9. Ein männlicher Gott über Frauen
Der Monotheismus wirkte in weiten Teilen der westlichen Welt befreiend und einigend. Dieser Abschnitt beleuchtet das Leben der Gründerinnen und der Frauen in den Entstehungsgeschichten des Judentums, Christentums und Islams. Da wir uns auf den Einfluss dieser Religionen auf die Stellung der Frau konzentrieren, ist zu beachten, dass sich die sozialen Erfahrungen gläubiger Frauen von ihren spirituellen unterscheiden und dass die Erfahrungen von Frauen innerhalb ihrer Religionen sehr unterschiedlich sein können. Trotz der Diskriminierung, der Frauen ausgesetzt waren, wandten sich Frauen aus allen Gesellschaftsschichten dem Monotheismus zu.
Monotheismus (Subst.), die Lehre oder der Glaube, dass es nur einen Gott gibt.
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Herausgeber des Remedial Herstory Project. „9. EIN MÄNNLICHER GOTT ÜBER FRAUEN“. Das Remedial Herstory Project. 1. November 2025. www.remedialherstory.com.
Triggerwarnung: Dieses Kapitel enthält Anspielungen auf Vergewaltigung und sexuelle Übergriffe.
In der Antike gab es in vielen Religionen bedeutende Göttinnenverehrung, die die Schöpfung und das Fortbestehen der Welt den Göttinnen zuschrieb. Viele polytheistische Glaubensrichtungen, wie der Hinduismus, kannten die Idee des Göttlich-Weiblichen, wonach Gott oder das höchste Wesen entweder völlig geschlechtslos war oder eine gleichwertige weibliche Dimension besaß. Diese Vorstellung von einem weiblichen Gott oder weiblichen Göttinnen wurde jedoch durch den Aufstieg der monotheistischen und patriarchalischen abrahamitischen Religionen Judentum, Christentum und Islam – alle drei im Nahen Osten entstanden – in Frage gestellt. Auch wenn die Idee des Göttlich-Weiblichen an Bedeutung verliert, darf man nicht unterschätzen, wie patriarchalisch die heidnischen Gesellschaften waren. Das Leben im Heidentum war für Frauen sicherlich nicht immer sicher oder fortschrittlich.
Die heiligen Schriften dieser Religionen – die Tora, die übrigen Bücher des Alten Testaments, das Neue Testament und der Koran – verwenden durchgehend männliche Pronomen für das Göttliche und sind reich an männlichen Titeln und Gottesbildern wie Herr, Vater, König oder Brah. Dies führte dazu, dass Gott nicht nur mit dem männlichen Geschlecht, sondern auch mit traditionellen Vorstellungen von Männlichkeit und männlicher Macht gleichgesetzt wurde. In diesem Abschnitt werden wir die komplexe Rolle der Frau innerhalb monotheistischer Traditionen untersuchen und wie ihre spirituelle und soziale Gleichstellung durch ihren Glauben sowohl gefördert als auch behindert wurde.
Polytheismus (Subst.) , die Lehre oder der Glaube, dass es mehrere Götter gibt.
abrahamitisch (Adj.) , bezeichnet eine oder mehrere der Religionen (Judentum, Christentum und Islam), die Abraham, den biblischen Patriarchen, verehren.
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Ein männlicher Gott
Vom 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis zum 7. Jahrhundert n. Chr. verfestigte sich in der westlichen Kultur die Vorstellung eines einzigen männlichen Gottes durch tausendjährige monotheistische Tradition, in der alle bedeutenden Propheten, deren Werke uns bekannt sind, Männer waren. Diese Glaubensrichtungen teilen viele Ansichten über Frauen, wie die Unreinheit der Menstruation, die Notwendigkeit einer gewissen männlichen Kontrolle über Frauen (insbesondere über die weibliche Sexualität) und die scheinbare Duldung wirtschaftlicher und sozialer Abhängigkeit von Männern, selbst wenn die Geschlechter als spirituell gleichwertig gelten. All diese Einschränkungen beziehen sich auf den vermeintlichen Zweck der Frau: Kinder zu gebären und zu erziehen. Es ging einzig und allein um die Fortführung der männlichen Familienlinie.
The Hebrew Bible is an early Abrahamic account of world events. Many stories within the Hebrew Bible are corroborated by other texts such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, which discusses a great flood similar to that of Noah’s story, making it hard to ignore as both a religious and historical text. Although many women are featured in the Hebrew Bible, none of the confirmed authors are known to have been women, although, there are theories that some of them may have been female. For example, two books of the Hebrew Bible, Ruth and Esther, tell women’s stories and have women’s names.
Gender differences found in Hebrew literature suggest women were subordinate to men in ancient Jewish tradition. In fact, the first book, Genesis, is often called “God’s curse to womankind.” It begins with the story of Creation, where the idea of a strictly male monotheism is evident. God creates a garden and then Adam, or literally, “Man.” The scriptures say he is made in God’s own image, solidifying the view of God as a male (despite assertions elsewhere that God is beyond human concepts such as gender). Later, Eve, the first woman, is created from Adam’s rib. God tells them not to eat from the tree of knowledge in the garden, but Eve is corrupted by the devil (disguised as a snake) and eats from the tree, subsequently convincing Adam to do so too. They become “knowledgeable,” the meaning of which has been debated for millennia. God is furious, and banishes them from the garden.
In the Christian interpretation, Eve is deemed singularly responsible for the fall of humankind and humans’ expulsion from the garden because she was tempted by the devil to eat the forbidden fruit. In the 400s, this story was interpreted by Augustine of Hippo, who introduced the Christian concept of original sin. Some interpret it to mean that women were uniquely vulnerable to the temptation of sin.
In 1896, a German scholar purchased fragments of what would later be determined to be Gnostic Gospels. These 1st century Christian texts were meant to be destroyed as blasphemy and were not incorporated into the official Bible but are still used by scholars today. Combined, these fragments and complete works comprised over 50 different texts with different authors dated during and after the life of Jesus. They included gospels, poems, and myths, very different from those selected by the early Christian church to be in the Bible. Today, the Gnostic Gospels are regarded as an alternative set of books that reveal the story of creation and early humans. They show the diversity of early Christian thinking. These works had a different rendition of the story of Adam and Eve. For one, the snake is not evil; it represents divine wisdom. Historian Elaine Pagels claims that the snake “convinces Adam and Eve to partake of knowledge while ‘the Lord’ threatens them with death, trying jealously to prevent them from attaining knowledge and expelling them from Paradise when they achieve it.” Pagels also highlights a Coptic poem representing a divine feminine voice,
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin....
I am the barren one, and many are her sons....
I am the silence that is incomprehensible....
I am the utterance of my name.
Erbsünde
Gemälde mit dem Titel „Der Garten Eden mit dem Sündenfall“
Original sin (n.), the condition of sinfulness that all humans share, which is inherited from Adam and Eve.
Koptisch (n.) , eine christliche ethnoreligiöse Gruppe von Menschen, die in Ägypten und Sudan beheimatet sind.
Judentum
Another example of women’s roles in the origin of the faith appears in the story of Judaism’s founder, Abraham; a man from the city-state of Ur, who accepts that there is only one true God. As in most patriarchal cultures, his wife Sarah follows him on his spiritual journey.
In the Book of Genesis, we learn that Abraham betrays his wife to save his own skin. A famine caused the couple to be refugees in Egypt and Abraham worried that his beautiful wife would be a target for Egyptian men, so he begged her to pretend to be his sister so they wouldn’t kill him to get her. The Pharaoh finds her desirable and rewarding her “brother” with wealth, she becomes his concubine. When a great plague hits the palace, the pharaoh learns of their deceit and demands they leave Egypt immediately. Abraham then pulls the same trick with their next host, King Abemelek of Gerar. God spoke to the king and told him to return Sarah to her husband, and until he did so no woman of Abemelek’s court would conceive. Despite Abraham being responsible for the lies, only Sarah is blamed for the misfortune of all these women. The Bible reads, “For the Lord had closed fast all the wombs of the house… because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.” She was, again, returned to her husband.
As a part of their story, the couple had failed to bear children. It was essential for the patriarch to have an heir, so it was very common in ancient cultures of the Fertile Crescent for men to take on concubines, or secondary wives, even at the request of the primary wife, as the stability of the family relied upon a new generation. Sarah was worried that Abraham would have no heir with her, so she gave him an enslaved woman named Hagar to produce a male heir. In the story, God hadn’t intended this - he wanted Abraham to have a child with his wife. Because of her selflessness, Sarah becomes the first person in the Bible to have a healing, and God allows her to become pregnant and produce a male child, Isaac - another central figure in the development of early Judaism.
Some women featured in the Hebrew Bible seem to have power and autonomy, although they were socially unequal. Rahab, for example, was a prostitute who sheltered Hebrew spies during the invasion of Canaan. Deborah, is the only female judge in a male-dominated culture, and Esther, the influential Persian queen, saves the Jewish people by foiling a plot to murder them by the evil minister, Haman.
Other women are derided for that power and autonomy in the Old Testament. Jezebel persecuted the prophets and clung to idolatrous religion and thus earned such a reputation for wickedness that even today her name is used to describe a deceitful woman. Her story shows that she had her own beliefs and had some agency to act upon them.
Likewise, the Queen of Sheba was described extensively in the Abrahamic faiths, although some consider her to be a mythological character. She was a wise and respected queen from Arabia who found clever ways to protect and mother her people, including marrying an enemy to save her people from war, only to kill him on their wedding night. The Jewish King Solomon then heard of her power, but he really desired her spectacular throne and demanded she submit to him. After an exchange, she eventually came with an entourage, only to find that Solomon had stolen her throne and was sitting on it. In some versions of the story, she accepted defeat and submitted to him to save her people. Humbling herself before a powerful male king, she crossed a glass floor to approach him and, thinking it was water, lifted her skirts to cross it. He rebuked her for her hairy legs, but after she challenged him with a series of riddles, they inevitably parented the infamous Nebuchadnezzar. She can be viewed in a negative light for giving up her throne, but modern female scholars across Abrahamic faiths read her story differently. She was a wise queen who put her people before her pride and accepted humiliation to avoid war.
Sarah stellt Hagar Abraham vor
Rahab, dargestellt in einem Gemälde mit dem Titel „Die Hure von Jericho und die zwei Kundschafter“
verspotten (v.) , Verachtung ausdrücken; lächerlich machen.
Götzendienst (Adj.) , Verehrung eines Bildes oder einer Darstellung eines Gottes, die als Gegenstand der Verehrung verwendet wird.
Arabien (n.) , eine Halbinsel in Westasien, nordöstlich von Afrika gelegen (heutiges Saudi-Arabien, Oman und Jemen).
Jesus
These stories were well known when Jesus Christ, a Jew born under Roman rule, preached the story of a loving God who absolved sin and offered forgiveness. Women, including his mother, Mary, became immediate followers. His teaching was recorded in the four gospels and other books in the New Testament in which women were frequently portrayed either so pure as to be unattainable, or as whores.
Mary, or the Virgin Mary, is central to the story of Christianity and fits into the unattainable category. In the New Testament, God sends an angel to Mary to tell her that she will bear the son of God and is to name him Jesus. Mary's epic and pregnant journey to Bethlehem has been told and reenacted in churches around the world for millennia, but many have questioned the notion of the miraculous virgin birth.
Mary would have been very young at the age she was betrothed to Joseph, perhaps 12. A year after their betrothal, she would have been sent to live with Joseph and his family. Had she become pregnant out of wedlock at that time, she would have been terrified, as the consequences were severe, including the possibility of being sold into slavery or stoned to death. Yet, the New Testament tells us that Joseph was also visited by an angel and told to marry her anyway. Some have hypothesized that Joseph himself was the one to impregnate her, while others proclaim it was a matter of promiscuity. Some have also tried to claim she was raped by a Roman soldier and even provided a name of one, but this story was likely concocted to discredit Jesus.
However, this miraculous origin story was not unheard of. In the Greek and Roman traditions, virgin births were common. Dionysos was the son of a virgin. Jason was the son of the virgin, Persephone. Plato’s mother, Perictione, was a virgin. Attis, a Phrygo-Roman god, was born to the virgin Nana. Even Emperor Augustus traced his lineage back to Romulus and Remus, Rome’s founders who were born by a god to a virgin priestess.
The Gnostic Gospels also highlighted the importance of another female figure from Jesus’ life, Mary Magdalene. In fact, one of these gospel’s authors, uncopied for almost two millennia, was named after, and maybe authored by Mary Magdalene. The Gnostic Gospels made Mary complex and spiritual, thereby making her controversial. However, what has been uncovered from the Gospel of Mary is still missing large portions as yet to be found and interpreted.
From what has been discovered, the account makes her central in the aftermath of Jesus’ passing. In Chapter 5, the grieving disciples turned to Mary to hear the words of Christ. She said, “What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you.” In Chapter 9, Peter asks, “Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?” Mary weeps at his doubt, only to be defended by Levi, who says, “Peter you have always been hot tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.” These and other parts of the text suggest that Mary was closer to Jesus than the male disciples.
A translation by the historian Elaine Pagels reads, “the companion of the [Savior is] Mary Magdalene. [But Christ loved] her more than [all] the disciples, and used to kiss her [often] on her [mouth]. The rest of [the disciples were offended] . . . They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’ The Savior answered and said to them, ‘Why do I not love you as (I love) her?’”
Was the idea of a female partner to Jesus too much? Or was Mary’s gospel and those of her supporters repressed because of the jealousy of the other disciples? Did Jesus truly love her more? Christian thinkers of the period created a landscape where obedience, self-abnegation, and perpetual remorse were the only acceptable attitudes for women. Why?
Early Christian leaders certainly held women in some contempt. Saint Paul, who spread the faith in the first century, wrote the most quoted line to silence and subordinate women in 1 Corinthians 14:34: “Women should keep silent in the churches, for they are not allowed to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. But if they want to learn anything, they should ask their husbands at home. For it is improper for a woman to speak in the church.” Paul was writing his letters to Christians in Rome and Corinth with advice on how to avoid being slaughtered by the pagan Roman majority. Romans were very patriarchal compared to the early Christians, so what Paul was saying can be interpreted to mean that women should keep quiet in church in order to help the Christian minority stay “under the radar,” and keep them safe. Regardless, the effect was that a lot of people interpreted it to mean that Paul wanted women to remain silent.
Others would be far more direct in the condemnation of women. Another prominent Christian thinker, Tertullian, said: “The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times so it is necessary that the guilt should live on also. You are the one who opened the door to evil, you are the one who plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the one who deserted the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not strong enough to attack. All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man. Because of your deception, that is, death, even the son of God had to die.” Tertullian's philosophy and obsession with women’s subjugation became common by the Medieval Era. Popular literature portrayed women as subversive and connected to the wild forces of nature. Men became suspicious of women’s sexuality and fought to suppress it. Once again, sex for women was supposed to be just about reproduction.
The myth of Adam and Eve as justification for female subordination led historian Rosalind Miles to assert that it was “the single most effective piece of enemy propaganda [...] Eve did not fall, she was pushed.” Certainly its repetition among early modern writers and the continued denial of women’s education supports this.
The two Marys with central roles in the New Testament were stripped of their substance and became known not for their spirituality and guidance of Jesus, but for their sexuality. There was Mary the impossibly virgin mother and Mary the whore. The fact that information was withheld or forcibly repressed reveals the greatest error in traditional history: we disproportionately attribute achievement to men because of a lack of sources about and by women. Women were generally not taught to read and write so they could not leave source documents. Women were confined to households so they did not contribute to public discourse. This suggests that it was impossible for women to create sources, not that women’s writings were repressed.
Gemälde mit dem Titel „Die betende Jungfrau“
Gemälde mit dem Titel „Die Bekehrung der Maria Magdalena“
Selbstverleugnung (Subst.), die Verleugnung, Demütigung oder Erniedrigung des eigenen Selbst.
Subversiv (Adj.) , darauf ausgerichtet, ein etabliertes System oder eine Institution zu untergraben.
Gemälde mit dem Titel „Die büßende Magdalena“
Verbreitung des Christentums
Trotz der Angriffe auf den Beitrag von Frauen zum Glauben widmeten sich Frauen in den Jahrhunderten nach Jesu Tod der Verbreitung des Christentums. Wie Jesus selbst, der für seinen Glauben am Kreuz starb, nahmen viele frühe Christen, darunter auch Frauen, seinem Beispiel nach und starben freiwillig den Märtyrertod. Zwei Jahrhunderte nach Jesu Tod lebte Perpetua, eine 22-jährige Adlige und stillende Mutter. Ihre Sklavin Felicity war schwanger, als beide in Karthago in Nordafrika wegen ihrer Konversion zum Christentum verhaftet wurden. Im Gefängnis verfasste sie einen Bericht, der allgemein als historisch anerkannt ist und somit der älteste erhaltene Text einer christlichen Frau darstellt. Perpetua beschrieb die Angst, die sie durch die Trennung von ihrem noch nicht entwöhnten Kind empfand, wie ihr heidnischer Vater sie wiederholt bat, ihrem Glauben abzuschwören, und wie sie schließlich mit ihrem Kind wiedervereint wurde. Als sie wieder stillen konnte, sagte sie: „Sofort ging es mir gut […] plötzlich war das Gefängnis ein Palast für mich.“ Doch ihre Liebe zu ihrem Kind schwächte ihren Entschluss nicht. Sie, Felicity, und mehrere männliche Konvertiten hielten an ihrem Glauben fest und wurden zum Tode durch Angriffe wilder Tiere verurteilt – eine gängige Strafe im alten Rom. Zwei Tage vor der Hinrichtung gebar Felicity eine Tochter, die von anderen Christen adoptiert wurde, was sie als Wunder betrachtete. Sie hatte befürchtet, ihre Schwangerschaft würde sie daran hindern, mit ihren Freundinnen den Märtyrertod zu erleiden, da das römische Recht die Hinrichtung einer schwangeren Frau verbot. Doch selbst in der Arena wurden die Frauen von den Männern getrennt, damit ein weibliches Tier, eine „wütende Kuh“, die Frauen töten konnte.
Gemälde mit Darstellung des Martyriums von Perpetua, Felicitas, Revocatus, Saturninus und Secundulus
Klöster
Eine weitere Möglichkeit, wie Frauen dem frühen Christentum dienten, bot sich in Klöstern. Klöster und Nonnenklöster waren in ganz Europa verbreitet, und bereits im 4. Jahrhundert übernahmen Frauen ähnliche Aufgaben wie ihre männlichen Kollegen (spirituelle Unterweisung, Gebet für die Gemeinschaft, Pflege von Kranken und Armen), allerdings meist unter männlicher Aufsicht nach dem 7. Jahrhundert. In den Klöstern wurden Frauen Gelehrte, nachdem sie Keuschheit gelobt hatten, kümmerten sich um Bedürftige und entsagten ihrem weltlichen Besitz. Indem sie ihr Leben Gott widmeten, eröffneten sich ihnen Alternativen zur Mutterschaft und zum Dienst im Haushalt. Nonnen dieser frühen Zeit lebten oft länger als verheiratete Frauen, da Geburten eine der häufigsten Todesursachen für Frauen in der Vormoderne waren.
Klöster stürzten das Patriarchat nicht um, boten aber jahrhundertelang Zuflucht davor. Dennoch waren ihrer akademischen und spirituellen Macht Grenzen gesetzt. Nonnen, die die patriarchale Machtstruktur vergaßen oder sich ihr widersetzten, wurden bestraft, insbesondere während der Reformation in Europa. Im England des 17. Jahrhunderts beispielsweise wurde eine Nonne, die eine Schule für junge Mädchen gründen wollte, in einer fensterlosen Zelle eingesperrt. Als zwei andere Nonnen auf den Straßen zu predigen begannen und gefragt wurden, wer ihr Ehemann sei (also wer ihnen die Erlaubnis dazu gegeben oder für sie verantwortlich sei), antworteten die Frauen: „Wir haben keinen Ehemann außer Jesus Christus.“ Der Bürgermeister beschimpfte sie daraufhin als Huren und befahl dem Polizisten, sie auf dem Marktplatz auszupeitschen, bis ihnen das Blut den Rücken hinunterlief.
aufgeben (v.) , formell erklären, dass man auf (einen Anspruch, ein Recht oder einen Besitz) verzichtet.
Constantine
Schließlich spaltete sich das Römische Reich in zwei Teile: das West- und das Oströmische Reich. In Rom fasste das Christentum in einem von Krieg, Bankrott und Unruhen geprägten politischen Umfeld allmählich Fuß. Der oströmische Kaiser Konstantin I. (oder der Große) forderte religiöse Toleranz für alle Glaubensrichtungen und gab die geplünderten christlichen Kirchen den Gläubigen zurück.
Konstantin war der erste römische Kaiser, der das Christentum annahm und sich 312 n. Chr. sogar selbst bekehrte. Die römischen Traditionalisten waren entsetzt über seine Konversion und seine zunehmend tyrannische Herrschaft. Er setzte Terror ein, um Konversionen zu erzwingen und seine Macht zu sichern, was das zerfallende Reich kurzzeitig wiedervereinigte. Konstantin berief außerdem das Konzil von Nicäa ein, eine religiöse Versammlung, die über das Schicksal der Marien entschied, indem sie den Kanon der in die Bibel aufzunehmenden Texte heilig erklärte und alle anderen als Ketzerei verwarf.
Heidnische Schriften und Glaubensvorstellungen ereilte letztlich dasselbe Schicksal. Eine Gruppe namens Parabalani operierte im gesamten Reich als im Wesentlichen christliche Terroristen und verfolgte Nichtgläubige. Nach Konstantins Tod bestieg Theodisius I. den Thron, erklärte das Christentum zur Staatsreligion und ermächtigte die Parabalani und Bischöfe, jüdische und heidnische Tempel und Götzenbilder zu zerstören .
Hypatia und Maria
Ancient Egypt had a long tradition of polytheism and a caste of female-priestesses under the goddess of the alphabet and library. Egyptians in the early centuries saw notable women scholars emerge such as Hypatia and Maria of Alexandria.
Maria, for example, founded theoretical and experimental alchemy and invented tools used by modern chemists around the third century CE. Little is known about her because none of her original philosophical writings exist. Some scholars believe she may be more than one woman. It is possible there were multiple Marias or that women later assumed her name for her notability.
In Hypatia’s case, her accomplishments are well documented by primary sources. Her resistance to the dominant culture and her defiance of Christianity led to her demise in the early fifth century CE. She was brilliant and noted by her contemporaries for her intellectualism. She was the only woman to hold a position as an academic at Alexandria’s university and did so wearing the same robes as the male scholars. Historian Socrates Scholasticus described her, saying, “On account of her self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in coming to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.”
Hypatia’s high profile proved to be problematic for the newly-formed Christian church. Historian Joshua Mark explained that her “charisma, charm, and excellence in making difficult mathematical and philosophical concepts understandable to her students [...] contradicted the teachings of the relatively new church.” Hypatia’s world became the center of a religious conflict that disrupted the religious syncretism of the Roman Empire and ultimately cost her life.
Alexandria became a hotbed for the conflict when Cyril became the Christian bishop and a more moderate Christian, Orestes, was appointed the lesser title of prefect. Cyril expelled the Jewish population and destroyed pagan temples, images of their gods and goddesses, and documents, an act that infuriated Orestes. He wrote to the bishop in opposition, which resulted in a multi-year political confrontation. Over time, Cyril fueled Christians’ fear by turning on Hypatia, one of Orestes greatest supporters, using her pagan beliefs and unnatural position as a famous woman scholar to condemn her. Much later, the story was dramatized by John of Naikiu to emphasize her wicked qualities. He wrote, “She was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her satanic wiles. And the governor of the city [Orestes] honored her exceedingly for she had beguiled him through her magic.”
A sympathetic Socrates Scholasticus wrote,
Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal [...] and dragging her from her carriage [...] stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs [...] and there burnt them [...] surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort.
The ancient historian, Damascus, told a much different - though no less horrifying - version of the story. He said that the Christian bishop was so shocked when he arrived in Alexandria by the throngs of people coming to listen to a woman that he immediately began to plan her murder. He said,
This information gave his heart such a prick [...] So next time, when following her usual custom, she appeared on the street, a mob of brutal men at once rushed at her—truly wicked men ‘fearing neither the revenge of the gods nor the judgment of men’ – and killed the philosopher [...] while she was still feebly twitching, they beat her eyes out [...] and as a result they laid upon the city the heaviest blood-guilt.
Other accounts say that the parabalani pulled her from her carriage and murdered her with oyster shells.
Whatever the details of her horrible demise, Hypatia’s essential crime was being an educated woman allied with Orestes in opposition to the fanatic Christians in Alexandria. None of the opponents who faced death for their pagan or Jewish beliefs died in such a way. Orestes himself, the person standing in Cyril’s path, merely disappeared. Had he been a woman, would he have met the same gruesome fate?
Following Hypatia’s murder, the school closed, and Hypatia’s writings were destroyed as heresy. Cyril was elevated to sainthood and Hypatia was forgotten until the Renaissance reignited European interest in the bygone knowledge.
Islam
Judentum und Christentum breiteten sich über Jahrhunderte hinweg weltweit aus, veränderten sich und passten sich an. Im 7. Jahrhundert erreichte der Kampf um den Monotheismus mit der Entstehung des Islam auch die Arabische Halbinsel. Diese Religion, deren Lehren durch den Propheten Mohammed offenbart wurden, begann als monotheistische Tradition, die das Heidentum ablösen und den Glauben an den einen wahren Gott als Höhepunkt der jüdischen und christlichen Traditionen vollenden sollte.
Da das Christentum zunächst die Lehren, (männlichen) Propheten und Geschichten des Judentums übernommen hatte, bevor es sich abspaltete, um den Lehren Christi zu folgen, den es nicht nur als Sohn Gottes, sondern auch als seinen wichtigsten Propheten ansah, übernahm der Islam alle männlichen Propheten und Geschichten des Alten (jüdischen) und Neuen (christlichen) Testaments und betonte die neuen Lehren Mohammeds als des wichtigsten Propheten. Er folgte auch der jüdisch-christlichen Tradition, Gott oder Allah – ein Wesen jenseits menschlicher Kategorisierungen wie Geschlecht – mit männlichen Pronomen zu bezeichnen, was viele dazu veranlasste, sich Gott als männlich vorzustellen.
Abschluss
Weltweit spielten Religionen eine entscheidende Rolle bei der Gestaltung der kulturellen und religiösen Strukturen, die das Leben von Frauen prägten. Die iranische Schriftstellerin und Frauenrechtlerin Azam Kamguian ging sogar so weit zu behaupten: „Religionen gehören zu den ältesten und hartnäckigsten Hindernissen auf dem Weg zur Gleichberechtigung und Freiheit der Frauen. Religion ist in der Tat der Feind der Frauen, und es liegt in der Natur aller Religionen, […] auf vergangene Zeiten und überholte Werte zurückzublicken.“
In ganz Afro-Eurasien und sogar in den altamerikanischen Zivilisationen – die sich ohne afro-eurasischen Kultureinfluss entwickelten – wurden geschlechtslose oder zweigeschlechtliche Götter durch einen allmächtigen männlichen Sonnengott ersetzt, was die militärische Gesellschaft widerspiegelte, in der sie lebten. Bis heute ist die Rolle der Frau in den monotheistischen Traditionen ein heftig umstrittenes Thema. Wir ermutigen Sie, diese Glaubensrichtungen neu zu entdecken und die Frauen zu finden, deren Geschichten jahrhundertelang vernachlässigt oder gar ausgelöscht wurden.
Welche Rolle spielten Frauen in den Anfängen dieser Traditionen, und wie haben sie diese in den Jahrhunderten seither geprägt? Wie erlangten Frauen trotz offizieller Doktrin Handlungsfähigkeit? Wie beeinflussten diese Glaubensrichtungen den Alltag weiblicher Anhängerinnen? Ist der monotheistische Gott, wenn wir die Fakten betrachten, wirklich so männlich, wie es die patriarchale Tradition uns glauben machen will? Und welche Rolle spielten die Nonnenklöster im Widerstand gegen die männliche Führung?
