Merlin Stone

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Merlin Stone is a sculptor and professor of art and art history who became interested, in adulthood, in archaeology and ancient religions from her study of ancient art.

She spent a decade on research before writing the book published in the UK as The Paradise Papers and then in the U.S. as When God Was a Woman (1976). It describes her theory of how the Hebrews suppressed allegedly goddess-based religions practiced in Canaan and how their reaction to what she asserts as being the existing matriarchial and matrilineal societal structures shaped Judaism and, thus, Christianity. Stone's hypothesis is radical and challenging to the accepted view of antiquity. As such it remains a controversial thesis.