Top Highlights

• Illustration 27: Michelangelo: God the Father and the Sophia, Sixtine Chapel. Orthodox Judaism in biblical or talmudic times was to develop an entirely patriarchal image of God. This exclusive concept of a universal male and abstract Deity was gradually to take root in  the popular consciousness, and it led to the construction of a society on a pat...
• The patriarchal religious tradition, of course, saw the promised messianic figure as a male. The same was true in Asia, where spiritual authority is held by men (the Brahmins, guardians of Hindu orthodoxy, for instance, and the Buddhist monks). Zoroaster and the tradition of Mazda in ancient Iran announced the coming of Saoshyant, the holy warrior ...