Killing off a defiant consort was not the answer, any more than silencing and debilitating women economically has been. Perhaps when women and men bite that apple—or fig—at the same time, learn to consider each other’s ideas and opinions with respect, and regard the world and its riches as a place that belongs to every living being on it, we can be

when the Bible tells us that Eve defied the male deity and instead accepted the word and advice of the serpent. We may indeed find that the seemingly innocent myth of Paradise and how the world began was actually carefully constructed and propagated to “keep women in their place,” the place assigned to them by the Levite tribe of biblical Canaan.

As we read previously, under the Levite law only the husband could ask for or demand divorce; in fact, all he had to do was write a note. We may see this as a very different society from that of the Sumerian Eshnunna, where if a man took a second woman after the first had borne children, he was to be put out of the house without any possessions.

Such divorces may not have happened frequently, though we have no records with which to judge, but the laws allowing such divorce probably resulted in the woman, fearful at the possibility of being dismissed, becoming a submissive servant, the archetype of the “good wife” who obediently, smilingly caters to her husband’s slightest whim or desire.

As the victim of rape, a woman automatically lost the right to continue her life as a single woman or to become a wife in a more carefully arranged and probably more desirable marriage. The law reads, “If a man find a damsel that is a virgin which is not betrothed and lay hold on her and they be found, then the man that lay with her shall give unto

holy shrine was described as being full from one end to the other. It was then reported in the Bible, “And when they went to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings, Jehu appointed four score men without and said, if any of the men that I have brought into your hands escape, he that letteth him go, his life shall be for the life of him.” So it was rec

that her real crime was her refusal to accept the worship of Yahweh, choosing instead the religion of her own parents, that of the Queen of Heaven and Her Baal.

In fact, in this version of the Old Testament, many of the references to Asherah, Ashtoreth and the asherim are more explicitly explained. In the New English Bible we read that Elijah confronts the ancient religion as that of Asherah. It tells us in I Kings 18:19 that these four hundred people were “four hundred prophets of the goddess Asherah, who

The Bible itself records that any Hebrew who dared to worship in the ancient religion of the Queen of Heaven and Her Baal were the victims of a violent religious persecution.