Ishtar

Ishtar

A multifaceted goddess, Ishtar takes three paramount forms. She is the goddess of love and sexuality, and thus, fertility; she is responsible for all life, but she is never a Mother goddess. As the goddess of war, she is often shown winged and bearing arms.

Ishtar (the word comes from the Akkadian language; she was known as Inanna in Sumerian) was the first deity for which we have written evidence. She was closely related to the bonds between communities. Ishtar's symbols were the the lion, the morning star, and eight or sixteen pointed stars—which are symbols of power. The word Easter may have come by by way of other languages like the German Eostre, the goddess of the dawn.

It is not the name and symbols but the function, purpose, and methods that distinguish these goddesses. Ishtar , who was the partner of Dumuzi (Tammuz), was worshiped as the goddess of fertility care. She was considered to be a "tutelary deity" of social justice and social welfare.

Ishtar (Inanna) was one of the older known tutelary goddesses of Mesopotamian cities, along with Nisaba, Ezina, and Nanshe of Uruk, (see Sumer). An essential civil power to operate those social welfare systems came from her father, Enki who granted her tutelary powers under his civil authority.

As a protector and benefactor of various disadvantaged groups, such as orphans, widows or people belonging to indebted households.

This was done through what we would call today a civil bureaucracy in the Mesopotamian city-state. In the administrative text found in Sumer we see the temple of the goddess Nanshe who was also a tutelary goddesses listing grain rations for a widow alongside that grain meant for Nanshe's clergy who administered to these needy.

Gods of Socialism

The Mesopotamian systems of government were systems of "theocratic socialism. The center of these systems was their government temples which provided a wide range of services including public works like dikes and irrigation canals which were financed by contributions of the people in the form of investments or taxation.

Like the temples of Pharaoh's Egypt they also provided and distributed food supplies which were divided among the needy which was all managed by a powerful class of bureaucratic priests.

The model of these proto-states was that of the modern systems of legal charity through forms of public religion. Pure Religion created similar social bonds but only through freewill offerings. These systems were rejected and condemned by men like Moses of Exodus and Jesus and his followers of The Way. These systems of welfare were a snare and a trap according to David and Paul because they were considered to be covetous practices run by men who exercise authority one over the other and therefore idolatry.

Many modern governments where power is increased or centralized because the masses who become accustomed to the welfare of state and its forms of civil religion funded by compelled contributions of its registered members with the promise of entitlements providing some form of free bread or social welfare or what has been called the dainties of these rulers.

The alternative was a network of fervent charity which was promoted by Moses and Jesus the Christ which sets the captive free rather than the Legal charity of the state which degenerates the masses and subjecting them in a snare of bondage while empowering rulers and tyrants.

Augustus Caesar expanded if not singularly instituted a similar system of free bread in Rome through its government temples which led to its decline and fall.

In more modern times FDR set up his New Deal and LBJ his Great Society which is presently leading to the same degeneration of the people and a corresponding decline of social bonds and fall of "Pure Religion" and loss of liberty.