How to read this page

Each section keeps three things apart:

• Column A: Documented. What the text, manuscript, or record actually says.
• Column B: Interpretation. What scholars or traditions think it means.
• Column C: Spiritual reading. A symbolic or contemplative reading, offered as meaning, not as proof.

One caution applies to the whole page. Grammatical gender is a feature of language. A feminine noun does not by itself prove that people thought of the thing as a woman. Sometimes they did, sometimes they did not. The sections below show where the evidence goes further than grammar.

1. Ruach: the Spirit and breath

Column A: Documented

• The Hebrew word ruach means spirit, wind, and breath. It appears in the second verse of the Bible: "a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2, NRSVUE). Other translations render it "the Spirit of God."
• In biblical Hebrew, ruach is usually treated as a feminine noun, though it is sometimes masculine.
• In Greek the word for spirit, pneuma, is neuter. In Latin, spiritus is masculine.
• In Syriac, a form of Aramaic used by early Christians in the Middle East, the word ruha (spirit) is feminine. Sebastian Brock, in "The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature" (in After Eve, ed. Janet Martin Soskice, 1990), shows that early Syriac Christian writers used feminine grammar for the Holy Spirit until about 400 CE.
• Brock quotes the fourth-century Syriac writer Aphrahat, whom he calls a "thoroughly orthodox witness": "as long as a man has not taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother."
• Origen of Alexandria (Commentary on John 2.12) quotes a lost early Christian text, the Gospel of the Hebrews, in which Jesus says: "Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away on to the great mountain Tabor."

Column B: Interpretation

• Brock describes three stages in Syriac: feminine as the norm until about 400 CE; from the early fifth century some writers began to treat the word as masculine; from the sixth century masculine usage became regular in theological prose, while feminine forms survived in poetry and liturgy.
• Susan Ashbrook Harvey, a historian of early Christianity, argues that the grammar carried real meaning in Syriac Christianity: "There was real meaning in calling the Spirit 'She'."
• Several modern Christian theologians, among them Jürgen Moltmann and Yves Congar, have written about feminine or maternal language for the Holy Spirit. Others disagree. This is an open conversation within Christian theology, not a settled question.

2. The Shekhinah: the divine Presence

Column A: Documented

• The word Shekhinah (also spelled Shekinah) means "dwelling" or "presence." It does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. It comes from the rabbis, in the Mishnah, Talmud, and Targums, where it refers to God's presence in the world. It is built from the biblical verb shakhan, "to dwell."
• Yehudah Mirsky writes in the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women: "Though the term is grammatically feminine, in the Talmud it is not explicitly gendered."
• In medieval Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah), the Shekhinah takes on a clearly feminine character. The Zohar compares her to a mother, sister, daughter, and bride. She is linked with Malkhut (Kingship), the last of the ten sefirot, the aspects through which the divine is understood to flow into the world.

Column B: Interpretation

• Gershom Scholem, the founder of the modern academic study of Kabbalah, saw the feminine Shekhinah as one of Jewish mysticism's most significant innovations. As My Jewish Learning summarizes him, its popularity "is proof that it responded to a deep-seated religious need."
• Raphael Patai (The Hebrew Goddess) argued for a line of continuity from older feminine divine figures to the Shekhinah. Many scholars treat that as a suggestive thesis rather than a proven one.
• Contemporary Jewish thinkers, including Rabbi Leah Novick and Rabbi Jill Hammer, have written about the Shekhinah in Jewish renewal and feminist spirituality. Traditional Jewish communities also honor the Shekhinah, in their own way. Both are part of the living tradition.

3. Mary Magdalene

Column A: Documented: the canonical Gospels

• Luke 8:2 names "Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out" among the women who traveled with Jesus and supported his work.
• All four Gospels place Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb. In John 20:11-18 she is the first person to see the risen Jesus, and he sends her to tell the other disciples. She goes and announces: "I have seen the Lord."
• No Gospel calls her a prostitute.

Column A: Documented: how her image changed

• Around 591 CE, Pope Gregory the Great preached a series of sermons in Rome that identified three Gospel figures as one person: Mary Magdalene, the unnamed sinful woman who anoints Jesus in Luke 7, and Mary of Bethany. Historian James Carroll (Smithsonian, 2006) describes this as settling a reading that had been common but not official.
• The Eastern Orthodox churches did not adopt this merging. They honor Mary Magdalene as "Equal to the Apostles."
• On 3 June 2016, the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship, at the wish of Pope Francis, raised her yearly celebration from a memorial to a feast, the same rank as the apostles. The explanation by Archbishop Arthur Roche uses the ancient title apostolorum apostola, "apostle of the apostles," which he traces to Rabanus Maurus and Thomas Aquinas.

Column A: Documented: the Gospel of Mary

• The Gospel of Mary survives in a fifth-century Coptic manuscript, the Berlin Codex (Papyrus Berolinensis 8502), bought in Cairo in 1896, and in two Greek fragments (Papyrus Rylands 463 and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 3525). The Rylands fragment is from the early third century, so the text itself is older.
• The surviving text is incomplete. Six pages are missing at the start and four in the middle.
• In it, after the Savior departs, the disciples are afraid. Mary comforts them. Peter says: "Sister we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of woman. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember..." (translation on the Gnostic Society Library site). She shares a vision about the soul's ascent. Andrew and Peter doubt her. Levi defends her: "But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her?"
• The Gospel of Philip (Nag Hammadi Codex II, trans. Wesley W. Isenberg) says: "There were three who always walked with the Lord: Mary, his mother, and her sister, and Magdalene, the one who was called his companion."

Column B: Interpretation

• Karen L. King (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle, 2003) dates the Gospel of Mary to the early second century and reads it as part of an early Christian debate about women's leadership and spiritual authority. Christopher Tuckett dates it somewhat later in the second century.
• Some scholars, including Stephen Shoemaker, have asked whether the "Mary" of some early non-canonical texts is always Mary Magdalene. Most still read the Gospel of Mary as being about her.
• The Greek word behind "companion" in the Gospel of Philip (koinōnos) can mean partner, associate, or spouse. Scholars disagree on what it implies. The manuscript is also damaged at key points.
• Popular books and films have claimed much more about Mary Magdalene than these texts say. Those claims are not on this page because the sources do not support them.

4. The Thunder, Perfect Mind

Column A: Documented

• The Thunder, Perfect Mind is a Nag Hammadi text (Codex VI, tractate 2) spoken entirely by a feminine divine voice. In George W. MacRae's translation: "I am the first and the last. I am the honored one and the scorned one. I am the whore and the holy one. I am the wife and the virgin."

Column B: Interpretation

• Scholars have compared its "I am" form to Isis hymns (see below) and to Wisdom's speeches in Proverbs. It does not fit neatly into any single school. Its paradoxes are often read as a voice that holds opposites together.

5. Isis

Column A: Documented

• Isis was one of the most important goddesses of ancient Egypt. In the Greek and Roman world her worship spread across the Mediterranean.
• Laurent Bricault's Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas (Brill, 2020) documents her role as protector of sailors, with titles such as Pelagia ("of the open sea") and Euploia ("of good sailing"), coins showing her holding a sail, and the spring festival of the Navigium Isidis (the "Ship of Isis").
• In the Roman novel The Golden Ass (Book 11) by Apuleius, second century CE, Isis appears to the hero and says (William Adlington's 1566 translation): "I am she that is the naturall mother of all things, mistresse and governesse of all the Elements... my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners."
• According to the historian Procopius, the temple of Isis at Philae, in southern Egypt, was closed by order of the emperor Justinian around 535-537 CE.

Column B: Interpretation

• Jitse H. F. Dijkstra (Philae and the End of Ancient Egyptian Religion, 2008) argues that the Philae cult was already fading on its own by then, and that there was "no definite break between Isis and Christ at Philae." The closure is real; the idea that it ended a thriving cult is disputed.
• Many people have noticed that images of Isis nursing the child Horus look like later images of Mary nursing Jesus. Sabrina Higgins ("Divine Mothers," Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies 3, 2012) reviews the evidence and concludes it "does not warrant a generalization that there was a deliberate continuity" between the two. Nursing Isis images span about 700 BCE to the fourth century CE, while nursing Mary images are firmly attested in Egypt only from the seventh century. The visual parallel is real. A direct line of borrowing is not proven.

Column C: Spiritual reading

This section is a symbolic and contemplative reading. It is offered as meaning, not as historical proof.

Breath, presence, witness, voice. Read together, these traditions describe a feminine face of the sacred that is close at hand rather than far away: the breath over the waters, the Presence that dwells with people in exile, the woman who stays at the tomb when others have gone and is the first to say "I have seen the Lord," the voice that holds honor and scorn in one sentence. Many readers find in these figures an invitation to a faith that listens, stays, and makes a home. That reading belongs to the reader. The texts above are there for anyone to check.

Sources

• Bible Gateway (NRSVUE): Genesis 1:2, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1:2&version=NRSVUE ; Luke 8:1-3, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+8:1-3&version=NRSVUE ; John 20:1-18, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+20:1-18&version=NRSVUE
• Sebastian Brock, "The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature," in After Eve, ed. Janet Martin Soskice (Collins Marshall Pickering, 1990), reproduced at: https://womenpriests.org/?p=1930
• Wikipedia, "Gender of the Holy Spirit": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_the_Holy_Spirit
• Wikipedia, "Gospel of the Hebrews" (fragment quoted by Origen, Commentary on John 2.12.87): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_the_Hebrews
• Yehudah Mirsky, "Feminine Images of God," Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, Jewish Women's Archive: https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/feminine-images-of-god
• My Jewish Learning, "Shekhinah: The Divine Feminine": https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-divine-feminine-in-kabbalah-an-example-of-jewish-renewal/
• James Carroll, "Who Was Mary Magdalene?", Smithsonian Magazine, June 2006: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/
• Holy See Press Office, decree on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, with article by Archbishop Arthur Roche, 10 June 2016: https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2016/06/10/160610c.html
• The Gnostic Society Library, The Gospel of Mary: http://gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm
• Wikipedia, "Gospel of Mary": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mary
• The Gospel of Philip, trans. Wesley W. Isenberg: http://gnosis.org/naghamm/gop.html
• The Thunder, Perfect Mind, trans. George W. MacRae: http://gnosis.org/naghamm/thunder.html
• Karen L. King, The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle (Polebridge Press, 2003).
• Laurent Bricault, Isis Pelagia: Images, Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas, trans. Gil H. Renberg (Brill, 2020).
• Apuleius, The Golden Asse, trans. William Adlington (1566), Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1666
• Robert B. Gozzoli, review of J. H. F. Dijkstra, Philae and the End of Ancient Egyptian Religion (Peeters, 2008), Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009.06.43: https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/?p=26464
• Sabrina Higgins, "Divine Mothers: The Influence of Isis on the Virgin Mary in Egyptian Lactans-Iconography," Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies 3 (2012): 71-90: https://www.lockwoodonlinejournals.com/index.php/jcscs/article/view/99