Those women, and all their sisters, have been left out of the books, and worse (worse for them, at any rate), they were left out of god's reckoning, too. Women, in our "culture" have been designated as sisters and daughters of Eve, Eve who heard the serpent's tempting and ate the apple and caused the Fall. Eve, that vessel of sin, helpless before the lusts of her body, that body made to lure men into sin. "The woman made me do it," Adam said. We despise Adam, we women, but he's supposed to be our master. Women knew/know that Adam is "the weaker vessel", but god set Adam to rule us, we are to Adam what Adam is supposed to be to god.
Well ... there are plenty of quite powerful women in the Bible. Just sayin'.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the feminine face of the church, as far as I'm concerned. A virgin, miraculously impregnated by the will of god. I think I understand that Mary herself was born of an "immaculate conception", that she was conceived without sin?
So even the feminine face of the church is horrible to me! Mary was not a woman, she was a child, a virgin child, she had not yet given in to the vile lusts of her weak female body. She was that unreal construct, The Virgin Madonna, and all other women are the other thing: The Whore. And Mary is supposed to make women think they are important to the church? Certainly women are important: since it's our fault that men lust after us and our sin-filled bodies, we have to bear the consequences, forever. .
Protestants like myself don't believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary because we don't believe such a belief is substantiated in the biblical texts. Thesame would go for the 'immaculate conception' - the doctrine that Mary herself was born without sin.
I agree with Hal. God is beyond gender. Since I believe in a God of revelation(who uses the language of symbol to reveal truths about His nature to us mortals), He does seem to choose in Scripture the Father metaphor of speaking of and about Himself. I don't have a problem with that. The Bible also uses some feminine metaphors to describe God's nature and character.
IdylleSeethes, very interesting indeed what you say about the Holy Spirit being referred to as 'Sophia', the spirit of wisdom, in the feminine. My church has just bought a new hymnbook with a very rich collection of hymns and worship songs from all branches of the Church, including Celtic, charismatic, Taize, Iona, alongside traditional hymns and familiar contemporary songs. I was very chuffed to see a hymn in this collection which addresses the Holy Spirit as 'she'.
I understand that it is indeed a Jewish tradition to refer to the Spirit of God in the feminine gender: 'ruach', Hebrew for 'Spirit' being of the feminine gender. (Can any Hebrew scholar here put me straight here?
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U2 have a wonderful song about the Holy Spirit, also referred to as 'she', called Grace, on their album All That You Can't Leave Behind.