Our Father, Who Art Our Mother :  The (Open) Secret Queer History of God.  Michelangelo’s iconic God the Father image, painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, draws on the Hebrew Bible’s patriarchal God tradition. In Deuteronomy 32:6 Moses explicitly refers to God as “your father” (avicha).

God the Father is front and center in Jewish and Christian liturgy. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Jews direct their prayers to “Our Father, Our King” (Avinu malkenu). The Christian prayer “Our Father, Who Art in Heaven” (Pater noster qui es in caelis)—otherwise known as the Lord’s Prayer—was declared by Tertullian “the summary of the whole gospel.”

And yet the Hebrew Bible tells us this same God “convulsed in labor for you,” “gave birth to you,” and “suckled you” (Deuteronomy 32:13 and 18). Such contrasting images—of Divine Father and Divine Mother, just a few lines apart—suggest a dual-gendered deity. Why has no one written on this before?

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