A Gender Neutral God/ess: Be Inclusive but MAKE NO IMAGES was the Religious Change

by J. J. McKenzie

Overview

One of the main purposes of this eBook is to show that the Bible is a document written by many different ancient peoples. It explains how, when, and why various theological ideas arose - and how those ideas have been altered by later translation decisions. Several chapters discuss the literary devices early religious writers used to describe a gender inclusive Deity. Some of the devices are plurals, gendered words, and poetic parallelism. Early Goddess religions are described and their images shown by 80 colored images. Finally, how, the biblical writer incorporated early Goddess concepts into the Hebrew religion without using forbidden "graven images" is explained. Due to the amount of research involved in these ideas the ebook contains numerous footnotes, a list of illustrations, and a bibliography. This is an important eBook for people who question the inordinate influence religion still has in today's world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780985373306
Publisher:	J. J. Graphics
Publication date:	08/06/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
Sales rank:	741,531
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

The genesis of "A Gender Neutral God/ess" was 32 years ago. I was ill. A minister suggested I turn to the Bible for comfort. Quickly I read the Bible. In those days feminist issues were being discussed. I objected to some of the biblical statements about women. My liberal minister pointed me to current feminist writings on biblical issues. I read a number of books, compared different Bibles, and began noticing that the same biblical text varied between Bibles.

After an 'Aha' moment, I realized that I needed to learn Hebrew and Greek. I also decided, that to be balanced, I needed to study theological writings, information on the development of the biblical text, and methods of interpreting the Bible. Additionally, I wanted to learn about the historical setting of the Bible and about contemporaneous cultures.

My studying began and continued over ten years. Then I wrote "I Will Love Unloved: A Linguistic Analysis of Woman's Biblical Importance."

I underwent a critical review of that manuscript before it was published. While interacting with the reviewer, I added more material to bolster my thesis that certain biblical writers envisioned a bi-gender Deity. Consequently, the manuscript became too long. So, I removed much of that added material.

The removed material became the nucleus of my current book: "A Gender Neutral God/ess: Be Inclusive but MAKE NO IMAGES was the Religious Change." During and after publishing my first book, I earned a living as a professional watercolor artist. My husband and I also designed and built our house ourselves and planted extensive gardens.

I tried to forget my second manuscript and my interest in it. Yet, it's topic kept brewing in my mind. When the house was done and retirement a reality, I began studying again. It has been exciting to finish this second manuscript, and, due to the growth of the Internet, to locate more images and material to demonstrate my points.