angrysoba
Philosophile
Oooh! I have that book on my shelf as well. I haven't read it yet but had it for about two years now.
I did have the Bible on the shelf for longer though, so it's fair that I got to that first, I think.
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Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch to Live!
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Oooh! I have that book on my shelf as well. I haven't read it yet but had it for about two years now.
I did have the Bible on the shelf for longer though, so it's fair that I got to that first, I think.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Thanks. I read this post last night just before bed and saw the passage you quoted. I was sure I had read that bit already but had missed the mention of the Ten Commandments. In fact, I had read Exodus 24 which is almost identical in many parts to Exodus 34. I read Exodus 34 this morning.
Okay, I have got it now. This book repeats itself over and over again so many times. Instead of God constantly saying about the fat and the caul around the liver and a sweet savour to the LORD why not just say it once and refer back to the method that sacrifices have to be made? He's so long-winded.
The same goes for all his specifications for the ark, the candlestick, the tabernacle and the altar. Pages and pages of the damn picky instructions only to be followed by pages and pages of Moses building according to these instructions. He could have just written, "And Moses built these things according to God's wishes", but no. Pages and pages more.
SpuriusMaximus
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Well, yes, it's in the context of that. We had gone from that to the Dominicans and their taking thought crimes seriously. I was just saying that that wasn't really a Dominican aberration as much as just taking JC's words seriously.
Ah...you have been reading Leviticus..... If there is anything more moronic than Leviticus in the history of literature I would be surprised.
YHWH spends almost 3 chapters telling Moses how to identify and make sure who has leprosy.
What does YHWH then tell Moses? Does he teach him the UTTERLY SIMPLE process of making penicillin? Does he give him penicillin? Does he show him how to cure those poor unfortunate wretches? Maybe by using that MAGICAL STAFF he had and which confounded all the sorcerers of Pharaoh?
No....he instructs him to THROW THEM OUT like lepers (sorry could not help it).
What about all those AD NAUSEAM instruction for how to build this elaborate tabernacle? And all for what? So that YHWH can play house.
Where were the runaway slaves supposed to procure all the material involved? The Gold alone would have been impossible, not to mention all that died cloth for the tent? Most people of today forget how rare it was to have any colored material.
What about all those gems for the priests (sons of Aaron, nephews of Moses)?
Consider all the animals that were needed for all those INTERMINABLE OFFERINGS. Where were they supposed to come from? The people did not have food for themselves… remember…. YHWH had to rain manna on them.
They were wailing about how they would have preferred to back in Egypt as slaves eating onions than spend another day eating the darned manna. YHWH then had to STUFF their nostrils with quails and PLAGUE them with it too….for being demanding ingrates.
So given that they had no food let alone Sheep, Bulls, Doves and so and so forth to BURN for YHWH to forgive them for having menstrual cycles and night emissions?
Moses was frequently gathering the Israelites and talking to them…..did anyone think about what it would take to gather about three million people in one place? What about talking to them? Did Moses have loudspeakers and display screens like they do in stadiums?
If you have been to any concert where you had the misfortune to be in the nosebleed section you would begin to appreciate how ridiculous it is for anyone to think that a human being can in any way communicate with 50,000 people let alone 600,000 assuming he only talked to the men of “sword carrying age” and 3 million if we count the rest.
Mentioning the swords….where did the slaves get them?
Can you think of how much food and water three million people need? Just the water alone....an average human needs at least 1.5 liters a day to stay hydrated and that is not in a desert. So that is 4.5 million liters (1 million gallons) of water DAILY in a desert? How did they distribute the water? How did they store it?
Think about the feces and urine of three million people….it is not like they had sewers and sewerage treatment plants.
What about all the MARCHING they were doing from one spot to another? Do you know that if they walked in a file of 5 people in a row walking lockstep like an army then they would measure at least 400 KM (248 miles). So that is 400 KM long file of 5 people in a row.....248 miles..... At an average of an army march rate of 50 miles a day it would take the column of people 5 days just to travel its own length.
What most people who take the Bible at its word do not do is THINK about what it takes to do what it says was done.
Think about the numbers….600,000 men of fighting age….. and these are runaway slaves from Egypt?????????
All the population of Egypt would have not ever reached more than about 2M people in all of its history, nor Babylon or Assyria.
When you get to the later parts where all the gold of the Temple is counted….think about the numbers.
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sphenisc
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Surely they used broomsticks?
SpuriusMaximus
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Well, as someone who called the literary style atrocious before, I'll agree there very quickly. If it's any consolation, though, if you think it's boring now, wait until you get to the next book, Numbers, and its devoting page after page to made-up census data. So, don't despair yet, it gets a lot worse
Though to be fair, one also must remember that:
1. Numbering chapters and verses is a very late invention. As in, medieval. Before that it just was a text. You couldn't just say, "see, Exodus 20:24". The only way to cite Exodus 20:24 was to quote Exodus 20:24.
2. The codex format was not invented yet. The closest anyone had to it was two wax-covered tablets with a hinge in the middle, for taking notes. (Hmm... coming with two tablets off the mountain... Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
) But the Torah wasn't even written on such tablets. Each book was one big scroll. To find some text in Exodus you had to scroll through the text until you find what you're looking for. So even in that aspect, it was easier to just repeat it than tell people, "see the rules in Exodus."3. At that, these are liturgical texts, and supposed to be read to some illiterate people, not scholars. If you're reading to them why they must give you lots of gold and meat because you're born in the priestly class, you can't leave them with a bunch of pointers to other books. They don't have the inclination, time, money for a copy or the literacy to do that. (IIRC estimates for literacy in ancient Palestine in Roman times are about 3%, and even those were mostly in the cities.) So anything that needs to be cited from another book, has to be literally quoted right there and then.
Etc.
Although, yeah, it doesn't excuse the atrocious style otherwise.
geni
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Ah Numbers 1:46. Even if you want to take that literaly (and hebrews liked inflating numbers) 2 million is more reasonable total.
RobDegraves
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@ Leumas
I've actually discussed the "Exodus" at length before in a related thread. Quite frankly most secular historians don't think it ever happened. There are simply too many factors that contradict what we know of Egyptian history, even if you assume that the numbers of Hebrews was less than the stated amount. It just doesn't make sense.
I can go over it again if people want me to.
@ Angrysoba
Actually that is a very good point and something to keep in mind. Most people seem to think that the Inquisition and/or witch hunters went after the old women who lived alone and looked weird. That was seldom the case.
One of the rules that drove the Inquisition was that the inquisitor could confiscate and keep the money, property and all goods of a condemned heretic. This was a strong impetus towards accusing well to do women, and men, of heresy, witchcraft and whatever else will lead them to the bonfire. Once accused, it was fairly rare that you could escape the fires. The question, this being torture of course, was rarely answered in the negative and medieval minds could come up with tortures that would make modern despots throw up. A favorite from northern England was to take a leg, spread lard on it and place it over a fire, where it would bake rather than burn.
There were however a number of limits.
You could not accuse a Noble. Lacking a police force or private army abroad, the Church depended on the local nobility for it's muscle. Nobility tended to see an attack on one of it's own as an attack on all... and that would be a mistake for the Church. There is an interesting account of a woman in Southern France who used to like to dress as a man and fence. The inquisitor writing the report wanted her tried in the worst way. However, the local Duke fancied her... so she remained free and untoasted. She later on married a priest in Paris.
Another limit was the Church itself. There were specific rules about condemning a Heretic or witch and to not follow them could have serious consequences, usually life in prison. There were a number of Inquisitors who were recalled and then imprisoned for going too far with executions. That was little comfort to their victims I imagine.
Over all, the inquisition was an exercise in power. The Church needed to strengthen it's hold over the populaces and crush any movement that would lessen it's influence. The later on witch hunting craze had a different genesis.
I've actually discussed the "Exodus" at length before in a related thread. Quite frankly most secular historians don't think it ever happened. There are simply too many factors that contradict what we know of Egyptian history, even if you assume that the numbers of Hebrews was less than the stated amount. It just doesn't make sense.
I can go over it again if people want me to.
@ Angrysoba
Actually that is a very good point and something to keep in mind. Most people seem to think that the Inquisition and/or witch hunters went after the old women who lived alone and looked weird. That was seldom the case.
One of the rules that drove the Inquisition was that the inquisitor could confiscate and keep the money, property and all goods of a condemned heretic. This was a strong impetus towards accusing well to do women, and men, of heresy, witchcraft and whatever else will lead them to the bonfire. Once accused, it was fairly rare that you could escape the fires. The question, this being torture of course, was rarely answered in the negative and medieval minds could come up with tortures that would make modern despots throw up. A favorite from northern England was to take a leg, spread lard on it and place it over a fire, where it would bake rather than burn.
There were however a number of limits.
You could not accuse a Noble. Lacking a police force or private army abroad, the Church depended on the local nobility for it's muscle. Nobility tended to see an attack on one of it's own as an attack on all... and that would be a mistake for the Church. There is an interesting account of a woman in Southern France who used to like to dress as a man and fence. The inquisitor writing the report wanted her tried in the worst way. However, the local Duke fancied her... so she remained free and untoasted. She later on married a priest in Paris.
Another limit was the Church itself. There were specific rules about condemning a Heretic or witch and to not follow them could have serious consequences, usually life in prison. There were a number of Inquisitors who were recalled and then imprisoned for going too far with executions. That was little comfort to their victims I imagine.
Over all, the inquisition was an exercise in power. The Church needed to strengthen it's hold over the populaces and crush any movement that would lessen it's influence. The later on witch hunting craze had a different genesis.
SpuriusMaximus
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Actually, I think at this point we better make clear a distinction that for normal people is not obvious at all, and full of erroneous information all around. Namely the distinction between heresy and witchcraft, and respectively between inquisition and witch-hunters.
While there is some overlap between inquisition and witch-hunt(er)s, they are not the same thing. Probably the easiest to illustrate is by the fact that even in protestant countries where the inquisition had no power, they still burned witches by the thousands.
The Catholic church, as in, its leadership, actually had very little interest in witches. Their biggest problem were heretics (e.g., protestants) and apostates (e.g., Jews and moors who had to pretend to convert to be allowed to stay there, but then practiced their old stuff.) The church seriously wanted those dead.
The burning at the stake for those was justified by the words of Jesus himself in John 15:6: "f a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." So they did just that to those who didn't worship Jesus just right or renounced him.
Unfortunately, as you mention, since their wealth was invariably confiscated, this created an incentive to go after whoever is from a Jewish or Moorish family and is wealthy, at least in Spain. In effect, as long as you were poor and not made many enemies, you could read the Torah or the Quran all you want, but getting rich was practically a death sentence.
And yes, so sure were they that they'll get a confession through torture that the wealth was confiscated immediately at the arrest.
But these were tried for heresy or apostasy, not for witchcraft.
In fact, most of the church leadership and theologians in Italy and France didn't even believe in witchcraft. The popes even condemned the Malleus Maleficarum, added it to the index of forbidden books in the next century, and actually forbade inquisitors to have anything to do with witchcraft trials.
Not that it stopped any from extending their authority to that too. In fact, it happening lots was why a formal interdiction had to be given. Still, they kept trying. It was easy to justify too, since the victims were forced to confess worshiping Satan, which did make them heretics, so in theory the authority of the church was not exceeded. But, as you mention, go on too big a spree with it, and you might get called to explain to the Inquisition in Rome why you ignored the Pope's orders. These guys were less big on burning, but, yeah, they used torture too and handed out life sentences in prison like there's no tomorrow.
Secular witch-hunters, which were most of the cases in England and actually most other countries, were a different dish. They had less of an incentive to sort victims by wealth or anything, and often worked for a flat per-witch fee. The aforementioned "witch hunter general" Matthew Hopkins worked like that, for example, and it's no wonder that he was finding witches everywhere then. And if you work like that, it's also a safer bet to go for some poor old lady that nobody likes, than after a rich one with connections and powerful friends. And sure enough, Hopkins found a lot of poor witches.
People denouncing each other, though, that was a different story. As rivalries, power games and envy ran through all segments of society, yeah, a lot of well-off people denounced other well-off people.
While there is some overlap between inquisition and witch-hunt(er)s, they are not the same thing. Probably the easiest to illustrate is by the fact that even in protestant countries where the inquisition had no power, they still burned witches by the thousands.
The Catholic church, as in, its leadership, actually had very little interest in witches. Their biggest problem were heretics (e.g., protestants) and apostates (e.g., Jews and moors who had to pretend to convert to be allowed to stay there, but then practiced their old stuff.) The church seriously wanted those dead.
The burning at the stake for those was justified by the words of Jesus himself in John 15:6: "f a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." So they did just that to those who didn't worship Jesus just right or renounced him.
Unfortunately, as you mention, since their wealth was invariably confiscated, this created an incentive to go after whoever is from a Jewish or Moorish family and is wealthy, at least in Spain. In effect, as long as you were poor and not made many enemies, you could read the Torah or the Quran all you want, but getting rich was practically a death sentence.
And yes, so sure were they that they'll get a confession through torture that the wealth was confiscated immediately at the arrest.
But these were tried for heresy or apostasy, not for witchcraft.
In fact, most of the church leadership and theologians in Italy and France didn't even believe in witchcraft. The popes even condemned the Malleus Maleficarum, added it to the index of forbidden books in the next century, and actually forbade inquisitors to have anything to do with witchcraft trials.
Not that it stopped any from extending their authority to that too. In fact, it happening lots was why a formal interdiction had to be given. Still, they kept trying. It was easy to justify too, since the victims were forced to confess worshiping Satan, which did make them heretics, so in theory the authority of the church was not exceeded. But, as you mention, go on too big a spree with it, and you might get called to explain to the Inquisition in Rome why you ignored the Pope's orders. These guys were less big on burning, but, yeah, they used torture too and handed out life sentences in prison like there's no tomorrow.
Secular witch-hunters, which were most of the cases in England and actually most other countries, were a different dish. They had less of an incentive to sort victims by wealth or anything, and often worked for a flat per-witch fee. The aforementioned "witch hunter general" Matthew Hopkins worked like that, for example, and it's no wonder that he was finding witches everywhere then. And if you work like that, it's also a safer bet to go for some poor old lady that nobody likes, than after a rich one with connections and powerful friends. And sure enough, Hopkins found a lot of poor witches.
People denouncing each other, though, that was a different story. As rivalries, power games and envy ran through all segments of society, yeah, a lot of well-off people denounced other well-off people.
I Ratant
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I was watching a docu on Susan Boyle last night, and apparently -before- she went to world-wide stardom overnight, she was considered one of those "not the most peaceable"...
Some of the witches hanged at Salem were also of the harridan type.
I Ratant
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That is a common cause for murder a woman in Islam.
SpuriusMaximus
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I'd also like to introduce a further limiting factor, and probably one reason why the RCC didn't want to over-extend into hunting witches too: local revulsion. There is a fine line one is walking when keeping whole populations scared witless. Push it a little too far, and even a cornered rabbit will fight back.
And while the line that only a witch would feel mercy for another witch did work to keep people in line while you burned their mom, it worked at times too well: it worked both ways.
Occasionally some town would figure out that they can go "hey, if this guy knows so much about witches, how do we know he isn't one himself"? Especially those who told or wrote whole stories about what happens at a witches' sabbat, were routinely rumoured to be actual witches themselves. Most didn't really get an actual formal accusation, but they were walking a tight rope there.
An urban legend attributes this end to Matthew Hopkins, though in his case it's been confirmed to be false. He was however repeatedly informally accused of being a witch himself, and the revulsion to his witch-finding spree actually caused even some clergy to preach against the witchhunts.
Jean Bodin, a jurist and apologist of the whole thing (he actually thought that burning at the stake is too lenient, because, meh, it takes less than an hour to die) including such endearing stuff as torturing children to make them testify against their parents, actually had a formal accusation against him and it was only by intervention of his powerful friends and supporters that the whole thing was stopped just as the guards were coming to search is home for witchcraft stuff.
Others were less fortunate. Konrad von Marburg, for all his excessive zeal (and arguably not having the common sense to leave nobility alone), not only got killed by knights on the road, but managed to turn German opinion against the inquisition for many years. Inquisitor Pedro de Arbues in Spain also found himself assassinated. And it's probably symptomatic that even before that he had started to wear chainmail.
Torquemada, while not killed, soon started to travel with a small army of 250 footmen and 50 knights, to do his reign of terror. He had made himself so seriously hated, that he actually needed that ridiculously oversized bodyguard.
And while the line that only a witch would feel mercy for another witch did work to keep people in line while you burned their mom, it worked at times too well: it worked both ways.
Occasionally some town would figure out that they can go "hey, if this guy knows so much about witches, how do we know he isn't one himself"? Especially those who told or wrote whole stories about what happens at a witches' sabbat, were routinely rumoured to be actual witches themselves. Most didn't really get an actual formal accusation, but they were walking a tight rope there.
An urban legend attributes this end to Matthew Hopkins, though in his case it's been confirmed to be false. He was however repeatedly informally accused of being a witch himself, and the revulsion to his witch-finding spree actually caused even some clergy to preach against the witchhunts.
Jean Bodin, a jurist and apologist of the whole thing (he actually thought that burning at the stake is too lenient, because, meh, it takes less than an hour to die) including such endearing stuff as torturing children to make them testify against their parents, actually had a formal accusation against him and it was only by intervention of his powerful friends and supporters that the whole thing was stopped just as the guards were coming to search is home for witchcraft stuff.
Others were less fortunate. Konrad von Marburg, for all his excessive zeal (and arguably not having the common sense to leave nobility alone), not only got killed by knights on the road, but managed to turn German opinion against the inquisition for many years. Inquisitor Pedro de Arbues in Spain also found himself assassinated. And it's probably symptomatic that even before that he had started to wear chainmail.
Torquemada, while not killed, soon started to travel with a small army of 250 footmen and 50 knights, to do his reign of terror. He had made himself so seriously hated, that he actually needed that ridiculously oversized bodyguard.
I Ratant
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4 secretaries walked through my office.
One of them was carrying a small broom.
"Ah, I see you brought your own transportation with you" sez I.
And I suffered for that for years!
theprestige
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Thank you. It looks like Matthew Hopkins did in fact have a hate-on for black cats, although the passage of the Malleus you cited only mentions familiars once, and without any indication whatsoever of their nature or appearance (except to say they collaborate with the "in everything"). So I'm not sure if that's really where the cat craze came from, as you claim.
However, I'm more interested in your claims aboout specific Bible verses. Earlier you said:
Unfortunately, neither of the sources you cited mention Exodus or Leviticus at all. Since you said verses of "that kind" were "explicitly invoked", I was hoping you had a citation for a text that invoked verses of that kind explicitly.
SpuriusMaximus
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Well, the influence of even Matthew Hopkins' book should not be underestimated, as the witch prosecutions in the English colonies were based on it. While at home his excesses has actually gotten more people to speak against witch hunts or use of torture or the water test, in the colonies his book actually started the craze.
The Malleus Maleficarum on the other hand, actually mentions familiar spirits more than once, but you're correct, it never says what they look like. That's what later allowed even gnats and mosquitoes to be taken for familiars.
That said, I never said that only cats were thus targeted. It was supposed to be an example, rather than THE one critter that makes up the whole list.
And at any rate, those are not the only books on witchcraft. Even James I of England found time to write his own treatise of demonology and witches. It was apparently a whole genre at the time. (And again it mentions familiar spirits, but without restricting their shape to animals. In fact in chapter VI the spirit could be bound into any object, including a page or a ring or whatever.)
But, at any rate, ASCII and you shall receive. If you want clear mentions of those passages, take for example, A Treatise of Witchcraft by Alexander Roberts. You can't get a much more clear mention of the Exodus verse than its being even on the title page and being referenced by exact chapter and verse number a couple more times in the text. The Leviticus one is both quoted and cited by chapter and verse number in, for example, the "The ninth Proposition, and second Corrolary" chapter. Though biblical references to familiar spirits are peppered through the whole text, in case it wasn't clear where they got that "familiar spirit" idea from.
I think it should have to do as a clear mention of those verses in a witch hunter manual?
The Malleus Maleficarum on the other hand, actually mentions familiar spirits more than once, but you're correct, it never says what they look like. That's what later allowed even gnats and mosquitoes to be taken for familiars.
That said, I never said that only cats were thus targeted. It was supposed to be an example, rather than THE one critter that makes up the whole list.
And at any rate, those are not the only books on witchcraft. Even James I of England found time to write his own treatise of demonology and witches. It was apparently a whole genre at the time. (And again it mentions familiar spirits, but without restricting their shape to animals. In fact in chapter VI the spirit could be bound into any object, including a page or a ring or whatever.)
But, at any rate, ASCII and you shall receive. If you want clear mentions of those passages, take for example, A Treatise of Witchcraft by Alexander Roberts. You can't get a much more clear mention of the Exodus verse than its being even on the title page and being referenced by exact chapter and verse number a couple more times in the text. The Leviticus one is both quoted and cited by chapter and verse number in, for example, the "The ninth Proposition, and second Corrolary" chapter. Though biblical references to familiar spirits are peppered through the whole text, in case it wasn't clear where they got that "familiar spirit" idea from.
I think it should have to do as a clear mention of those verses in a witch hunter manual?
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Weak Kitten
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Oh! That would make so much more sense in the context! I always wondered why that particular law didn't contain any explanation of how to identify a "witch". That always struck me as odd since other unusual crimes are pretty well described, especially if the penalty was death. "Poisoner" doesn't really need much of a description does it?
RobDegraves
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Oh.. snap.
I love project Gutenberg, it's got a lot of nice references. To be honest, I have a lot of actual books and references on the subject but I had failed to find that particular text on Gutenberg. The ones I do have do mention cats, dogs, toads and various other animals as being familiars. As far as bible chapters being quoted, there are a lot. In fact medieval rhetoric used bible verses almost exclusively. It's a fascinating area of study.
angrysoba
Philosophile
It goes on and on!
Yes, I think that first appears in the next book, Numbers. Although if it did appear in Leviticus it was something I skipped over. The rules for how the priest discovers leprosy was painful to read.
I do notice that somewhere in Leviticus he tells the Israelites to shun all those with physical ailments, crooktbacks, funny eyes etc...
That's bloody charming isn't it. God makes all these people as they are and then orders that they be shunned. He says the same of animals that are put forward to be sacrificed. God won't have any that are not perfect specimens. No wonder that he hated Darwin who later worked out that destroying the best animals would lead to inferior stock later on. With that kind of agricultural policy being dished out from on high it isn't a wonder that they had no food and yearned for meat like they had had in Egypt.
Yeah, that's sort of glossed over. Maybe it came from the same place the manna came from.
Actually, God makes an Easterly wind blow some quails towards the Israelites. And when a few of them collect up the quails and eat them God SMITES them! What an arse!
Sorry, I am responding as I read each part you have written and keep anticipating what you are going to say.
At one point it does say he gathered seventy elders to the tabernacle. Maybe they used the human microphone!
From the manna factory?
It's a miracle?
I think the whole, "Not to be taken literally" defence is wheeled out more often these days.
It's not to be taken literally
Well, as someone who called the literary style atrocious before, I'll agree there very quickly. If it's any consolation, though, if you think it's boring now, wait until you get to the next book, Numbers, and its devoting page after page to made-up census data. So, don't despair yet, it gets a lot worse
Though to be fair, one also must remember that:
1. Numbering chapters and verses is a very late invention. As in, medieval. Before that it just was a text. You couldn't just say, "see, Exodus 20:24". The only way to cite Exodus 20:24 was to quote Exodus 20:24.
2. The codex format was not invented yet. The closest anyone had to it was two wax-covered tablets with a hinge in the middle, for taking notes. (Hmm... coming with two tablets off the mountain... Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
3. At that, these are liturgical texts, and supposed to be read to some illiterate people, not scholars. If you're reading to them why they must give you lots of gold and meat because you're born in the priestly class, you can't leave them with a bunch of pointers to other books. They don't have the inclination, time, money for a copy or the literacy to do that. (IIRC estimates for literacy in ancient Palestine in Roman times are about 3%, and even those were mostly in the cities.) So anything that needs to be cited from another book, has to be literally quoted right there and then.
Etc.
Although, yeah, it doesn't excuse the atrocious style otherwise.
That's interesting. I hadn't thought of that.
SpuriusMaximus
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As far as I understand -- mind you, sadly, I don't actually speak Hebrew -- a terminal He (ה) generally means a feminine form in Hebrew. English tends to not have such word genders, but almost any other language has. The word used in Exodus 20:18 is "מְכַשֵּׁפָ֖ה", roughly "mekasepah", clearly a feminine.
So, yes, it's clearly an admonition against FEMALE uh, whatever that word means. It's the only instance in the OT of it.
It helps if you understand that pretty much for as long as we had a written history, well, as the quote goes:
"Remember when you were a kid and the boys didn't like the girls? Only sissies liked girls? What I'm trying to tell you is that nothing's changed. You think boys grow out of not liking girls, but we don't grow out of it. We just grow horny. That's the problem. We mix up liking pussy for liking girls. Believe me, one couldn't have less to do with the other." — Jules Feiffer
Pretty much sums up 99.95% or so of the existence of the human species. We liked pussy lots. And I mean LOTS. We even went to war for pussy, demanded pussy in war settlements, and even have documents where pussy was a part of the settlement in a lawsuit between two guys. Oh we loved it.
But we seriously didn't want the ones with a pussy in our tree house. And especially those who think they have rights or are equals or can run a business just like the guys or some other silly girl notion like that. Or not put out. Oooh, we really hated those.
As soon as we find skeletons, we find evidence (e.g., in the different density bands formed in the bones by malnutrition, plus the extreme height variance) that women got less food, sometimes severely less food. And were twice as likely to be killed at birth. As soon as we have a written word, women are blamed for every bleedin' thing going wrong.
As in literally, as soon as you have guys figuring out how to press a stick in wet clay to write stuff in Mesopotamia or draw funny animal shapes in Egypt, you get stories where invariably the FEMALE spirits are the bad ones, and women magician are responsible for the propagation of what we nowadays call airborne diseases, and witches coat their broomsticks in hallucinogens before putting their, you know, on that broomstick, and such stuff.
Some almost 5 millennia before the European burning craze... yeah, we were already blaming the women for the exact same things. It can't possibly be a man who does that stuff. It's got to be a woman that sees to it that plague moves from house to house.
Or in the Hebrew tradition, arguably THE most evil spirit, THE one who kills babies just to spite their parents and stuff like that, is... Adam's first wife, who thought she has rights and is rightfully his equal. Ever wonder why Eve was created from a rib? Well, some rabbis figured out that there was one created from dirt too, but she thought that that makes her equal to Adam. She was evil like that, see?
Oh, and even when we had goddesses, they really liked wartime rape and such. See, Inanna, serial force-rapist extraordinaire. Heh.
I really don't know what the <beep> is wrong with this world...
So, I guess, to more clearly answer the question, OF COURSE the witches were female. Who else were they going to blame everything on? The guys? Don't be ridiculous
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