Academia is Getting Goddesses All Wrong
Today's scholars are missing the point on Asherah and the Dying and Rising Gods
I did a fun podcast criticizing the academic consensus on goddesses and the ubiquitous dying-and-rising god myths common across pagan mythology.
Today’s academics can see that there is a clear pattern to these resurrection myths, but they completely fail to make sense of what they are looking at, which is one big cross-cultural tradition of the Mother Goddess, the mother of the Biblical God.
The heart of my presentation was a slide deck prepared by noted Christian mythicist Dr. Richard Carrier, who has made a career arguing that Jesus probably did not exist as a historical person. Richard Carrier is an outspoken atheist and materialist who routinely debates Christian apologists. Let’s see if he is willing to talk to me.
Richard Carrier argues in part that the resurrection of Jesus is part of a broader pagan tradition of dying and rising gods, which is completely true, and he prepared an entire lecture on the subject. He pulls together all the correct evidence, but then completely misreads it.
I am not picking on Richard Carrier personally, I chose his slide deck because it accurately represents contemporary scholarship, and my criticism is with the academic consensus as a whole. Richard was kind enough to publish his slide deck, and it was useful for my purposes.
I want to thank Jacob Berman, host of the History Valley podcast, for giving me the opportunity to make my case. Jacob gets many of the top biblical scholars on his channel, and he has interviewed me many times since my book came out.
Most atheist scholars don’t want to talk to me, I don’t know why, but the response has been consistent ever since I started working on History of the Goddess in 2019.
It’s funny because I am highly educated and can defend my scholarship. I was at Cornell University for over a dozen years, I have two degrees, and was employed on the research staff. I have a technical career in clean energy and have worked with top-level experts all over the world.
But when it comes to goddess research, I can’t even get the academics to respond to my emails. I think their lack of response says more about their intellectual fragility than it does about the strength of my argument.
Dr. Richard Carrier, Dr. Dan McClellan, Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou, anyone listening?