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91-534: As a neologism, the term derives from two Greek words: thea , θεά , meaning 'goddess', the feminine equivalent of theos , 'god' (from PIE root *dhes- ); and logos , λόγος , plural logoi , often found in English as the suffix -logy , meaning 'word, reason, plan'; and in Greek philosophy and theology, the divine reason implicit in the cosmos. Thealogy has areas in common with feminist theology –

182-523: A prophetess . Later, church president Joseph F. Smith (a nephew of Joseph Smith) explained his own belief that "God revealed that principle that we have a mother as well as a father in heaven to Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith revealed it to Eliza Snow Smith, his wife; and Eliza Snow was inspired, being a poet, to put it into verse." A companion hymn "Our Mother in Heaven" was published in the church's Juvenile Instructor four decades later. The doctrine

273-607: A "reflection on the divine in feminine and feminist terms" appeared in To Make and Make Again . By this time, the concept had gained considerable status among Goddess adherents. Situated in relationship to the fields of theology and religious studies , thealogy is a discourse that critically engages the beliefs, wisdom, practices, questions, and values of the Goddess community, both past and present. Similar to theology, thealogy grapples with questions of meaning, include reflecting on

364-606: A Heavenly Mother nor stating that her existence is too sacred to discuss, several factors may influence the current trend that sees even a mention of Heavenly Mother as treading on forbidden ground. Members take their cues about what is acceptable doctrine from talks of General Authorities and official church manuals and magazines". These materials rarely mention Heavenly Mother directly. The publicly discussed church discipline of feminists like Lynne Kanavel Whitesides , Maxine Hanks , Janice Merrill Allred , and Margaret Toscano, all of whom were disciplined in part for statements related to

455-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

546-479: A beloved daughter of heavenly parents, with a divine nature and eternal destiny." Other references to heavenly parents can be found in Latter-day Saint speeches and literature. In 2015, an official essay was published on the church website which surveyed 171 years of statements about a Mother in Heaven and confirmed that it is part of church doctrine. Various LDS Church leaders throughout the history of

637-461: A children's book that discusses Heavenly Mother. Krishna said in an interview, "We all know that we have a Heavenly Mother. There’s no reason not to talk about this, and to celebrate what we know." Krishna pushed back against the idea of sacred silence by saying, "Not once ... did a general authority ever say that we cannot speak of her because of her supposedly fragile nature. She is a goddess in might and dignity. And to consider her otherwise, I think,

728-489: A divine purpose, such as to avoid drawing attention to her and to preserve the sacredness of her existence. In 1960, an LDS seminary teacher published in a Mormon encyclopedia that "the name of our Mother in Heaven has been withheld "because of the way God the Father's and Jesus Christ's names have been profaned. Margaret Merrill Toscano writes that "[w]hile no General Authority has made an official statement denying belief in

819-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

910-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

1001-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

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1092-556: A man and woman?' Most certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself ... I must believe that deity consists of a man and woman." This notion was reaffirmed by later church leaders Hugh B. Brown , James E. Talmage , Melvin J. Ballard , and Bruce R. McConkie . Some Mormon feminists have adopted the practice of praying to the Heavenly Mother. However, LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley opposed this practice, saying that Mormons should not pray to

1183-437: A secluded spot Joseph laid down on his back and stretched out his arms. He told the brethren to lie one on each arm, and then shut their eyes. After they had prayed he told them to open their eyes. They did so and saw a brilliant light surrounding a pedestal which seemed to rest on the earth. They closed their eyes and again prayed. They then saw, on opening them, the Father seated upon a throne; they prayed again and on looking saw

1274-430: Is a bridge between matriarchal studies and thealogy. Contemporary thealogians include Carol P. Christ , Melissa Raphael, Asphodel Long, Beverly Clack, Charlotte Caron, Naomi Goldenberg, Paul Reid-Bowen, Rita Nakashima Brock, and Patricia 'Iolana. At least one Christian theologian dismisses thealogy as the creation of a new deity made up by radical feminists. Paul Reid-Bowen and Chaone Mallory point out that essentialism

1365-469: Is a problematic slippery slope when Goddess feminists argue that women are inherently better than men or inherently closer to the Goddess. In his book Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality , Philip G. Davis levies a number of criticisms against the Goddess movement, including logical fallacies , hypocrisies , and essentialism. Thealogy has also been criticized for its objection to empiricism and reason . In this critique, thealogy

1456-547: Is also attributed to several other early church leaders. According to one sermon by Brigham Young , Smith once said he "would not worship a God who had not a father; and I do not know that he would if he had not a mother; the one would be as absurd as the other." Polygamy has played an important part in Mormon history and multiple Mormon denominations have teachings on the existence of a polygamous Heavenly Father married to multiple Heavenly Mothers. Brigham Young taught that God

1547-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

1638-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

1729-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

1820-477: Is disrespectful to Her." Though LDS Church president Gordon B. Hinckley has said the prohibition on praying to Heavenly Mother in no way "belittles or denigrates her", some feel that it makes her seem less important than Heavenly Father. Others assume that both heavenly parents are equally important and expect that more will be revealed when humanity is ready. Mormon fundamentalists believe that Heavenly Father has multiple wives, and that although humankind shares

1911-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

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2002-593: Is seen as flawed by rejecting a purely empirical worldview for a purely relativistic one. Meanwhile, scholars like Harding and Haraway seek a middle ground of feminist empiricism. Artist Edwina Sandys ' 250-pound (110 kg) bronze statue of a bare-breasted female Crucifixion statue, Crista , was removed from the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine at the order of the Jesus Suffragan Bishop of

2093-841: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Heavenly Mother (Latter Day Saints) In

2184-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

2275-708: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

2366-735: Is taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the Restoration Church of Jesus Christ , and branches of Mormon fundamentalism , such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints . The doctrine is not generally recognized by other denominations within the Latter Day Saint movement, such as the Community of Christ , where trinitarianism is predominant. In

2457-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

2548-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

2639-628: The Episcopal Diocese of New York during Holy Week in 1984. The bishop accused the Cathedral Dean of "descrating our symbols" even though viewer reaction had been "overwhelmingly positive." In 2016, Sandy's Crista was reinstalled at the cathedral, on the altar, as the centerpiece of the "groundbreaking" The Christa Project: Manifesting Divine Bodies. The Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York wrote an article for

2730-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

2821-570: The Latter Day Saint movement , Heavenly Mother , also known as Mother in Heaven , is the mother of human spirits and the wife of God the Father . Collectively Heavenly Mother and Father are called Heavenly Parents . Those who accept the Mother in Heaven doctrine trace its origins to Joseph Smith , founder of the Latter Day Saint movement. The doctrine became more widely known after Smith's death in 1844. The Heavenly Mother doctrine

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2912-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

3003-642: The 1979 book Changing of the Gods , Naomi Goldenberg introduces the term as a future possibility with respect to a distinct discourse, highlighting the masculine nature of theology. Also in 1979, in the first revised edition of Real Magic , Bonewits defined thealogy in his Glossary as "Intellectual speculations concerning the nature of the Goddess and Her relations to the world in general and humans in particular; rational explanations of religious doctrines, practices and beliefs, which may or may not bear any connection to any religion as actually conceived and practiced by

3094-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

3185-478: The Church 5:254, quotes Smith as saying: "Come to me; here's the mysteries man hath not seen, Here's our Father in heaven, and Mother, the Queen." In addition, a secondhand account states that in 1839, Smith had told Zina Diantha Huntington , after the death of her mother, that "not only would she know her mother again on the other side, but 'more than that, you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother,

3276-541: The Divine Father." Apostle John A. Widtsoe , a contemporary of Roberts, wrote that the afterlife "is given radiant warmth by the thought that ... [we have] a mother who possesses the attributes of Godhood." In 1894, Juvenile Instructor , an official publication of the LDS Church, published a hymn entitled "Our Mother in Heaven". A 1925 First Presidency statement included the lines "All men and women are in

3367-580: The Eternal Father and Mother", now used as the lyrics in the Latter-day Saint hymn " O My Father "), which acknowledged the existence of a Heavenly Mother. The poem contained the following language: In the heavens are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare. Truth is reason: truth eternal tells me I've a mother there. When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by, Father, Mother, may I meet you in your royal courts on high? Some early Mormons considered Snow to be

3458-569: The Father had a plurality of wives," and that after her death, Mary (the mother of Jesus) may have become another eternal polygamous wife of God. One scholar interpreted a 1976 LDS manual as alluding to this teaching. Author Carol Lynn Pearson stated that a seminary teacher from her youth fervently taught that there were multiple Heavenly Mothers. Another denomination, the Apostolic United Brethren , believes in multiple Mothers in Heaven. Orson Pratt , an early apostle of

3549-485: The Father was polygamous, although teachings on Heavenly Mothers were never as popular and disappeared from official rhetoric after the end of LDS polygamy in 1904 (although existing polygynous marriages lasted into the 1950s). Top leaders used the examples of the polygamy of God the Father in defense of the practice and this teaching was widely accepted by the late 1850s. Apostle Orson Pratt taught in an official church periodical that "We have now clearly shown that God

3640-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

3731-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

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3822-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

3913-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

4004-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

4095-580: The Heavenly Mother because Christ instructed his disciples to address the Heavenly Father in their prayers. When a feminist professor was fired from Brigham Young University in the 1990s, it was revealed that one of the reasons was her public advocacy of praying to Heavenly Mother. Other Mormon women have been excommunicated for similar publications such as teaching that Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost . One early authoritative statement from

4186-460: The Heavenly Mother, may add to the general sense that discourse about her is strictly forbidden. However, Brigham Young University professor David L. Paulsen has argued that such a belief finds no official backing in statements by church leaders, and that the concept that the Heavenly Mother is consigned to a "sacred silence" is largely the result of a relatively recent cultural perception. In 2016, McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding wrote

4277-456: The LDS Church has formally denounced since the 1970s the Adam–God doctrine as taught by Young, today this statement is doctrinal only to certain groups of Mormon fundamentalists .) Young also preached that resurrected "eternal mothers" would "be prepared to frame earths like unto ours". Susa Young Gates , a daughter of Young and a women's rights activist, stated that the "great Heavenly Mother

4368-465: The LDS Church, opposed worshiping a Heavenly Mother, because, he reasoned, like wives and children in any household, Heavenly Mother was required to "yield the most perfect obedience to" her husband. Early leader George Q. Cannon thought that "there is too much of this inclination to deify 'our mother in heaven ' ", arguing that she is not part of the Godhead and that to worship her would detract from

4459-497: The LDS Church, the doctrine of "Heavenly Mother" or "heavenly parents" is not frequently discussed; however, the doctrine can be found in some church hymns and has been briefly discussed in church teaching manuals and several sermons. The theological underpinnings of a belief in Heavenly Mother are attributed to Joseph Smith, who shortly before his death in 1844 outlined a controversial view of God that differed dramatically from traditional Christian consensus. Smith's theology included

4550-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

4641-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

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4732-421: The belief that God would share his glory with his children and that righteous couples might become exalted beings, or gods and goddesses, in the afterlife. Although there is no known record of Smith explicitly teaching about Heavenly Mother, several of Smith's contemporaries attributed the theology to him either directly, or as a natural consequence of his theological stance. An editorial footnote of History of

4823-418: The cathedral's booklet stating, "In an evolving, growing, learning church, we may be ready to see 'Christa' not only as a work of art but as an object of devotion, over our altar, with all of the challenges that may come with that for many visitors to the cathedral, or indeed, perhaps for all of us." This exhibition of more than 50 contemporary works that "interpret – or reinterpret – the symbolism associated with

4914-481: The church have spoken openly about the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother. Brigham Young stated about Adam and Eve: "I tell you more, Adam is the father of our spirits ... [O]ur spirits and the spirits of all the heavenly family were begotten by Adam, and born of Eve. ... I tell you, when you see your Father in the Heavens, you will see Adam; when you see your Mother that bore your spirit, you will see Mother Eve." (Since

5005-534: The context of God and gender within Paganism , Neopaganism , Goddess Spirituality and various nature-based religions. However, thealogy can be described as religiously pluralistic , as thealogians come from various religious backgrounds that are often hybrid in nature. In addition to Pagans, Neopagans, and Goddess-centred faith traditions, they are also Christian , Jewish , Buddhist , Muslim , Quakers , etc. or define themselves as Spiritual Feminists. As such,

5096-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

5187-543: The entire First Presidency on the subject is the "origin of man" letter on the 50th anniversary of Charles Darwin 's Origin of Species . The church also later implied the theology in the 1995 statement " The Family: A Proclamation to the World ", where the church officially stated that each person is a "spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents". Similarly, the 2019 version of the Young Women Theme reads, "I am

5278-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

5369-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

5460-535: The history of mankind is a testimony of the necessity for both man and woman." Author Charlotte Scholl Shurtz stated that the LDS Church's emphasis on Heavenly Parents as a cisgender, heterosexual couple excludes transgender, nonbinary, and intersex members and enshrines heteronormativity and cisnormativity . She further said that current teachings ignore transgender, non-binary, and intersex people, and further deny exaltation and godhood to non-cisgender individuals. Former BYU professor Kerry Spencer Pray stated

5551-553: The idea that a Heavenly Mother is too sacred to speak about in the LDS Church is culturally nonsense. Heavenly Mother is absent in the visionary experiences in Mormon scriptures . The only recorded visionary experience is related by Zebedee Coltrin and recorded in the journal of Abraham H. Cannon . One day the Prophet Joseph asked him [Coltrin] and Sidney Rigdon to accompany him into the woods to pray. When they had reached

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5642-486: The image of Jesus", in order to provide "an excellent vehicle for thinking about sacred incarnation, and one that reaches out to humans of all genders, races, religions and sexual orientations" included work by Fredericka Foster , Kiki Smith , Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Eiko Otake . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

5733-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

5824-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

5915-436: The main elements of thealogy within the context of Goddess feminism. She situates thealogy as a discourse that can be engaged with by Goddess feminists—those who are feminist adherents of the Goddess who may have left their church, synagogue, or mosque—or those who may still belong to their originally established religion. In the book, Raphael compares and contrasts thealogy with the Goddess movement. In 2007, Paul Reid-Bowen wrote

6006-618: The majority of its members". In the same glossary, he defined "theology" with nearly identical words, changing the feminine pronouns with masculine pronouns appropriately. Carol P. Christ used the term in Laughter of Aphrodite (1987), claiming that those creating thealogy could not avoid being influenced by the categories and questions posed in Christian and Jewish theologies. She further defined thealogy in her 2002 essay, "Feminist theology as post-traditional thealogy", as "the reflection on

6097-522: The meaning of the Goddess". In her 1989 essay "On Mirrors, Mists and Murmurs: Toward an Asian American Thealogy", Rita Nakashima Brock defined thealogy as "the work of women reflecting on their experiences of and beliefs about divine reality". And again in 1989, Ursula King notes thealogy's growing usage as a fundamental departure from traditional male-oriented theology, characterized by its privileging of symbols over rational explanation. In 1993, Charlotte Caron's inclusive and clear definition of thealogy as

6188-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

6279-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

6370-400: The nature of the divine, the relationship of humanity to the environment, the relationship between the spiritual and sexual self, and the nature of belief. However, in contrast to theology, which often focuses on an exclusively logical and empirical discourse, thealogy embraces a postmodern discourse of personal experience and complexity. The term suggests a feminist approach to theism and

6461-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

6552-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

6643-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

6734-451: The role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into the rich celestial air, because at that moment you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny." According to historian Linda Wilcox, Heavenly Mother "is a shadowy and elusive belief floating around the edges of Mormon consciousness". The lack of focused teaching and more information about her has caused speculation among Mormons that this de-emphasis may have

6825-469: The same Heavenly Father, they do not all share the same Heavenly Mother. The question of how Heavenly Mother is regarded ties into a larger set of questions among many Mormons about power in relationships between men and women. When asked why God said that Adam would rule over Eve, Hinckley said, "I do not know ... My own interpretation of that sentence is that the husband shall have a governing responsibility to provide for, to protect, to strengthen and shield

6916-657: The similitude of the universal Father and Mother. ... [M]an, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents . ... [and] is capable, by experience through ages and aeons, of evolving into a God." There has also been some more recent discussion of Heavenly Mother by LDS Church leaders. In a speech given at BYU in 2010, Glenn L. Pace , a member of the LDS Church's First Quorum of the Seventy , said, "Sisters, I testify that when you stand in front of your heavenly parents in those royal courts on high and look into Her eyes and behold Her countenance, any question you ever had about

7007-439: The spirit "was a child with his father and mother in heaven". The apostle Parley Pratt even taught in an official church periodical that God may have had multiple wives before Christ's time, and that after the death of Mary (the mother of Jesus) she may have become another eternal wife. In 1845, after the death of Smith , the poet Eliza Roxcy Snow published a poem entitled "My Father in Heaven", (later titled "Invocation, or

7098-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

7189-529: The study of God from a feminist perspective, often emphasizing monotheism. The relation is an overlap, as thealogy is not limited to one deity (in spite of its etymology); the two fields have been described as both related and interdependent. The term's origin and initial use is open to ongoing debate. Patricia 'Iolana traces the early use of the neologism to 1976, crediting both Valerie Saiving and Isaac Bonewits for its initial use. The coinage of thealogian on record by Bonewits in 1976 has been promoted. In

7280-493: The teachings on heterosexual, patriarchal Heavenly Parents alienates queer and single people like her, and that Heavenly Mother does not communicate with Her children, and is presided over by Her husband. Mormon scholar Margaret Toscano said LDS teachings frame Heavenly Mother not as an individual, but subsumes her into the Heavenly Parent patriarchal family. Authors Bethany Brady Spalding and McArthur Krishna argued that

7371-597: The term thealogy has also been used by feminists within mainstream monotheistic religions to describe in more detail the feminine aspect of a monotheistic deity or trinity, such as God/dess Herself, or the Heavenly Mother of the Latter Day Saint movement . In 2000, Melissa Raphael wrote the text Introducing Thealogy: Discourse on the Goddess for the series Introductions in Feminist Theology. Written for an academic audience, it purports to introduce

7462-441: The text "Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy", which can be regarded as another systematic approach to thealogy, but which integrates philosophical discourse. In the past decade, other thealogians like Patricia 'Iolana and D'vorah Grenn have generated discourses that bridge thealogy with other academic disciplines. 'Iolana's Jungian thealogy bridges analytical psychology with thealogy, and Grenn's metaformic thealogy

7553-473: The wife of your Father in Heaven ' ". In addition, members of the Anointed Quorum , a highly select leadership group in the early church that was privy to Smith's teachings, also acknowledged the existence of a Heavenly Mother. The Times and Seasons published a letter to the editor from a pseudonymous person named "Joseph's Speckled Bird", in which the author stated that in the pre-Earth life,

7644-471: The wife. Any man who belittles or abuses or terrorizes, or who rules in unrighteousness, will deserve and, I believe, receive the reprimand of a just God who is the Eternal Father of both His sons and daughters." Hinckley then went on to reaffirm the equality of men and women: "Each is a creation of the Almighty, mutually dependent and equally necessary for the continuation of the race. Every new generation in

7735-527: The worship of Heavenly Father. However, early 20th-century church leader Rudger Clawson disagreed, arguing that "it doesn't take away from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal Mother ... [W]e honor woman when we acknowledge Godhood in her eternal prototype." Some church leaders have interpreted the term "God" to represent the divinely exalted couple with both a masculine and feminine half. Erastus Snow , an early Mormon apostle, wrote " 'do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of

7826-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

7917-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

8008-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

8099-422: Was the great molder" of Abraham 's personality. "Gates speculated that Heavenly Mother has played a significant role in all our lives, looking over us with 'watchful care' and providing 'careful training. ' " Early 20th-century church leader B. H. Roberts pointed out that the Heavenly Mother doctrine presents a "conception of the nobility of women and of motherhood and of wife-hood—placing her side by side with

8190-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

8281-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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