The scriptures start with a beautiful image: the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters. God, in Hebrew, is elohim, a masculine noun. But Spirit, in Hebrew, is ruach, a feminine noun. The word “hovered,” elsewhere in the Hebrew bible, refers to a mother bird hovering over her nest. The She-Spirit hovered over Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan River.
Spirit shows up all over the scriptures. Unfortunately, the patriarchy of bible translators shows up too. While the capitalized He/Him of God is inserted everywhere, the preferred pronouns of Spirit (She/Her) are erased. If humans are made in God’s image, then our pronouns matter too. Some of us are male. Some of us are female. Some of us, like divine Spirit, are both.
Thanks kindly for this post. You may in its regards be interested in reading if you've not already Kyla Schuller's book, The Trouble with White Women: A Counterhistory of Feminism. While I don't have any particular difficulty with the historical Jesus known as he, due to the scandal of particularity',
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't have any particular difficulty with the historical Jesus being known as he, due to the 'scandal of particularity', that's a completely different issue than reading masculinity back into the Jewish Scriptures and up into the Godhead itself. We stumble when these rich metaphors are only read literally, a method of interpretation that the Church has certainly used, though along with analogical, allegorical, and moral interpretations of texts' meanings. I hope you get some good conversation about this from Lavern Spicer.
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