“There was therefore no inevitability in the emergence of an all­ male priesthood. The prolonged ideological struggle of the Hebrew tribes against the worship of Canaanite deities and especially the persistence of a cult of the fertility-goddess Asherah must have hardened the emphasis on male cultic leadership and the tendency toward mysogyny, which fully emerged only in the post-exilic pe­riod. Whatever the causes, the Old Testament male priesthood rep­resented a radical break with millennia of tradition and with the practices of neighboring peoples. This new order under the all-powerful God proclaimed to Hebrews and to all those, who took the Bible as their moral and religious guide that women cannot speak to God.”

—  Gerda Lerner

The Creation of Patriarchy, ch. 8, pp. 178-179
The Creation of Patriarchy (1986)

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Gerda Lerner 3
Austrian-American women's history scholar 1920–2013

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