처녀와 창녀

Virgin and Whore: The Ideology of the (Holy) Virgin in Western Culture

Even though it is not only woman who had blood and flesh, it is not only woman who has sexual intercourse, and it is not only woman who gives life and its consequent death, the tendency to see woman as a transmitter of sexuality and death have kept producing the cult of virgin and whore in which almost all women are considered "whores." This bifurcation and dichotomy of woman as virgin and whore played a significant role in formulating the idea of immaculate conception of Jesus Christ and later that of Maria's. Many scholars have pointed out that "parthenos" in the Greek Old Testament was a mistranslation of the Hebrew word "almâ" which means simply an unwedded woman. In the ancient times, however, the meaning of the virgin, was different than one thinks of today. Virgin was "not a maiden inviolate"(Gaddon 191) and virginity meant spiritual and religious fertility which transcended beyond carnality and sin. It is my argument here that the Greek translation of "parthenos" is a partially correct or expanded one of the Hebrew word "almâ," if it is not the exact one. Sometimes, the idea of a virgin was expanded to the one including "sacred prostitute" of Babylonian or Canaanite culture. Ishtar or Astarte, Artemis or even Athena were praised because they personified generous and unlimited love. Are not our mothers pure and sacred even if not biologically virgin? We come to understand that the immaculate conception of Jesus Christ is not irrelevant and somehow related to the story of the Babylonian and Greco-roman virgin-goddesses and the Hellenistic idea of the visitation of male gods upon many goddesses and women. What does matter is not the idea of immaculate conception itself but its ideological misuse and abuse. The cult of virgin and whore produced a simultaneous praise and despise of women, and finally propagated a gender-biased idea that women are vessels for evil, chaos, and death. The problematic notion of the immaculate conception and its logical offspring, the Trinity, however, could be understood and valid only if it is accepted as a part of a universal myth of parthenogenesis and trinity of everyone. W hat is important is not whether we are born of a virgin, but whether we are all children of God regardless of one's religion. Jesus says, "In your Scriptures doesn't God say, 'You are gods? You can't argue with the Scriptures, and God spoke to those people and called them gods"(John 10:34-35).