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novel: shining ones

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This post is so I can keep talking about my plans for the trilogy The Shining Ones—books tentatively entitled Abraham's Daughter, Mary Mary, and Fatimah the Blessed—without distracting from the conversation in the locked community post where the subject came up. Also so anybody who thinks I'm fucking up with my plans can tell me, so I can change my plans.

So. Arcade Fire's "Abraham's Daughter". How would that prominent female character changing the Akedah affect the history of Judaism? SJ Tucker's "Mary Mary". How would additional prominence to Mary of Nazareth and Mary of Magdala, subsequent to the changes in Judaism of that era, affect the history of Christianity? And I can't not do Islam, that wouldn't be fair, so how would additional prominence to Muhammad's daughter Fatimah and his wives Khadijah and Aisha, subsequent to the changes in Judaism and Christianity of that era, affect the history of Islam? Then, how would the changes in all three religions affect the world of today?

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Hello and welcome to theology braindump! Here's hoping something is helpful.

I suppose you have the answer the first question before you even know what you'd be starting from in the second and third, right? XD So I'm looking at the lyrics and I think where I'd start is what are you envisioning happening on the mountain with Abraham and Isaac? I could interpret that as her stepping in basically in place of the angel, and I could also interpret it as her offering herself to the angel for slaughter in Isaac's place.

Everything I've read about Abraham suggests he was strongly attracted to monotheism (like the story about him smashing the idols in his father's shop) so I almost want to suggest we'd have ended up with a Judaism where the Daughter took the place of YHWH, perhaps with YHWH taking an almost Demiurge-like role, with the whole rewritten to where YHWH and his Daughter are playing tug-of-war for the souls of their Chosen People? Or if you want something a little subtler maybe she takes the role that's sometimes given to the Holy Spirit of calming YHWH and convincing him to relent and forgive his people their transgressions, perhaps resulting in a ditheistic instead of monotheistic religion?

Once I know where you want to take Judaism and whether you plan to make any major alterations in the history, I think I'd be better able to make suggestions for the later books. (Would you put the Daughter in place of Christ, completing the sacrifice of Isaac with very different implications? Would you keep Christ and have the Daughter incarnate as Mary Magdalene? Or would she be disincarnate and influencing events in some other manner?)

That opens up all sorts of new and interesting avenues of exploration. I was thinking she'd stay purely human, and the angel would say she'd passed the test and Abraham hadn't (and also give her a damn name), and I'd ponder further implications after reading moar history and moar debate about the Akedah. But I really like your ideas.

I like the idea of her passing the test and Abraham not (especially when you remember that the story is held up throughout ancient Israelite culture as Why Human Sacrifice Is Bad And We Don't Do It, which makes me go o.O when I think about how Abraham was going to do it and would have if God hadn't stopped him). One of the things that fascinates me about the Hebrew Bible (that I think Christians would do better if they remembered) is how often even God's chosen people screw up. A lot of the time, it isn't God working through them as God working in spite of them. Just because one of the Patriarchs did it doesn't necessarily mean we're supposed to approve of it, and the text sometimes makes that clear.

(I have a whole rant about Jacob supplanting Esau and all the treachery there, courtesy of a Confirmation class I taught on the subject once and later got called in to the lead pastor's office for a lecture on why lying and cheating and manipulating are OK if it's all part of God's plan and obviously if the promise continued through Jacob then God must have wanted him to do it all along. And since he was my boss there was a limit to how long I could argue with him and list counter-examples. Judah and Tamar, anyone? David and Bathseba?)

Definitely a lesson Christians should keep in mind, I think. Thanks!

I like the idea of this being all part of a test for both her and Abraham. That'd be considerably different than I was picturing, but it has some interesting implications of its own.

I'm not so sure if Abraham was so much strongly monotheist as he was henotheist; certainly, until very late Israel and Judah were henotheistic, not monotheistic; that is, they believed multiple gods existed, but only worshipped the one. And from what I recall, the dualism of God/the Devil is mostly a Christian thing, when they slapped pagan theology onto Jewish holy texts. And isn't the Demiurge out of Greek philosophy? As to "the Holy Spirit" calming YHWH, that presupposes two things: first, that YHWH spends a lot of time angry and needing to be propitiated, which is much more of a Christian assumption than a Jewish one, I believe. It's part of what happens when you separate God into three pieces and one of them (Jesus) is explicitly all about forgiving; then one of the others needs to be seen as angrier to compensate, and once Christians had decided Jews were Evol it was a good "justification" for prejudice--not only were Jews Christ-killers, they worshipped the angry god of the Old Testament! The other thing about the Holy Spirit calming YHWH is that the Holy Spirit being separate from the Father/Creator is also a product of Christianity; in the Hebrew Bible, the spirit is "ruach elohim," "the breath of God." It's not separate from the Creator, it's a part of the Creator that gets sent out into the world.

Henotheistic is probably a better choice historically than monotheistic, though there are plenty of people who will argue that he was monotheistic.

The dualism is not inherent in ancient Judaism and, yes, the Demiurge is Greek/Gnostic, but I'm positing what might have resulted if there was this second being, the Daughter, who stepped in to save Isaac, who (based on my interpretation of the song) is somewhat at odds with her Father and what influence that might have had on the development of a religion based on Abraham's beliefs and experiences. Such a religion would likely be very different precisely because the mercy of Isaac's life being saved wouldn't have come from the Father, but instead from the Daughter.

I think it's likely that something similar to the dualism that you discuss emerging from the separation of Christ from Creator would result if we had a Daughter who was separate from her Father, who was seen to be working at cross-purposes from him, and who intervened to stop an act of sacrifice that is otherwise, in our own timeline, viewed as YHWH's mercy or abhorence at human sacrifice. We'd be taking that mercy away from him at the very beginning of the religion and assigning it to someone else, which I think would have to completely reshape the way the Creator is viewed.

In fairness, I didn't go into very much of an explanation, but I hope this better outlines my POV? If you still think I'm wrong, I'd love to discuss more. (Assuming the OP doesn't mind.)

I see where you're coming from, but even positing that the daughter is some sort of semi-divine being (or perceived as such) there's no particular reason to believe that this would necessarily shove Judaism closer to Greek philosophy (especially considering that they had little/no contact with Greece and the gnostic stuff comes from a later era). Cultures don't usually develop nearly that parallel unless there's cross-polinization going on. I would think that such a thing would send them in a different direction more inherent to Jewish culture and thought, or at least borrowing from Sumerian (where Abraham came from) or Canaanite (where they lived at the time) theology instead. But I don't know enough Jewish philosophy, let alone Sumerian or Canaanite, to figure out what they'd do instead. I just know that your suggestion feels very inauthentic to me because I know it's borrowing from Greek ideas very heavily.

The dualism of Father/Son in Christianity, and the dualism between God and the Devil, are because within the first generation the vast majority of the Christian church were gentiles, not Jews, and they spoke Greek and read the Scriptures in Greek and if they were educated, were educated in Greek philosophy. So of course when they were trying to figure out how all the pieces fit together they used Greek philosophical concepts to explain things. Without that group of Greek-educated people interpreting the scriptures and forming the basis of Christian thought, would we have come to believe as we have? Probably not. But now we are so steeped in the concepts they created and adapted that we take it as normal and obvious.

Go for it!

I am not so sure there would be changes because of Abraham's daughter; societal structures are very good about absorbing stories like that and co-opting them into supporting the kyriarchy. Think of what happened to the Virgin Mary. In Luke, she's spouting revolutionary ideology, and in John she's ordering Jesus (whom she knows is the Son of God) to turn water into wine even when he says he doesn't want to--and he does it. How is she remembered for most of Christian history? "Meek and mild." o.O

Speaking of women and women's stories being forced out, there are many other examples of it throughout the history of Christianity, women who were prominent in the Bible being marginalized and fit into boxes. (The worst example being Junia, whom you will today find people who believe she was a man, because there couldn't possibly be a female apostle, oh noes.)

But the more details that are recorded about any one woman, the harder it is to sideline her.

I wonder: part of the sidelining was when people got confused over names or lack thereof, and merged several women in their heads. Which is how Mary Magdalene got assumed to be a prostitute; they confused her with Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, and then with the unnamed woman in Luke 7 (who washed Jesus' feet just like Mary the sister of Martha did in John) who was called a sinner.

If there weren't so many women called "Mary" or left unnamed, what impact would that have had? If it was harder to confuse or conflate the women around Jesus, what effect would that have?

Ooh, that last is a very good point.

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