The Holy Spirit as feminine: Early Christian testimonies and their interpretation |
Johannes van Oort
Received: 22 Oct. 2015; Accepted: 02 Feb. 2016; Published: 19 Aug. 2016
Copyright: © 2016. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
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Abstract
The earliest Christians – all of whom were Jews – spoke of the Holy Spirit as a feminine figure. The present article discusses the main proof texts, ranging from the ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’ to a number of testimonies from the second century. The ancient tradition was, in particular, kept alive in East and West Syria, up to and including the fourth century Makarios and/or Symeon, who even influenced ‘modern’ Protestants such as John Wesley and the Moravian leader Count von Zinzendorf. It is concluded that, in the image of the Holy Spirit as woman and mother, one may attain a better appreciation of the fullness of the Divine.
Introduction
In two previous articles, I discussed the place and role of both the doctrine and the experience of the Holy Spirit in the Early Church (Van Oort 2011; 2012). An important aspect remained, however: namely the fact that many early Christian authors – in particular those belonging to so-called ‘Jewish Christianity’1 – spoke of the Holy Spirit as Mother.
How did this come to pass? And which consequences may be derived from this phenomenon for present-day discourse on the Holy Spirit?
An essential background to the occurrence of the Holy Spirit as Mother is, of course, the fact that the Hebrew word for Spirit, ruach, is in nearly all cases feminine. The first Christians, all of whom were Jews, took this over. Also in Aramaic the word for Spirit, rucha, is feminine. All this, however, does not fully account for the early Jewish Christian practice. A close reading of the relevant texts will reveal more.
Jewish Christian sourcesOrigen and the ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’
The first prooftext, which already brings in medias res, is from the Greek church father Origen (c. 185–254). In his Commentary on the Gospel of John, he says:
Origen, who in all probability dictated these lines when he was in Palestinian Caesarea, refers to a ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’. Until today there is much discussion about the origin and contents of this Gospel (e.g. Frey 2012:593–606; Luomanen 2012:1–2, 235–243), but all specialists agree that it was of Jewish Christian provenance. Apart from several other things, we learn from this quote that, sometime in the beginning of the second century CE, the Jewish Christians of this Gospel spoke of the Holy Spirit as Mother (mētēr).
The same is evident in another quote from Origen:
From both quotes we may also learn that Origen himself accepted the concept of the Holy Spirit as Mother.
Jerome and the ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’
The church father Jerome (c. 342–420), who spent many years in Bethlehem, makes mention of several passages from the Gospel of the Hebrews, too. In his Commentary on Micah, he says:
The essence of the same quote from the Gospel of the Hebrews is found in Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel:
In his Commentary on Isaiah, Jerome states:
While Jerome was well acquainted with the old Jewish Christian tradition of the femininity of the Holy Spirit, which in his time was still alive among the ‘Nazaraeans’, who read the ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’, he considered it to be a question of language only.
Epiphanius and Hippolytus on the prophet Elxai
For the Jewish Christians themselves, however, it was not merely a question of language. Apart from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, this is testified by a number of testimonies regarding the prophet Elxai. This Jewish Christian prophet—in the various sources also named as Elchasai, Alchasaios, Elkesai and Elxaios—is said to have received the revelation written about in the Book of Elchasai in Mesopotamia in the year 116–117.
The church father Epiphanius (c. 315–430), for many years bishop of Salamis and the metropolitan of Cyprus, transmits this revelation as follows:
Later on in his book, Epiphanius reports essentially the same:
Earlier the learned Hippolytus (c. 170–c. 236), a Christian presbyter at Rome, had transmitted the same tradition on Elchasai:
The Pseudo-Clementines
A next testimony to the Holy Spirit’s femininity may be derived from the so-called Pseudo-Clementines. The Pseudo-Clementines is a work circulated under the name of Clement of Rome (fl. c. 96), which came down to us in two fourth-century forms: the Greek Homilies and the Latin Recognitions. Both forms contain very old Jewish Christian source material. The Jewish Christian concept of the Spirit as a feminine Being is, by implication, preserved in one of the Homilies:
The text identifies Wisdom with the Holy Spirit. This equation of Wisdom (chokma, sophia) and Holy Spirit (ruach, pneuma) has old parallels in Jewish and Jewish Christian traditions. Already in the Jewish book Wisdom of Solomon, preserved in Greek as part of the Septuagint and being in high esteem among most early Christian writers, one finds this equation; for instance, in Wisdom 9, 17 it runs:
Wisdom is equated with the Holy Spirit and both are considered to be feminine.2 Hence one understands how in early Christian tradition Christ is so often considered to be the child of mother Sophia or the Holy Spirit.3 In essence, both traditions express the same concept. The oldest patristic testimonies to this concept are the texts from Origen and Jerome quoted above.
In interpreting all these testimonies, one should bear in mind that ancient Jewish Christianity did not express itself in Greek discursive terminology, but in Semitic metaphorical language. Or, stated otherwise: the Jewish Christians expressed themselves in images, not in logical concepts. Accordingly, one may also understand that the Christian concept of Trinity is not merely due to Greek philosophical thinking, but has genuine and extremely old sources in Jewish Christian writings.4 One may reread the statements of Hippolytus and Epiphanius on Elxai’s vision of God with his Son and the female Spirit as quoted above.
Theophilus and Irenaeus
The influence of the archaic Jewish Christian tradition on Spirit and Sophia is even found in Greek Christian authors such as Theophilus of Antioch (fl. later 2nd c.) and Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–c. 200). In his writing Against Autolycus, the Greek bishop and apologist Theophilus wrote for instance:
In Greek speaking bishop Irenaeus’ work Against Heresies, which is mainly transmitted in Latin, it runs inter alia:
The Pastor of Hermas
The Shepherd of Hermas is a rather enigmatic and, in all probability, composed document which originated in Rome between the end of the first and the middle of the second century. Its final form consists of five ‘Visions’, twelve ‘Mandates’ and ten ‘Similitudes’. In the second and third centuries, it was accepted as Scripture by several ecclesiastical authors and even Didymus the Blind, a contemporary of Athanasius in the fourth century, included it in his canon of Scripture. It is also found in the highly important biblical manuscript Codex Sinaiticus, dating from the same time.5 In many of its utterances, the Shepherd reveals its Jewish Christian provenance.
One of these Jewish Christian features is the concept of the Holy Spirit as feminine. Although the Shepherd of Hermas (now generally classified as one of the ‘Apostolic Fathers’) uses the word ‘spirit’ in a variety of ways, in several cases ‘spirit’ appears to mean ‘Holy Spirit’. One of these cases is SimilitudeIX (Körtner & Leutzsch 1998:300 ff.), where the Holy Spirit is presented in the image of twelve virgins (parthenoi). The plural should not lead us astray here.6 Elsewhere in the Shepherd the Holy Spirit—in her equivalent the Church—is described as being pre-existent and also as an old women (gunē presbutis) (Vis. I, 2, 2; cf. e.g. II, 4, 1 ff.: presbutera in Körtner & Leutzsch 1998:158).7
Melito of Sardis
Some decades later, and in another part of the Roman Empire, Melito of Sardis († c. 190) composed his homily On the Passover. It became famous after its discovery and publication by Campbell Bonner in 1940. In its newest editions one finds some fragments added, the seventeenth of which reads as follows:
It does not seem to be beyond doubt that the fragment, which follows On the Passover in a Bodmer Papyrus Codex, really stems from Melito. In any case it is a liturgical dialogue, if not part from Melito’s sermon, then perhaps of a baptismal liturgy. In its main theme and imagery, On the Passover is close to Jewish Christian thinking in general and Jewish Paschal tradition in particular. In the just quoted fragment, the Mother is without a doubt the Holy Spirit.
Sources from East and West Syria
As we have just seen with Theophilus, Irenaeus, the Pastor Hermae and (perhaps) Melito, the concept of the Spirit as feminine is sometimes found as an archaic reminiscence of Jewish Christianity in later Greek writers. However, in several Christian writings stemming from Syria, which mainly had Syriac (a branch of Aramaic) as their original language, this speaking of the Holy Spirit as feminine really abounds.
The Gospel of Thomas
Apart from some Greek scraps, the Gospel of Thomas has been mainly transmitted in a Coptic translation found in the second codex of the ‘gnostic’ library which, in December 1945, was discovered near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt.8 Many researchers maintain that the Gospel of Thomas—in any case in its original form(s)—was not ‘gnostic’ at all, nor even tincted with typical ‘gnostic’ ideas, but a fine example of primitive Jewish and Syrian Christianity. One of its logia reads as follows:
Here, the true Mother is the Holy Spirit.
The Acts of Thomas
The Acts of Thomas recount the missionary activities of the apostle Judas Thomas. It is generally agreed that the composite work, which has survived in several Syriac and Greek manuscripts, was written in Syriac sometime before the middle of the third century. It contains many archaic elements pointing to early Jewish Christian tradition in Syria.
One of these archaic Jewish Christian elements is the concept of the Holy Spirit as feminine. It is clearly found in the following texts transmitted in Greek:
One may also compare Acta Thomae 7 (the Syriac text speaks of the glorification of ‘the Father, the Lord of all’ and ‘the Spirit, His Wisdom’) (cf. Klijn 2003:29), whereas the Greek text has: ‘The Father of truth and the Mother of Wisdom’) and Acta Thomae 133 (‘We name over you [i.e. the ‘bread of life’ in the eucharist] the name of the Mother [= the Holy Spirit]).
Gospels in Old Syriac, the Odes of Solomon, the Didascalia and the Apostolic Constitutions
A number of other writings from the Syrian world may be briefly dealt with under one heading. The first is the Old Syriac Version of the Gospels, which reaches back to the second century and transmits Jn 14:26 as follows:
In all probability, the Odes of Solomon are a (Jewish) Christian work which is almost certainly written in Syria or Palestine in the course of the same second century. In Ode 36, 3 it runs:
The Didascalia Apostolorum (‘Teaching of the Apostles’) is an ancient ‘Church Order’ which seems to have been composed in Syria in the earlier half of the third century. In the Syriac text of chapter 11 it runs:
Virtually the same is stated in the Apostolic Constitutions, a collection of ecclesiastical commandments dating from the latter half of the fourth century and almost certainly of Syrian provenance:
Aphrahat and Ephrem
Clear resonances of this kind of representation are present in Aphrahat. As a rule he is said to be the first of the (orthodox) Syriac church fathers and also ‘the Persian sage’. We mainly know him from his so-called ‘Demonstrations’, a work dating from about 340. In the eighteenth Demonstration it runs with reference to Genesis 2:24:
One may add to this quote a passage from Demonstration VI, where Aphrahat speaks of the role of the Spirit in baptism:
Although Ephrem Syrus (c. 306–373), who wrote most of his extant works in Edessa, conjugates the Syriac word rucha as feminine, one finds only one or two passages9 in his œuvre which highlight her femininity. In one of these it runs:
Makarios/Symeon
Finally, an extremely rich and influential source is constituted by the homilies of Symeon of Mesopotamia. For centuries, these homilies were transmitted under the name of Makarios (Macarius), an Egyptian monk who lived c. 300–390 and was a staunch supporter of Athanasius. Modern research, however, established that their real author is no other than a certain contemporary Symeon, who lived in Mesopotamia, in the vicinity of the upper Euphrates. The homilies of this Symeon mainly survive in Greek in four collections. The second collection, consisting of fifty ‘spiritual’ homilies, became the most popular, but the other three are important as well.10
Here I quote only some of the most conspicuous examples, derived from a number of editions of the various collections. In the most influential Fifty Homilies, we read:
Elsewhere it runs of the Holy Spirit:
Repeatedly it is stressed by Makarios that there is no human birth without a mother, and therefore no spiritual birth without the Holy Spirit (e.g. Hom. 8, 1; Klostermann 1961:37). As the mother (mēter) of young birds cares for them, so the Holy Spirit provides food for God’s children (Hom. 16, 2; Klostermann 1961:79–81). At another occasion, Makarios speaks of ‘the grace of the Spirit, the Mother (mēter) of the holy’ (Hom. 27, 1; Klostermann 1961:151).
Over the centuries, the writings of Makarios and/or Symeon have exerted an enormous influence, both in the East and in the West, not only in Syriac Christianity and other Eastern Orthodox circles, but also among Protestants. It is interesting to note that, among many others (see e.g. Benz 1963; Van de Bank 1977), both the very influential John Wesley11 and the also very influential Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf were deeply influenced by Makarios. Although in the case of the first one I was not able to find any stress on the femininity of the Holy Spirit, in Zinzendorf there is indeed. In his first address in Pennsylvania, for instance, he said that ‘the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is our true Father, and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is our true Mother’.12
Conclusions
Here I may conclude. It is not my aim to further look for influences of early Christian testimonies in this respect, nor did I even intend to be complete in my overview of early Christian texts.13 I only tried to make clear a certain current, which had its initials in early Jewish Christianity and also exerted its influence on other (‘orthodox’) Christian writers. It seems to have been the same Jewish and/or Jewish Christian influences which, moreover, can be found in many ‘gnostic’ texts, but I deliberately excluded these texts from my exposition.14 Here I just note that sometimes genuine Christian traditions and concepts, which became forgotten in mainstream Christendom, were kept alive in ‘heretical’ Christian circles.
It would be completely wrong to state that the image of the Holy Spirit as a woman and mother is simply caused by the fact that the Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac words for ‘spirit’ are (nearly) always feminine. Of course this was an important factor, but there were other significant factors as well, such as the link between the figures of the Holy Spirit and Wisdom or between Holy Spirit and the Jewish feminine concept of the Divine Presence or Shekinah.15 Moreover, it should be remarked that, still, we are dealing with metaphorical language. Religious language is inherently metaphorical, that is, bound to images and similes. By its very nature it cannot define God’s essence. All ancients were aware of the fact that this essence of the Divine remains a holy mystery and is by nature ineffable.
Nevertheless, the very first Christians, all of whom were Jews by birth, used to speak of the Holy Spirit as feminine. These Jewish Christians (or, perhaps better: Christian Jews) adhered to Genesis 1:27 where it is said that God created male and female after his image. If this text is really taken for true, then something female is inherent to God. Apart from the image of a Mother, Syrian and other Jewish Christians stressed the ‘hovering’ (rahhef) of the Spirit as stated, for instance, in Genesis 1:2 and Deuteronomy 32:11.16 Besides, they attributed to the Spirit the motherly features which Jewish prophetic writings like Isaiah (49:15–15; 66:13) find in God. One may also bring to mind that, according to Matthew, Jesus compared himself to a mother bird (Mt. 23:37). Moreover, when believers are born anew from the Spirit (e.g. Jn 3), they are ‘children of the Spirit’, who is their ‘Mother’.17
An expression such as ‘children of the Spirit’ is typical to Makarios.18 It explicitly refers to the motherly function of the Holy Spirit. There appears to be a tender aspect in God (see e.g. Is 66:13) which can only be expressed in the simile of the Mother. This does not mean that in this way we have ‘defined’ God; it just means that in this way we attain a better appreciation of the fullness of the Divine.
AcknowledgementsCompeting interests
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships which may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
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Footnotes
1. The term ‘Jewish Christianity’ is used here to denote those ancient form(s) of Christianity which directly stemmed from Jews and retained typical features of their faith and ways of thinking.
2. For this and related Jewish texts, see e.g. Bousset and Gressmann (1966:346, 397).
3. One of the first who saw this was Schüssler Fiorenza (1983:132–135); one may compare, for instance, Barker: 1992:48–69 [= Ch. Four: ‘The Evidence of Wisdom’]). Sometimes, however, their reasoning and rather quick conclusions should be taken with caution.
4. Kretschmar (1956:99) considers the scheme of Elxai’s vision to be ‘die älteste Form der “Trinitätslehre”’ (‘the oldest form of the “doctrine of the Trinity”’).
6. With reference to Seeberg (1924:371, 1922:140), his promovenda Selma Hirsch wrote in her dissertation (1926:41), ‘Der Geist wird hier pluralisch, als eine Mehrheit von Geistern gedacht, ”was aber ebensowenig wie אלהים oder קדזשים usw. auf eine Vielheit von Wesen zu deuten, sondern nur auf die Mannigfaltigkeit der in einem Wesen zusammengefaßten Kräfte hinweist“.’
7. More on the Shepherd’s pneumatology in concise form in e.g., Osiek (1999:31–34).
8. See e.g. Robinson (2014). Here and elsewhere I speak of ‘gnostic’ (between parentheses) to indicate that, in modern research, the term has become problematic.
9. Cf. Murray (1975:318–319, 144 n. 2): ‘… two passages in the Diatessaron commentary suggest that he was familiar with the tradition’. With reference to Murray (1975:313–319), Chorbishop Seely Joseph Beggiani (2014:81), reduces this to one.
10. Further particulars on the diverse (and overlapping) collections conveniently in, for instance Drobner (2007:370–372).
11. See e.g. Outler (1964 [paperback ed. 1980]: 9 where Outler also mentions his particular interest in Ephrem Syrus). Cf. e.g. a quote from Wesley himself (‘A plain account of genuine Christianity’) on p. 195. More on Wesley’s study of Makarios and the translation of his works in Benz (1963:118–127, n. 14).
12. Beyreuther & Meyer (1963:38): ‘… da der Vater unsers Herrn Jesu Christi unser wahrhaftiger Vater/ und der Geist Jesu Christi unsere wahrhaftige Mutter ist (…)’. A little further on it runs (38): ‘… daß es nicht anders sein kann, als daß sein (= Christ’s) Vater auch unser Vater und seine Mutter auch unsere Mutter sein muß’ and near the end (45): ‘… so spricht man von seinem und unserm Vater/ von dem Geist, der seine und unser aller wahrhafftige Mutter ist …’
13. An important testimony seems to be Apoc. 12; see e.g. Quispel (2008:749–752).
14. I only mention here Nag Hammadi writings such as the Apocryphon of John (e.g. 10, 17–18: ‘… the Holy Spirit, who is called the Mother of the living’) and the Gospel of Philip (e.g. 55 and 59), and testimonies such as Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. I, 30, 1–2 (the Sethians called the Spirit the First Woman: Primam Feminam) and Epiphanius, Panarion 21, 2, 3 (Simon Magus called Helena the Holy Spirit).
15. I do not enter the difficult question of whether or not Shekinah may be considered as (nearly) identical with God’s Spirit. See e.g. Schäfer (2002 [paperback 2004]). It is interesting to read on e.g. pp. 86–91 his argument that the Shekinah (which in his view is not identical to the Spirit) is the female aspect of God.
16. See e.g. Murray (1975:22, 144 and 313, among others).
17. Cf. Murray (1975: e.g. 312ff.).
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