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All Lecture Notes Religions and Gender (G_BATRSAL054)
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This is a summary of the course Religions and Gender by Lourens Minnema. The summary contains all the notes from the lectures.
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Lecture 1: Male and female role models and stereotypes in ancientnarratives (09.01.23)
Topic
Male and female role models and stereotypes in ancient narratives: mythological and legendary
couples and gender differences in
- the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic (Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Ishtar)
- Homer’s Odyssey epic (Odysseus and Penelope)
- the Hindu Mahabharata epic (Nala and Damayanti, Yudhisthira and Draupadi)
- the Hindu Ramayana epic (Rama and Sita)
Readings
- Gilgamesh epic plot summary
- Homer’s Odyssey epic plot Odysseus and Penelope testing each other
- Nala and Damayanti plot summary (Mahabharata 3.50-80) (hand-out)
- Ramayana and Mahabharata plot summaries (Hillary P. Rodrigues, Introducing
Hinduism. New York/London: Routledge, 2006, 136-153, Chapter 7: The Epics)
- Ria Kloppenborg, “Female Stereotypes in Early Buddhism: The Women of the
Therigatha,” in: Ria Kloppenborg and Wouter J. Hanegraaff, Female Stereotypes in
Religious Traditions. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995, 151-169
Guiding questions
- (Ria Kloppenborg) Which ambiguities play a role in the female stereotypes of early
Buddhism, and how exactly? Please, include specific examples.
- (Optional: van Es) How do Dutch and Norwegian women with a Muslim background
respond to which stereotypes, and why exactly?
Starting notes
● Guiding questions are part of the written exam
● Write extensively on the answers - show that we are familiar with the issues
● Thematically divided, not per religion
● Gender: set of social roles that a culture presumes, can differ per culture as it is about a
set of social roles that a culture prescribes as having to abide by. Each culture has their
own way of defining gender
● Download all the articles per week otherwise they will be deleted off of canvas
● Not interested in the facts, but the issues (what is at stake) - then we add the facts, so
we still need to know where the issue was and where it came from, but the core issues
are what will be raised during the exam
● “What exactly are the social roles attributed by a culture to either males or females, does
it only apply to people or also to gods)
Gilgamesh epic
● This is the oldest epic, oral and then clay tablets
, ○ Someone sent to humanise or domesticate Enkidu, who is a wild man, this is
done by a prostitute → she has intercourse with him and then civilises him
○ He gets very upset when hearing about Gilgamesh (the king of the city), as he
violates whoever he wants (before #metoo) → he wants to interfere, so they
wrestle and then become friends because they wrestle
○ They go off to be macho heroes, Humababa the tree/forest spirit is the target of
this (Uruk is without wood, its low riverside, and therefore they need to go far and
wide to collect wood)
○ The sun god Shanash helps them, because otherwise the air god (Enlil) is
fighting against them as he is helping Humbaba
○ Goddess Ishtar then is horny for them and asks Gilgamesh to marry her, which
he rejects → she is very angry and upset, calls in her dad, he sends the bull of
heaven to fight Gilgamesh, but the 2 men fight the bull and win
○ Gods decide to punish them, 1 should die, they select Enkidu and he actually
dies. Gilgamesh is ofcourse upset, but we’re not sure if its about the reality of
death or just the fact his friend died.
○ He wants to become immortal, and goes on a journey to the ends of the world.
Meets Unapishtim (?) who survived the flood, so clearly he knows about
immortality. Then he meets the innkeeper, who tells him not to strive for
immortality and to concentrate on the pleasures of this world.
○ Unapishtims wive is helpful and recommends he looks for the plant of immortality,
that way he can restore his youth (but a snake steals it → etiologically explain
how snakes restore their skin).
○ Recognises he has to come to terms with his own mortality, through the city of
Uruk
● There are technical differences between versions. There are older and younger versions
→ through this we can see if the topics are dealt with differently.
○ First versions: Gilgamesh is king and hero
○ Second versions: he becomes a human being who is partly mortal (as he has
divine and human origins → hence why he is the hero)
○ Third versions: added tablets 6 and 12, where ancient wisdom is added
○ Narrative (Jakobson): Gilgamesh aspires to immortality (the one based on fame),
the death of Enkidu (immortality in terms of fame is destroyed, but still don’t
accept death), try again, try to become physically immortal (fails as well), then
have to face that you lost your old values, so have to look for a different shade of
immortality (the cultural king of the city)
● Ishtar (goddess of sex, war, fertility)
○ Makes marriage proposal, which Gilgamesh refuses → it’s a long speech on why
he is breaking it off, but it has a structure
■ Third section: Gilgamesh starts to recount the previous lovers of Ishtar,
“I’m not going to walk into that trap”, it all ended badly for the others
● It goes from forces and nature to familiar and human (goes from
nature to culture, wilderness countryside city, universal vague to
particular)
, ● Ishtar was in conversation with the gardener
○ Then the nature of the proposal, motivation for proposal and refusal aren’t the
clearest (why refuse a goddess)
■ He will be powerful, but only in the afterlife when he is dead and buried,
so be her spouse in the afterlife. But he doesn’t want to die yet
■ Ishtar is linked to death and fertility and loss of fertility in different stories
● When she doesn’t get her way she turns to the bull of heaven
(means fertility), she herself is the embodiment of fertility
● Ishtar’s dealings with Gilgamesh and the bull, is about the fertility
(both female and male form) → the divine force of fertility in male
and female forms
■ If he goes ahead with Ishtar, it is about dying, not a gender battle but a
battle between life and death and nature vs culture
● What Ishtar has to offer is fertility vs infertility → she wants to
increase her own fertility by marrying Gilgamesh and get his fruit
or seeds
■ If gilgamesh culture vs ishtar represent nature, then culture refuses the
conditions of nature → at this stage, the culture of Uruk, the urban culture
of civilised life in a city has reached the kind of self confidence that
refuses to live by the conditions of nature OR culture no longer belongs to
nature as a part of it, culture is stepping back from nature, no longer
belonging to nature, it’s in a position to say no, culture is not nature (you
have to take measures to civilise or domesticate nature
● Represents a shift from hunter gatherer to agricultural
society
○ Gilgamesh becomes more human, which mean that different topics become
important → Gilgamesh no longer taking the role of a god, but by playing the role
of a human being (mortal being), acts different to a divine being, if you reject the
proposal, you choose the human side over the god side
● Women in general
○ Images of women in the Gilgamesh epic, women become good guys if they are
supportive of guys, otherwise they are irrelevant
○ Symbolic inversion (status or role reversal)
■ Gilgamesh is very fond of his mom, she’s the only one he’s nice to, no
one else he cares about
○ Shamchat: prostitute who doesn’t act like a prostitute, she’s a working woman
who supports herself, and usually she’d be shunned and seen as someone who
will ruin relationships, but here she is the only one who raises the child Enkidu.
As a prostitute, her sexuality or job is not related to nature, but to culture, it is a
sign of culture (seen as pretty sophisticated here). She is the one who is able to
make Enkidu sophisticated, as she is halfway between the city and wilderness
○ Siduri: she is a tavern keeper, she is an independent working women and
therefore suspect as well
, ○Ishtar: violence, war, etc. nothing feminine about the way she is a goddess (role
reversal, but not because she wants to be a man, but she behaves according to
the natural force not social roles (sex, war, fertility, etc) → a goddess embodies
the forces of nature, not reflecting women in society
● Enkidu and Gilgamesh
○ Pretty gay lmao, homosexuality was known
○ Physical beauty is only stressed for these 2 men, not for the women
○ The metaphors used is like what we would expect for a heterosexual couple (hair
like a women, veiling like a bride, etc)
○ The latest authors of the epic reject the behaviour of these 2 men, Gilgamesh
should finally grow up is the reasoning, he behaves like an adolescent, he goes
around experimenting but he should get properly married → Gilgamesh doesn’t
live up to his role until he returns to Uruk
○ Intimate bond between 2 fighters (i.e. Achilles and Patroclus), 2 males behaving
in a masculine way in times of war
Mahabharata epic
● Framework:
○ There is a conflict about the succession to the throne, 2 branches to the family
(names), they both want the throne, but the Kharabas occupy the throne at the
expense of their cousins. The Phandavans should be on the throne. But the
challenge is that the rightful guys should take over. The mediator in the conflict is
Krishna, so they have to be on both sides (but Krishna is on the side of the
rightful heirs) → but he has another agenda
○ Krishna is a mediator in the conflict, he will become the charioteer of ?, but he is
also the god Krishna, which is the incarnation of the god Vishnu. Vishnu only
appears when the new world order comes into being → and the current world
ordr has to be replaced by a civil war between the two. So Krishna doesn’t just
wish to mediate or take sides, but there’s a cosmological agenda, and the god
has to replace this world with an entirely new world
○ The god Krishna has to make sure that the conflict on earth escalates, so that it
can be replaced (his cosmic agenda). This world is ruled by a lack of moral order
(dharma), it’s a world order that is no longer functioning (the bad guys are on the
throne)
○ On the level of society we’re looking at “what is dharma?”. The epic never gives
a conclusive answer.
○ Instead of a war they have a game of dice, whoever wins gets the throne.
Draupadi is married to 5 good guys and is involved in this game of dice.
● The game of the dice
○ Practically, it’s considered a skill to be good at it, including the ability to cheat.
The guy who plays on behalf of the bad guys is highly skilled, but the good guy is
incompetent in this game. He has a weakness that is typical of the age of the lack
of moral order. He is addicted to the game of dice, so he cannot refuse.
○ There are 4 ages, and the scheme is that the 4th age is the age of … the bad
age, the number 1 of the dice. The whole universe is represented in the dice
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