BBC - Divine Women (2012)

In this three-part series historian Bettany Hughes goes back to the beginning of time and visits the world's oldest religious site’s to find startling evidence that women were part of the very birth of organised religion. She visits a world where goddesses ruled the heavens and earth, and reveals why our ancestors thought of the divine as female.

Part 1: When God was a Girl
Historian Bettany Hughes. visits a world where goddesses ruled the heavens and earth, and reveals why our ancestors thought of the divine as female. Travelling across the Mediterranean and the Near East, Bettany goes to remote places, where she encounters fearsome goddesses who controlled life and death. And she ends up in modern-day India, where the goddess is still a powerful force for thousands of Hindus. Immersing herself in the excitement of the Durga Puja festival, Bettany experiences goddess worship first-hand, and finds out what the goddess means to her devotees.


Part 2: Handmaids of the Gods
Historian Bettany Hughes continues her journey into the hidden and controversial history of women's place in religion as she uncovers the lost era of the priestess. She delves into the ancient Greek worship of the goddess of sex, Aphrodite, and finds out what this practice meant for women. She also heads to ancient Rome, where the fate of the civilisation lay in the hands of six sacred virgins. Returning to the crucial early years of Christianity, she finds evidence that overturns centuries of Church teaching and challenges the belief that women should not be priests.


Part 3: Women War of the Words
Programme Three explores a missed 'golden age' for women, when historical characters such as the Empress Theodora in Byzantium, Wu Zetien in China (the Empress who called herself Emperor), the early women of Islam and Anglo-Saxon Hilda of Whitby, used the power of ancient traditions and new ideas about religion and philosophy to wield influence in a man's world - notably through the power of reform, education and the word. We look at evidence through the Byzantine Empire, early Islam, in China, Northumbria and Oxford.







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