Dan Brown and the Sacred Feminine, Part 3 (of 4)

This post continues a four day series showing how Dan Brown's assertions that the Old Testament of the Bible supports the worship of a female goddess are wrong. Each day's post is a small chunk of a complete article at my website at www.NewMediaMinistries.org Endnote references will appear at the end of the series.

Assertion 3: The Old Testament name for God proves they believed in the divine feminine.

Langdon to Sophie: "The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH-the sacred name of God-in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah." (Chapter 74, p. 309)


Brief Answer

Dan Brown, like all conspiracy theorists, is manipulating the letters of words to read into them what he wants them to mean. He does this with other words and phrases throughout the book. What he comes up with, though, is nonsense. The word Jehovah is a German transliteration of the Hebrew word, not the other way around. The next part of the nonsense is his "androgynous physical union between a masculine word and a female name." Think about it. That is nonsense. Did the words have sex or what? The fact is that Jah is simply an abbreviated form of Jehovah and is used mainly in the Psalms. So to say either Jah or Jehovah is to say the exact same thing. Finally, Jehovah does not derive from Eve's name. They both derive from a common word or family of words, the meaning of which I explain below in Appendix 1.

One God alone

At this point I would like to quote various Old Testament passages that make it clear that Judaism believed (and still does) in one God. There are no others. The very first of the Ten Commandments says: "You shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3) The Hebrew can also be translated "besides Me" as the New International Version indicates in a footnote. The second commandment elaborates this prohibition to worship other Gods (Exodus 20:4-6).

Deuteronomy 12:1 - 13:18 makes it very clear that Israel is to follow God alone. It warns that if a prophet, a dreamer (one who receives revelations from God through a dream), a family member, or even a whole town says, "Let us go and worship other gods...do not yield to him (e.g. 13:8)." They are even to be put to death! "It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere (13:4)."

I Kings 11:1 - 13 tells us how God forbade King Solomon (King David's son and successor) to worship or build alters to foreign gods for his foreign wives. Solomon did anyway, and God promised, "I will most certainly tear the kingdom away from you and give to one of your subordinates...tear it out of the hand of your son." (which He did)

In the time of the prophet Jeremiah (627-586 B.C.E) , some of the Jews were worshipping a goddess referred to as Queen of Heaven (see 7:18, 44:17). She was called Ishtar by the Assyrians and Astarte or Ashtoreth by the Canaanites.⁴ But this and the worship of other gods and goddesses was a chief reason God punished the southern kingdom (Judah). In 586 the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and took thousands into captivity.⁵

The whole Bible, Old and New Testaments alike reflect and bask in this monotheism.

Tomorrow I will:

Provide the conclusion to this series, a list of endnote references, and an Appendix which explains more about the Hebrew name for God "YHWH'"

What do you think?