On retaining the integrity of the original texts regarding Sophia
"The fullest development of her is in the so-called "Wisdom Books" of the
apocryphia in the Greek Pentateuch that were canonized into Christian Scripture
and are still used by the Roman Catholic and English Orthodox churches. Sophia
dominates the first nine chapters of Proverbs and is found in both the Old and
New Testaments.
There was no attempt in the West to maintain the integrity of the original texts
until Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate at the request of the papacy in the
fourth century. Zuntz, by using the standard practice of textual comparison, in
his detailed analysis of the oldest Pauline manuscript, notes, in his book, The
Text of the Epistles, numerous places where the text has been altered. Jerome,
himself, in letters to his colleagues, bewails the fact that he has so many
variant texts to select from for the compilation of a standardized version. At
one point before him he has the old Hieronymian text and its revision. He says,
"The differences throughout are clear and striking." In his writings he does
leave us a clue to the subject at hand. At one point he has before him the
gospel of the Hebrews used by the Syrian Christians which, as some now say,
predated the four canonical gospels. In it, Jerome says that the Holy Spirit is
expressed in the feminine gender and is considered the mother in law of the
soul. (Library 11, commentary in Isaiah, chapter 11: Library 2, commentary. in
Micah 7.6:) So here is some additional external evidence from an unrelated
source that the Holy Spirit was originally considered feminine. In Judaism, the
medieval writers of the Kaballah concentrated on the masculine aspects of the
sefiroth (the 13 aspects of God) and relegated Sophia to an inferior sphere than
that she had heretofore occupied. Roman Catholicism explicitly associated Old
Testament Sophia texts with Mary or the Mother Church. In the Eastern Church,
Sophia survives and is often associated liturgically with the Holy Spirit and
sometimes with Christ, himself. Further, the church fathers of the Patristic Age
preferred the male "Logos" when describing Christ in order to avoid gender
confusion. Philo, who at first equated Sophia with Logos, "substituted Logos for
Sophia, until the masculine person of the Logos has taken over most of Sophia's
divine roles including the firstborn image of God, the principle of order and
the intermediary between God and humanity. Sophia's powers are restricted and
she is limited to Heaven.
In both Greek and English, "Spirit" is a neuter noun. And we think of a neuter
noun as an "it" rather than a he or she. Thus we think of the Holy Trinity of
orthodox theology in a peculiar way. God the Father we visualize in warm,
personal terms. God the Word (i.e., Logos) we more often speak of as God the Son
and think of personal images ranging from Bethlehem to Nazareth to Jerusalem.
Not so, however, with the Holy Spirit. Both the neuter noun and the biblical
images of fire and anointing tend us away from personal to impersonal imagery,
from Spirit as divine personality to Spirit as divine emanation. How
unfortunate. In the Gospel of John, Jesus invites us to know about, expect, and
experience the Holy Spirit. And he speaks of the third member of the divine
family in terms that are personal. In fact, he challenged his original followers
to think of the Holy Spirit in the same personal ways they had experienced him."
http://www.spiritbride.com/A/spiritbride/wisdom%20books.htm
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