I just read two awesome books called Finding Holy Spirit Mother by scholar Ally Kateusz and Our Mother The Holy Spirit by scholar Marianne Widmalm. According to them, there is good evidence that the early church and Jesus referred to the Holy Spirit as Mother.
This feminine metaphor for the Holy Spirit was edited right out of Christian texts during the age of Constantine. Yet until about the end of the fourth century, She was there.
Here is a short history of Mother Holy Spirit in the early church, with the help of Ally Kateusz’ book, Marianne Widmalm’s work, and my own research.
The Syriac Bible
One of the most important early churches was in Syria. Remember Acts 11:26, where in Antioch of Syria, believers were first called Christians. Matthews records that Jesus’ “fame spread throughout Syria” (4:24).
Wikipedia says, “Syriac translations of the New Testament were among the first and date from the 2nd century” (bold is mine). They are as important as the Greek and Latin texts, but because they originated in the East, westerners usually remain ignorant of them.
Syriac was a dialect of Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke. Authors of New Testament Scripture record very few actual Aramaic words of Jesus. The Syriac translation of the Bible (called The Peshitta), however, opens a window for us into Jesus’ language and therefore his worldview.
For example, the Old Syriac gospels have the following for John 14:26, writes Johannes von Ort:
 … but that (Syr.: hi = she) Spirit, the Paraclete that my Father will send to you in my name, She (Syr. hi) shall teach you everything, She (hi) shall remind you of all what I say. (Evangelium da-Mepharrese – tr. Burkitt 1904:510-511)
Scholar Marianne Widmalm says of the Spirit as She, “this was not a grammatical inconsequential detail but it had vast theological ramifications.” Widmalm notes, “It is impossible this would not affect [readers’] perception any less than that of Yahweh being male.”
The Spirit as She In Hebrew
Widmalm points out that this same phenomenon of the Spirit as She occurs in the Old Testament Hebrew due to the similar grammar construction to the Aramaic. Hence, Isaiah 63:14 says this when translated literally, “Like the cattle in the plain, she goes down, the Spirit of Yahweh, she gave rest to him, thus you guided your people for the glory of your name.”
And, again in Job 32:8, it says literally, “…but the Spirit, she is in humans, and the breath of Shadday, she gives understanding to them.” Job 33:4 echoes this with “Spirit of El, she made me, and the breath of Shadday, she gives life to me.” (Note the feminine gender of Shadday, or El Shaddai).
The Book of Sirach goes unnoticed by many believers today, but it has been called Ecclesiasticus (“church book”) “probably because the church used it so extensively in its liturgy,” says the Priests for Equality. Originally written in the 2nd century B.C. in Hebrew, it was rejected by the Jewish people as canon, possibly due to its later date, yet accepted by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches as canon Scripture.
Sirach amazes me still because the entire book refers to Wisdom as She. The Wisdom of Solomon and parts of Baruch do also, as well as Proverbs itself. Wisdom appears to be equivalent to the Spirit of God (see Widmalm’s article on Lady Wisdom here).
Sirach is my latest devotional go-to, as I both glean true wisdom from it (as I would of Proverbs), and as I continue to work on changing my off-kilter God image to one balanced with the feminine.
As I read it, it makes perfect sense that the early church would have had a high comfort-level with the Spirit as She and even as Mother. The next section presents archaeological evidence for this.
From Ruah to Spirita Sancta
Kateusz shares a book titled The Meaning of Ruah at Qumran. In it, readers learn of a study of the Dead Sea Scrolls (written in both Aramaic and Hebrew, found in the caves at Qumran). The early church used these 215 manuscripts. In them, when Spirit (Rukah D’Qudsha in Syriac) referred to the spirit of the people or of God it had a feminine ending (an evil spirit had a masculine ending).
Rukah translated into Greek as Pneuma, a neuter word. In Rome, where they spoke Latin, Pneuma and Ruah became Spiritus, a masculine word. Yet we have evidence of at least three tombstones of Latin Christians inscribed with Spirita Sancta instead of Spiritus Sanctus. They kept the feminine emphasis on the Holy Spirit despite a change in the gender of the words in their own language.
Why? Could Syrian literature really have emphasized the feminine nature of the Holy Spirit in such a way that many early believers even in Rome saw Her as Mother? And why did this stop in the church?
“A Language of the Christian People”
Scholar Sebastian P. Brock wrote many books about the Syrian early church. Kateusz says he sees the language of ancient Syria, called Old Syriac, as “a language of the Christian people.” (Again, it is a dialect of Aramaic, which Jesus spoke). Scholar and translator Wilhelm Schneemelcher notes that the Holy Spirit as Mother “was quite common in early Syrian theology and literature.”
Brock writes that “the three main monuments of early Syriac literature [are] the Acts of Thomas, and the writings of Aphrahat and Ephrem.”
Aphrahat, also called The Persian Sage, leaves us this, about Gen. 2:24 (“a man shall leave his father and mother”):
Who is it who leaves father and mother to take a wife? The meaning is as follows: as long as a man has not taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother, and he has no other love. But when a man takes a wife, then he leaves his (true) Father and his Mother [bold mine].
Ephrem (306-373), revered as a saint, and praised by Jerome, was called “the sun of the Syrians” and “the harp of the Holy Spirit.” He unashamedly uses the imagery of Jesus-as-breast: “He was lying there, sucking Mary’s milk, yet all created things suck from his goodness. He is the living breast; from his life the dead have sucked living breath – and come to life” [bold mine].
And he speaks of God of as wholly feminine, with a feminine pronoun, as a midwife:
The Divinity is attentive to us, just as a wetnurse is to a baby, keeping back for the right time things that will benefit it, for she knows the right time for weaning, and when the child should be nourished with milk, and when it should be fed with solid bread, weighing out and providing what is beneficial to it in accordance with the measure of its growing up.
The Acts of Thomas emphasizes God/Spirit as Mother several times, such as, “And they have glorified and praised with the living Spirit, the Father of truth and the Mother of wisdom.” The author includes, in liturgical sayings, “Come, compassionate Mother” and “hidden Mother” with the frequent use of the feminine pronoun. Finally, he writes, “We glorify and praise you and your invisible Father and your Holy Spirit, the Mother of all creation.” (Thanks to Marg Mowszco for her compilation of quotes from The Acts of Thomas).
Sebastian Brock concludes: “In using female imagery for God Ephrem and other Syriac writers are simply following the lead set in the biblical writings themselves where such imagery applied to God is by no means infrequent -even though traditionally male-oriented eyes have usually been blind to this.”
Perhaps we have also been blind to Jesus’ own use of the feminine pronouns and metaphors for the Spirit in Aramaic.
The Gospel of the Hebrews
It might sound familiar, but it’s not the Book of Hebrews. It’s what Matthew wrote in his native tongue of Hebrew (similar to Aramaic) when he wrote his gospel. Though the originals are gone, we have secondary evidence of its existence through 20 different church Fathers, says scholar Marianne Widmalm. They include Origen, Jerome, and Theophilus and Irenaeus.
The earliest is Eusebius, a bishop, theologian and historian, who uses a non-extant work of Papias (60-130 A.D.) to prove that “Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language, and interpreted them as he was able.” Eusebius notes Papias was included in the generation after the apostles. Widmalm writes that Papias’ witness was as good as it gets without having known Jesus.
One of the shining gems from the book is a lost saying of Jesus, placed just after Jesus’ baptism and the Holy Spirit’s descent like a dove upon Jesus, with the blessing of the voice from heaven. It is, “The Savior says: ‘Even so did my Mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away to the great mountain Tabor.'”
The traditional interpretation of Jesus’ baptism has been that it was the Father’s voice speaking over Jesus, “This is my beloved son…” But Matthew reveals in The Gospel of the Hebrews that Jesus recognizes his Mother’s voice, the Holy Spirit who has descended on Him like a dove.
This was well known among the church fathers who referred to The Gospel of the Hebrews in their works. Jerome is one example, who writes that no one should be offended by this passage, “for in the deity there is no gender.”
The Gospel According to Thomas
The Gospel According to Thomas was written in Ancient Syria from between 60-250 AD. It continues the tradition of The Gospel of the Hebrews, in calling the Spirit Mother. It was one of the many books condemned to be burned listed in a book called the Galasian Decree. It survived, only to be edited for heresy by scribes such as Archbishop Nicetas of Thessaloniki.
However, writes Johannes von Ort, “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.”
In a manuscript dating to 1000 years old, the following was amazingly not redacted:
We glorify and praise thee and thine invisible Father and thine Holy Spirit the Mother of all creation.
As well as:
The apostle took the oil and pouring it upon their heads anointed and chrismed them and began to say: Thou, Mother of compassion, come…Come, Holy Spirit, purge thou their reins and hearts.
And additionally, the Gospel of Thomas uses this prayer to consecrate new believers:
Come, Holy Spirit, Come, She that dost know the mysteries of him that is chosen, Come, She that has part in all the combats of the noble champion, Come, the silence that reveals the great things of the whole greatness, Come, She that manifests the hidden things and makes the unspeakable things plain, The Holy Dove that bears the twin young, Come, hidden Mother, Come, She that is manifest in Her deeds and gives joy…
Other Mother Holy Spirit from the Jar….
Other examples from the jar in Nag Hammadi include The Gospel of Philip (“whoever becomes a Christian gains both Father and Mother”); The Secret Book of John (“I am the Father. I am the Mother.”); and The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, in which a trinity of Father, Mother and Son is used in six different verses.
Why Suddenly a Male Holy Spirit?
Dr. Brock notes that by the end of the fourth century, Syriac writers became wary of calling the Holy Spirit Mother, and it began to be edited out of future manuscripts.
“Old Syriac scribes in the Cradle of Christianity began to change the Holy Spirit’s gender from female to male,” says Kateusz.
She explains in her book that for 300 years, the early church’s many sects lived peacefully, each focused on their own way of following Jesus. Many of the earliest house churches were led by women, as well as later some of the most famous sects. For example, the Marcions, founded by both a woman and a man, appointed women leaders. Additionally, prophetesses established the New Prophecy group of believers, quoting Paul’s letter to the Galatians, “In Christ there is neither male nor female.”
One sect in Rome, however, believed that these and other groups were heretical, and also that women should not participate in church leadership. The Emperor Constantine claimed this sect as his own.
Diocletian, the Emperor before Constantine, had ordered the destruction of all churches and Christian groups meeting together, as well as that their books, chalices and property be destroyed. The persecution was so brutal, writes Kateusz, that pagans helped to hide Christians from the government.
Constantine must have been a welcome change, at least to some. But for those on the Out list–anyone deemed a heretic like those who continued to refer to the Spirit as She–it was becoming dangerous once again.
In 324, Constantine invited bishops to Nicaea to determine correct Christian doctrine. Women leaders were not invited.
The Roman church soon became like their earlier persecutors, showing no mercy to anyone disagreeing with their theology. One example of this, writes Kateusz, is that in the sixth century the last surviving members of the New Prophecy group–again, led by women–were ordered to convert to Roman Catholicism. Many refused, and instead were burned alive in their churches.
Books, too, were burned, especially anything with Jesus’ reference to the Holy Spirit as His Mother. Kateusz writes, “One such list [of books to be burned] included forty gospels and other sacred books plus the entire works of over fifty Christian teachers and founders of early Christian faiths.”
Widmalm says, “When the femininity of the Holy Spirit disappeared, it went hand-in-hand with women’s roles disappearing in the initial structure of the Christian church.”
One can see how women’s leadership and Mother Holy Spirit began to be erased from church history. Yet, because of devout monks who hid sacred manuscripts in a jar in the desert in 367 AD, we have evidence as to what Jesus and many others may have believed about the Holy Spirit.
Post-script: Since I first started reading and writing on this topic, prolific blogger Marg Mowczko wrote a very comprehensive post (here) called “The Holy Spirit as Mother in Early Syriac Texts” if you would like to delve further into this topic.