:27):

"Your fathers have blasphemed me ... For when I had brought them into the land, for the which I lifted up mine hand to give it to them, then they saw every high hill and all the thick trees, and they offered there their sacrifices, and there they presented the provocation of their offering; there they made also their sweet savour and poured out their drink offerings... Wherefore say unto the house of Israel Are ye polluted after the manner of your fathers? and commit ye whoredom after their abominations?"

Later in chapter 23 he relates the downfall of such women:

"there were two women, the daughters of one mother [Aholah of Samaria and Aholibah of Jerusalem]: and they committed whoredoms in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth: there were their breasts pressed and they bruised the teats of their virginity ... and poured their whoredom on her ... And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she doted on her lovers, the assyrians and her neighbours, which were clothed with blue ... with all their idols she defiled herself, neither she left her whoredoms brought from Egypt ... And Aholibah sent messages unto them in Chaldea ... and the Babylonians came to her in the bed of love... therefore I will bring [thy lovers] against thee on every side ... because thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen and because thou art polluted with their idols... and with the men of a common sort were brought Sabeans from the wilderness, which put bracelets on their hands, and beautiful crowns on their heads ... and so they went in" (23).

Israel After the Rains

When the Jews returned from the exile they were dismayed to find those who had stayed in the Holy Land had reverted to their old ways and intermarried with Canaanite wives. Those returning disregarded the cultural accommodation of their compatriots and unilaterally imposed their own form of exilic separatism on Israel. Nevertheless the urban population was not so easily to be suppressed and invectives by Nehemiah indicate the post-exilic reforms were slow to take effect. But Ezra arrived in 397 BC and, in the pouring rain, delivered a diatribe that every man should sever his ties of love and marriage with the Canaanite women. At the same time the old Hebrew script was ironically replaced by Aramaic.

"There follows in this tenth and final chapter of Ezra a mass divorce and expulsion of children. Scores of Jewish man are listed by name, each of whom had married a non-Jewish woman and in some cases had children by her. All of these women and children are driven out" (Miles R474 379):

"Then all the men of Judah and Benjamin gathered themselves together unto Jerusalem within three days. It was the ninth month, on the twentieth day of the month; and all the people sat in the street of the house of God, trembling because of this matter, and for the great rain. And Ezra the priest stood up, and said unto them, Ye have transgressed, and have taken strange wives, to increase the trespass of Israel. Now therefore make confession unto the Lord God of your fathers, and do his pleasure: and separate yourselves from the people of the land, and from the strange wives. Then all the congregation answered and said with a loud voice, As thou hast said, so must we do" (10:9)

Tobit 4:12 declares "take first a wife of the seed of thy fathers, and take not a strange wife which is not of thy father's tribe: for we are all sons of the prophets". The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs echoes this "take therefore thyself a wife without blemish or pollution, while yet thou art young and not of the race of strange nations". The Book of Jubilees goes so far as to invoke death by stoning for an Israelite who would give his daughter or sister to a Gentile, and the woman is to be burned to death, indicating the conservative position of the Essenes in the face of Greek influence in Jerusalem. However the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs in the first century BC concedes a stem from which "shall grow a rod of righteousness to the Gentile to judge and save all that call upon the Lord".

The Son of the Father and the Women of Galilee

There is a very strong streak of sacrificial violence merged into the concept of atonement - both the union of at-one-ment and a terrible penalty that has to be paid to God for the error of the people's ways, which is expressed in multiple places, from Psalm 22, to the 'just man' who is killed out of jealousy in Wisdom of Solomon 2:12-20 (p 227). The 'suffering servant' of Isaiah and the 'foolish shepherd' of Zechariah set the tone of the rejected messenger of doom whom the people reject or kill, only to find to their remorse he was their savior. Zechariah spoke of a final struggle against false ways surrounding the temple of Jerusalem, in a military and cosmic confrontation, splitting apart the entire world as then known.

Later traditions of Judaism became infused with such apocalyptic thought, emerging from the Zoroastrian cosmic renovation in a final struggle between dark and light. While in Persian thought this was a cleansing struggle between clarity and ignorance, in the Jewish apocalyptic context, it became a struggle between divine and malign forces of Belial, Prince of Darkness personified in Essene terms in the Wicked Priest. In the visions of the desert seers or nabis, such as Jokanaan (John the Baptist R664), it became a cosmic struggle between God and Satan, who was originally a tester of commitment to God, but had now become a dark force, into which the messianic hope was launched as a cosmic quest (Cohn R126, Pagels R524).

Jokanaan's beheading takes place in a highly provocative sexual context. The lands of Edom and Moab had coalesced into the Kingdom of Nabatea, centered on Petra, a high peak of Arabic culture, based on irrigation, whose citizens worshipped the fertility goddess by various names, including al-Lat (goddess), Manat (fate), and al-Uzza (powerful) with her Dionysian( R521) consort Dhu Shara (R245) in the high places. Relative equality between female and male power was expressed in their coinage in the joint kingship and queenship of Aretas IV and Shaqilat II (p 221).

Salome - Beardsley (Wilde)

Herod Antipas had deserted his marriage to the Nabatean princess in favour of his cousin Herodias, who was his brother, Philip's wife. The princess took flight, fearing Herod would kill her and the Nabateans had in response declared war on Herod. Jokanaan then accused Herod and Herodias of adultery, and was imprisoned in the castle Machaerus on the Nabatean border, where Herod and his generals were holding a war cabinet (Flavius Josephus R350). Thus begins the tale of Salome dancing what is presumed to have been the dance of the seven veils of Inanna's descent before the men for which Herod offered her half his kingdom in a clear reference to the descent, echoed in Esther 5:3 in claiming Haman's head:

"When the daughter of Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and them that sat with him, the king said unto the damsel, Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee. And he sware Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom. And she went forth, and said unto her mother, What shall I ask? And she said, The head of John the Baptist." (Mark 6:22).

Jokanaan is thus killed as the substitute sacred king in the male sacrifice of Inanna's descent. Jokanaan's challenge and death signify the very arrow of cultural, religious and gender conflict. In Luke, Jokanaan talks in apocalyptic terms, using images of Tammuz and Ba'al:

"Whose [winnowing] fan is in his hand, he will thoroughly purge his floor,
and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable."

Yeshua (Jesus) brilliantly encompassed this confused cultural tradition of jealousy and endeavoured to unite the apocalyptic and fertility traditions in one renewal as a hybrid lord Adonai and mashiach. We explore his 'persona', as diversely described in orthodox and gnostic texts, the Talmud, and by historians. Upon his baptism by Jokanaan, the holy spirit descended on him in the form of (Aphrodite's) dove. He became the 'bridegroom' - the nominal consort of the sacred marriage, cryptically referred to in Isaiah 61, the unique 'black verses of god-anointing' which he read in liberation in the synagogue at Nazareth:

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me ... to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound ... as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels. ... as a garden causes the things that are sewn in it to spring forth (Is 61)

Jesus now turns the tables, claiming the destiny of the prophets was to heal gentiles:

"But unto none of them was Elias [Elijah] sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow .And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus [Elisha] the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian".

For his challenge to the role of the 'elect' in espousing the 'lost sheep of Israel', Yeshua was nearly cast off the cliffs of Nazareth but passed through the angry crowd. The term 'messiah' comes from the Hebrew mashiach, meaning 'anointed one', as does 'christ'. The only places in the Bible where anointing occurs are those of priests anointing kings. Central to the anomaly of Yeshua is that he cited Isaiah 61 'blasphemously' and was anointed by a woman.

This set the stage for a mission of consorting, controversy, chaos and miraculous dread, from his mother's request to turn water into wine at the wedding at Cana on the day of the festival of Dionysus' epiphany (Ranke-Heinemann 1992) to the walking on water at Galilee.

And new wine is not put into old wineskins, lest they burst;
nor is old wine put into a new wineskin, lest it spoil it. (Thomas 47)

As the 'true vine' Yeshua espoused the ultimate fertility parable of the mustard seed:

Dionysian (Dhu Shara) tragic mask with dolphins . Khirbet Tannur. Aretas IV and Shaqilat II share Nabatean coinage as partners (Glueck R245).

This tradition of miraculous dread and chaos messiahship, whipping up controversy and committing frank blasphemy in breaking traditional taboos, is in no way a fulfillment of traditional ideas of the Jewish messiah. It falls into the orbit of Dhu Shara, Lord of Seir as mentioned in Genesis (33.14): "until I come unto my lord unto Seir", the Dionysian 'God of Gaia' of the vineyards of Edomite Nabatea . Their orgiastic festivals (Browning R92 47), involved "Rich food in plenty and strong wine without stint" (Glueck R245 166). Bar-Hebraeus quoted Psalm 12:8 of Nabatean women: "the wicked walk on every side while vileness is exalted among the sons of men." One can only surmise that Yeshua was attempting a cultural synthesis of all the religious currents in the greater Israelite backdrop, including a considerable degree of popular fertility worship, particularly among the women of the countryside, an aspect of the 'lost sheep of Israel'. Graves (R256) notes the Talmud babli Sanhedrin called Yeshua or Yeshu-ha-Notzri "Balaam the Lame", claiming he came from the wicked kingdom of Edom. Graves suggests Yeshua was lamed in the manner of sacred kings (Graves R257), echoed in Luke's "physician heal thyself".

His miraculous reputation was however ephemeral and inversely related to familiarity, as is evidenced by his marginal performance in his home town of Nazareth:

"A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin,
and in his own house. And he could there do no mighty work,
save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them" (Mark 6:4).

Such chaos messiahship extended from sending the hapless herd of pigs to their doom in the name of casting out spirits and a performance of feeding the five thousand morsels of loaves as communion wafers, capped by such apocalyptic blasphemy that many disciples deserted:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." (John 6:52).

"From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him" (6:56).

Yeshua restated central Jewish ethics, reversing Hillel's "Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you" quoted when he was asked to recite the Torah standing on one foot, into the affirmative "Do to others what you would they should do to you" (Matt 7:12). Both are significant moral advances on 'tit for tat' or 'an eye for an eye' in the prisoners' dilemma, because they are educative of good intent. Hillel stresses non-defection and non-violence but risks non-involvement; Yeshua asserts cooperation, risking coercion.

Yeshua took this further into a naked altruism, going far beyond mutuality, or reciprocation, setting a 'standard' of almost sacrificial giving to the defector in the face of evolutionary and social survival, which only God, or those taking a quick exit, can really 'afford':

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also. (Matt 5:38 )

'Always cooperate' is one of the most rapidly eliminated prisoners' dilemma strategies. The evolutionary value of love is its capacity to unite in a win-win of good will and empathy that goes far beyond the boundaries of kin and 'self-serving' reciprocation, so embracing selfless love is a high ethical ideal, conducive to loving cooperation. But is every form of love which is sensitive to, or conditional on, a loving response simply to be equated with the divisiveness of sin?

"Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; ... For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? ... But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: Give, and it shall be given unto you" (Luke 6:27).

In Isaiah 61, we hear jubilaic mention of both the bridegroom and the bride, but during Yeshua's mission the bridegroom has assumed a lone role as an apocalyptic sacred king:

"And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days" (Mark 2:19)

Several passages in the Gospel of Thomas continue this trend:

"Many are standing at the door, but it is the solitary who will enter the bridal chamber." (75)
They said to Jesus, "Come, let us pray today and let us fast."
Jesus said, "What is the sin that I have committed, or wherein have been defeated?"
But when the bridegroom leaves "the bridal chamber, then let them fast and pray." (104)

In John, Jokanaan in a later Christian construction, 'prophesies' a sacred marriage:

"Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled." (3:28)

The real support for Yeshua's mission and the disciples came always from the women:

"and the twelve were with him, And certain women, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, which ministered unto him of their substance" (Luke 8:1).

The Greek version's 'them' infers the 12 were supported by the women (Walker R721).

Magdalen's 'seven devils' hark directly to the seven galla of Inanna and the descent and link her allegorically to the role of the 'sinner' as 'sacred whore'.

Although Yeshua's sexual life remains enigmatic, he is said to have "loved Mary and her sister Martha". His role with Mary suggests the sacred union, although it is the Descent:

"Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41).

He is implicated in the hieros gamos with Salome in the Gospel of Thomas (Robinson R589):

"Jesus said, 'Two will rest on a bed: the one will die, and the other will live.'

Salome said, 'Who are you, man, that you ... have come up on my couch and eaten from my table?' Jesus said to her, 'I am he who exists from the undivided'. ... 'Therefore I say, if he is destroyed he will be filled with light, but if he is divided, he will be filled with darkness'." (61)

This suggests he is claiming to speak from the 'whole' condition before Adam and Eve became twain, and is a key part of his attitude to marriage, which has steered Christianity and Western culture in the direction of monogamy ever since.

Jesus then refers to 'eunuchs for heaven' in a way which caused Origen and some cult followers to castrate themselves, but Uta Ranke-Heinemann (R564 23) has pointed out this was not about intercourse, but remarriage - men curtailing their polygynous tendencies.

"His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." (Matt 19:10).

This is a far cry from the delightful invocation to be ravished by the breasts of the young wife in Proverbs, which is positively sexual in the Jewish fertility tradition, although condemning the strange woman's equally enticing ways. Here sexuality has become confined and negative outside the invocation to cleave to one's wife as one flesh. Sexual pleasure is denied. Even to appreciate a woman sexually is evil. Remarriage after divorce has become adulterous and the emphasis, even if it is not on physical castration, is on psychic castration. While physical divorce is banned, we now have a divorce between sexual pleasure and god-ordained reproduction which will wrack the Christian community for two millennia.

His statement "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:57) echoes this second Adamic claim.

Healing destiny is in turn achieved by making the two sexes one in an 'Edenic' reunion:

"When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness, then will you enter [the kingdom]" (Thomas 22)

In a patriarchal twist, Jesus asserts that making woman 'male' is the route to the kingdom:

"Simon Peter said to them, 'Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.' Jesus said, 'I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven'." (114)

In 'Stromata' Clement of Alexandria claims that in the lost Gospel According to the Egyptians, when Shelom [Salome] asked how long death would prevail Yeshua replied "So long as you women bear children" to which she replies "Then I have done well in not bringing forth." When she asked when the kingdom would come, he replied: "When you women have trampled the garment of shame, when the two become one, and when the male with the female is neither male nor female" and in the same gospel he said "I have come to destroy the works of the female" (Graves R256).

The Dialogue of the Saviour, also originating in the first century, conveys these sentiments:

"The Lord said: 'Pray in the place where there is no woman'.
Matthew said: 'meaning Destroy the works of womanhood,
not because there is any other [manner of birth] but because they will cease [giving birth]'." (91)

We can see extensions of this idea in the following two passages, firstly in Thomas again trampling the garments of shame in returning to the child-like state:

"When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?" Jesus said, "When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then [will you see] the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid" (37).

When describing the after-life Yeshua is said in a possible orthodox redaction to have portrayed a sexless heaven, in which 'original lubricity' is replaced by sexless immortality:

"And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection" (Luke 20:34).

The female mother in opposition to the father god appears again in Thomas:

"He who knows the father and the mother will be called the son of a harlot" (105).

"When you see one who was not born of woman,
prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father" (15).

Although these hark back to the undivided Adam, they have the strained sentiments of a male messiah who is engaging the feminine tradition, while in the same motion, trying to overthrow it, in a misguided attempt to undo the perceived sins of Eve and the entire reproductive biological paradigm. We cannot thus see Yeshua as a feminist, nor even the 'gylanic' figure of 'partnership society' Eisler (R183) suggests, but rather an ingenious, yet tortured masculine attempt to encompass all traditions, and force the hour of doom as noted in Graves (R256 343-4) citing the very verse in Isaiah preceding Yeshua's Nazareth reading:

Mary: "His fault was this - he tried to force the hour of doom by declaring war on the female.
But the female abides and cannot be hastened."
Shelom: "Peace woman - Is it not written of the Kingdom of God
"I the Lord will hasten it in his time"

His negative attitudes to family contrast sharply with his Edenic view of innocent children:

"If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).

"For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and daughter in law against mother in law. And a man's foes shall be of his own household" (Matt 10:35).

"Whoever does not hate his father and mother cannot become a disciple to me. And whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters and take up his cross in my way will not be worthy of me" (Thom 55).

Yeshua describes himself as a winebibber and friend of publicans in a manner reminiscent of Ishtar, declaring feminine wisdom to be the arbiter:

"For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil.

The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners! But wisdom is justified of all her children" (Luke 7:33 ).

In the following passage he preaches love for a weeping 'sinner' or 'sacred prostitute' who anoints his feet with ointment, washing his feet with her tears and wiping them with her hair:

"And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven" (7:44).

The 'sinner' anoints Christ's feet while seven galla emerge - Giovanni de Milano (Haskins R297).

In a parallel event, he liberated the woman taken in adultery, sometimes also identified with Magdalen, exposing the male accusers:

"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (John 8:7).

He was anointed again by Mary of Bethany sometimes identified also with Magdalen:

"Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment" (John 12:3).

When Judas protests at the profligate waste, Jesus replies "Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this". In a closely parallel account he is anointed on the head by a woman in a traditional gesture of messiahship:

And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves ... And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always (Mark 14:3).

According to Margaret Starbird (R661, R662), this 'nard' although formally an aromatic root, is from the enclosed vaginal garden of paradise, hinting at the priestess as a 'sacred prostitute'. In both cases the anointing is a provocation to imminent betrayal.

In John (12:23), Jesus declares himself to be resurrecting grain of Tammuz, gaining immortality just as Dhu Shara gained immortality by donning the tragic mask:

"The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal"

The crucifixion reads as a carefully crafted Dionysian tragedy performed with Shakesperian subtlety. Yeshua has carefully organized many details in advance, arranged by code word, including the ass and the room for the last supper. He passes the sop to Judas in a ritual division of the twelve into a sacrificial paschal lamb and a scapegoat 'betrayer'.

He enters Jerusalem as sacred fertility king heralded by palm leaves and makes to overturn the tables in the Temple in the tradition of Zechariah's foolish shepherd, thus provoking the high priests to accuse him of the original charge of blasphemy and the Romans to try him for insurrection. He is seized in an Edenic garden, the disciples scattering like sheep, with Peter denying him the ritual three times. The High priests, to avoid committing him to death themselves, pass him over and he is shipped backwards and forwards between Herod and Pilate, neither of whom wish to be saddled with responsibility for his provocation, but become very good friends over the exchange (Luke 23:12). When Pilate asks Yeshua does he claim to be king, he can find no fault when Jesus replies:

"To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world,
that I should bear witness unto the truth."

Barabbas, whose ritual name means 'the son of the father', a title noted in other Saturnalia in the region, is offered in his place as scapegoat three times by Pilate, but the high priests say"We have no king but Caesar" (John 19:15), and the crowd cries "His blood be on us, and on our children" (Matt 27:25), sealing the process of the accusation of blasphemy, as recorded in the Talmud:

"On the eve of Passover they hung Jesus of Nazareth. And the herald went out before him for 40 days [saying, 'Yeshua] goes forth to be stoned, because he has practiced magic, enticed and led astray Israel. Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and declare concerning him.' And they found nothing in his favor."

As confirmed in the many accounts of threatened stoning by the Judeans in the gospels:

Yeshua's reply to this accusation casts him into the blood-shedding, Josephic Northern tradition of Galilean Israel (Schonfield), rather than the Judaism of Herodian Judea. He refers to Abba among the congregation of the gods: "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?" (p 208) - only to die like one of the princes.

Therefore they sought again to take him: but he escaped out of their hand,
And went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized; and there he abode.

Finally he returns to Judea, Lazarus and the sacred tragedy of a death for a life:

Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judaea again.
Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again? (11:8 )

He is subjected to the Saturnalia, variously by the Roman soldiers, or earlier by Herod's men. His reed sceptre is broken and he is 'set to nought' in an intimation of ritual castration and arrayed in 'royal' garbs and marched to Golgotha, lamented by the women in the manner of Tammuz, to which Yeshua utters the apocalyptic curse against female birth:

"There followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck." (Luke 23:28).

The three women at the crucifixion, with the men casting lots on the vesture (Francesca)

It is noted in Matt 27:32 that immediately after the humiliation "as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear his cross." According to Basilides, Christ changed places with Simon of Cyrene and then mingled with the crowd of onlookers, while Simon carried the cross, bore it to the hill, drank the gall and vinegar and was crucified. The 'Second Treatise of the Great Seth', a revelation dialogue allegedly delivered by Jesus, says (Robinson R589 365, Pagels R522 91):

"It was another, their father who drank the gall and vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another on whom they placed the crown of thorns,. But I was rejoicing in the height ... and I was laughing at their ignorance."

Having been given the title "King of the Jews" by Pilate he is then crucified, has his abdomen pierced in a focal confirmation of Zechariah's prophecy (12:10):

"and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced,
and they shall mourn for him,
as one mourneth for his only son."

He utters the cry of Psalm 22: "El El why have you forsaken me?"

In the tradition of the Wisdom of Solomon (2:12-20):

Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is inconvenient to us and opposes our actions;
he reproaches us for our sins against the Law,
and accuses us of sins against our training.
He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord ...

Let us see if his words are true,
and let us test what will happen at the end of his life;
for if the righteous man is God's son, he will help him,
and deliver him from the hand of his adversaries.
Let us test him with insult and torture,
that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his forbearance.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.

This cycle of jealous oppression of the 'just man' is a sacrificial rite, echoing the Descent, but denuded of its hieros gamos fertility - a death of sacrificial atonement dedicated to the jealous God - again lamented in Isaiah's 'suffering servant':

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he
was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we
did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him;
and with his stripes we are healed.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before
her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare
his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for
the transgression of my people was he stricken (53).

The fragmentary Gospel of Peter says Yeshua was as silent in just this way:

"And they brought two criminals and crucified the Lord between them.
But he himself remained silent, as if in no pain" (4:1).

He then succumbs so precipitously that Pilate 'marvels', suggesting he could possibly have survived the 'Passover plot' (Schonfield R623, Graves and Podro R260).

"And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost.
And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom" (Mark 15:37).

The feminine veil of the temple is rent - the marriage is consummated and the hymen is broken. The women of Galilee, who somehow have come down to the passover, knowing the Lord they have given their 'substance' to is performing the descent, all look on from far off including a triple of three key women.

"There were also women looking on afar off: among whom was Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James and of Joses, and Salome; (Who also, when he was in Galilee, followed him, and ministered unto him;) and many other women which came up with him unto Jerusalem" (Mark 15:40).

He is then laid in the sepulchre by Joseph of Arimathea followed by the women:

"And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments" (Luke 23:55).

Yeshua was sacrificed in the presence of the women and not the male disciples, who have fled, they are the last to be with him in the sepulchre and the first to return after the sabbath, variously described as Mary Jacobe, Mary Salome and Mary Magdalen:

"And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him" (Mark 16:1).

"Noli me Tangere" echoes the sacred sexual union of the Song of Songs (R755).

He is exulted as risen on the third day after harrowing hell, as in Inanna's descent, by Magdalen alone, who in an allegory of the second Adam mistakes Yeshua for the 'gardener' and recites the searching lament for Adonis and Tammuz (John 20:13):

"And they say unto her, 'Woman, why weepest thou?' She saith unto them, 'Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.' Jesus saith unto her, 'Mary'. She turned herself, and saith unto him, 'Rabboni'. Jesus saith unto her, 'Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended' " .

As echoed in the Song of Songs (p 479):

"I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer"

Magdalen then conveys the exultation of the 'risen Christ' to the male disciples:

"Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord,
and that he had spoken these things unto her "(John 20:18 ).

Luke confirms the central role of Magdalen, although derided by Peter and the apostles:

"It was Mary Magdalen and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles. And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not." (24:10) .

Yeshua declares Magdalen's name shall be told:

"Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her" (Matt 26:13)

Apostola Apostolorum: Magdalen announcing
the resurrection Albani Psalter b 1123 (Haskins R297).

In the orthodox account, Yeshua was styled as the one and only apocalyptic male hero of cosmic renovation in the Essene and Zoroastrian vision who shall come again in the final apocalyptic crisis, the only begotten son of God, sacrificed in tragic 'atonement' so that, in believing in him, we shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

The notion of the bridegroom continues after the crucifixion in the messianic hope. In Luke we are reminded to wait on the Lord as a returning bridegroom (12:35):

"Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately."

In Mark the hope is embodied in the bridegroom:

"Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.... While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps. And the five foolish said unto the five wise, Give us of your oil; for our lamps are gone out. But the wise answered, saying, Not so; lest there be not enough for us and you: but go ye rather to them that sell, and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut" (25:1).

In the synoptics Peter declares Yeshua to be the apocalyptic Christ:

"He saith unto them, 'But whom say ye that I am?' And Simon Peter answered and said,
'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God'" (Matt 16:15).

But in the Gospel of Thomas, rather than declaring himself messiah, Yeshua makes the inscrutable reply of a gnostic teacher:

"'Compare me to someone and tell me whom I am like'.
Simon Peter said to him, 'You are like a righteous angel.'
Matthew said to him, 'You are like a wise philosopher.'
Thomas said to him, 'Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like.'
Jesus said 'I am not your master. Because you have drunk,
you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out'" (13).

Yet in one of the most intimate of his gnostic statements he is the 'all' and is everywhere:

"It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all.
From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend.
Split a piece of wood, and I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." (77)

And rather than a kingdom in the heavens, he declares it is the natural world before us:

"If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky', then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea', then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you" (3).

"It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is'. Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it" (113).

The initial group which gathers before Pentecost still contains the women, although Peter chauvinistically mentions only the males:

"When they were come in, they went up into an upper room... The [apostles] all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said: "Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled" (Acts 1:13).

This delicate relationship between Peter and the disciples, the women and the desposyni - Yeshua's family, headed by James, continues to the Pentecostal revelation, which is a prophecy based on sons and daughters, servants and handmaidens - males and females together:

" And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.... And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.... which was spoken by the prophet Joel. 'and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy'." (Acts 2:1).

Pentecost is really a three-way schism and parting of the ways between three paths 'ordained' by Yeshua: the following of Mary Magdalen and the 'women' [Matt 26:13], the Hebrew Christians headed by Yeshua's brother James the Just [Thomas 12] (Eisenman R182), and Peter's death-cursing brand of Christian communism [Matt 16:18, Acts 5:5], which was overtaken by Pauline born-again 'paganism'. The women now vanish from the synoptic account and from this early time on, in orthodox Christianity, women have been barred from the Church, ostensibly because they carry the earthly principle of 'carnal sin' through which Eve's wiles drew Adam and us all into a 'life of death', despite Christ's redeeming act. The gnostic Christians professed to carry the inner illumination of Yeshua's teaching. Some took their tradition directly from Magdalen, Martha and Salome and were notable for the equal status accorded to the genders. By 200 AD Irenaeus was complaining that women were still celebrating the Eucharist with the gnostic teacher Marcus and the gnostic sects were repressed.

John is noted as being a 'gnostic' gospel despite inclusion in the canon, although it has been cast in opposition to the egalitarian gnosticisn of Thomas (Pagels R525). Of all the Gospels, John carries Yeshua into the heights as logos, only -begotten. It is John who repeatedly cast aspertions on Thomas as doubting the unique power of Christ. Brown (R90 149) suggests that the originating group (50-80 AD) of the community was led by Mary Magdalen but that there was a schism early in the Johannine Community. She was highly esteemed as the primary witness to the resurrection and recognized as such even by believers who did not belong to this particular community. She was known, very early on, as the 'companion of Jesus' Later (c 90-100 AD), the claim that a female disciple of Jesus had been their community's first leader and hero became an embarrassment. Jusino (R352) thus suggests John's gospel is a sexually redacted version of an original gospel of Magdalen.

Mary Magdalen's enigmatic nature remains. Some scholars believe that the name Magdalene is the Greek rendering of the Aramaic word m'gad'lla meaning 'hairdresser' (Graves R256, Graves and Podro R258). Women practising this profession were regarded among the Jews as ladies of easy virtue. Magdalen 'alone stands out undefined by a designation attaching her to some male as wife, mother, or daughter and she is the only one to be identifiable by her place of birth'. Magdalini in Greek signified her belonging to el Mejdel (Migdal tower for 'fish tower') a prosperous fishing village on Galilee, destroyed in 75 AD because of its infamy and the licentious behaviour of its inhabitants (Haskins R297 15). A tiny desolate dome shrine marks the site. Starbird (R662) refers to her as magal eder the tower of the flock.

"And thou, O tower of the flock, the strong hold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem" (Micah 4:8).

This is also tied up with mother Mary's ambiguous figure as an unmarried mother. It is quite clear that Yeshua's parentage was a source of concern to early Christians and of satirical derision from the Rabbis. Matthew 1:19 confesses: "Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a publick example, was minded to put her away privily". The Talmud claims that Jesus was Yeshua ben Pantera the illegitimate son of Mary M'gadd'la (the braider or hairdresser) by a Roman (Graves and Podro R258 98, Wilson R755 62) and that she was 'descended from princes and rulers but consorted with carpenters' (Graves R256 6). Pantera is a Roman surname known from the archaelogical record (Wilson R755). In Matthew, Yeshua's descent is reckoned through four 'loose' women: Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba and Ruth. In addition to the 'virgin birth', star, magi, and slaughter of the innocents, the infancy legends are permeated with fertility paganism. Bethlehem is 'the House of Bread' (Frazer R222 5/257). St. Jerome stated that: "Bethlehem ... lay formerly under the shadow of a grove dedicated to Tammuz [the grain god], that is to say Adonis, and the very grotto where the infant Christ uttered his first cries resounded formerly with the lamentations over the lover of Aphrodite" (Briffault R76 3/97).

In early and medieval lore Mary Magdalen is represented as a beautiful and meretricious woman, a witch and a whore. In many gnostic texts she is the companion of Jesus and is with him on several important occasions. In one curious case, however, Mary is not present, and this is during an event of especial significance. Before the last supper Jesus called his disciples together and asked them for the bread and the cup to bless them. At that moment Mary Magdalen laughed, whereupon Jesus asked all the women to leave (Walker R721).

There is still greater confusion about the Salomes. One Salome appears in the 'infancy gospels' as a midwife and is the first to recognize him as the Christ. Traditionally, Salome is the name given to the wife of Zebedee and mother of James and John. Then we have the beautiful sixteen-year old daughter of Herodias and step-daughter of Herod Antipas the tetrarch. In a popular tradition current at the time she, like her mother, had lusted after John the Baptist and had been spurned by him, leading to the beheading (Wilde R745). Another is mentioned in the Gospel to the Egyptians (p 223), who appears to be childless, and in Thomas Yeshua 'comes up' on Salome's couch (p 223). To add to the confusion, she is sometimes referred to as Mary Salome. The only Salome mentioned in the Bible is watching the crucifixion from afar off, and coming after the entombment to anoint the body (Walker R721).

The apocryphal Coptic Book of the Resurrection of Christ, attributed to the apostle Bartholomew, names the women who went to the tomb. Among them were: Mary Magdalen; Mary the mother of James whom Jesus delivered out of the hand of Satan; Mary who ministered to him; Martha her sister; Joanna (Susanna) who renounced the marriage bed; and 'Salome who tempted him.' It would seem that some time after she had contrived the beheading of John the Baptist, Salome may have tried to use her wiles to tempt Jesus, but became his follower, and like Mary Magdalen remained close to him thereafter.

Satan and the Male Combat of Dark and Light

We can't leave this arena without dealing with a new apocalyptic form of the 'jealous god' in the form of the ultimate male combat myth - the polarization of the entire universe into light and dark in the contest between God and Satan. Male combat is as central to sexual jealousy, as are the ancient invocations against whoring in the Old Testament. It is also central to some of the most diabolical manifestations of Christianity in terms of treating the 'other' in any form of perceived deviation as agents of the Devil.

Although Satan has a historical precedent in the Zoroastrian cleansing final conflict between the forces of dark and ignorance and those of light, he emerges first in Jewish writings as a kind of tester of faith in Yaweh, and only later gains the aura of being God's nemesis as a rebel leader of the fallen angels, leading to a final apocalypse.

Elaine Pagels (R524) notes:

"What fascinates us about Satan is the way he expresses qualities that go beyond what we recognize as human. Satan evokes more than the greed, envy lust and anger we identify with our own worst impulses and more than what we call brutality which imputes to human beings a resemblance to animals ... Thousands of years of tradition have characterized Satan instead as a spirit. ... Many people have claimed to see him embodied at certain times in individuals and groups that seem possessed by an intense spiritual passion, one that engages even our better qualities, like strength, intelligence and devotion, but turns them towards destruction and takes pleasure in inflicting harm. ... I invite you to consider Satan as a reflection of how we perceive ourselves and those we call 'others'. Satan has after all made a kind of profession out of being the 'other', and so Satan defines negatively what we think of as being human. The social and cultural practice of defining certain people as 'others' in relation to one's group may of course be as old as humanity itself. ... Conflict between groups is of course nothing new. What may be new in the Western Christian tradition ... is how the use of Satan to represent one's enemies lends to conflict a specific kind of moral and religious interpretation, in which 'we' are God's people and 'they' are God's enemies, and ours as well ... aspects of Christianity I find disturbing ... [revealing] certain fault lines in the Christian tradition that have allowed for the demonizing of others throughout Christian history - fault lines that go back nearly two thousand years to the origins of the Christian movement."

This brings us full circle to the question of genetic competition, jealousy, male combat and Alexander's theory of morality (p 44) as a solidarity within groups to make them more effective at inter-group conflict.

Although there are relatively few direct references to Satan in the synoptic gospels, only one in John and none in those of Thomas or Mary, Yeshua's mission is strongly polarized between light and dark forces and the advent of the Kingdom is bound up in a powerfully dualistic way between the actions of players perceived to be on the dark side, such as Judas, the high priests, scribes and Herodians, in John the 'Jews'; with the Pharisees, certain Samaritan villages, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and sometimes the disciples, caught somewhere in the middle; while the lone figure of Yeshua, a 'fox without a hole', bears the light, while issuing such provocation and controversy that it is hard to tell which side, dark, or light, is the active agent in the escalating confrontation.

This carries over to the Crucifixion, where virtually all the players are implicated, Judas for betraying Yeshua, when savagely provoked by the sop and the profligate female anointing 'for my burial', the High priests when Yeshua assaults the temple sufficiently to cause them to fear Roman intervention (John 11:47), Pilate when the situation overtakes him, and despite protesting he can 'find no fault' washes his hands of him, the Jewish crowd who called for his blood saying 'whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar', Satan who is waiting to figuratively gash him from the pinnacles, and finally God who is about to sacrifice his only begotten Son so that 'all who believe in Him should not perish but', despite this homicide 'have everlasting life' in the sacraments of flesh and blood. Or is it Yeshua himself who brought this all upon us, however ingeniously and prophetically?

Ever since, for Christians, Satan and the Jews have been implicated together while Yeshua and God have been cleared of any crime. Jews consider Yeshua and Satan are implicated but the they still have God on their side. Yet why was this killing necessary? As Elaine Pagels notes in her historical analysis, these times were apocalyptic and led directly towards the siege and sacking of Jerusalem, which was one of the most genocidal episodes in classical history, but is this a standard by which to set our paradigm of survival?

The direct references to Satan begin with Yeshua's forty days in the desert, where he is challenged to perform miracles, tempted with worldly power and challenged to tempt death off the Temple to see if he will be saved - something he later does in overturning the tables:

"And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him" (Mark 1:13).

"Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season." (Luke 4:2).

In a second passage Yeshua curses the unwelcoming cities to be thrust down to hell claiming that anyone who rejects him or the disciples are also enemies of God. The seventy revel in wielding power over the devils and Yeshua gives them miraculous power to tread on scorpions. We thus have a complete role reversal. 'Power over' is now assumed in just the way Satan offered, but here it is 'with God on our side':

"Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. He that heareth you heareth me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me. And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven" (Luke 10:13).

Yeshua as much as admits this conflict is one of fragmentation, when accused by the scribes of being Ba'al Zebul, Lord of the Flies, for using diabolical means of exorcism:

"And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Beelzebub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end" (Luke 3:22 )

Yeshua's point is a direct confirmation of Alexander's position (p 44). Unity within the group is necessary for effective competition or final combat with the 'other.' Neither is it clear that infirmities, whether psychic or physical are 'devils' but natural maladies, even if amenable to powerful forms of faith healing.

Peter is even accused of being possessed by Satan for the 'humanity' of questioning the self-destructive act, so similar to the one Satan tempted Yeshua perform from the pinnacles:

"And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he spake that saying openly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But when he had turned about and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men" (Mark 8:31).

Finally we have Judas' betrayal, and the only passage in John to refer directly to Satan: