The Virgin Goddess: Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology (Numen Book Series, 59)

The contemporary search for the feminine face of God is requiring a re-examination of the relationship of Christianity to the pagan world in which it came to birth. Stephen Benko approaches this study as both an historian and a Christian believer. Inquiring into extra-biblical sources of Marian piety, belief and doctrine, he proposes 'that there is a direct line, unbroken and clearly discernible, from the goddess-cults of the ancients to the reverence paid and eventually the cult accorded to the Virgin Mary.' Chapter by chapter he seeks to establish his conclusion that 'in Mariology the Christian genius preserved and transformed some of the best and noblest ideas that paganism developed. Rather than being a 'regression' into Paganism, Mariology is a progression toward a clearer and better understanding of the feminine aspect of the divine and the role of the female in the history of salvation.'

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Stephen Benko was Professor at the Temple University of Philadelphia (Dept. of Religion and Philosophy) and at the California State University Fresno (Ancient History). His major publications are Pagan Rome and the Early Christians (1986), Pagan criticism of Christianity during the first two centuries A.D. (1980). Editor of The catacombs and the colosseum: the Roman Empire as the getting of primitive Christianity (1971).