WI - Jesus had been female?

ninebucks

Banned
I started a thread about this a couple of months ago, and it didn't get much interest.

Personally, I feel any hopes that a female-fronted religion would inspire a more enlightened attitude towards gender equality are deeply, deeply, naive. There have been countless female-fronted cults throughout human history, and the communities that followed them never sought to abolish the gendered division of labour.

I'm planning a TL that includes an alternative world religion, founded in the ancient Caucasus by a female prophet. In this religion, women are seen as being closer to God, but rather than this engendering respect, it engenders patriarchicalism. Women are seen as something to be protected, which in effect gives men a carte blanche to lock their wives away and keep them separated from the sins of the world. Marriage essentially becomes compulsary for women, and any attempt to avoid marriage is associated with evil possession.

In my opinion, the genders of the founding figures of a religion has very little bearing of how mysogynist said religion may become.
 

Elidor

A very Dystopian take on this:

Maybe if *Jesus was a woman, the role of her as a "sacrificial lamb" get emphasized over her role as a teacher, defiant reformer, and the word of God incarnate. So in time, all her teachings will be lost, and people will focus entirely on the sacrifice thingy. ATL *Christianity will in fact devolve into a near-pagan sacrificial cult based around a misogynistic Old Testament morality, where women are expected to completely submit and sacrifice themselves to God/Society and those who are like God and are the preservers of social order (i.e, the men)

In other words, Gorean Judaism.
 

A Random Person

than prophesy would have not been fulfilled... unless interpritation of hebrews to find male to also mean genderly neutral. (I.E. Son, King)

Also there is the issue of cruxifixion, it was so horrible that women were spared that sentence. however it was desribed as the type of death in prophecy. If it was to happen, than the romans had to make an exception.

also judeism is patriarchal, patrilineal and patrilocal.
 

jycee

ninebucks said:
In my opinion, the genders of the founding figures of a religion has very little bearing of how mysogynist said religion may become.
Click to expand...

This is very true, and I like the idea for your TL religion.
Many religions do give importance to females but when they do it is usually in a maternalistic fashion which usually results in misogyny it all depends on what approach the female prophet will take.
 

Tom Kalbfus

Banned
Goldstein said:
Given the condition of women in that time and place, she would have had a pretty anonymous and hard life, and she would have been inmediately stoned by the angry populace at the first word of preaching...

...Unless you're one of those who think that Jesus was actually able to cast spells... then the thread would become more interesting, but it would be in the wrong section.
Click to expand...
Not spells, miracles! Also if Jesus was of a virgin born, she would likely be female since we are talking about only Mary's x chronisome. without a male to impregnate Mary, there would be no Y Chronisome to make a male baby. The process is called parthinogenesis, the female ovum starts to divide and become a fetus without the input of male sperm.
 

Tom Kalbfus

Banned
Not much is different, it is the message, not the messanger. The ancient world had a lot of female dieties before Christianity, one more is not going to make a lot of difference.
 

Count Dearborn

There was a comic called The Boston Bombers that took place in a world where Jesus was a woman. No islam, and the Jews saw her as the Messiah.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Tom Kalbfus said:
Flesh is flesh, the nail goes through it just the same. So are you saying the Romans would recoil from the prospect of nailing a woman to a cross?
Click to expand...

Did they? Publicly executing defenceless women seems like a very impolitik thing to do in an occupied territory.

If anyone knows about where Roman law stood in regards to women and political crimes, it'd be interesting to know. Would a woman be given the honour of such an execution? Or would she just be offed quietly? (Or would she be ignored all together, and some male relative forced to take responsibility for her?)
 

Keenir

Banned
A Random Person said:
Also there is the issue of cruxifixion, it was so horrible that women were spared that sentence. however it was desribed as the type of death in prophecy. If it was to happen, than the romans had to make an exception.
Click to expand...

given how many prophecies are in the Torah, finding matches won't be tough.

though even if you use ones that were used for OTL Jesus...like "limbs shall be broken" and "blood shall be spilled"...

okay, that means that female Jesus will be stoned during her mense.
 

Keenir

Banned
Tom Kalbfus said:
Not spells, miracles! Also if Jesus was of a virgin born, she would likely be female since we are talking about only Mary's x chronisome. without a male to impregnate Mary, there would be no Y Chronisome to make a male baby. The process is called parthinogenesis, the female ovum starts to divide and become a fetus without the input of male sperm.
Click to expand...

is rare, but every so often, something goes wrong, and the parthenogenic child is male.
 

Stephen

Banned
Keenir said:
is rare, but every so often, something goes wrong, and the parthenogenic child is male.
Click to expand...

Is this in the case of lizards or amphibians because the sex of their embryos is decided in diferent ways from mamals. Otherwise without a Y chromosome it couldnt be a true male but some kind of infertile homaephraedite.
 

Nicole

Stephen said:
Is this in the case of lizards or amphibians because the sex of their embryos is decided in diferent ways from mamals. Otherwise without a Y chromosome it couldnt be a true male but some kind of infertile homaephraedite.
Click to expand...
To be fair, there is really no evidence of Jesus' fertility. (Well, apart from the Merovingians, I guess ;) )
 

Tom Kalbfus

Banned
Keenir said:
is rare, but every so often, something goes wrong, and the parthenogenic child is male.
Click to expand...
That means the mother is not a true female. There are some women with the XY gene, because of some deformity that causes insensitivity to male hormones such that male organs do not develop and is by default female though genetically male. I would think such a "female" would miscarry alot because sometimes you would get the YY result which doesn't produce a human being, probably a mass of cells instead.
 

False Dmitri

Tom Kalbfus said:
Not much is different, it is the message, not the messanger. The ancient world had a lot of female dieties before Christianity, one more is not going to make a lot of difference.
Click to expand...

Judaism did not. That's a huge difference, since Christianity began within Judaism. The major goddess venerated in Israel had been suppressed in a massive way by the Jewish priesthood, centuries before Christ.

Others have pointed out that messianic prophesies pointed to a coming King... and Israel had no precedent for ruling Queens.

So all in all, Jesusessica (great name, whoever used it first) will have a very difficult time spreading her message from the get-go, since it would go greatly against the grain of what people in Judea were believing.

At best, I'd expect either an insurgent, female-based religious movement, or else a movement based around Gentile disciples who had more experience with goddess-worship.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top