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Mary is a woman. In Greek and Hebrew tradition, woman is associated with divine wisdom. This not a hard association to make in regards to Mary since various traditions of early Christianity held her to be a mystic of sorts. Up until the mid 1800's there were homilies in Church tradition that refer to her as the first priest. When wisdom had thought that truth, the symbol commonly associated with Jesus, had been destroyed, wisdom believed all was lost. She clung to the shell of what she believed to be truth, Jesus' body. When she saw that the body was gone that even that body was gone, she sought out truth again. She encountered truth again but did not recognize it for it was now in a form she was unfamiliar with. When the truth called out her name, she was able to recognize the truth for what it was because truth always calls out to wisdom and truth commands wisdom to teach the truth first. The other apostles represent other aspects of the self that will be in disbelieve when encountered with wisdom carrying a message of truth. Because these aspects had once known truth, though they mis-attributed it to the container rather than what the message was, they decided to test the Wisdom containing the message of truth to see for themselves if it was fruitful. Upon testing they found Truth once again.

They disbelieved but they still went to check out her claim, hence they "tested" wisdom.


The Hebrew word for "wisdom" is חכמה (chokmah). It is a feminine noun. Wisdom is personified as a woman in Proverbs 8.

The Greek word for "wisdom" is σοφία (Sofia). It is feminine noun. Wisdom is also personified as a female in the New Testament specifically Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:35 to give an example. The Greeks even personified Sophia source
And which deity was considered a prime source for wisdom (sophia), that would be the Goddess Athena.
So yes these cultures both personified wisdom as a female and it would not be a stretch of the imagination to think that Mary could be wisdom personified her.

I am aware of the verses you speak of

and
By our standards yes this is down right sexist, but back then this would have been a pro-women's liberation statement since gender roles were believed to be fixed by both cultures. "To make a woman into a man" would a metaphor for making women into a man's equal, since in these ancient cultures men did run things.

This is assuming a few things concerning Thomas 114 though. Thomas 114 is debated if it was ever part of the original text and is believed to be a later addition by a "future" scripture editor.

Also why not use women as a symbol for wisdom? The nouns in both Hebrew and Greek are feminine. Greeks would have been familiar with Wisdom being a woman from their own mythology, and Hebrew mythology already regarded God's wisdom as a woman. The elements are already in place to set up wisdom as woman so what's to keep them from doing it, especially considering, as Karen King stated, that a large portion of early Christianity was mostly women?

Also early Christian literature distinctive point is turning traditional ideas of what is "power" and "godly" upside down favoring those who were disenfranchised by these ancient societies. That being shamed was not the end of the world and some of these shameful things should be considered honorable.

I have no problem with destroying bad trees. I do admit that these were written by individuals who were biased and sexist for our time. I think that Paul's call for "women to be silent in Church" is complete bullshit. But these authors did not write for our time, they wrote these texts for their people with events going on that we only have fragments of. I am not going to be biased and force these authors into my culture view though. That would be like me calling early doctors stupid because they were ignorant of germs.

What I hope to do is to gain what I can from these writings and weed out the things that are unnecessary. If I could re-write the NT and Nag Hammadi to convey the same messages and have it contemporary with us I would in a heartbeat but I am incapable of it at this point since I am still learning and growing. I am by no means a guru of any kind. All I can do is share what I know at this point and how I got to it. I'm pruning out the stuff on my end whether you see it or not. I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I have been looking at it with "rose-colored glasses" or that I'm so sola scriptura hindbound that I don't see the mack-truck heading right at me.

I should hope that you would.

Maybe, but I think that might be expected. A tree I don't think is hindering my view, might be completely hindering your view. We are in some ways sitting at different angles from that which we are trying to see. While we are universal in the sense that we are looking at the same thing, we might not be universal in where we are looking at it from. If you feel that certain trees are blocking your path than feel free to chop them down if you need to do so, if it seems like I'm telling you not to, I'm not, rather explaining why I am not chopping them down from my view.

No they weren't. Female babies were often left on the sides of mountains because they were less "valuable" to people since they couldn't work nor could they get schooling. These cultures were very cruel.

I don't know. All I know is that the Greek and Hebrew mythos did describe wisdom as women. This is just pure speculation here so take it with a grain of salt but given how these cultured did have fixed gender roles, they might have made an analogy regarding this female role and wisdom, just off the top of my head, women gives birth to life, wisdom gives birth to truth. If truth brings life and keeps us alive, then that means that wisdom is woman.

This is going to be very sexist but here's one. Wisdom is mysterious and is paradoxical, like a woman. Therefore wisdom is a woman.

Your right that "chokmah" is described as "father" on the Tree of Life. However it should be noted that while Jewish tradition states that the Kabbalah came from Moses, the earliest written evidence of it's existence is 11th century-13th century CE. I'm not completely familiar with the Kabbalah since obviously I'm not Jewish but I do have some friends here on Gaia that might have a better understanding of this tradition than me. If you'd like I could see I could PM them about it or I can give you their usernames and you could PM them about it.

I could be wrong about this but I think that there are five feminine and five male Sephirots, this being since God in totality is recognized as being neither male nor female exclusively but a union of the male and female. This is just an observation but Binah and Chokmah are both feminine nouns. These two sephirots are a completing pairing in regards to Divine Wisdom. The common comparison I'm seeing regarding these two sephirots is that they are a Yin and Yang to each other. Divine Wisdom cannot exist without this pairing.

And doing something like this would be consistent with the structure of early Christian literature. I mean depict God as b*****d Jewish guy who not only fails the Judaic Messiah prophesies but gets publicly executed. If they depicted God in such a shameful fashion, I'm not seeing why woman could not be depicted as wisdom.

I'm sorry if I came off as accusing you of such. I meant no such thing. I was merely asserting where I am coming from.



This may be a point where we are going to have to agree to disagree.

My studies have been pointing that women in early Christian literature were representative of divine wisdom. It still exists some what in modern Church traditions in that there is Sophia worship in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and that Catholics regard Mary Mother of God as symbol for divine wisdom (delivering Christ into the world). There were traditions of early Christianity that regarded Mary Magdalene as equal, if not greater, than the other apostles based on various heretical documents.

Since Christianity was rather counter-culture up until it became the Roman Imperial Cult in 325 CE, I find it hard to believe that early Christians would not have connected Mary with Wisdom because it went "against the grain" of conventional thinking at that time.

I'm waiting for a response from one of them right now

Alright then allow me to revise my statement then and get us back on focus. If I understand correctly you called issue with my interpretation because neither preceding culture would have made the connection of women being divine wisdom since feminine did not necessarily mean woman, especially in regards to the Gods. Okay I get this and I agree.

But somewhere along the line this connection was made by early Christians. If it didn't directly come from the preceding cultures that Christianity stemmed from, then that means that this sort of view/connection would have been unique to Christianity.

I disagree with you concerning Paul but we will save that for another discussion.

You should realize that the Bible as we have it was put together hundreds of years after the fact of any of the stories in it, in the middle ages when women's role had been truly repressed.

So, I would like to point out that women in the Old Testament weren't normally considered worthless...

In the older stories that mention women, the women play very important roles, and yes the main characters are normally the men, but those men rely on the women that are near them.

Look at the story of Abraham and Sarah for example. Abraham took Sarah's advice without thought. He must have truly thought her intelligent and wise.

Yes women were usually subordinate, but they weren't regarded as stupid. It wasn't impossible for them to rise through the ranks as leaders either.

Deborah was a judge of Israel before Israel became a monarchy. The whole nation must have valued her wisdom for her to achieve that status.

There are many stories that didn't make it to the Bible that woman play more prominent roles, even the Book of Adam and Eve, Eve is portrayed as partner to Adam, not slave.

There were many laws that repressed what things women could do, but there were just as many laws that were placed to protect women... In fact, many of the repressive laws were meant to do that...

Yes, she was restricted to the house unless she had a man's permission, but looking back at that time, it seems sensible really.The woman's body was supposed to be protected, that was what the coverings were for. Her womb was considered sacred. She was provided for by law in the event of her husband's death. The law also provided requirements that her husband take care of her in all ways. A man might divorce his wife without contest which might seem unfair, since a woman would have to get consent; but when a woman did plead for divorce, the man she was divorcing would be held accountable for how he had treated her, and what he had or hadn't done for/to her.

Women are considered the epitome of physical beauty, and wisdom the epitome of spiritual beauty. I guess this is what it all boils down to really though.

I would also like to point out that not only girl children were left out in the elements to die. Any child that a family could not or did not want to take care of was left to that fate. Yes, male children might be more often spared because they would be able to do heavy labor sooner and such, but it wasn't really a truly sexist attitude, it was just considered a fact of life and a family's survival.