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From: krshane@aol.com (KRShane)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.kali.astarte.inanna,alt.pagan,alt.religion.wicca,alt.mythology,talk.religion.misc,alt.religion.all-worlds
Subject: Re: CDeville: Astarte
Date: 3 May 1996 20:48:52 -0400
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Yah. Two big USENET boo-boos in one. Continuing a cross-post (defense:
most of the groups *do* seem relevant, and I've seen comment on this
thread in/from several of them) and not quoting (come on - hacked to death
already). So:

Summary: we are disagreeing on whether the "Great Goddess" theory of
common origin as applied to the crypto-Assyrian goddess Astarte and the
Hebrew/Semite goddess Astoreth is "true". Bad Question. Deponent sayeth
not. We have no primary sources to go on that have not been subject to
extensive post-facto analysis that is inevitably done through the lens of
the 6000-plus years between any actual primary worshippers of either
Goddess. However, the central claim of most of the better *scholarship* on
early Goddess worship is that the figure of the Goddess *as
symbol/archetype* is so similar in a vast variety of cultures and eras
that one can posit a basic human *experience* that gives rise to belief in
a Goddess figure, and further that cultures of common biological,
geographic, and cultural heritage will evince this archetype in forms that
are in essence "the same Goddess". I don't think it's credibly deniable
that Astarte and Astoreth, from what we know of them (damned little,
really) were similar enough, and followed by sufficiently similar
cultures, that they can be considered as possible "twins". Anything more
than that is thealogy - and notoriously difficult and unrewarding to
pursue in terms of "evidence" and "proof".

Just my $0.50
"This is the weather the cuckoo likes, armored division submissive to  
vernacular the world into a gambling birdhouse velocity."
_____________________________________________________________________
W. Mark Woodhouse - Pagan - Traveller - Flirt - Freelance Philosopher