Nothing seems more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

David Hume

Was Mary Israel, Bride of God? 1

Israel Personified as a Woman
The Hierogamos or Sacred Wedding
The Song of Songs

Abstract

In Jewish tradition, the bridegroom is God and the bride or the children of the bridechamber are the children of Israel. God and Israel are betrothed or married. Essenes did not permit divorce at all, so God could not divorce his bride, Israel. Yet pious Jews despaired that Judaea was ruled by Rome, a Satanic power, and so the bride was unfaithful and unfit for marriage. God was staying away from the Bridal Chamber—the Holy of Holies of the temple. When Jesus called the Jews, “this adulterous generation”, he was not accusing them all of committing adultery, but was using the hierogamos metaphor to declare Israel unfit for God. The bride had been illegally taken by another, Rome, and Jesus and the Nazarenes wanted to recover the virtue of Israel by liberating Jerusalem. Then the marriage could go ahead, and the gates of the kingdom would open.

Israel Personified as a Woman

Israel is often personified as a woman in the scriptures, a fact that has a bearing on several incidents in the gospels. Among instances are:

And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
Isaiah 1:8

As yet shall he remain at Nob that day: he shall shake his hand against the mount of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem.
Isaiah 10:32

For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.
Jeremiah 4:31

Therefore thus saith the Lord; Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things: the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing.
Jeremiah 18:13

The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.
Lamentations 1:15

What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?
Lamentations 2:13

Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies.
Micah 4:10

Thus saith the Lord, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry. (Israel seems to be depicted here as male then female—significant?).
Jeremiah 31:2-4

Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps: set thine heart toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest: turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities. How long wilt thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? For the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man. (Note that this seems to link with the previous passage quoted (Jer 31:2-4) where Israel is first a man then a woman. Whatever the meaning of the passage, it seems likely that the Essenes interpreted it as the dissolution of the female sex into the sexless, but apparently male beings, angels. In other words it was an indication that heaven and earth would join and those, the Elect, who survived into the kingdom of God would become angels—a new thing in the earth (angels visited the earth from heaven but they were not in the earth meaning of its natural inhabitants).)
Jeremiah 31:21-2

Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him.
Isaiah 62:11

And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds; for he shall uncover the cedar work. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.
Zephaniah 2:14-15

Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord.
Zechariah 2:10

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.
Zechariah 9:9

Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. (God is Israel’s husband).
Jeremiah 31:32

The Hierogamos or Sacred Wedding

All the religions of the ancient near east had a common culture of religious events (S H Hooke, Myth and Ritual, 1939). It involved the death and resurrection of the god, the creation myth, a ritual combat in which the god defeats his enemies, the sacred marriage of the god to the goddess representing the people, and a triumphal procession in which the images of the gods are revealed and carried to or from their temples for purification, and the king played the role of the god, as his regent on earth. Its purpose was to ensure order, and fertility in the coming growing season. Christians can hardly deny the similarities with Christianity, the rituals and myths of which also involve the incarnation, death and resurrection of a god, a belief in him as the creator of everything, his triumph over an enemy, his marriage with his people, the Church, and a fondness for religious processions in which images or symbols of their god are carried in public.

Von Soden (The Ancient Orient ) deduces that even early on in the ancient near east monogamy was the norm. As early as the third millennium, marriages by purchase had been abolished. Some kings had special houses for their wives, and so were not monogamous, but the legal provision for a man to take a concubine, usually a slave, under certain circumstances shows that ordinary men could legally only have one wife. Even the gods were monogamous, and the ceremony of the hierogamous or sacred marriage was widespread and popular. Dr Theodore H Robinson—cited by Claude Chevasse, The Bride of Christ, (1939)—notes the evidence that a divine marriage was celebrated in Judah. In Jewish tradition, the Bridegroom is God, the Bride is the land of Israel, and the Children of the Bridechamber are the Children of Israel. God and Israel are betrothed or married. So:

For thy Maker is thine husband; the Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall he be called.
Isaiah 54:5

Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.
Jeremiah 3:14

Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.
Isaiah 62:4-5

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.
Isaiah 61:10

And in that day will I make a covenant for them… and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me for ever. Yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord.
Hosea 2:18-20

>As the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.
Isaiah 62:5

It was part of the cycle of agricultural feasts and would have been done at one of the equinoxes, in the autumn when the rains came, or in the spring at the harvests. In Egypt, and perhaps Mesopotamia, it was timed for the flooding of the rivers which brought moisture and fertile mud to the fields. The Jews held it when the first rains were due in the autumn.

The Song of Songs

Canticles or The Song of Songs, a poem of human love, not obviously a lofty religious work, most likely is the relic of a cycle of ritual wedding songs, used in a religious sense because Jews had sung them in the ceremony of the betrothal of God. Theophile J Meek (cited in Chevasse) says it was a collection of the liturgy of the worship of the resurrection and hierogamos of Tammuz, who was the original dying and rising god of the ancient near east. His bride was Ishtar who had rescued him from Hades and then entered into the divine love match with him, the sacred signal for seasonal growth of vegetation to begin. Canticles has many unusual Hebrew words and phrases best explained as having a Babylonian source. The risen God—equal to Tammuz—had the title, “the Beloved”, and it is the goddess—equal to Ishtar—who is “the Lover”. Tammuz was the Shepherd God, symbolic of nature and the bucolic life, just as Pan was in classical mythology. Meek considers that much of the shepherd symbolism of patriarchal religions comes from their dependence on the original worship of Tammuz, perhaps at first by primitive herdsmen or shepherds and then by the early agricultural communities. In the corresponding cults of Adonis and Aphrodite in Cyprus and Biblos, the mourning was for seven days, and the resurrection and reunion was on the eighth.

Meek identifies “the Beloved” in Canticles as Dod, the god of Beersheba. Dod is David, a god mentioned at Elephantine about 400 BC, and is cognate with Dido, the “Wandering Ishtar”, the Tyrian moon goddess, identified with Elissa, the legendary founder of Carthage. Thus, in late Persian times in Yehud, Dod was perhaps “The Beloved” and Dido “The Lover”, becoming the basis of the Canticles. Dido, having founded Carthage, threw herself on a pyre rather than be obliged to marry the local king, having sworn never to marry again.

Dodo appears as the name of three men in the Jewish scriptures, and Dodai, which also appears, seems to be one Yehouistic form of the same name, and Dodavah or Dodavahu is another one. The use of Vahu for Yahu, identifies Yahu with the Persian wind God, and this man comes from Mareshah, a remarkably Persian sounding place! Dothan is a town with a related name evidently related to this same god.

“My beloved”, in Hebrew, is “yadid” whereas, in Song of Songs, it is Dodi. The distinction is apparent in this further piece of biblical nonsense:

Now I will sing to my Beloved [yadid] a song of my Beloved [dodi] concerning His vineyard. My Beloved [yadid] has a vineyard in a fruitful horn.
Isa 5:1

In the Aramaic version of the Jewish scriptures, Dodi is not translated. It was thought of as a proper name. In the Canticles, the hero is not merely a shepherd because he has every delight and is a king. He is also called Shelma or Shelan, forms of Solomon. Solomon = David! The lover is called “The Shulamite”, also suggesting Solomon and also the Canaanite mother goddess, Shala. Shala speaks of her lost bridegroom, whom she was seeking, just as Ishtar sought the dead Tammuz.

The remaining character in the cast is the chorus, just as in Greek drama. They are “The Daughters of Jerusalem”. This chorus was a feature of the Tammuz liturgy, mourning with the goddess the death of the god, then rejoicing at his resurrection and hierogamos. Psalms 45 is another example of such a liturgy, the king and queen ritually dramatizing the god and goddess. Knowing all this, what is meant by:

There followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.
Luke 23:27-28

At the least, it shows the author of Luke knew the true context of the phrase from Canticles as appropriate in the context of the death of Jesus, and so he was drawing a plain parallel between Jesus and Tammuz! Later Rabbinic Judaism, after the revolt of Bar Kosiba, tried to hide all this as best it could, and the Rabbis from Akiba declared it to have been expressions of the love of Yehouah for Israel all along!

Page Tags: Jesus, Israel, Israel as a Woman, Bride of God, Bridegroom, History, Mary, Fasting, Persian Marriage, Bridegroom and Fasting, Divorce, Dead Girl, Menstrual Woman, Mysteries of Mary, Bride, God, Marriage

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.