Read Chapter 4: The Shekhina, in The Hebrew Goddess,by Raphael Patai.  Copy and paste the following questions to a new e-mail,answer them, then send to the Mystery School with the following subject line: Heb Gds 4 from ________(your magikal name).

Presvytera Deborah (TraceyDeb), who wrote the question sets for Chapters3 thru Conclusion, writes:

An interesting side note on this chapter: Some time ago, a Christian woman I know turned to me and said (out of the blue!), “Do you know they changed the Strong’s Concordance?” (The Strong’s Concordance takes every word from the Bible and traces it back to the original Hebrew or Greek word.)  I was puzzled.  She said, “In an older version of Strong’s it traces the word ‘helpmate’ (used in Genesis to describe the creation of woman) to a word that means ‘one who stands strongly against, one who stands in opposition’. The idea behind this seems to be that the woman needs to standup to the man as a strong, balancing force, not a wimpy mouse who acceeds to his every whim. But in the newer versions they changed it to say ‘someone who comes alongside to help’.” I cannot say whether this is true or not;my friend did not have her copy of the older version of the Strong’s Concordance to show me what she meant.  It does seem interesting that this chapter refers to Shekhina as a strong, opposing deity who takes man’s part, defending him against YHVH’s wrath.  Shekhina may be our example of the need for female strength to balance masculine strength. This may have been what was intended for women all along, but was literally lost in translation!

QUESTIONS:

1. What is the Shekhina?

2. What are the Talmud and Midrash?

3. T/F The term Shekhina does not occur in the Bible.

4. What trend led to the emergence of the Talmudic Shekhina?

5. What is the most frequently appearing of these entities?

6. T/F Wisdom is regarded as God’s wife.

7. In what translation of the Hebrew scriptures does the Shekhina first appear?

8. What does Shekhina literally mean?

9. Like Joseph’s body, the Shekhina is an ______________, _______________presence.

10. What caused Shekhina to go into exile?

11. What musical sound accompanies Shekhina’s movement?

12. T/F The Shekhina can rest upon idolators.

13. The Shekhina comes quite close in the Talmudic sources to being regarded as a ________________ __________________ of the deity.

14. T/F The plural concept of the godhead was considered heretical in Biblical times.

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