From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Mar 05 2002 - 07:42:28 MST
Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> At 04:25 PM 3/4/02 +0100, KPJ wrote:
>
> >|As for genderless pronouns, it is interesting to note that angels, which
> >|are sexless according to the scholastics, are usually titled "he".
>
> >In fact, I understand angels are supposed to be hermafrodites.
>
> In the Old Testament, they were able to have sex with `the daughters of
> man', and, like demons, were clearly an incorporation of local deities into
> a purportedly monotheistic doctrine. The Scholastics argued that angels are
> not merely sexless, each is its own distinct species. They are also
> bodiless and without parts, so sex would be tricky, but even if performed
> it would necessarily be sterile.
Actually, when the Old Testament was first written, judaism was itself
still quite polytheistic. It eventually welded all the top good gods and
goddesses into one, but you can discern what each individual was by the
various names used for "God" in the old testament: The Creator, The Lord
of Hosts, The Most High, etc were all separate individual gods at some
point. The chief female aspect was Sophia, the Goddess of Wisdom, which
is where the name for the Haggia Sophia cathedral comes from. The
'wisdom' followers have generally evolved into the modern christian
Marianists.
In the situation of Mary being impregnated with Christ, we don't see her
having spiritual sex with God, but only with the Archangel Gabriel.
Whether he used his own parts or merely borrowed the proper instrument
from the big guy remains debatable...
The archangel Lucifer, whose original jobs were to guide the sun around
the heavens and 'bring the light' to men, was obviously demoted to
manage the black body radiation of the inner workings of the earth's
core, primarily I think because the primary competitor with Judaism and
Christianity were all solar gods, so the sun god (Lucifer) had to be
smited, of course. This is also why the Catholic Church opposed the
Copernican Heresy for so long, because a heliocentric universe
threatened the possibility of a resurgence of sun worshipping.
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