The problem is that both cannot be right in the long run. Either a society can be built around a feminine-oriented form of spirituality or it cannot. And in the latter case it is the anti-idolatry anti-feminine monotheist who is right, which is what I believe.

Regarding your “YH” + “WH” thesis, Crash, this is obviously pure hot air. Kabalah-like Judaism has always been very fond of that kind of play with words. But it has never yielded more insight than say reading tea leaves or looking at the innards of dead poultry.

YHWH is masculine in all its attributes and behavior. Just think of the “King of Glory” in the Psalms. It is “King” and not “Queen”. Moreover, as I said, YHWH is in stark contrast with the other deities of the region in that he is alone while the others most often came in pairs: a male deity and a consort. Hence the condemnation of the “Baals and the Ashtoroths” that we find so often in the OT. Deny that if you want, I don’t think it will fool anyone but those who want to be fooled.

Your original assumption, that YHWH was an attempt to remove all traces of the feminine is incorrect. In Hebrew, the YH is masculine, and the WH is feminine. It is the only Hebrew word that is both masculine and feminine. Your entire “thesis” is based upon a faulty assumption.
Many women are exalted in the biblical text, attractive or not. Your opinion takes a minor detail (ie not worshipping beauty), and stretches it to a ridiculous extreme. Are there people who are obsessed with Gov. Palin? Of course. Just as there are people who are obsessed with Sen Obama, easily to the point of psuedo- idolatry ( an image seemingly ecouraged by the Obama camp). Your failure to note this obvious fact tends to make me agree with Phil-

You have serious women issues.

Seek help. And fast.

Your ramblings are juvenile and offensive, not to mention outright ignorant. What you’ve done is cherry pick English language translations of Hebrew and Greek text, taken out of context for the time in which they were written, and use them to construct a world view to support your own twisted view of humanity. You’re no different than those who use “race matters” as a justification to divide the world along genetic lines.

Religion should be a way for man to embrace God and through prayer, speak to God in an effort to better both himself and the world in which he lives. People who use religion to divide up the world, or assert their own superiority, are fools at best, and dangerous at worst. My quarrel with radical Islam, for example, isn’t over their belief in Allah. It’s over their belief in Allah that justifies the taking of innocent human life in God’s name.

And so it is with fools like you who have some serious male-female personal issues you’re attempting to work through under the guise of promoting a religious doctrine.

Seek help. And fast.

And Ishtar is still a bad movie.

It was fashionable for Victorian era ladies to pretend to be shocked at the mention of anything connected to sexuality. Now it is the same thing but in reverse. Big grown men like you Phillip have to pretend to be “offended” at the slightest mention of something seemingly “anti-sex” or “mysoginistic”. That is the price to be admitted into polite society: you have to go with the crowd.

And of course it is also fashionable, in a token show of residual masculine pride, to pretend to know little of what has made us what we are.