And, in the episode "Did God Have a Wife?", Ms. Stavrakopoulou puts together three implications from the 2008 Nova program: the link between Canaanite theology and Israelite theology, the implication that Israel was really a subset of Canaanite polity and that the Israelis re-invented themselves during the Babylonian Exile, shedding their Canaanite roots and becoming truly monotheistic only on The Return.
What the Nova program hinted at she makes explicit. Especially in terms of the mechanism that shed Canaanite polytheism's nascent gender equality in favor of Patriarchal male dominance, affecting Judaism, Christianity and Islam not for the better.
On a broader note: the mid-first millennium B.C. seems to be a watershed for such transitions: conservative Rome beginning to overshadow liberal Etruscan culture, the Greeks evolving into elitist patriarchies, Egypt floundering. Fertile ground for a history PhD dissertation.
What the Nova program hinted at she makes explicit. Especially in terms of the mechanism that shed Canaanite polytheism's nascent gender equality in favor of Patriarchal male dominance, affecting Judaism, Christianity and Islam not for the better.
On a broader note: the mid-first millennium B.C. seems to be a watershed for such transitions: conservative Rome beginning to overshadow liberal Etruscan culture, the Greeks evolving into elitist patriarchies, Egypt floundering. Fertile ground for a history PhD dissertation.
