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NASB | Jeremiah 7:18 "The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Jeremiah 7:18 "The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods that they may offend and provoke Me to anger. |
Subject: shekina glory |
Bible Note: Excerpt from Maragret Starbird's THE WOMAN WITH THE ALABASTER JAR: "It was my love for Christ that led me to revisit the Gospel story in search of his lost Bride. Years of research had convinced me that the celibacy of Jesus was a false doctrine and that the interpretation of the New Testament needed to be revised to include his wife. But who was this wife, and why was she not mentioned in the Gospels? I wondered. What could have happened to her? According to Scripture, God's Messiah, the Anointed One, will give sight to the blind and cause the lame to walk; comfort the broken-hearted and proclaim liberty to captives; and set prisoners free and proclaim the day of God's favor. These messianic activities prophesied by Isaiah are recognized in the actions and miracles of Jesus in the Gospels. No mention here of bondage in heaven or on earth! The God of the Hebrew Scriptures did not wish his people to serve in bondage, but rescued them from slavery in Egypt and brought them home from captive exile in Babylon. Based on the New Testament texts, Christians are quick to claim that Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel, fulfilling ancient prophecies from the Scriptures, but they almost universally fail to mention the woman who anointed Jesus -- the woman with the alabaster jar who knelt before him, poured her fragrant unguent over his head, and dried her tears from his feet with strands of her hair. And yet the Hebrew word *messiah* literally means "the Anointed One." And, although the details vary a little, there is only one story of an actual anointing of Jesus recorded in the canonical Gospels of the Christian faith: an anointing by a woman at a banquet in Bethany! My research had shown me that in the ancient rites of the Near East, it was a royal bride who anointed the king. Together they embodied the Divine in a life-sustaining partnership -- the *hieros gamous*. My revised interpretation of the anointing scene from the Gospels outlined in _The Woman with the Alabaster Jar_ sheds new light on the dangerous fracture in Christian doctrine, providing a partnership model to transform Christianity at the threshold of the approaching third millennium. The anointing of Jesus in the Gospels is an enactment of rites from the prevailing fertility cult of the ancient Middle East. In pouring her precious unguent of nard over the head of Jesus, the woman whom tradition has identified with "the Magdalene" (meaning "the Great"!) performed an act identical to the marriage rite of the *hieros gamous* -- the rite of the anointing of the chosen Bridegroom/King by the royal representative of the Great Goddess! Jesus recognized and acknowledged this rite himself, in the text of his role as the sacrificed king: "She has anointed me in preparation for burial" (Mark 14:8b). Those who heard the Gospel story of the anointing at the feast in Bethany would certainly have recognized the rite as the ceremonial anointing of the Sacred King, just as they would have recognized the woman, "the woman with the alabaster jar," who came to the garden sepulchre on the third day to finish the anointing for burial and to lament her tortured Bridegroom. She found an empty tomb. Highlights of this story recounted in the four Christian Gospels are reminiscent of myths celebrated in pagan fertility cults of the Middle East, those of Tammuz, Dumuzi, and Adonis. In the pagan rituals surrounding the ancient myths, the Goddess (the Sister-Bride) goes to the tomb in the garden to lament the death of her Bridegroom and rejoices to find him resurrected. "Love is stronger than death" is the poignant promise in the Song of Songs and similar love poetry of the Middle East celebrating these ancient rites of the Sacred Marriage. " |