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SHEKINAH

Dan Brown attempts to tie his "secret knowledge" to early Judaism with this shocking statement: "Admittedly, the concept of sex as a pathway to God was mind-boggling at first. Langdon's Jewish students always looked flabbergasted when he first told them that the early Jewish tradition involved ritualistic sex. In the Temple, no less. Early Jews believed that the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple housed not only God but also His powerful female equal, Shekinah. . . . The Jewish tetragrammaton YHWH—the sacred name of God—is in fact derived from Jehovah, an androgynous physical union between the masculine Jah and the pre-Hebraic name for Eve, Havah" (p.309, DVC).

Such concepts sound scholarly when spoken by a fictional Harvard professor of symbology. They can also be misleading when they come from the pen of someone who is trying to rewrite history to claim that God is pleased by the pagan practices of ancient fertility cults.

But according to Harper's Bible Dictionary, the term Shekinah has a very different biblical origin and meaning. "Shekinah (she-kī'nuh), a Hebrew word from the root 'to dwell' that is translated as the 'Presence' of God. God's Shekinah is not a being or reality separate from God (despite the positions of Philo [late first century BC to first century AD] and Maimonides [AD 1135-1204]) but a title for and designation of God in post-Old Testament writings, especially in His presence among humans and in the world. The Targums (Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) often avoid anthropomorphisms and substitute Shekinah for 'God.' Rabbinic literature refers to God's Shekinah in a variety of contexts. God's presence was seen in the cloud that led the Israelites in the desert and in the tent of meeting in the desert. The Priestly writer's word for the tent of meeting, the mishkan or 'tabernacle,' comes from the same root as Shekinah. The glory of God, which filled the Temple, was his Shekinah and when the Temple was destroyed, God's Shekinah left the Temple. In one tradition the Shekinah returns to heaven, but in another it remains in the Western (or Wailing) Wall of the Temple Mount. Rabbinic traditions conceive of God's Shekinah as omnipresent, but as especially present in Israel, and in the post-Temple period, in synagogues and houses of study." (p.938, Harper's Bible Dictionary).

At no time does the Bible refer to Shekinah as God's powerful female equal. That is a Dan Brown invention.