he Greek 'feminine' term for wisdom', sophia; translates a
Hebrew 'feminine' term, hokhmah. In the book of 'Proverbs'
contained in the Bible as well as 'The Wisdom of Solomon'
contained in the Apocrypha; It is clearly shown that the early
Hebrews saw God's wisdom and spirit as female. Wisdom is a spirit that is friendly to people, but she will not forgive anyone who speaks against God, for God knows our feelings and thoughts, and hears our every word. Since the Lord's spirit fills the entire world, and holds everything in it together, she knows every word that people say. Wisdom of Solomon 1:6-7
Early interpreters have pondered the meaning of certain Biblical passages - for example, the saying in Proverbs that God made the world in Wisdom'. Could Wisdom be the feminine power in which God's creation was 'conceived'?, the double meaning of the term conception - physical and intellectual - suggests this possibility: The phrase "He knew his wife" is to know physically but also as 'ennoia'; within thoughtfulness. This character of thought [ennoia] is feminine, since ... [it] is a power of conception." "Wisdom, " God's earliest creation and playmate, who had her counterpart in the Greek Sophia; is a Deity in which biblically, God's wisdom is specifically expressed as female (Prov 8:1-36).
The bride of the lamb is interpreted to be the new city of Jerusalem, in Christianity again symbolizes the Church. We read:
"And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."
That the interpretation is later than the original idea of a bride is quite obvious in the Fourth Book of Esdras, where the prophet encounters a woman and listens to the tale of her tribulation. The woman disappears and in her place he beholds a city whereupon the angel Uriel explains the vision saying (4 Esdras x. 44): "The woman which thou hast seen is Sion, which thou now seest before thee as a builded city." A similar idea is found in the Wisdom of Solomon where wisdom is personified as Sophia and is spoken of as having existed before the world, taking the place of the Holy Ghost in Christianity. We read for instance in chapters vii and viii:
"For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. . . . And p. 458 being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets. For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom. . . . Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things. . . . In that she is conversant with God, she magnifieth her nobility: yea, the Lord of all things himself loved her. For she is privy to the mysteries of the knowledge of God, and a lover of his works."
“Martin Luther, the originator of the Protestant
movement, was not ashamed to think of the Holy Spirit in
feminine terms. We often miss this in Luther studies because his
feminine terminology is translated into English masculine terms,
but if his German is translated without such a gender bias, his
sense of the Holy Spirit being feminine shines out like a
beacon.”
Even the famous Church Father Origen speaks of the Holy
Spirit as
being feminine, when saying:
Paidiske de kypias tou hagiou Pneumatos he psyche.
The soul is handmaiden to her mistress, the Holy Spirit. Another
illustration is found in the now lost Gospel of the Hebrews (cf.
The
Lost and Hostile Gospels by Rev. S. Baring-Gould, London, 1874,
pp.
130-1), probably one of the first ever written by Christian
hands,
extracts from which have survived in the writings of Origen and
Jerome. This particular passage is quoted by Origen and runs as
follows:
Arti elabe me he meter mou to hagion pneuma, hen mia ton trichon
mou,
kai anenenke me eis to horos to mega thabor.
Straightway my mother the Holy Spirit took me in one of my hairs
and
bore me to the great mountain Thabor. -- Homily xv, on Jeremiah
and
on John. Similarly Jerome, another Church Father, wrote (Micheas,
vii, 6):
Modo tulit me mater mea Spiritus Sanctus in uno capillorum
meorum.
Then my mother the Holy Spirit took me in one of my hairs.