Isbn 978-1-57951-171-5 $16.95 160 pg Religion/Classics BUY This Book from Amazon |
Hermaphrodites,
Gynomorphs & Jesus She-Male Gods & Roots of Christianity Dr. David C A. HIllman $14.95 Sexuality was fluid in the ancient Greek and Roman world—there was no word for “gender,” or for “homosexual” or “heterosexual.” Monotheism is black-and-white—you are male or female. The Greeks and Romans had a broader view: some are born male, some female, some with both sexes, some with neither—and some could change with time. Those who changed—the dual-gendered gynomorphs—were most powerful of all. The ancient world’s greatest prophet, Teiresias, was both a man and a woman. The young woman Iphis married her female lover, Ianthe, after the gods changed Iphis to a man. The bi-gendered Dionysus was charged with the crucial role of returning Justice to the world. Hermaphrodites, Gynomorphs & Jesus explores these stories and many more—showing how they deeply influenced the development of Christianity. Using primary Christian and pagan sources, Dr. David Hillman shows the intense arguments between the new church and older religions that led to self-castration by Church fathers and a deep anti-female bias in the Church’s foundations—which remains an issue today. Carefully researched and often shocking in its revelations, Hermaphrodites, Gynomorphs & Jesus shows two worlds in deep conflict: the broad and open one that produced Western Democracy, and the narrow and constricted one that became the Church’s road to power. Hermaphrodites, Gynomorphs & Jesus will change your view of Christianity—and of the Greek and Roman world in which it developed. |