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The idea of the Holy Spirit as feminine entity is the heir of the earliest Judaeo-Christian speculations. It was most probably also influenced by the ancient Mesopotamian concepts of the goddess Ištar, viewed as the Holy Spirit. The biblical roots of the idea lie in the use of bird-imagery in connection with the Spirit, especially by means of the verbal root rḥp, used of the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2), and of a mother bird hovering over its nest and young (Deut. 32:11). Christian tradition has universally seen this image, precisely as a symbolic bird over the waters, renewed in the appearance of the Spirit as a dove at the baptism of Jesus. Another biblical element at the origins of the feminine Holy Spirit was the feminine personification of Wisdom in Proverbs 8:1-9, Ben Sira 24 and elsewhere. Because both ‘wisdom’ and ‘spirit’ were feminine in Hebrew and were personified accordingly, it was likely that they could sometimes be confused, sometimes identified, as they were by many Gnostics. Thus one finds both ‘Sophia’ and ‘Achamoth’ (a corruption of the plural of Hebrew hokmah, wisdom), sometimes closely related to, sometimes both identified with, the feminine Holy Spirit. In the non-gnostic sources, where the feminine Holy Spirit appears, the first are Odes of Solomon, where the Holy Spirit appears in form of the dove and as Mother. The Holy Spirit appears in these texts as a feminine power of God whose relationship to him is not clear, but who is the agent or intermediary through whom the Virgin conceived.
In Syriac writings, the Holy Spirit was “she” up to 400 CE. The invocations to the Mother-Spirit to descend on the candidate for baptism in the Acts of Thomas are typical of early Syriac literature: the Holy Spirit is active in the sacraments and in the sanctification of the individual Christian. The principal passage on the Holy Spirit in all Ephrem’s works is in the Hymns on Faith 74. The Spirit is symbolized mainly as warmth, emitted by the sun as the Spirit is sent by the Father. The Spirit warms the naked and clothes them as Adam was clothed with glory. As the sun’s warmth thaws all that is frozen, brings nature back to life and makes calves frolic, so the Holy Spirit dissolves the bonds of sin and the devil, made the disciples exult, and brings springtime to the Church. In the Hymn on the Consecration of the Church at Qennešrin (= Chalcis) by the Bishop Balai from the fifth century CE, the Holy Spirit is still ‘she’: “May the Holy Spirit listen to the priest for he has established a home for the Father and the Son; May She receive vows with sacrifice, for house and vows are all for thy sake.”
Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Ben Sira 24
Deuteronomy 32:11
Ephrem Syrus, Hymns on Faith 74
Genesis 2:1
Hymn on the Consecration of the Church at Qennešrin (= Chalcis) by the Bishop Balai
Proverbs 8:1-9
Bibliography
| Murray 1975, 22, 80, 273, 312-314 | Murray, Robert. Symbols of Church and Kingdom. A Study in Early Syriac Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1975. |
Amar Annus
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