Merlin Stone

Merlin Stone (born September 27, 1931 in Brooklyn, New York; died February 23, 2011) was an author, sculptor, and professor of art and art history. She is best-known for her book, When God Was a Woman.

Biography

Merlin Stone became interested in archaeology and ancient religions from her study of ancient art. She taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo. From 1958 to 1967 she worked as a sculptor, exhibiting widely and executing numerous commissions.^[1]

She spent a decade on research before writing the book published in the UK as The Paradise Papers and then in the U.S. as When God Was a Woman (1976). It describes her theory of how the Hebrews suppressed goddess worshipping religions practiced in Canaan and how their reaction to what she asserts as being the existing matriarchial and matrilineal societal structures shaped Judaism and, thus, Christianity.^{[citation needed]}

Her other major work, Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, collects stories, myths, and prayers involving goddess-figures from a wide variety of world religions, ancient and otherwise. Stone's hypotheses are radical and challenging to the accepted views of antiquity. She is the author of numerous short stories, book reviews, and essays, including 3,000 Years of Racism.

Stone's book When God Was a Woman had a profound effect on the emerging Goddess Culture of the 1970s and 1980s in the US.

Books

• The Paradise Papers: The Suppression of Women's Rites
• When God Was a Woman
• Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood
• Ancient Mirrors of Womanhood, Volume 2
• 3000 Years of Racism

References

1. ^ According to the author's information on the 1976 Harcourt edition of When God Was a Woman.

External links

• Merlin Stone – official website

Persondata
Name	Stone, Merlin
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Date of birth	September 27, 1931
Place of birth
Date of death	February 23, 2011
Place of death