Dear Dr. Dever,
Firstly, a word of thanks and appreciation for your work over the years, and in particular for Did God Have A Wife? To speak only for myself, the book has shaped my own thought and understanding of my ancestral traditions, and for this you have my deep and lasting gratitude.
Anent Wife, though, I would like to point out to you an irony which I suspect has heretofore escaped your attention. To this not-altogether-objective reader, it is striking how closely your denunciations of the excesses of contemporary Goddess worship and feminist spirituality—which is, in fact, modern folk religion—resemble the Deuteronomic and Priestly hostility toward the folk religion of their own time. I find it curious that, from the position of your own academic orthodoxy, your sympathy for folk—and in particular, women’s—religion apparently extends to ancient women, but not to your contemporaries. Plus ça change….
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I've long been mystified by academia's general disinterest in the new pagan religions. As a historian of religion myself, I would -
That's a shame. Though there are certainly valid critiques to be made of Goddess/feminist spirituality, I think it best if they we -
My thoroughly un-nuanced reading of Frymer-Kensky is that she's an ideologue with a monotheist ax to grind, whose work is academic
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I completely agree with your comments on Frymer-Kensky. I would have called her an apologist for the superiority of Hebrew monothe -
Thanks for that Steven. I knew Dever quoted me in his book from a student, but I did not know he treated the Goddess movement nega
