One of the great tragedies in Christian mythology has been the loss of the female aspect of God. I emphasize the word loss because in the beginning of Christianity, the female aspect of God was present in the form of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, when gendered, was perceived to be female, partially because the word “spirit,” is a feminine noun in Hebrew (ruah) and Aramaic (ruha). The first Christians were not Christians by any modern day standard. They were Jews. They spoke Aramaic and, if they could read, they read Hebrew or one of its dialects. So the Spirit, for them, was feminine. According to what the Jews and first Christians knew of her from their scriptures, the Spirit was the vital force, the “breath of life,” that indwelled the human body. When she enters the human being, she enlivens it. When she leaves, the human being dies. But this is not all. As the life force, she is also the power of God that assists with the creation of the universe and the human being. As this power, she features prominently in the biblical creation story. The book of Genesis opens with the Spirit of God moving over the primordial waters, when “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Her movement sparks the separation of light from darkness, and the heavenly firmament from the waters underneath. Shared from Awake in our Mythology Please Like the page for similar posts like emoticon fb/AwakenMythology
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 23:35:27 +0000
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