jesusthespun3

The family is based on the matrilocal, blood-kinship groupings of early humans, which are based on the matrifocal organizations of primates. Primate social organizatioin is designed, and functions, to benefit females and "their" offspring. Amongst primate groups, the male tyrannos is nominal leader, but invariably serves at pleasure of the collective adult females. If he fails to serve the wishes of the females, they mass and drive him from the group, often killing him.

Did Jesus teach that the blood kinship system of the family was the way to salvation? Hardly. Yet his modern "spokespeople" assure us that humanity cannot survive without it.

Jesus taught that while one should respect the assistance provided by one�s blood kin, that while one�s personal mother and father indeed should be honored, the family itself was a prison, to be abandoned and transcended in place of a far more inclusive version of �family values.� Jesus taught likewise that the State was corrupt and wicked, and that its institutions and policies were not only a-masculine, but anti-masculine, and counter to the will of god.

Nothing has changed in two millenia. The very persons, groups and institutions waving the banner of Jesus in our faces, bristling with moral certitude and ready to cage us to prove it, are the very entities of unconsciousness and selfishness that Jesus preached against so long ago.

Here is a smelly, wild-eyed male, unattached to wife, nation or religion, running around the landscape barking about how brotherhood was the only hope for saving not only humanity, but the entire world, and how the Father wanted this, and the Father said that, and promising the Kingdom of heaven. Compare these sentiments with the status of fatherhood in modern America.

In the same way we are now told that America is a �patriarchy,� a cabal of (mostly white) males gathering to plot and execute a �war on women� and to serve men�s every interest, we are assured that the socio-political milieu of Jesus was likewise patriarchal. Rome at that time was supposedly the epitome of patriarchy. In fact, however, it was a pseudo-theocracy of emperors, a fledgling attempt at masculinity barely removed from queen-appointed kingship. "Patriarchy," such as it was, had long ago passed its zenith in Greece under Solon.

Kingship appointed by a queen, or by an inner circle of women, was a transitional form of social organization between the matriarchates and the upstart �patriarchies.� Moreover, the power of the feminine in Rome was considerable, not only through political instruments like the Vestals, but in the stronghold of Roman matrons, the home. Frazer, Bachofen, Briffault and other classical scholars demonstrate these points exhaustively and convincingly.

The second �patriarchal� mileau in which Jesus operated was Judaism. With its political element forced underground by Roman occupation, the religious and social expression of Judaism was intense, and surprisingly diverse, during the life of Jesus. Here again we are told of a male-dominated culture � why, the very word �patriarchy� derives from the male leaders of the Hebrew Tribes, the patriarchs.

Yet here was this derelict, abrasive, angry, fire-mouthed male running around the desert, going off on everybody about the essential elements of masculinity � brotherhood, fatherhood and kingship � and about how these elements were either absent from, or corrupted by, the culture. Jesus was as alienated from the Hebrew Temple as he is from the agendas of modern Christianity. He was the over-turner of the tables, the rebel par excellance. If the institutions, values, and mindsets of Jesus� time were truly patriarchal � truly a case of men dominating and oppressing women � then why wasn�t this dissenter proclaiming the need for sisterhood and a stronger role for the mother? Why did he hammer constantly on bringing an abstracted, alienated fatherhood from �heaven� down to the material realities of Earth? Why did he insist that humanity�s liberation lay in brotherhood?



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