Wedding Pattern in Bible Holydays (2)

This Part 2 is the continuation and conclusion to “Wedding Pattern in Bible Holydays (1)”.  Part 1 should be read first.  Most of the symbolic material in Part 1 won’t be repeated here in Part 2.

This two-part topic is tying ancient Israel’s traditional wedding pattern for betrothal & marriage to the sequence of the Lord’s Old Testament (OT) holydays, and to New Testament (NT) writings.  We’re discussing their wedding customs, and typing them to Christ and His church.   

In the NT, Jesus portrays Himself figuratively as a Groom or bridegroom (Mk.2:20), and the church is His Bride.  In 2Co.11:2, Paul the apostle figuratively betroths the church/Bride to Christ.  (I’ll capitalize the words Groom and Bride when they refer to Christ marrying His church.)

There were seven annual God-ordained holy occasions for Israel.  Here’s a list of the Lord’s annual days and the time of year in which they occurred, from Leviticus 23:

Their sacred year began near the spring equinox of March 20.  Le.23:5 Passover was 14 days later, in early April.  v.6 Passover began the seven Days of Unleavened Bread.  v.15-16, 21 Pentecost/Shavúot occurred 50 days later, near June 1.  v.24 the Day of Trumpets/Shouting, Rosh Hashánah (“Beginning of the [civil] Year”, Ezk.40:1a), occurs near the autumnal equinox of September 21.  v.26-28 the Day of Atonement or Yom Kíppur fast is ten days later, around October 1.  v.33-36a the 7-day Feast of Tabernacles (FOT)/Sukkót/Booths began in October, five days after Yom Kippur.  v.36b the Last Great Day 8, called Shémini Atzerét, culminated the FOT.  (also see the topics “Days Israel Observed – God-Ordained” and “Feasts of the Lord and the Jews”.)

So far, in Part 1 we tied the traditional Jewish wedding pattern only to the OT sequence of Passover, Days of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost/Shavuot.  A shared cup of wine, to seal the betrothal or érusin, linked to Passover.  After the prospective groom went away to “prepare a place” for his betrothed at or near his father’s house (Jn.14:1-3), she would begin purifying herself.  That loosely ties to the Days of Unleavened Bread.  While the groom was away, he would send gifts to her.  That custom is reflected in Pentecost, when the gift of the Holy Spirit (HS) was given to the church/Bride, Ac.2:38 etc.  see Part 1.   

However, the betrothed groom & bride didn’t know the date of the actual wedding or nisúin.  It was for the father of the groom to decide when his son had the wedding chamber (húppah Strongs h2646, Hebrew) and house sufficiently prepared for her.  Only the father knows the time for his son/groom to come back for her!  Jesus said of His return in Mk.13:26, 32 “No one knows the day or hour, but My Father only”. 

{Sidelight: Paul said he was taught by Christ’s revelation (Ga.1:12).  Did Paul ever ask or wonder, ‘When are you coming back, Lord’?  If Paul did, he wasn’t told the date.  For that matter, none of the apostles knew the date.  Though in 2Pe.1:14, Peter knew he himself would soon die.  Mk.13:32 Jesus Himself didn’t know an exact date for His return; only Father God knows!  After Jesus’ resurrection, He told His disciples in Ac.1:5-7…it’s in His Father’s authority.  Those verses indicate that the date of Jesus’ coming was something He did not then know.  Israelites and saints, such as Peter, have kept fulfilling the number of their given days on earth, Ex.23:26b.  (However, as Jesus prophesied in Mk.13, Jerusalem & the temple were destroyed in 70 AD when Jesus ‘came’ as Judge, Ja.5:9b.)}

The betrothed Jewish bride would wait in faith that her groom will return and take her to the place he’d prepared.  He.11:1 “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”  Though he was absent, she trusted that he would come for her!  We in the church too must maintain faith.

It’s said that ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’.  She may not have known him all that well.  Peter wrote of Jesus in 1Pe.1:8. “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you don’t see Him now, you believe in Him.”  The betrothed bride believed her groom would return to take her away.

Customarily the groom came at midnight!  Mt.25:1, 5-6 “In the middle of the night there was a shout, ‘Behold the groom! Come out to meet him.”  The shout would identify that her groom wasn’t a real thief stealthily intruding.  Mt.25:10-13 “Watch therefore, for you do not know the day or the hour.”  Lk.12:40 “Be you also ready, for the Son of Man comes at an hour when you think not.”  The groom usually would return at a late night-time hour.  But leading up to his return….

As the months elapsed with the groom absent, the bride would lie awake watching for him night after night.  Then she’d fall asleep!  Paul wrote the church in 1Th.5:1-2, 10 “You know the day of the Lord comes as a thief in the night. That whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with Him.”

At last…her groom would come and ‘steal’ her away!  She’d been veiled since betrothal.

At betrothal, customarily the marriage contract or ketúbah was signed by two witnesses. cf. Re.11:3.  John the Baptizer was a witness for the Groom, Jesus (Jn.1:6-7, 15, 32).  Jn.3:26-29 John called himself the “friend of the Groom [bridegroom]”.  At the groom’s return, one of the two witnesses or the groom himself would shout (Mt.25:6).  Her family then knew he’s not a real thief on her father’s property!

1Th.4:16 “The Lord Himself [Jesus] will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.”  v.15 the saints who are alive shall not precede those who had “fallen asleep”.  That is, the saints who’d died precede those who will read Paul’s letter.  Jesus said in Jn.5:25, “An hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live”.  Deceased saints, “fallen asleep”, are taken away by Jesus the Groom.

This coming of the groom was typed by the Day of Trumpets/Shouting.  Le.23:24 Yom Téruah.  This holyday occurs on the 1^st day/new moon of the sacred 7^th month, 1 Tíshri.  They knew the season, but didn’t know whether the moon’s first visible crescent to mark the new month would appear on the 29^th or 30^th day of the old month.  Our Ancient Days: Yom Teruah “The day and the hour that no man knows.”  Jesus said in Mk.13:32, “But of that day and hour no one knows”.  Only the Groom’s Father.

Ancient Israel would watch…then a new moon sighting traditionally had to be confirmed by two witnesses.  The new moon is almost entirely dark.  It’s just a thin sliver.  cf. Mt.24:29-31 “…The moon will not give its light. Then they will see the Son of Man [Jesus] coming.”  The Day of Trumpets/Shouting was also known as the ‘Day of the Concealed Moon’, Yom Kéhseh, the ‘hidden day’.

Mal.4:2 “For you who fear My name, the Sun of righteousness [Christ] will arise with healing in His wings, and you will go forth.”  Jesus is here depicted by the Sun, and the moon’s first visible crescent too reflects the light of the Sun/Son!  Benson Commentary Mal.4:2 “Christ, who is fitly compared to the sun. The church is described as ‘clothed with the sun’, Re.12:1, adorned with graces communicated to her from Christ.”  Again, the groom while absent would send gifts to his betrothed bride.  (see Part 1.) 

{{Sidelight: The 1^st day of the 7^th month, Rosh HaShanah, was also known as the ‘Day of Remembrance’, Yom HaZíkaron (Le.23:24 memorial/zikarón h2146), as birthday of the world.  And as Yom HaDín, the ‘Day of Judgment’.  The sealing/execution of the judgment was then signified by Yom Kippur, ‘Day of Atonement’, occurring ten days later.  see the topic “Day of Atonement (2)”.  (Note: Also there are plural layers of meaning within the concept of Jesus’ Coming.)}}

It’s dark when the saints close their eyes in sleep or death!  A symbolic Day of Trumpets/Shouting is typed in 1Co.15:51-52. “We will not all sleep…for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible.”  Although it wasn’t known exactly when the first sliver of the moon will be visible, the very ill and those advanced in age know that death is near.  (ref 2Pe.1:14 Peter, 2Ti.4:6 Paul.)

Again, the Groom comes in the night for His Bride.  Then she will no longer reside in her father’s house.  Ps.45:10-11 Septúagint “Hear, daughter. Forget your people and your father’s house. Because the King has desired your beauty.”  When the Father of the Groom decided, He would send His Son to take the Bride from her childhood home (earth).  Paul the aged said of himself in Php.1:23, “To depart and be with Christ is much better”.  SSol.2:10 “Arise, My darling, come away with Me.”  She is veiled. 

With a procession, the bride was taken to the huppah bridal canopy, at/near his father’s house.  The ketubah marriage contract was read at a night ceremony.  Customarily included in the reading was Ps.118:26 (Mt.21:9). “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”  The contract was given to the bride by the groom or by the two witnesses.  (see Joel 2:16 for more groom/bride/huppah language.) 

Is.61:10 the groom decks himself with ornaments and the bride is adorned with jewels.  Gill Exposition Is.61:10 “A bridegroom puts on the best clothes he has on his wedding day.” 

Now her veil is removed.  At the wedding nisuin…the bride and groom finally stand face-to-face! 

Ge.32:24, 29-30 “Jacob said, ‘I have seen God face to face, yet I am still alive.”  Traditionally, Jacob saw the face of Christ the Messenger of YHVH on Yom Kipper.  ltradio.org “Face-to-face’ is an idiom for the Day of Atonement.”  Only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, did Israel’s High Priest dimly come face-to-face with the mercy seat of Christ (Le.16:2), amid smoke in the Most Holy Place.    

The typological Day of Atonement (At-One-ment) holyday was the 10^th day of the 7^th month, 10 Tishri.  (It follows Rosh HaShanah.)  Ge.2:24 a husband and wife become one flesh; they become figuratively as one.  Paul wrote of the espoused church/Bride in 1Co.13:12, “Now we see dimly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.”  When the Bride is face-to-face with Jesus, she then really gets to know the Groom!   

David wrote in Ps.17:15, “I shall behold Thy face in righteousness”.  Behold the face of the Lord.  The disciple John wrote in 1Jn.3:2b, “We will see Him as He really is”.  The Groom/Son of God.  SSol.6:3 “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”  v.3-9 represents a type of Christ and His gifted Bride(s).

After the wedding, the bride and groom would spend 7 days in the wedding chamber or booth.  Only then was the marriage consummated!  (They’d been apart from the betrothal date until he came for her.)  Laban spoke of his daughter to his son-in-law Jacob in Ge.29:27, “Complete the week of this one”.  Jdg.14:17 Samson was with his new bride for 7 days. 

Weddings were often held either in June or near the 7-day Feast of Booths in the 7^th month, after the Day of Atonement.  The 7 days in the canopied huppah or chamber is typed by the FOT/Booths. 

A wedding was a big celebration!  Mt.22:9-11 guests were expected to wear attire customarily suitable.  A wedding feast was held (cf. Ge.29:21-22, Jdg.14:12).    

The marriage feast for Jesus and His Bride(s) culminates at His Father’s house in heaven.  Re.19:1, 7-9 “I heard a loud voice of a multitude in heaven. The marriage of the Lamb [Jesus] has come and His Bride has made herself ready. Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”  

After the celebratory wedding feast, the couple would go to their new home, usually built at/near the house of the groom’s father.  They hope to live ‘happily ever after’.

The 8th Day Shemini Atzeret was the next day (22 Tishri), immediately following the FOT.  That ends God’s sacred holydays for the year.  That day is thought to foreshadow the new heaven and the new earth.  (Note: There were some traditional variations in wedding custom details and typologies.)

After Christ’s marriage feast of Re.19…Re.21:1 “I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”  The Bride(s) will live forever with her/(their) Husband, the Lord Christ.  (see “Polygyny – Lawful in God’s Eyes?”.)

And for those presently alive on this earth, Re.22:17 “The Spirit and the Bride say come”.  All should believe in Jesus for salvation!

Few of us know in advance the total number of our days/years.  But elderly saints and the terminally ill are closer to completing their days here.  Then they, and eventually we too, will close our eyes for the last time, as have all the saints who went before. 

We anticipate then becoming part of that great cloud of witnesses who preceded us!  He.12:1, 22-24 “We have a great cloud of witnesses. The general assembly and church of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and Jesus.”  cf. Ec.12:7.  (1Co.15:44 we too will have a spiritual body.  see “Life and Death – for Saints” and “Rebirth to Physical Life”.)

In OT times, the Lord was the figurative Husband of ancient Israel, Je.3:14.  (see “Jesus Was the Old Testament God”.)  His name YHVH was engraved upon the mitre plate on the high priest’s forehead, Ex.28:36-38.  Re.22:4 then we shall see His face and His name shall be in our foreheads.  A bride is given the name of her husband.    

The ancient wedding typology presents a beautiful and meaningful picture!  Only Father God knows when to say to His Son, ‘The hour has come, go get your Bride’.  At the time we take our final breath, may each of us be ready.

 

Wedding Pattern in Bible Holydays (1)

Marriage is ordained by God.  Ge.2:18 “The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a suitable companion to help him.”  Adam & Eve were husband & wife.  A relationship between Christ & ancient Israel and Christ & the church is that of a figurative husband & wife(s).    

Christ the Lord, in type, had married His people Old Testament (OT) Israel.  Je.31:32 “I was a husband to them’, declares the Lord.”  In the New Testament (NT), Jesus referred to Himself as a Groom or bridegroom.  Mk.2:20 “Jesus said, ‘The days will come when the Groom will be taken away from them.”  Jn.3:29 Jesus’ cousin John the Baptizer called himself the “friend of the Groom/bridegroom [Jesus]”.  (I’ll capitalize the words Groom and Bride when they refer to Christ marrying His church.)

Christ, as spiritually joined to Christians, used marriage symbolism.  2Co.11:2 Paul the apostle said, he figuratively “betrothed you [the church] to one Husband, like a pure Bride chosen only for Christ”.  Jesus spiritually marries His church.  Paul wrote in Ep.5:31-32, “A man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. This mystery is profound, in regards to Christ and the church.”

Ancient Israel’s wedding model for betrothal & marriage can be seen from the Lord’s OT holydays and NT writings.  This topic discusses Israel’s wedding customs, and types them to Christ and the church.

Archaeologists have found evidence of Jewish wedding customs.  My Jewish Learning: Ancient Jewish Marriage “At the beginning of the 20^th century, an actual Jewish marriage record during the period from the return of the Babylonian exile was discovered – the oldest marriage contract in Jewish history.”  The wedding pattern of Bible times adds symbolic meaning to scripture and God’s holydays.

There were seven annual God-ordained holy occasions for Israel.  Here’s a list of the Lord’s annual days and the time of year in which they occurred, from Leviticus 23:

Their sacred year began near the spring equinox of March 20.  Le.23:5 Passover was 14 days later, in early April.  v.6 Passover began the 7 Days of Unleavened Bread.  v.15-16, 21 Pentecost/Shavúot occurred 50 days later, near June 1.  v.24 the Day of Trumpets/Shouting, Rosh Hashánah (“Beginning of the [civil] Year”, Ezk.40:1a), occurs near the autumnal equinox of September 21.  v.26-28 the Day of Atonement or Yom Kíppur fast is ten days later, around October 1.  v.33-36a the 7-day Feast of Tabernacles (FOT)/Sukkót/Booths began in October, five days after Yom Kippur.  v.36b the Last Great Day 8, called Shémini Atzerét, culminated the FOT.  (also see the topics “Days Israel Observed – God-Ordained” and “Feasts of the Lord and the Jews”.)

We’ll tie the annual sequence of holydays to ancient Israel’s traditional wedding model.  In the model, the Day of Trumpets/Shouting, Yom Kippur, and the FOT are addressed in Part 2 of this topic. 

Jesus, the Son of God the Father, portrayed Himself as a Groom.  Again, the NT church is the Bride (2Co.11:2).  Ro.7:2-4 Paul showed that the church is to be “joined” or Married to the ascended Christ.            

In the ancient Near East, the father of the groom would choose or obtain a bride for his son.  The father of the groom would go to the house of the father of the bride to begin the arrangements.  Ge.24:4 father Abraham sent his servant to the old country to bring back a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac.

Ge.34:4-6 the young man Shechém wanted Jacob’s daughter Dinah.  Shechem asked his father Hamór to make arrangements for their marriage.  Hamor then went to Jacob to discuss the matter.  

Jdg.14:1-7 Samson saw a young Philistine woman in Timnáth and wanted her.  He asked his father and mother to get her as a wife for him.  The three of them went to Timnath to make the arrangements.

The father of the groom (or the groom himself) and the father of the bride were often the matchmakers.  A bride didn’t do the initial choosing, but she’d give consent to the proposed match (cf. Ge.24:58).  A mutual commitment or shíddukin between the bride & groom then led to a formal betrothal or érusin.

When the groom’s father (or the groom) went to the house of the chosen bride’s father, they arranged a binding marriage contract or ketúbah. (cf. Tobit 7:14.)  It set the conditions of the marriage covenant. 

Customarily two witnesses would sign the ketubah contract (cf. Re.11:3).  Jn.1:6-7, 32 John the Baptizer (Elijah, Mt.11:13-14) was a witness for Jesus.  Jn.1:15 “John bore witness of Him.”  Jn.3:26, 29 John, as witness for Jesus, called himself the “friend of the Groom”.  A modern counterpart may be the ‘best man’.  (For Christ’s marriage to OT Israel, Moses was traditionally the ‘friend/witness of the Bride’.  Mt.17:3 the two witnesses, Moses and Elijah, were seen in the Transfiguration.)

The prospective bride was a productive member of her father’s household.  Her marriage will result in a loss of labor/income for the household.  So a bride price or móhar was determined, and then paid to her father/family.  It could be items of gold or silver money, or service.  Ge.24:53 precious things were given to Rebekah’s family to ‘purchase’ her for Isaac.  Ge.29:20 Jacob served Rachel’s father Laban for 7 years, as her bride price.  A free wife brought a dowry into the marriage, a bond wife didn’t.  Ge.29:24, 29 some Bible interpreters view the maids Zilpah & Bilháh as the dowry of Leah & Rachel.

Shared cups of wine (or bírkat érusin) confirmed that her bride price was accepted by the groom, and sealed the betrothal, the erusin.  Commonly the betrothed groom was age 16-20, the bride age 13-16.

In this imagery, Father God is both the Father of the Groom (Jesus) and the Father of the Bride (the church).  Father God is the Father of all, of everyone, including Jesus. 

Jesus the man was Jewish, from the tribe of Judah (He.7:14).  This Groom came to earth, the home of the Bride(s).  Jesus’ heavenly Father chooses us as a Bride for His Son.  Ep.1:3-4 “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ…chose us.”  The elect (Brides) then consent to the future Marriage.  1Jn.4:19 “We love Him because He first loved us.”  Father God, as Father of the Bride, gives His elect to Jesus.

The Bride was purchased.  Ep.1:14 KJV the Bride is Jesus’ “purchased possession”.  Paul wrote of the church in 1Co.6:20, “You have been bought with a price”.  This Bride price was exceedingly costly!    

This Bride price was the Groom’s lifeblood!  1Pe.1:18-19 the price wasn’t “perishable things like silver or gold, but the precious blood of Christ”.  At Jesus’ final Passover meal, His Last Supper, Jesus took a cup of wine and said to His disciples in Lk.22:20, “This is the new covenant in My blood”.

The New Covenant (marriage) agreement was made at Passover in Jerusalem.  This was the 1^st holy occasion of the sacred year.  It occurred on 14/15 Abíb, the 1^st month.  Traditionally, the groom drank from a cup of wine.  If the chosen bride accepted His offer, she then drank from the cup.  Their action sealed the marriage covenant.  Although the Lord hadn’t commanded wine at Passover, wine was added as a traditional custom in the Roman Empire.  The Talmud Pesachim tract about Passover rituals, “They should not give [a man] less than four cups of wine”.  Jesus and His chosen disciples drank the cup.    

A betrothal was thus sealed.  Betrothal was viewed as marriage, unconsummated.  It could be annulled only if he gave her a legal certificate of divorce (De.24:1), traditionally called a “get”.  Mt.1:18-20 Joseph’s betrothed Mary became pregnant by the Holy Spirit; initially he wanted to divorce her.

After the betrothal ceremony and the mohar or bride price paid, the groom would return to his father’s house for an indefinite time (even up to two years).  At or near his father’s house, the groom would prepare an addition or home for his bride.  Some Israelites lived in cluster homes with a courtyard.  Also the groom would build there the wedding chamber, the húppah (Strongs h2646, Hebrew).  

Jn.14:1-3 was the promise commonly spoken by Jewish grooms after betrothal, “I go to prepare a place for you”!  Jesus the (resurrected) Groom then went to His Father’s house.  Jn.20:17 “I ascend to My Father and your Father.”  God is Father of the Groom and Bride both.  Jn.14:2-3 “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places. I will come back and take you to be with Me.”  Jesus promised to come back for His Bride and take her to the place He’s prepared for her in the heavenlies, where His Father dwells.

The betrothed bride, now veiled, begins to purify herself.  Est.2:12 Esther’s beautification process to prepare her for the king consisted of one year of oils & fragrant spices.  Is.1:18 “Says the Lord, ‘Though your sins were as scarlet, they will be white as snow.”  SSol.4:7 “You are altogether beautiful my love, and there is no blemish in you.”  The Bride/church is portrayed as purified, clothed in pure white linen.  Re.19:7-8 the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints, those invited to the marriage.

This cleansing process of the bride is loosely typed by the Days/Feast of Unleavened Bread (which began at Passover).  Paul wrote in 1Co.5:7-8, “Cleanse out the old leaven, even as you are unleavened. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Let us therefore keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened sincerity and truth.”  Sin can spread in a person’s life.  Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary: Leaven “Here, leaven symbolizes sin that defiles the believer.”  The Bride is to put out sin and pride which puffs us up, as leaven.

While betrothed, the groom and bride lived separately.  After the groom returned to his father’s house to prepare the place for his bride, he would customarily send gifts to her.  Jesus told His disciples in Jn.16:7, “It is to your advantage that I go away”.  After Jesus paid the Bride price (His lifeblood!), He ascended to His Father in heaven.  Ep.4:8 “When He ascended on high…He gave gifts to humanity.” 

The bride’s mother would teach her the wifely responsibilities.  Mother and daughter usually would become closer during this time while the groom is absent. 

Jesus, in heaven, now sends the Holy Spirit (HS) or Comforter to His betrothed Bride.  Ac.2:1, 4 at the Pentecost following Jesus’ ascension, the gift of the HS was sent to the Bride.  Ac.2:38-39 at Pentecost Peter proclaimed, “Repent and be baptized, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit”.  Paul wrote of spiritual gifts to the church.  1Co.12:4 “There are various kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.”  1Co.12:7-11 Paul then lists several gifts of the HS which are distributed to the church/Bride(s).  Like a good mother, the indwelling HS teaches & leads Christians while our betrothed Lord is away in heaven.

This gift-giving was typified by Pentecost, which occurred near June 1^st, 50 days or so after Passover.

However, the groom and bride didn’t know the date of the actual wedding or nisúin.  It was for the father of the groom to decide when his son had the huppah wedding chamber & house sufficiently prepared for the bride.  Only the father knows the proper time for the son/groom to return to get his bride!  Jesus said of His return in Mk.13:26, 32 “No one knows the day or hour, but My Father only”.

The betrothed bride would wait in faith that her groom will return and take her to the place he’d prepared.  He.11:1 “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.”  Her longing and anticipation would grow.  Though he was absent, she trusted that he would come for her!  Likewise, we in the church are to keep the faith (Col.1:2-4); we continue to trust Jesus…as we wait.

The topic is continued and concluded in “Wedding Pattern in Bible Holydays (2)”.  Part 2 links ancient Israel’s wedding model to the latter four God-ordained holy occasions of the sacred year.

Universal Christian Salvation (1)

All of us Christians have ancestors, friends, and loved ones who died unconverted.  They may (or may not) have been generally good people…but they didn’t believe ‘Jesus saves’.  Are they doomed to an eternity of torment in hell-fire?  This topic seeks to satisfactorily answer that question, that dilemma.

Nancy Evans Bush Dancing Past the Dark, p.82-83 “As simply a place for the dead, the idea of an underworld has existed as long as there have been societies. Many of the underworlds look remarkably similar, their function as a place of punishment…eternal punishment is a concept only within some sects of Christianity.”  (Also there are Islamic scholars who believe in an eternal hell/jahannam.)

There are three main Christian beliefs regarding the ultimate destiny of erring humans: #1 Eternal Conscious Torment in hell-fire; #2 Annihilationism; #3 Universal Reconciliation/Salvation.  This topic focuses on Universal Reconciliation through Christ Jesus, that is, Christianity.  Protestant views….

Calvinism is a Protestant theology named after the Swiss reformer John Calvin (1509–1564).  Calvinists think that God doesn’t desire to reconcile or save all of humanity, because God elected to save only a few.  They think most humans are predestined by God to receive eternal conscious torment/punishment in hell-fire (#1).  This seems sadistic.  (also ref the two-part topic, “Gehenna”.)

Arminianism is a Protestant theology named after the Dutch theologian Jacóbus Armínius (1560–1609).  It is today’s most common Christian view.  Arminians think that God wills for all people to be saved through Jesus.  But they think that God is unable to save or reconcile most of humanity, because God won’t infringe on the free will He gave to mankind.  Arminianism thinks that a man may freely choose to accept or reject God.  And those who reject God will then be tortured forever in hell-fire (#1).

Annihilationism (#2) is the belief that the wicked who don’t know God will perish, ceasing to exist.  It is also called Conditional Immortality; the fate of the wicked isn’t eternal life in hell-fire torment.

Universalism or universal Christian Reconciliation is the belief that all or most humans will ultimately be reconciled to God, saved through Jesus (#3).  This may involve living more than one physical life.

However, Christian Universalism doesn’t mean that false religions (e.g. New Age) are of God, or that sin is okay!  Jesus declared in Jn.14:6, “I Am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  Ac.4:12 Peter said of Jesus, “There is no other name under heaven…by which we must be saved.”  According to the New Testament, Jesus is the only way to (universal) salvation!

A person who knows their Bible may cite isolated verses which seem to support any or all of those three main beliefs!  Yet God is love (1Jn.4:8).  Which belief best reflects God’s character, His love & justice?

New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, v.12, p.96 (quoted in Bob Evely At the End of the Ages, p.113). “In the first five or six centuries of Christianity, there were six theological schools; of which four (Alexandria, Antioch, Caesárea, and Edessa-Nísibis) were Universalist, one (Ephesus) accepted [annihilationist] conditional immortality, one (Carthage or Rome) taught [hell-fire] endless punishment of the wicked.”  From approximately 170–430 AD…four schools believed in Christian universalism, one school believed in annihilationism, one school believed in eternal conscious torment.

Let’s examine Bible verses supporting Christian Universalism; most people will eventually be saved.

In the New Testament (NT) and in the Old Testament (OT) Septúagint/LXX, the Greek term for “all” is “pas” (Strongs g3956).  This term “pas” occurs 1,240 times in the NT, and 7,000 times in the LXX.  Following are representative verses containing the word “all”/“pas”.

The Greek term pas can mean each & every (person).  In Ep.4:6 e.g., the apostle Paul asserted that there is “One God and Father of all [pas g3956], who is above all [pas g3956].”  Here, “all” indicates ‘each & every’; all are below Father God.  Ellicott Commentary Ep.4:6 “The word ‘all’ must be taken as applying to all God’s rational creatures, made in His image (and indeed even to all His creatures).”  Also 2Co.5:10 “We must all (pas g3956] be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ.”  Everyone must.  Barnes Notes 2Co.5:10 “All’ – None shall escape by being unknown.”

Some pertinent OT LXX verses with “all” (pas g3956): Ps.22:27-29 “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; all the families of the nations shall worship before Him…All who descend into the earth shall fall down before Him.”  All peoples who lived & died to eventually worship the Lord!  Clarke Commentary Ps.22:27-29 “Each family shall embrace it [the gospel] for their own salvation. They shall worship before Jesus the Savior. Every dying man shall put his trust in Christ.”  Benson Commentary Ps.22:29 “The whole human race.”  All die.  Gill Exposition Ps.22:29 “Who go down to the house of the grave’. Christ is Lord, both of the dead and living.”  Lord of all (Ac.10:36)!

Ps.65:2-3 “Praise becomes Thee, O God. To you all flesh shall come. You shall pardon our sins.”  Pulpit Commentary Ps.65:2 “In this Psalm the writer [David] is universalist, and embraces all mankind.”

Is.40:5 LXX “The glory of the Lord shall appear, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  (Luke quotes this OT verse in Lk.3:6.)  Barnes Notes Is.40:5 “All human beings.”  This must be yet future.

Many or most people in history lived their lives without ever hearing the name of Jesus/Yeshúa.  (The only name by which there is salvation, according to Peter in Ac.4:12.)  Individuals who never heard His name or never knew the Lord’s way of life…would a loving & just God condemn them in their ignorance to endless torment in hell-fire?!  Is that really the kind of God we worship and serve?

The Lord foretold in Is.45:23 LXX, “By Myself I swear, My word has gone out of My mouth; that to Me every [g3956] knee shall bow, and every [g3956] tongue shall swear by God”.  God swore by Himself!  (cf. He.6:13 “When God made His promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself.”)  Ellicott Commentary Is.45:23 “The highest form of asseverátion.”  Benson Commentary “The highest and most solemn oath possible.”  Pulpit Commentary Is.45:23 “This universal turning to God.”  Poole Commentary “A posture of reverence and subjection.”  Is the Lord able to bring it to pass…will every knee bow and will every tongue swear allegiance to God?

Joel 2:28 LXX the Lord promised, “I will pour out My Spirit upon all [g3956] flesh”.  (Peter quotes this verse in Ac.2:17 when the Holy Spirit outpouring began at Pentecost.)  Cambridge Bible Jl.2:28 “The measure of spiritual illumination will be extended to all. ‘All flesh.”  JFB Commentary Jl.2:28 “The consequent conversion of the whole world (Isa.2:2, 11:9, 66:23; Ro.11:12, 15).”  Scriptures indicate every knee will then bow in worship to God.

However, the Greek term for “all”, pas g3956, doesn’t always mean ‘each & every’.  Mk.1:36-37 “Simon and his companions searched for Him [Jesus]. They found Him and said to Him, ‘The people are all [pas g3956] looking for You.”  Here, “all” doesn’t mean ‘each & every’.  Gill Exposition Mk.1:37 “Not all the men in the world, nor, all the inhabitants of Capernaúm [v.21], but a large number of them.”  Key is the context in which all/pas g3956 appears.

Jn.3:26 “He [Jesus’ disciples, Jn.4:1-2] is baptizing, and all are coming to Him.”  But not each & every person came for baptism.  Cambridge Bible Jn.3:26 “All’ – an exaggeration very natural in their excitement.”  Rather, ‘many are coming’ (as in the Aramaic Bible rendering) conveys the meaning.

Yet would a God whose character is love (1Jn.4:16) only elect a comparative few for salvation?!  What about the ignorant multitudes who lived in BC times, before Jesus incarnated in the 1^st century AD?

Paul wrote in Ro.3:23, “All have sinned”.  Here, “all” does include each & every adult (except Jesus – 1Pe.2:22, 2Co.5:21).  Meyer NT Commentary “The sinning of every man is presented as a historical fact.”  And Ro.6:23 “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.”

Lk.13:3 Jesus warned, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish [g622]”.  Ro.2:4 “The kindness of God leads you to repentance.”  To who all does God give repentance (2Ti.2:25), so they won’t perish?

Peter wrote in 2Pe.3:9, “The Lord…not willing that any perish [g622], but that all should come to repentance”.  Benson Commentary 2Pe.3:9 “Any human being, any soul that He has made.”  God wills no one perish eternally, that all (eventually) repent from sin!  Cambridge Bible “Here the word ‘perish’ doesn’t mean annihilation, but the state which is the opposite of salvation.”  Expositor Greek Testament “His will is not even that ‘some’ should perish.”  He is God; in due time, can He bring to pass His will?

Job came to realize the Lord’s omnipotence.  Jb.42:2 LXX “I know that You can do all [g3956] things, and nothing is impossible with You.”  God is more than able to bring to pass His purposes & desires!  Gill Exposition Jb.42:2 “Job knew that…He [God] had a right to do what He pleased.”

1Ti.2:3-6 “God our Savior, who wills [g2309] all people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Who gave Himself as a ransom for all people.”  In this passage, “all” seems to include everyone.  (cf. the Lord’s assertion in Is.55:11 LXX, “So shall My word be…until the things that I willed [g2309] shall have been accomplished.”)  God’s will be done!  Vincent Word Studies 1Ti.2:4 “Prayer to God for all is acceptable to Him, because He wills the salvation of all.”  Meyer NT Commentary 1Ti.2:4 “In this verse the idea of the universality of God’s purpose is clearly expressed.”  Clarke Commentary 1Ti.2:5 “God equally wills the salvation of all.”  Barnes Notes 1Ti.2:6 “Who gave Himself a ransom for all’…a proof that God desires the salvation of all.”  JFB Commentary 1Ti.2:6 “In behalf of all, not merely for a privileged few.”  Thomas Whittemore (1800-1861) wrote, “1Ti.2:4 Undoubtedly to be understood all the human race”.  The passage indicates…God wills all be saved, our Savior died for all.  Parallel.  So it seems contradictory that God would elect only a few, predestining the majority to eternal torment!

1Ti.4:10 “The living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially [g3122] of those that believe.”  But not only of those that believe (now).  cf. Ga.6:10 “Do good to all, especially [g3122] to those of the household of faith.”  Do good not only to those of the household of faith, those that believe now.  cf. 2Ti.4:13 bring all the books or scrolls, especially the parchments.  Not only the parchments.  God will save ‘all’.  He does good to all of humanity created in His image.  He saves them out of trouble during their lives.  Ps.145:9 “God is good to all. His mercies are over all His works.”  Poole Commentary 1Ti.4:10 “[God] the Preserver of man and beast.”  And He’s the Savior of all, spiritually too.  But not until their time comes, when they believe & repent (Mk.16:16 & Ac.2:38).

Ro.5:12 “Just as sin entered the world through one man [Adam] and death through sin, so death spread to all people because all sinned.”  Sin is universal.  JFB Commentary Ro.5:12 “Thus death reaches every individual of the human family.”  (The next verses, Ro.5:13-16, are in parenthesis.)  Ro.5:17-19 “How much greater is the result of that done by the one man, Jesus Christ. As through one trespass all people were condemned, so through one righteous act all people were justified to [eternal] life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of the One many will be made righteous.”  This passage too reflects parallelism.  Cambridge Bible Ro.5:18 “The parallel of Adam and Christ.”  Barnes Notes Ro.5:18-19 “With the same certainty, to the same extent. Connected with eternal life. The ‘many’ – corresponding to the term in the former part of the verse, evidently commensurate with it; for there is no reason in limiting it to a part, any more than there is in the former.”  Poole Commentary Ro.5:18 “Many’ is sometimes put for ‘all’, as in Dan.12:2.”  It’s not only “many” who have sinned…everybody has sinned!  Pulpit Commentary Ro.5:18 “Indisputably denoting universality of effect.”  In parallel…as all have sinned, all will (in time) be justified to eternal life through Jesus!

However, we Bible readers may well recognize parallelism & universality in a passage…and yet dismiss its implication because of our presuppositions, preconceived notions, and past (false) teaching.  The same even goes for some Bible commentators (quoted by me), resulting in their seeming to contradict themselves elsewhere.  (This can give the impression of cherry-picking his contradictory comments.)

Questions to ponder: What is the ultimate fate of the 14-year-old girl who died last week in a car crash, without knowing the Lord?  What of the Maori tribesman who died in 1500 AD in New Zealand, never having heard the name of Jesus the Savior?  Do we think they’re doomed everlastingly to hell-fire?  Would an eternity of torment represent just retribution for them, as fair return for a few decades of life spent in sin or ignorance?  Yet God is just (Jn.5:30, Re.15:3).

{Sidelight: The earliest Christian missionaries didn’t arrive in New Zealand until 1814!  New Zealand History: Missionaries “They [Maori] rejected the low-church missionaries’ gloomy emphasis on an angry God looking to damn their souls to eternal fires. There were no Maori baptisms until 1830.”  It’s understandable that in 1814 those Maori would reject any thought of their (ignorant) grandparents or ancestors, deceased before missionaries arrived, burning forever in hell!  God is love, not sadism.}

Christian afterlife belief #3 (see the top), regarding the ultimate destiny or fate of mankind, offers a great hope…for our ancestors, family members, friends & loved ones who died ‘unsaved’!  This topic is continued in “Universal Christian Salvation (2)”.

 

Holy Spirit’s Identity

The identity of the Holy Spirit remains somewhat of a mystery to many Bible readers.  This topic is a composite of material excerpted from my previous topics relating to the Godhead: “Tri-unity of God”, “Godhead in Prehistory”, “Holy Spirit Personification”, “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”, “Names/Titles of God in the Old Testament”.

In the English language, the word “God” is customarily used for Deity.  Only the true God is Divine.

The Bible indicates there are 3 “Persons” in the Godhead, the Godkind or God Family: Father, Holy Spirit, Jesus the Son/Word.  They are identical in essence, fully divine, a tri-unity of subsistences having self-awareness.  The God Family is uni-plural, as “one” (echad, Hebrew Strongs h259) in nature.

The tripartite Godhead is revealed to us by Jesus the Son’s coming in the flesh and His words in the New Testament (NT), by other scriptures, and by the Holy Spirit (HS) indwelling us as Christians.  It’s been said in analogy that the Father is the wall outlet, the HS is the cord, Jesus is the lamp (Re.21:23).

Father God is in heaven.  God has operated through the HS and Jesus.  Ac.2:34 Jesus ascended into heaven and now sits there at Father’s right hand (and Jesus lives mystically in Christians, Jn.17:21-23 & Col.1:27).  The human Jesus wasn’t omnipresent.  The HS is on earth…omnipresent.  David wrote in Ps.139:7-10, “Where can I go from Your Spirit, where can I flee from Your Presence?”  Not anywhere.

The Father sent Jesus.  Jn.12:49 Jesus said, “The Father who sent Me has given Me commandment.”  The two are distinct.  The Father also sends the HS. Jn.14:26 “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send.”  Jesus too sends the HS (Jn.16:7).  So all three are distinct!  But neither Jesus nor the HS sends the Father!  They differ in order and subordination.  The human Jesus wasn’t omniscient.  Mt.24:36 “Of that day and hour no one knows, not the Son, the Father only.” (see “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has A God”.)

The HS belongs to and was part of Father God, has personality, but isn’t the totality of God.  God is a triad: 2Co.13:14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the HS be with you all.”  2Co.1:21-22 “He who establishes us in Christ and anointed us is God, who also gave us the Spirit.”  Ep.4:4-6 “There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.”  (That’s three!)  Ac.7:55 “Being full of the HS, Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”  He.9:14 “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God.”  1Co.12:4-6 “The same Spirit…the same Lord…the same God.”  (Again, that’s three.)  1Pe.1:2 “Elect according to a foreknowledge of God the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ.”

The triune God is thrice holy: One Spirit…one Lord…one Father (Ep.4:4-6).  Is.6:3 “Holy, Holy, Holy is YHVH of hosts.”  A three-in-one Godhead.  The heavenly worshipers in Re.4:8 “Do not cease to say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty”.

The terms for God as “Father” and “Holy Spirit” rarely occur as such in the Old Testament (OT).

The Holy Spirit in the OT: Is.48:16 “The Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me.”  Job.33:4 “The Spirit of God has made me.”  Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit on you.”

Every human has a spirit within.  Jb.32:8 “There is a spirit in man.”  Our human spirit gives biological life to our body of flesh (Ge.2:7).  Ja.2:26 “The body without the spirit is dead.”  Without our human spirit, we’re just a clod.  Our spirit in God’s image imparts self-awareness and intellect to our brain.  It’s a non-physical component which differentiates human mind from animal brain instinct.  Our spirit gives us a moral sense of conscience, based mostly upon the self and cultural customs & laws.  The HS will join with our human spirit (1Co.6:17); we become linked to God, able to obey God’s morality.

The Holy Spirit, ministering spirits (angels), our human spirits…aren’t an impersonal Star Wars type force!  Our human spirit is me, is you, within our flesh ‘suit’.  (see “Spirits – Made by God in Light”.)

Ontology is the study of being.  God, angels, humans are called personal beings.  But God’s Being isn’t finite or limited, as we are limited.  Scripture doesn’t define ‘person’ (the term we use in modern English), and doesn’t apply that term to the triune God.  The Latin persona was a ‘face’ worn by Greek/Roman dramatic actors.  Church fathers applied the Greek term hypostases (entities) to God.

The HS speaks in 1^st Person as “Me” and “I” in Ac.13:2. “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them to.”  Also ref Ac.11:12, Jn.16:13, Mk.13:11, which indicate the HS is personal and speaks.  2Sm.23:2-3 “The Spirit of YHVH spoke by me. The God of Israel.”  The HS is God/YHVH.  But who was/is this Holy Spirit of God?

Theóphilus, the 6^th bishop of Antioch (born approximately 20 years after the apostle John died), was the first to use the term trinity/triad.  In 175 AD he wrote To Autolýcus, 2:10. “God, having His own Word internal within His own bowels, begat Him, emitting Him along with His own Wisdom before all things.”  Theophilus’ triad was “The Trinity of [Father] God, His Word, and His Wisdom.” (Autolycus 2:15)

Wikipedia: Theophilus of Antioch “Theophilus’s apology is most notable for being the earliest extant Christian work to use the word ‘Trinity’ (Greek: τριάς trias), although it does not use the common formula of ‘the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’ to describe the Trinity. Rather, Theophilus himself puts it as ‘God, his Word (Logos) and his Wisdom (Sophía)’ [To Autolycus 2:15], perhaps following the early Christian practice of identifying the Holy Spirit as the Wisdom of God [Autolycus 1:7].”

“This is also expressed in the works of his contemporary, Irenáeus of Lyons, who writes [Ps.33:6], ‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power. Since then the Word establishes, gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God’. [Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching] ‘In like manner also the 3 days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the 4^th is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man.’ [To Autolycus 2:15]”

Irenaeus is called the most important theologian of his time.  He lived from 130–200 AD, having been taught by Polycarp (in Smyrna), who was a disciple of the apostle John.  

Residing in Lyons, France, Irenaeus wrote in Against Heresies. “The Son is rightly and properly called Word, while the Spirit is called the Wisdom [Sophia] of God”.  Ibid 4.7.4 “The Son and the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom [Sophia], whom all the angels serve.”  4:20:3 “God tells us through the mouth of Solomon that Sophia is the Spirit.”  Sophia (Strongs g4678) is the Greek term for Wisdom.

Christian historian Robert Grant Greek Apologists of the 2^nd Century, p.169 “Theophilus and almost every early Christian theologian agreed the Logos (like Sophia/Wisdom) was originally in God”.

Jesus referred to the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (WSol).  cf. Mt.27:43 & WSol.2:13, 18; Lk.11:31 & WSol.8:1.  (The apostle Paul referred to WSol too.  cf. WSol.13:5, 8 & Ro.1:19-20 KJV “Godhead”.)

Jesus said the Queen of Sheba “Came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (Mt.12:42, 1Ki.10:1-4).  Jesus also referred to the apocryphal Wisdom of Sirach (WSir)/Ecclesiasticus.  cf. Mt.6:14 & WSir 28:2.  WSol was written ca 20 BC; WSir was written ca 180 BC in Hebrew.

WSol.7:22, 25 “In herself, wisdom is a spirit that is understanding, Holy. She is the breath of the power of God, and the emanation of the pure glory of the Almighty.”  Wisdom is the Holy Spirit, split-off or spirated or emanated through God’s breath/mouth.  WSol.8:3-4 “She glorifies her noble birth by living with God, and the Master of all loves her.”  Pr.8:30 “I [wisdom] was daily His delight.”

WSol and WSir reflect how Jews believed and interpreted Proverbs & Wisdom in latter BC times.  Wisdom is sophia (g4678) in Greek, and chokmáh (h2451) in Hebrew.  Orthodox Bible “The Holy Spirit receives eternal existence only from the Father.”  Wisdom says in Pr.8:25 LXX, “He begets [gennáo g1080] Me”.  Philo On Flight and Finding (p.325) “Wisdom, even if it be most ancient of all other things, still has only second place to that Omnipotent Being.”  Father God is the Most High God.

Solomon’s prayer of WSol.9:4, 10, 17, “Give me the wisdom that sits by Your throne…Send her forth from Your holy heavens…Send Your Holy Spirit from on high.”  Wisdom the HS sat beside God’s throne in the heavens, as a Queen beside the King’s throne.  The real ‘Queen of Heaven’ isn’t Ishtar, or other pagan goddesses (cf. Je.44:17)…rather, She’s the feminine HS.

In Lk.7:35, Jesus indicated His Mother is Wisdom, the HS.  Connecting in order the following seven verses will identify the (feminine) HS: Jl.2:28a, Pr.1:20, 23, De.34:9a, Nu.27:18, Mt.1:18b, Lk.7:35.

The Works of Philo, p.85, 331, 405 “The Word [Logos, Greek] has received wholly pure parents…God being the Father and husband of wisdom, the mother of the Word….the Divine Logos flows forth from Wisdom.”  Creation reflects/teaches that it’s impossible to have a father without having a mother!

In our various languages, we use terms which correspond to the ancient Hebrew & Greek terms chosen by the Bible writers to identify and describe the ‘Persons’ of the God Family.  Jewish and Christian theology usually refers to God in male language and images, yet agrees it doesn’t adequately express all that the Divine is.  The Godhead possesses all the masculine and feminine attributes.  God is so great!

Wisdom is a personified hypostasis (a Greek term used in early Christian writings) or entity of God’s divine essence.

God reflects masculine roles: Ps.103:13 Father.  Ho.2:16 husband.  Ps.98:6 king.  Ex.15:3 warrior.

God reflects feminine roles: Is.66:13 Mother.  Is.42:14 pregnant.  Ps.22:9 midwife.  Ps.123:2 mistress.

Again, Wisdom is the Holy Spirit.  WSol.1:4-5 “Wisdom won’t enter the soul that plots evil. For a holy spirit of discipline flees from deceit.”  Again, WSol.9:17 “Unless You have given him wisdom and sent Your Holy Spirit from on high.”  Nu.27:18 “Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit.”  De.34:9 “Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the Spirit of wisdom.”  Omnipresent, at God’s throne in heaven, and within Joshua, was the HS Wisdom.  And Wisdom is “Her”.

Jesus was conceived in the virgin Mary by the HS (Lk.1:35 the HS came upon Mary); and John the Baptizer was filled with the HS in his mother’s womb (Lk.1:15).  Speaking of Himself and John, Jesus said in Lk.7:33-35, “Wisdom is justified by her children”.  Jesus, the Child conceived by Wisdom the HS, speaks of Wisdom as “her”!  (As did Proverbs, etc.)  Jesus’ words are authoritative and truth!

The Hebrew grammatical gender of Bible nouns has significance.  But this doesn’t mean God the HS is literally a woman!  Yet the HS is grammatically and figuratively “she/her”.

In OT scripture, the ancient Hebrew (Heb) language attached gender to Spirit essence.  The Heb term for spirit (rúach h7307, and Aramaic rúach h7308) is feminine (fem).  The Heb term for wisdom (chokmah h2451) is fem.  In the OT Septúagint/LXX and NT both, the Greek (Gr) term for wisdom is sophia g4678.  Solomon wrote in Pr.7:4, “Call wisdom your sister”.  Sisters are of course feminine, not masculine (masc).  In Pr.9:1-3, wisdom is “she/her”.  WSir.4:11 “Wisdom exalts her children.”  WSir.24:18 of Wisdom, “I AM the mother of love that is beautiful. I therefore, being eternal, am given to all My children who are picked by Him.”  (Father God picks His elect: Ep.1:3-5, 17, Jn.6:44.)  And Jesus knew Himself to be a Child of Wisdom/Sophia/“her” in Lk.7:35.

Elóah h433 is a Heb term for God, occurring 55 times in the OT (mostly in Job and poetic passages).  Jb.27:3 “The spirit of God [Eloah h433] is in my nostrils.”  The –ah ending is indicative of fem singular.  The most common OT Heb term for God is Elohím h430.  Elohim is a masc plural ending –im (Father and Son), combined with the fem singular root Eloah (HS/Wisdom) or possibly El.  Three.

Also the modern Heb fem term ‘shekínah’ represents the Divine Presence, the OT fire-cloud of glory.

Heb grammar too uses masc pronouns for God.  Heb & Aramaic has no neuter (no “it”); all nouns are masc or fem.  Again, the Heb term for spirit (ruach) is fem.  But unlike Heb, the Greek term for spirit (pneúma) is neuter.  The Latin term for spirit (spirítus) is masc.  Noun gender varies in languages.  In translated languages, gender doesn’t have the significance as in the original inspired Hebrew scripture.

In English, translators render pronouns with the Gr pneuma/spirit (neuter) as he masc, e.g. Jn.14:26. (or it neuter, Ro.8:26 KJV.)  Some of this is revisionism.  This practice subconsciously makes men seem more like God than do women.  Yet in 2Co.6:18, Paul wrote that God said, “You shall be sons and daughters to Me”.  In Jn.14:26, the Gr masc term paráclete is translated Comforter/Helper, and refers to the Gr neuter term Spirit.  Here translators chose to use the pronoun He.  But since God has both masc and fem characteristics (Is.42:13-14, Ps.123:2), Heb personal noun gender is more meaningful.  Later languages such as Greek, Latin, English don’t maintain the original Heb gender in translation.

The most ancient of the rare Old Syriac copies, the Siniatic Palimpsest (300s–400s AD), was found in 1892 in the Covenant of St. Catherine by Syriac Professor R.L. Bensly (Cambridge Univ).  Jesus’ words in Jn.14:26 read: “But She—the Spirit-the Paraclete whom He will send to you-my Father in my name —She will teach you everything; She will remind you of that which I told you.”  The Spirit is feminine to the Syriac church (as the ancient Aramaic ruach/spirit was fem), unlike Greek and Latin grammar.

J.J. Hurtak: “The Spirit is not called ‘it’ despite the fact that pneuma [spirit] in Greek is a neuter noun. Church doctrine regards the Holy Spirit as a person, not a force like magnetism. In the Eastern Church, Spirit was always considered to have a feminine nature. She was the life-bearer of the faith.”

The Westminster Leningrad Codex (1008 AD) is the oldest complete Heb manuscript.  In its ultra-literal interlinear English translation online: Is.11:2 “And she rests on him, spirit of YHVH.”  Ps.143:10 “Good spirit of you Elohim, she shall guide me.”  Nu.11:26 “The spirit, she is resting on them.”  Ezk.37:1 “She becomes hand of YHVH on me in spirit of YHVH.”  Jb.33:4 “Spirit of El, she made me; breath of Who-Suffices, she is keeping me alive.”  (Ec.12:1 “Remember Ones creating you.”…“Us” in Ge.1:26.)

From our Is.11:2. “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on Him [Messiah], the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.”  The LXX adds “godliness”.  Seven attributes!  And they’re all fem nouns!  Wisdom is primary (Pr.4:7).

In Pr.8:12-14, Wisdom speaks in 1^st Person. “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord. Counsel is mine. I AM understanding, strength is mine.”  These attributes are all fem!  Philo AI1 p.29…On Flight and Finding, p.325 “He called that Divine & heavenly Wisdom by many names….Indeed all the virtues bear the names of women.”  It’s not just coincidence.

Oswald Chambers’ Christian devotional, My Utmost For His Highest, is one of the most popular religious books ever written.  In it he wrote, “I am the Almighty God’ – El-Shaddaí, the Father-Mother God. The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real.”  God is both Father and Mother.  El Shaddai (h7706) has been described or defined as the ‘mighty breasted One’.

We may say the Father is the Source, Possessor, Director, Planner.  The Son is the Spokesman, the Executor, Mediator, Ruler.  The HS is Wisdom, the Omnipresence, the Comforter…and the Glory!

Father God is Jesus’ Father, and Jesus referred to Himself as the Child of Wisdom (Lk.7:35), His Mother.  In the NT, Jesus never called Mary, “mother”!  He referred to the surrogate Mary as “woman”.  Jn.2:4 “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?”  Jn.19:26 “When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple He loved nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!”

Jesus was fully God in the flesh…both His Father and Mother are God!  The womb of Mary, the “woman” as Jesus lovingly called her, served to form Him in the flesh to become the God-Man.  The 300s AD Apostles Creed reads, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary”.  Mary birthed Jesus.  Ga.4:4 “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.”  Lk.1:35 “The angel said, ‘The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of The Highest will overshadow you [Mary]; therefore the Holy One to be born shall be called Son of God.”  Orthodox Study Bible Lk.1:35 “Note the revelation of the Holy Trinity: The Father (The Highest), the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  The Father overshadowed the HS upon Mary, and God’s Son Jesus was conceived.

Chinese preacher Witness Lee was part of the Christian work started by Watchman Nee.  Lee’s Living With and In the Divine Trinity”, p.39 “Lk.1:35 shows the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary…the Most High, God the Father, overshadowing Mary…and the birth of the holy thing, the Son of God. Thus the entire Divine Trinity was involved in the conception.”  The Son was conceived into Mary by His divine Parents, who are both God.

Father God didn’t somehow have sexual relations with Mary, who was engaged to the man Joseph (Mt.1:18).  It was adultery to have sex with a woman married or betrothed to another.  De.22:23-27 God’s penalty for such adultery was death.  Surely, Father God wasn’t an (figurative) adulterer!

Furthermore, Mary was of a different kind…she was the human kind, not the Godkind.  God’s principle of biogenesis reflects each creation reproducing only according to its kind (ref Ge.1:11-12, 21, 24-25, 6:19-20, Mt.7:16, 1Co.15:38-39).  Father God is Spirit, not flesh, Jn.4:23-24.  The term incubus pertains to a spirit having sex with a human woman.  Heathen gods, such as Zeus/Jupiter, supposedly had sex with mortal women and produced offspring.

Philo Judaeus (25 BC–50 AD), The Works of Philo, AI2:14:49 “The mother of all things…the wisdom of God.”  Again, Jesus indicated He was the Child of her, Wisdom/Sophia, Mt.11:19 KJV.  Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit upon you.” (cf. Jl.2:28a)  She is the Holy Spirit.

Early church writings in various countries attest to the feminine HS.  The fragmentary Gospel to the Hebrews was written in Greek (probably at Alexandria) in the early 100s AD, for Jewish Christians.  The HS is Jesus’ Divine Mother in its Christology.  In one quotation Jesus declared, “My mother, the Holy Spirit took Me, and conveyed Me to the great mount Tabor”.  (cf. Lk.7:35 regarding Jesus’ mother.)

Áphrahat (280–345 AD) wrote in Syriac in Persia. Demonstrations VI “The Spirit, She opens the heavens and descends, and hovers over the waters; and those who are baptized put Her on.”  From Aphrahat’s Demonstration X, “As long as a man hasn’t taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother.”  (Re.19:7-9 is Jesus’ metaphorical marriage to Christians.)

Éphrem the Syrian (306–373 AD) was perhaps the most significant of all the Syriac language fathers, called ‘the greatest poet of the patristic age’.  His Hymnen de Ecclesia identifies the Spirit as feminine.

Robert Murray Symbols of Church and Kingdom, p.25 “The Syriac Fathers, as is well known, attributed female gender to the Holy Spirit in the first centuries after Christ; seeing the Holy Spirit especially as ‘Mother.”  The early Eastern Church originally believed the HS was She/Her.

But after some time, the Syriac church lost or suppressed the original OT & apocryphal Jewish concept of the fem HS or shekinah.  By the 500s AD, a masc HS was becoming more the norm.  Possibly this was due to Western influence, and because some heretical groups misused the feminine imagery.

Over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) has made Mary a counterfeit or substitute for the scriptural person of Wisdom/Sophia/Mother.  Yet a counterfeit presumes a prior genuine!  It was Wisdom who sat beside God’s throne as Queen (WSol.9:4).  She was beside YHVH at the beginning (Pr.8:22, 30).  The original Queen of Heaven (cf. Je.7:18) wasn’t a counterfeit Astarte or Isis…or Mary!

The surrogate Mary carried and birthed Jesus the Son of God.  She’s a godly woman.  But not a co-redemptrix or mediatrix; not due near-goddess status!  The RCC believes Mary was always sinless.  However, Mary herself indicated that she too needs a Savior!  Lk.1:46-47 Mary exulted, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior”.  Mary knew she was a sinner needing a Savior, as does all of humanity.

The early Syriac writers didn’t present the HS as a literal woman.  But by the 500s AD she’d become masculine.  It seems the concept of a fem HS became dangerous to the structure of the church.  Even by the time the HS had become a confirmed member of the trinity (Council of Constantinople in 381 AD), the HS was described as masc, despite having nurturing fem qualities!  But Ge.1:2, 26-27 females too embody God’s image!  Male and female both are created in the image (masc) and likeness (fem) of God.  Martin Luther reportedly was ‘not ashamed of speaking of the HS in feminine terms’.

Count Zinzendorf (1700–1760) was leader of the Moravian church in Czechoslovakia and America.  To Zinzendorf, the HS was feminine, the Creator (Ge.1:2, 26 “Us”) and Mother.  He wrote, “She has created the world with the Savior and now is remaking every child until it is a new creation, and becomes one in the spirit with him; She nurses and watches until it is grown.”

Again, in the NT Jesus never referred to Mary as His mother (or to Joseph as His father).  By the early 300s AD, the church was embroiled in the Arian controversies.  Many didn’t want Jesus begotten before time began.  But in the 300s AD, many did want women suppressed.  A quandary existed.  So they hushed scriptures which related to Wisdom/Sophía the HS too having been “brought forth” in past eternity…though Wisdom herself says in Pr.8:25b LXX, “He begets [gennao g1080] Me”.

Over the centuries AD, Mother Wisdom/Sophia became assimilated into the cult of the virgin Mary.  It elevated Mary, the counterfeit or replacement for Wisdom the HS.  Mariolatry ensued in the RCC.

For more details relating to the divine God Family, see my other topics: “Tri-unity of God”, “Godhead in Prehistory”, “Holy Spirit Personification”, “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”, “Names/Titles of God in the Old Testament”, “Jesus is God…Jesus Has a God”, “Jesus Was the Old Testament God”, “Jesus Is the Messiah”, “Jesus’ Virgin Birth”, “Savior’s Name in Bible Languages”.

Jesus’ Virgin Birth

There are some who teach the New Testament (NT), but don’t fully believe a basic gospel truth…the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.  That includes some who have knowledge of Bible Hebrew and Greek.

There was uncertainty about Jesus’ birth in 1^st century Judaism.  The Jews said to Jesus/Yeshúa in Jn.8:41, 48 “We weren’t born from sexual immorality. You’re a Samaritan and have a demon.”  Those disbelieving Jews implied that Jesus was racially variant and demented.  There was hostility between Jews and the mongrel Samaritan people.  Samaritans resembled Jews but were considered imposters.  v.42-44 Jesus’ reply was, He came from God and the father of those Jews was the devil.

In 178 AD, the Greek philosopher Célsus spread the false Jewish story that a Roman soldier called Pantéra (‘panther’) had an affair with Mary, and was Jesus’ biological father.  Rabbinic writings of the Middle Ages called Jesus/Yeshua, ‘Yeshu ben Pantera’.  Let’s see what the Bible says about Jesus’ birth.

The supposed parents of Jesus, Joseph and Mary, were Galileans betrothed.  But they hadn’t yet come together.  God sent the angel Gabriel to inform Mary in Lk.1:26-34. “You will bear a Son, and you shall name Him Jesus [Yeshua]. He will be the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.’ Mary replied, ‘How can this occur, since I’m a virgin?”  Mary hadn’t had sexual relations with Joseph or any other man.

Mary went to visit her pregnant aunt Elizabeth for 3 months, 75 miles to the south (Lk.1:36-56).  When Mary returns to Galilee, Joseph sees she is 3–4 months pregnant.  What?!  Mt.1:18-19 “She was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit [HS]. Joseph, being a just man, didn’t want to disgrace her publically, so he intended to divorce her privately.”  Divorce annulled a betrothal.  If a betrothed woman has sexual relations with another man, it was adultery (De.22:13-14, 20-27).  Although stoning for adultery was a neglected law, Joseph could have thrown the first stone (De.17:7).  Or Joseph could put Mary away privately by giving her a writ of divorce (De.24:1), and paying the legal cost.

Before Joseph could divorce her, an angel came to him in a dream.  Mt.1:20-21 “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the One conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son and you shall name Him Jesus [Yeshua], for He will save His people from their sins.”  Joseph knew then that Mary hadn’t been impregnated by another man.  And Mary knew she hadn’t.

Gabriel had also informed Mary 3–4 months earlier in Lk.1:35. “The angel [Gabriel] said, ‘The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of The Highest will overshadow you [Mary]; therefore the Holy One to be born shall be called Son of God.”  Orthodox Study Bible Lk.1:35 “Note the revelation of the Holy Trinity: The Father (The Highest), the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  The Father overshadows the HS upon Mary, and God’s Son Jesus is conceived.  Chinese preacher Witness Lee was part of the Christian work started by Watchman Nee.  Lee’s Living With and In the Divine Trinity, p.39 “Lk.1:35 shows the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary…the Most High, God the Father, overshadows Mary…and the birth of the holy thing, the Son of God. Thus the entire Divine Trinity was involved in the conception.”  The Son was conceived into Mary by His Parents, who are God!  (See the topics “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”, “Holy Spirit Personification”, and “Holy Spirit’s Identity”.)

Jesus was Fathered by God Most High.  Jesus said in Jn.16:28, “I came forth from the Father”.  Mary gave birth to Jesus, and her husband Joseph became Jesus’ legal father.  Lk.3:23 “Jesus, supposedly the son of Joseph.”  Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ biological father.  Mary & Joseph both knew that Joseph didn’t father Jesus.  Mt.1:24-25 Joseph married her and “kept her a virgin until she gave birth to Jesus”.  Jesus was carried and birthed by a virgin, Mary/Miriam.

Father God is Jesus’ Father.  Jesus referred to Himself as the Child of Wisdom (Lk.7:35), His Mother.  In the NT, nowhere did Jesus call Mary, “mother”!  Jesus referred to the surrogate Mary tenderly as “woman”.  Jn.2:4 “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?”  Jn.19:26 “When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!”  John and other writers customarily referred to Joseph & Mary as Jesus’ father & mother, his parents.  But Jesus didn’t.  Jesus indicated His Mother is Wisdom, the HS.  (Connect in order seven verses to identify the HS: Jl.2:28a, Pr.1:20, 23, De.34:9a, Nu.27:18, Mt.1:18b, Lk.7:35.)

Father God didn’t somehow have sexual relations with Mary, who was engaged to the man Joseph (Mt.1:18).  It would’ve been adultery to have relations with a married or betrothed woman.  De.22:23-27 God’s penalty for such adultery was severe!  Needless to say, Father God (or the HS) didn’t commit adultery!  Furthermore, Mary was of a different kind…she was of the human kind, not the Godkind.  Father God is Spirit, not flesh (Jn.4:23-24).  The term incubus pertains to a spirit having sex with a human woman.  Heathen mythological gods, such as Zeus/Jupiter, had sex with mortal women and produced offspring.  Le.20:15-16 the penalty for beastiality (sex with a different kind) was death!

Jesus was fully God in the flesh…both His Father and Mother are God!  The womb of Mary, the “woman” as Jesus called her, served to form Him in the flesh to become the God–Man.  The 300s AD Apostles Creed has it: “I believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary.”  Mary birthed Jesus.  Paul knew of the virgin birth, writing in Ga.4:4, “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman”.  We already read where Matthew and Luke knew.

In Mk.6:3, Mark calls Jesus the “son of Mary”.  A matrilineal reckoning isn’t the usual practice seen in scripture.  So it seems Mark also knew of the virgin birth.  Jesus in the flesh most often referred to Himself as the Son of Man/humanity/ánthropos (Strongs g444, Greek)…not the Son of Male/áner (g435).

The first Bible prophecy is Ge.3:15, where God told the serpent, “I will put hostility between your seed and her seed”.  Her seed, not the male Adam’s.  Yet Bible genealogies are almost always patrilineal, not through females.  (e.g. Ac.16:1-3 Timothy hadn’t been circumcised because his father was Greek.)

The prophecy of Is.7:14 foretold the Lord’s virgin birth. “The Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold! The virgin shall be with child and she will call His name Emmanuel.”  The “Lord Himself” would be the sign!  (also ref Ge.22:8, “God Himself the lamb”.)  And a pregnant virgin would be so remarkable…something to “behold”!  Whereas a non-virgin who is with child is commonplace; it happens every day in every city.  It seems Is.7:14 cannot refer to King Hezekiah.  When Isaiah visited King Aház (Is.7:3-14-ff) and spoke of the future virgin birth of the Child, Hezekiah was already 8 years old or so (when Ahaz was age 20–21).  cf. 2Ki.16:2, 18:2.

The Greek term translated as “virgin” in the Septúagint/LXX Is.7:14 is parthénos (g3933).  In Greek, this term meant virgin.  The temple shrine of the mythological Greek virgin goddess Athena in Athens was called the Parthenon.  LXX Ge.24:16 of Rebekah, “She was a virgin [parthenos], no man had known her”.  LXX Jg.21:12 “Young virgins [parthenos] who had not known a man by lying with him.”

Matthew quoted the old Greek in his Mt.1:22-23 passage about Mary’s virgin pregnancy. “This was done to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Behold! The virgin [parthenos LXX] shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, meaning “God (is) with us.”  Yeshua/Jesus is God.  (see “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has A God”.)

Another prophecy about Jesus is Je.23:5-6. “Declares the Lord, ‘I will raise up for David a righteous Branch. He will reign as King. This is The Name by which He will be called, “YHVH our righteousness.”  Jeremiah indicated the Branch/Messiah will be both a descendant of David and…YHVH/God!  Je.30:9 “They will serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.”  The Messiah was referred to as David or the son of David (e.g. Lk.18:38).

Also Is.9:6-7, “A Child will be born to us. His name will be called Wonderful, Mighty God…on the throne of David forevermore.”  As Is.7 & Je.23, the Child to rule as ‘God with us’, on David’s throne.

Note: Other subjects connected to the virgin birth are the Davidic covenant (it’s not the Solomonic), the so-called curse of Jeconiah (some think Zedekiah is meant), Jesus’ genealogy.  see “Jesus’ Genealogy”.

Fathers name their own sons.  Mt.1:21 God chose the name Yeshua/Iesoús/Jesus for the Son of God.  The name wasn’t of Joseph or Mary’s own choosing.  The Greek name Iesous/Jesus is from the Hebrew Yehoshúa/Joshua (h3091), meaning ‘salvation’.  “He will save His people from their sins.”  Nu.13:16 “Moses called Hoshéa the son of Nun, Yehoshua [h3091 Joshua].”  The name Yeshua/(Iesous/Jesus) is the shortened form of the name of Moses’ successor in the Old Testament (OT), Yehoshua/Joshua.  They had the same name.  And phonetically, Jesus the Savior also was a ‘son of Nun/none’, since He wasn’t the son of human parents in the normal sense!

We see in Zec.6:11-13 another OT type who had the same name as Jesus. “Make an ornate crown and set it on the head of Jehoshua [Joshua, LXX Iesous/Jesus] the high priest. Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Behold a man whose name is the Branch.”  Around 520 BC, God raised up a high priest whose name was the same name the Branch/Messiah would have (ref Je.23:5).  God had predetermined to name the Son of God…Yeshua/Jesus!  (See the topic “Savior’s Name in Bible Languages”.)

1Jn.4:9 “God has sent His only begotten Son into the world.”  Jesus is the monogenés (g3439) Son, the unique one-of-a-kind Son of the Most High.  He had heavenly genes, if you will.  Jesus is Deity!  He.1:8 “Of the Son, ‘Thy throne, O God, is forever.”  Jn.20:28 “Thomas said to Him [Jesus], “My Lord and my God.”  Jesus was the Lord God of ancient Israel.  see “Jesus Was The Old Testament God”.

There is another very significant purpose for Jesus to have been born from a virgin!  It pertains to His DNA (the self-replicating material that contains genetic characteristics), and His blood.  Blood has great significance throughout the Bible!  Le.17:11 the life or soul is in the blood.  De.12:23 the blood is the soul/life.  Ge.9:4 the soul/life is the blood.  It was prophesied in Is.53:12, “He [Jesus] poured out His life unto death”.  The Lord God Jesus poured out His soul/lifeblood for our sins!

1Pe.1:18-19 “You weren’t redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold, but with the precious [g5093] blood of Christ.”  Silver & gold are closer to being incorruptible than are other substances.  Yet even they are corruptible.  Ellicott Commentary 1Pe.1:18 “By contrast, the blood of Christ is implied to be not corruptible.”  Pulpit Commentary 1Pe.1:19 “As opposed to the corruptible things of v.18; it is precious, because it is the blood of Christ. Christ’s holy body saw not corruption; the precious blood in its virtue and efficacy abides evermore.”  Bengel’s Gnomen “The blood of Christ is incorruptible.”  Ac.13:37 “He [Jesus] whom God raised saw no corruption.”  Pr.3:15 LXX “Wisdom is more precious [g5093] than precious stones.”  Lk.7:35 Jesus is Wisdom’s Child.  She and His blood are so precious!

As the God-Man, Jesus was flesh and blood (He.2:14).  The life is in the blood.  For Jesus, that life was the eternal Life of God in His blood!  Jesus’ blood speaks better things than that of Abel (He.12:24).  We’re saved by Jesus’ transcendent blood.  And His blood figuratively never loses its effectiveness.

Jesus said in Jn.6:54, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal Life”.  v.66 but after Jesus uttered those figurative words, many quit on Him.  His wasn’t just a man’s blood…Jesus’ perfect Life was in His blood!  Ac.20:28 “The church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”  God’s own blood!  Ellicott Commentary “The ‘blood of God’, which this passage suggests.”  Benson Commentary “How precious it is! Here the blood of Christ is termed the blood of God.”  Matthew Poole Commentary “The blood of Christ, called truly the blood of God.”  Jesus’ blood is incomparable!

There are those who even say that the ascended Jesus as High Priest sprinkled some of His shed blood on the mercy seat of the ark in heaven (as they interpret He.9:11-12, 23-24, 12:24, Re.11:19), where it remains forever.  JFB Commentary He.12:24 “He entered the heavenly holiest place ‘by His own blood’, carrying it separately from his body.”  Bengel’s Gnomen “This Priest Himself carried into the sanctuary His own blood separately.”

Geneticists understand that the DNA of the father and mother is passed on to the fetus, half from each.  Geneticists say that very little, if any, of a surrogate mother’s DNA is absorbed by the fetus (and vice versa).  None of the surrogate’s characteristics significantly affect the fetus.  (ref e.g., Dr. Julie Granka Does A Surrogate Mom Contribute DNA to the Child?.)  An expectant mother’s cells and the blood circulating in her body cannot penetrate the placenta screen or reach her unborn baby.  The baby’s own blood is formed in its little body.  However, nutrients do pass to the unborn through the placenta.

Mt.1:18-20 since Jesus’ Father is Father God, and the HS is Jesus’ Mother…there was divine DNA, so to speak, in Jesus’ blood (or soul or life)!  He received mitochondria DNA from His divine Parents.  Perhaps God miraculously placed the zygote of Jesus within Mary?  (I’m not a biogeneticist.)  Jesus said in He.10:5, “A body you [God] have prepared Me”.  And Jn.5:26 “As the Father has life in Himself, so He gave to the Son to have life in Himself.”  Eternal Life (zoé g2222) was within the Son Jesus!  That point is missed by people who don’t believe the great miracle of the virgin birth.  So Jesus, having divine DNA, didn’t reproduce while on earth.  A woman, having human DNA, would’ve been a different kind.  And any offspring they had would be a hybrid, with DNA part God and part human!

The life is in the blood (Le.17:11, De.12:23), and all men have sinned (Ro.3:23).  Jesus wasn’t a man with corruptible human blood/life as we, yet was somehow able to obediently live a sinless life and become the Savior of mankind.  His blood/Life was unequaled, having no corrupted sin nature!  Mary contributed nutrients, but no blood, cells, or DNA to Jesus.  Paul referred to Jesus as the last Adam (1Co.15:45).  The first Adam didn’t receive DNA from a human mother either!  If Jesus was only a good man/martyr who obeyed God fully, then others (with the HS) could too!  We wouldn’t need a Savior.  But we’ve sinned and do so need the Savior…Yeshua/Jesus!

Jesus wasn’t solely man in the flesh.  He was also Deity.  Col.2:9 “In Him [Christ] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.”  Both of His Parents are God.  Jesus was the fullness of Deity in a human body (as was glimpsed in Je.23:5-6).  He was Emmanuel, “God (is) with us”.  Jesus’ deity was veiled with flesh (He.10:19-20).  The primordial Word of God was fully God (Jn.1:1-3, 14), and was the Son of God by the Father/HS/blood/birth.  Thereby, Christ didn’t inherit a sin nature.  (Yet He wasn’t a docétic phantom.  Jesus’ fleshly body had nerve endings; He experienced pain/suffering on the cross.)

So Jesus’ virgin birth affirms that divinity was in His precious blood; which enabled only Him, of all men, to obey God completely.  His divine nature wouldn’t allow Him to submit to sin.  Though Jesus looked like other men, He (and His blood) was unlike any other person born of woman.

The virgin birth is crucial to the salvation of mankind!  As the song goes, Nothing But The Blood Of Jesus.  Ac.4:12 “There is no other name under heaven, by which we must be saved.”  Yeshua/Jesus is His name.  Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift (2Co.9:15)!

Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry

This topic further discusses the Holy Spirit (HS), and links & contrasts the HS to the virgin Mary who bore Jesus.  My other topics about the Godhead or God Family are: “Holy Spirit Personification”, Holy Spirit’s Identity”, “Godhead in Prehistory”, “Tri-unity of God”, “Jesus Was the Old Testament God”, “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has a God”.

Jesus said of Himself in Lk.7:35, “Wisdom is justified by her children”.  Jesus indicated He is the Child of Wisdom…“her”.  (Pr.7:4 wisdom is sister, not brother.)  The New Testament (NT) and the Old Testament (OT) Septúagint/LXX Greek term for Wisdom is sophía (Strongs g4678).  Nowhere in the NT did Jesus call Mary His ‘mother’ (or call Joseph His ‘father’)!

The gospel writers naturally refer to Mary & Joseph as Jesus’ mother & father, His parents.  Lk.2:27 “The parents brought in the child Jesus.”  Mt.13:55 “Is not this the carpenter’s son, and His mother called Mary?”  Jn.6:42 “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”  Mary even refers to Joseph as Jesus’ father.  After finding Jesus at the temple, Lk.2:48 “His mother said to Him, ‘Son, Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you”.  But Jesus replied to her in v.49, “Didn’t you realize that I must be in My Father’s affairs?”  Jesus was Fathered by God.

Jesus said in Jn.16:28, “I came forth from the Father”.  Mary gave birth to Jesus, and her husband Joseph was Jesus’ legal father.  Lk.3:23 “Jesus, being supposedly the son of Joseph.”  Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ biological father.  Mt.1:18 “When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with Child by the Holy Spirit.”  Jesus’ virgin birth!  Mary & Joseph knew that Joseph didn’t father Jesus/Yeshúa.  (also see the topic, “Jesus’ Virgin Birth”.)

Father God is Jesus’ Father, and Jesus referred to Himself as the Child of Wisdom (Lk.7:35), His Mother.  Rather than calling Mary, ‘mother’, Jesus referred to the surrogate Mary as “woman”.  Jn.2:4 “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what have I to do with you?”  Jn.19:26 “When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!”

Jesus was completely God in the flesh…both His Father and Mother are God!  The womb of Mary, the “woman” as Jesus lovingly called her, served to form Him in the flesh to become the God-Man.  The 300s AD Apostles Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary”.  Mary birthed Jesus.  Ga.4:4 “God sent forth His Son, born of a woman.”

Lk.1:35 “The angel said, ‘The Holy Spirit will come, and the power of The Highest will overshadow you [Mary]; therefore the Holy One to be born shall be called Son of God.”  Orthodox Study Bible Lk.1:35 “Note the revelation of the Holy Trinity: The Father (The Highest), the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  The Father overshadowed the HS upon Mary, and God’s Son Jesus was conceived.

Chinese preacher Witness Lee was part of the Christian work started by Watchman Nee.  Lee’s Living With and In the Divine Trinity”, p.39 “Lk.1:35 shows the Holy Spirit coming upon Mary…the Most High, God the Father, overshadowing Mary…and the birth of the holy thing, the Son of God. Thus the entire Divine Trinity was involved in the conception.”  The Son was conceived into Mary by His Parents, who are both God.

So Jesus is also God!  His blood factors, so to speak, were only Divine.  As Jesus grew in Mary’s womb, Mary’s own blood didn’t penetrate her fetal wall.  In 1Pe.1:19, Peter wrote of “The precious blood of Christ”.  God’s “own blood” (Ac.20:27-28)…formed from the Father and the HS!

Father God didn’t somehow have sex with Mary, who was engaged to the man Joseph (Mt.1:18).  It would’ve been adultery to have sex with a married or betrothed woman.  De.22:23-27 God’s penalty for such adultery was severe.  Surely, Father God wasn’t an adulterer!

Furthermore, Mary was of a different kind…she was the human kind, not the Godkind.  God’s principle of biogenesis reflects each creation reproducing only according to its kind (ref Ge.1:11-12, 21, 24-25, 6:19-21, Mt.7:16, 1Co.15:38-39).  Father God is Spirit, not flesh, Jn.4:23-24.  The term incubus pertains to a spirit having sex with a human woman.  Heathen gods, such as Zeus/Jupiter, supposedly had sex with mortal women and produced offspring.

Jesus wasn’t some Nephílim type of offspring (Ge.6:1-4, 1Enoch 6:1-4, Jude 6-7)!  see “Watchers and Gen. 6 ‘Sons of God”.  Father God didn’t go after strange flesh of another kind (Mary) and commit sin.  Ge.19:4-5, 24 God destroyed the Sodomites who desired perverse sex with the two angels who visited Lot.  Le.20:15-16 God’s penalty for beastiality (sex with a different kind) was severe!

Let’s look at the early church understanding of the feminine prototype in God…before the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) became dominant.

But first, Philo Judaeus (25 BC–50 AD), The Works of Philo, AI2:14:49 “The mother of all things…the wisdom of God”.  Again, Jesus indicated He was the Child of her, Wisdom/Sophia (Mt.11:19 KJV).  Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit upon you.”  She is the Holy Spirit.

Early church writings in various countries attest to the feminine (fem) HS.  The fragmentary Gospel to the Hebrews was written in Greek (probably at Alexandria) in the early 100s AD for Jewish Christians.  The HS is Jesus’ Divine Mother in its Christology.  In one quotation Jesus declared, “My mother, the Holy Spirit took Me, and conveyed Me to the great mount Tabor”.

Odes of Solomon, the earliest Christian hymnbook (probably written in Aramaic Syriac, pre-125 AD), translated by James H. Charlesworth, p.33-34 Introduction “Among Christians who worshiped in Aramaic and Syriac, the Holy Spirit was perceived to be feminine. The Odist may serve us well in recovering the feminine in our lives and worship”.  Two sample Odes:  Ode 28 “And from that (Life) is the Spirit that is within Me. And it cannot die because She is life.”  Ode 36 “I rested on the Spirit of the Lord, and She raised me up to heaven. And She caused me to stand on my feet in the Lord’s high place. [Christ speaks now] For according to the greatness of the Most High, so She made Me.”

Hippólytus of Rome (170–235 AD), in a fragment written in Greek, depicted “Isaac as an image of God the Father, wife Rebecca an image of the Holy Spirit, son Jacob an image of the church and of Christ”.

Marius Victórinus of Rome (360 AD) Advérsus Áruim 1:58 (Latin) said the Spirit was Jesus’ Mother.

Robert Murray Symbols of Church and Kingdom, p.25 “The Syriac Fathers, as is well known, attributed female gender to the Holy Spirit in the first centuries after Christ; seeing the Holy Spirit especially as ‘Mother.”  Following are writings reflecting the fem HS from a few ‘fathers’ of the Eastern Church:

Áphrahat (280–345 AD) wrote in Syriac in Persia. Demonstrations VI “The Spirit, She opens the heavens and descends, and hovers over the waters; and those who are baptized put Her on.”

Éphrem the Syrian (306–373 AD) was perhaps the most significant of all the Syriac language fathers, called the “greatest poet of the patristic age”.  In Hymnén de Ecclésia, he identified the Spirit as feminine.

Macarían Homilies (late 300s) were written in Greek at Edessa in Turkey. “Instead of an earthly father you are seeking the heavenly Father, and instead of a mother who is subject to corruption, you have as Mother the excellent Spirit of God, and the heavenly Jerusalem.” (ref Ga.4:26)

Martyríus Sáhdona (630 AD) Book of Perfection 1:3:13.  This Syrian theologian writes of the person “Who has been held worthy of the hovering of the all-holy Spirit [Ge.1:2], who, like a mother, hovers over us as she gives sanctification; and through her hovering over us, we are made worthy of sonship”.

John of Dályatha (700s) wrote in east Syria, calling the Spirit the mother and begetter (Letters 51:11).

Moses bar Képha (813–903), celebrated bishop near the Tigris River, wrote in a Syriac homily, “The Holy Spirit hovered over John the Baptist, and brought him up like a compassionate mother”.

The early Eastern Church originally believed the HS was She/Her.  But after some time, the Syriac church lost or suppressed the original OT & apocryphal Jewish concept of the fem HS or shekínah.  By the 500s AD, a masculine (masc) HS was becoming more the norm.  Possibly this was due to Western influence, and because some heretical groups misused the feminine imagery.

Russian Orthodox author Sergei Búlgakov (1891–1944) Sophia The Wisdom of God, p.1. “The church of St. Sophia in Constantinople. The grace, lightness, wonderful symmetry of the structure; an ocean of light pours in from above and dominates the whole space below…is artistic proof of Her existence.”  p.5-6 “The time has come for us to sweep away the dust of the ages and to decipher the sacred script. The theme of Sophia never had any place in Western theology. Protestantism showed itself particularly barren in this sphere. Unfortunately, the sophialógical barrenness of Western theology influenced Eastern theology also in a negative direction…a divergence from the true wisdom of the church.”

Unlike the Eastern Church, the RCC claims, “At no time has the Church referred to the Holy Spirit as ‘She’ when speaking of the person of the Holy Spirit”. (The Catholic Exchange 2006)  The RCC insists the HS be referred to as ‘He’.

Instead of a fem HS…the RCC developed excessive veneration of the virgin Mary.  Their Mariology is quasi-idolatry/Mariolatry.  They greatly reverence Mary, say she never sinned, and some pray to her.

Official Mary veneration is seen from the 430 AD Council of Ephesus, when Mary was given the title Theotókos/“God-bearer”, or Mother of God.  (Yet nowhere in the NT did Jesus call Mary, ‘mother’.)

Earlier, Irenaeus (130–200 AD) of France had called Mary the new/second Eve.  In his analogy, the pregnant Mary and Jesus the 2^nd Adam (1Co.15:45) were of the same body…as Eve & Adam were of the same body, before Eve was separated (Advérsus Háereses 3).  But Irenaeus’ comparison doesn’t overly venerate Mary.  (Irenaeus also wrote, “The Son is rightly called Word, the Spirit is called the Wisdom”.)

Peter Damian (1007–1073) was an Italian cardinal.  He connected Mary with Wisdom/Sophia as the omnipotent Throne of Wisdom. “The blessed virgin can do whatever she pleases, both in heaven and on earth. All power is given to thee [Mary]…nothing is impossible to thee.” (Serm.1 de Nat. B. Virg.)

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) was a French abbot.  To Bernard, Mary is the mother of humankind!  “At the command of Mary, all obey, even God.” (De Excel Virg, cap 12)  “Mary is our Mediatrix.”  (Second Sermon for the Feast of the Assumption) “Let us cast ourselves at the feet of this good Mother.”

St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) was an Italian of the Franciscan order.  To him, Mary is Co-Redemptrix (Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary). “The Virgin Mary, the Queen of Heaven.”  “The Holy Spirit intends Solomon’s words about Wisdom [in Proverbs, Wisdom of Solomon] to be understood of the most excellent Virgin Mary.”  Bonaventure transposed Jesus’ real Mother, Wisdom (the HS)…to Mary!  Bonaventure also wrote, “That woman (namely Eve), drove us out of Paradise and sold us; but this one (Mary) brought us back again and bought us”. (de don. Sp. 6; 14 Bonaventure)

As a child, the Beatles’ Paul McCartney was baptized a Roman Catholic.  Later, in 1970 even he sang, “In my hour of darkness, mother Mary comes to me; speaking words of wisdom…Let It Be”.

Over the centuries, the RCC has made Mary/Mariolatry a counterfeit or substitute for the scriptural position of Wisdom/Sophia/Mother.  Yet a counterfeit presumes a prior genuine!  It was Wisdom who sat beside God’s throne as Queen. Wisdom of Solomon 9:4 “Wisdom that sits by Your throne.”  She was beside YHVH at the beginning. Pr.8:22, 30 “I [Wisdom] was beside Him, daily His delight.”  The real Queen of Heaven (Je.7:18) wasn’t a counterfeit Astárte…not Deméter…not Isis…not Mary!

The surrogate Mary carried and birthed Jesus the Son of God.  She’s a godly woman.  But not a co-redemptrix or mediatrix, not due near-goddess status!  The RCC believes Mary was always sinless.  However, Mary herself indicated that she too needs a Savior!  Lk.1:46-47 Mary exulted, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior”.  Mary knew she was a sinner needing a Savior, just like all of humanity.

Christians believe we are born-again (“from above”).  But most today give little thought to the Mother such birth implies.  John saw in Re.12:1, 5, 14 “In heaven a Woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet. She gave birth to a Son to rule all nations. And two wings of a great eagle were given to the woman, that she might fly.”  (God said in Ps.2:7, “You are My Son, Today I have begotten Thee. I will give the nations as Your inheritance.”)  Re.12:17 “The dragon made war the with the rest of Her offspring.”  The Woman isn’t Mary.  Re.12 reflects the begetting HS and Spirit-filled church/offspring.

Is.66:7 “Before she travailed, she brought forth a man child.”  v.13 “As one who his Mother comforts, so I will comfort you.”  The HS is the Comforter/Helper.  Jesus said in Jn.14:26, “The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in My name”.  In the Old Syriac Jn.14:26, the Comforter/HS is “She” (as YHVH is as Mother in Is.66:13).  Also Ac.9:31 “In the comfort of the Holy Spirit, the church multiplied.”

The early Syriac writers quoted above didn’t present the HS as a literal woman.  But by the 500s AD she became masculine.  It seems the concept of a fem HS became dangerous to the structure of the church.  By the time the HS became a confirmed member of the trinity (Council of Constantinople in 381 AD), the HS was described as masc, despite having nurturing fem qualities!  But Ge.1:2, 26-27 females too embody God’s image!  Male and female both are created in the image and likeness of God.

Martin Luther was reportedly “not ashamed of speaking of the Holy Spirit in feminine terms”.

Count Zínzendorf (1700–1760), leader of the Moravian church, wrote of himself: “I have during my lifetime not eaten of the foods which were formerly forbidden them; I have employed the Sabbath for rest many years already, and our Sunday for the proclamation of the gospel – that I have done without design, and in simplicity of heart.” (Budingsche Sammlung, Leipzig, 1742, sec. 8, 224, letter written in 1738.)  To Zinzendorf, the HS was Creator (Ge.1:2, 26 “Us”) and Mother. “She has created the world with the Savior and now is remaking every child until it is a new creation, and becomes one in the spirit with him; She nurses and watches until it is grown.”

God said of Jesus in Lk.3:22, “You are My beloved Son”.  The apostle Paul quoted Ge.2:24 regarding Adam & Eve in Ep.5:23-33.  Paul midrashed that Christ will marry the HS-filled church.  v.30-32 “For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to His wife. This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”  The ascended and betrothed Jesus leaves His Father and Mother (HS/Wisdom) to marry the church/Bride!  And Adam had left God, with Eve (Ge.2:24-25, 3:23).

From Aphrahat’s Demonstration X, “As long as a man hasn’t taken a wife, he loves and reveres God his Father and the Holy Spirit his Mother”.  Re.19:7-9 is Jesus’ metaphorical marriage to Christians.

As part of the collective future “Bride” of Christ, male Christians may feel uncomfortable singing love songs of praise to Jesus.  Eventually we’ll be with Him, together forever.  Re.22:17 “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.”  We can be Jesus’ Bride because we’re all begotten by the fem (Mother) Spirit.  In Jn.3:3-8, Jesus said you must be born again of the Spirit.  The “offspring” of the HS (again Re.12:17).

Ro.8:29 Jesus the Son of God is the “firstborn of many brothers and sisters”.  Jesus is also the brother of all who are children of God via the HS.  v.11 “He who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”  v.15 “You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, we cry out ‘Abbá, Father.”  Christians are adopted children of Father God and Mother HS.  Jesus is our elder Brother.  2Co.6:18 “You shall be sons and daughters to Me’, says the Lord Almighty.”  (That’s not to say that Christians become God as the Creator God is God.)

Jesus said in Jn.5:19, “The Son can do nothing of Himself”.  Yet Jesus the Son personified the virtues & attributes of Father God and Mother HS/Wisdom.  (see “Holy Spirit Personification”.)  Paul saw the Spirit-filled Jesus too as wisdom.  Col.2:2-3 “Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  Jesus is the Son and emissary of Wisdom the HS.  Paul wrote in 1Co.1:24, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”.  Wisdom originally was “brought forth” a she in Proverbs (8:1, 24).  And in Lk.7:35, Jesus said He’s the Child of Wisdom/“her”.  Lk.4:14 “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.”  Jn.3:34 “God gives Him [Jesus] the Spirit without limit.”

Though Jesus could do nothing of Himself, His power & wisdom came from His Divine DNA, so to speak, from His Parents.  Mt.13:54 “Coming to His home town they were amazed and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom, and these wondrous powers?”  Jesus the Son as God inherited wisdom & power from God!  (Lk.13:34 Jesus isn’t effeminate, yet the HS in Him could even empathize as a mother hen.)

God is one/echád (De.6:4, Jn.10:30).  The Father, HS, Son are one…all three of the God kind & Family.

In the NT, Jesus never referred to Mary as His mother (or Joseph as His father).  By the early 300s AD, the church was embroiled in the Arian controversies.  Many didn’t want Jesus begotten before time began.  But in the 300s AD, many did want women suppressed.  A quandary existed.  So they hushed scriptures which related to Wisdom/sophia the HS having been “brought forth” in past eternity…though Wisdom herself says in Pr.8:25 LXX, “He begets [gennáo g1080] Me”. (see “Godhead in Prehistory”.)

Over the centuries AD, Mother Wisdom/Sophia became assimilated into the cult of the virgin Mary.  Mary, the counterfeit or replacement for Wisdom, was elevated.  Mariolatry ensued in the RCC.

 

Holy Spirit Personification

The Godhead tri-unity consists of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (HS)…the Godkind.  Before reading this, you might read “Godhead in Prehistory” and “Tri-unity of God”.  Much of the background material and scriptures referenced in those topics about the Godhead won’t be repeated or re-quoted here.

The Holy Spirit is God!  There are several verses in the Bible which attest to this.  e.g. 1Co.3:16, 2:10-11, Ac.5:3-4, 2Sm.23:2-3. (ref “Tri-unity of God”.)  Lk.3:21-22 reflects three ‘Persons’ or entities!

Male and female characteristics of humans embody the image and likeness of God (Ge.1:26-27).  Male and female are both necessary to represent God.  Humans are given God’s attributes in miniature.  Jesus said in Jn.14:9, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”.

Jesus was a man, an image of His heavenly Father.  Ezk.1:26-28 “Above the expanse was a figure with the likeness of a man. Such was the appearance of…YHVH.”  The Lord Christ appeared in the likeness of a human to Ezekiel and others.  (also see the topic, “Jesus Was The Old Testament God”.)

Personification is giving something human characteristics, or anthropomórphism.  In divinity, there may not be gender as we know it.  But the three ‘Persons’ do have characteristic functions.  Within the God Family of Father, HS, and Son…exists both masculine and feminine characteristics.

God reflects masculine roles: Ps.103:13 Father.  Ho.2:16 husband.  Ps.98:6 king.  Ex.15:3 warrior.

God reflects feminine roles: Is.66:13 Mother.  Is.42:14 pregnant.  Ps.123:2 mistress.  Ps.22:9 midwife.     

Jesus the Son of God came as a man, and revealed His Father.  Fathers and sons are masculine.  We refer to God/Deity customarily or conveniently as ‘He’, using masculine (masc) pronouns.

Yet the Godhead has feminine traits too!  Ro.8:20-23, 26 “The whole creation groans and suffers pains of childbirth. We having the Spirit groan, waiting for the redemption of our body.”  The Jewish apostle Paul portrayed the HS as a midwife, helping creation and humanity towards re-creation.

Pastor Mahesh Chavda wrote in The Hidden Power of a Woman, “In Judaism, unlike Christianity, God has never been viewed as exclusively male or masculine”.  Many Jewish scholars think Adam was created with dual gender. (see “Godhead in Prehistory”.)

Our use of non-personal imagery for God doesn’t carry the risk of falling into polytheism as much as Father-Mother language does.  Non-personal imagery for the HS: wind, cloud, fire, living water, dove.

Yet personal imagery for the HS/Wisdom is seen too…in Proverbs, Ecclesiásticus or Wisdom of Sirach (WSir), Wisdom of Solomon (WSol).  Pr.1:20 “Wisdom lifts her voice.”  “Her” is a feminine pronoun.

Wisdom’s quotes in 1^st Person, where Wisdom speaks, are found in: Pr.1:22-33 “I will pour out My Spirit on you [v.23].”  Pr.8:4-36 “When there was no depths I was brought forth [v.24].”  “I was at His [YHVH’s] side forming all things; daily His delight [v.30].”  Also ref Pr.9:4-6, 16-17.  WSir.24:3-22 “I [Wisdom] came forth from the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth like a mist. My throne was in the pillar of cloud [v.3-4].”  cf. the HS in Ge.1:2b, 2:6, and Ex.13:21 the shekínah glory cloud.

Wisdom is the Holy Spirit.  WSol.1:4-5 “Wisdom won’t enter the soul that plots evil. For a holy spirit of discipline flees from deceit.”  WSol.9:4 “Give me the wisdom that sits by Your throne.”  v.10 “Send Her forth from Your holy heavens, from Your glorious throne.”  v.17 “Unless You have given him wisdom and sent Your Holy Spirit from on high.”  Nu.27:18 “Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit.”  De.34:9 “Joshua the son of Nun was filled with the Spirit of wisdom.”  Omnipresent at God’s throne in heaven, and within Joshua, is the HS Wisdom…“Her”.

Jesus was conceived in the virgin Mary by the HS (Lk.1:35 the HS came upon Mary).  And John the Baptizer was filled with the HS in his mother’s womb (Lk.1:15).  Speaking of Himself and John, Jesus said in Lk.7:33-35, “Wisdom is justified by her children”.  Jesus, the Child conceived by Wisdom the HS, speaks of Wisdom as “her”!  (As did Proverbs, etc.)  Jesus’ words are authoritative and truth!

Wisdom is a personified entity or hypostásis (a Greek term used in early Christian writings) of God’s divine essence.

The Hebrew grammatical gender of Bible nouns has significance.  But this doesn’t mean God the HS is literally a woman!  Yet the HS grammatically and figuratively is a ‘she/her’.

In Old Testament (OT) scripture, the ancient Hebrew (Heb) language attached gender to Spirit essence.  The Heb term for spirit (rúach Strongs h7307, and Aramaic rúach h7308) is feminine (fem).  The Heb term for wisdom (chokmáh h2451) is fem.  In the OT Septúagint/LXX and New Testament (NT), the Greek (Gr) term for wisdom is sophía g4678.  Pr.7:4 “Call wisdom your sister.”  Sisters are of course feminine, not masculine.  In Pr.9:1-3, wisdom is “she/her”.  WSir.4:11 “Wisdom exalts her children.”  WSir.24:18 of Wisdom, “I AM the mother of love that is beautiful. I therefore, being eternal, am given to all My children who are picked by Him”.  (Father God picks His elect; Ep.1:3-5, 17, Jn.6:44.)  And Jesus knew Himself to be a Child of Wisdom/Sophia/”her” in Lk.7:35.

The dove is the most frequent symbol for the HS in early Christian art.  The Heb term for dove (yonáw h3123) is fem (e.g. Ge.8:11, SS.6:9).  The Heb term for breath (neshamáh h5397) is fem.  (e.g. Ge.2:7; Jb.32:8 “The breath of the Almighty gives man understanding.”)  Ex.25:31-37 the seven–branched holy lampstand with its oil was a symbol of the HS and tree of life.  Wisdom is symbolically the central branch.  Pr.4:7 “Wisdom is supreme.”  The Heb term for lampstand (menoráh h4501) is also fem.  Pr.3:18 “She [Wisdom] is a tree of life.”  Pulpit Commentary “Wisdom becomes equally life giving.”

Elóah h433 is a Heb term for God, occurring 55 times in the OT (mostly in Job and poetic passages).  Jb.27:3 “The spirit of God [Eloah h433] is in my nostrils.”  The -ah ending is indicative of fem singular.  The most common OT Heb term for God is Elohím h430.  Elohim is a masc plural ending -im (Father and Son), combined with the fem singular root Eloah (HS/Wisdom) or possibly El.  Also the modern Heb fem term ‘shekinah’ represents the Divine Presence, the fire-cloud of glory in the OT.

Heb grammar too uses masc pronouns for God.  Heb & Aramaic has no neuter (no ‘it’); all nouns are masc or fem.  Again, the Heb term for spirit (ruach) is fem.  But unlike Heb, the Greek term for spirit (pneúma) is neuter.  The Latin term for spirit (spirítus) is masc.  Noun gender varies in languages.  In translated languages, gender doesn’t have the significance as in the earlier inspired Hebrew scripture.

In English, translators render pronouns with the Gr pneuma/spirit (neuter) as he masc, e.g. Jn.14:26. (or it neuter, Ro.8:26 KJV.)  Some of this is revisionism.  This practice subconsciously makes men seem more like God than do women.  Yet in 2Co.6:18, Paul wrote that God said, “You shall be sons and daughters to Me”.  In Jn.14:26, the Gr masc term páraclete is translated Comforter/Helper, and refers to the Gr neuter term Spirit.  Here translators chose to use the pronoun He.  But since God has both masc and fem characteristics (Is.42:13-14, Ps.123:2), Heb personal noun gender is more meaningful.  Later languages such as Greek, Latin, English didn’t maintain the earlier Heb gender in translations.

The most ancient of the rare Old Syriac copies, the Siniatic Pálimpsest (300s–400s AD), was found in the Covenant of St. Catherine and transcribed by Syriac Professor R.L. Bensly of Cambridge University in 1892.  Jesus’ words in Jn.14:26 read: “But She—the Spirit-the Paraclete whom He will send to you-my Father in my name—She will teach you everything; She will remind you of that which I told you.”  The Spirit is feminine to the Syriac church (as the ancient Aramaic ruach/spirit was fem), unlike Greek and Latin grammar.

J.J. Hurtak: “The Spirit is not called ‘it’ despite the fact that pneuma in Greek is a neuter noun. Church doctrine regards the Holy Spirit as a person, not a force like magnetism. In the Eastern Church, Spirit was always considered to have a feminine nature. She was the life-bearer of the faith.”

The Westminster Leningrad Codex (1008 AD) is the oldest complete Heb manuscript.  In its ultra-literal interlinear English translation online: Is.11:2 “And she rests on him, spirit of YHVH.”  Ps.143:10 “Good spirit of you Elohim, she shall guide me.”  Nu.11:26 “The spirit, she is resting on them.”  Ezk.37:1 “She becomes hand of YHVH on me in spirit of YHVH.”  Jb.33:4 “Spirit of El, she made me; breath of Who-Suffices, she is keeping me alive.”  (Ec.12:1 “Remember Ones creating you.”…“Us” in Ge.1:26.)

Pronouns in this ultra-literal translation do grammatically reflect the ancient Heb language gender.  The “she” pronoun agrees with our translations of Prov, WSol, WSir…where Wisdom is “she”.  Also, in this online Codex Jb.28:12-ff, Wisdom is “she”.  However, most of our translations attach the pronoun “it” to wisdom in Job 28.  This inconsistency may be a translational bias in Job 28…especially when we consider that wisdom is fem to Jesus in Lk.7:35 & Mt.11:19 (as well as “she” in Provs, WSol, WSir)!

From our Is.11:2, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on Him [Messiah], the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord”.  The LXX adds “godliness”.  Seven attributes!  And they’re all fem nouns!  Wisdom is primary (Pr.4:7).

In Pr.8:12-14, Wisdom speaks in 1^st Person. “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, I find knowledge and discretion. The fear of the Lord. Counsel is Mine. I AM understanding, strength is mine.”  These attributes are all fem!  Philo AI1 p.29…On Flight and Finding, p.325 “He called that Divine and heavenly Wisdom by many names….Indeed all the virtues bear the names of women.”  It’s not just coincidence.

Pr.9:1-2 “Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars.”  As wisdom was the principal branch of the seven-branched menorah (fem) in God’s tabernacle Holy Place.  cf. Re.5:6 “The seven Spirits/sevenfold Spirit of God, sent into all the earth.”  Barnes Notes “The seven Spirits of God, the manifold operations of the one Divine Spirit.”  Pulpit Commentary Re.5:6 “The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son.”  The HS is sent, Jn.14:26 & 15:26.  Zec.4:10 “These seven are the eyes of the Lord which range throughout the earth.” (also the Zec.3:9 prophecy.)  Ps.139:7-10 rhetorically, “Where can I go from Your Spirit [ruach fem]”.  God’s (sevenfold) HS is omnipresent.

Following are the various Names/Titles of the HS in the OT.  The Spirit of: Wisdom/Understanding etc. (the seven in Is.11:2 & Pr.8:12-14), Life, Truth, YHVH, Elohim, Eloah, El.  (But not the Spirit of: adonaí/lord h136 or adówn/master h113.)  Also in the OT God calls the HS, “My Spirit”.  In the NT the HS is called the Spirit of God (Théos g2316), the Spirit of the Lord (Kúrios g2962), “The Spirit”, and the Comforter/Helper.

The Father is Lord, e.g. Mt.11:25.  Jesus is Lord, e.g. Jn.13:13.  But I don’t know of any Bible verse which specifically says the HS herself is Lord/master/ruler.  Jesus didn’t refer to the HS as “Father”.

In the NT the HS is submissive, subservient, faceless, humble…not worshiped or prayed to directly.  She’s identified by titles (e.g. “God”) from the Father, not of herself.  The HS testifies of and glorifies Jesus, not herself (Jn.15:26, 16:13-14).  HS Presence may arrive noticeably, but silently departs.

The dove is a symbol of the HS.  The dove is said to be a very affectionate bird, harmless, very gentle.  A dove doesn’t retaliate against enemies, but will retreat.  Solomon wrote of his beloved in SS.5:2, “My love, my dove, my undefiled”.  Ro.15:30 speaks of “the love of the Spirit”.  WSol.1:6-7 “Wisdom is a Spirit that loves mankind. The Spirit of the Lord fills the world.”  Philo Who is the Heir of Divine Things, 25:127 “Divine wisdom, God’s possession she is, symbolically called a turtledove.”

More verses together showing the HS Wisdom is God:  Jesus says in Jn.14:21, “He who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him”.  Likewise the HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:17a, “I love those who love Me”.  Jesus and Wisdom (and the Father) love those who love Jesus and Wisdom.  Analogous.

The Lord says in Je.29:13, “You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart”.  Likewise the HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:17b, “Those who diligently seek Me will find Me”.  We humans will find the Lord and Wisdom when we wholeheartedly seek the Lord and Wisdom…again analogous.

Jesus says in Jn.15:16, “You should bear fruit and your fruit should remain”.  The HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:19, “My fruit is better than gold”.  And in Ga.5:22 Paul wrote of “the fruit of the Spirit”.  The fruit & attributes of the HS (within humans) are better than gold!

The Word Jesus says in Jn.14:6, “I AM the life [zoáy g2222]”.  1Jn.1:1-2 “Concerning the Word of Life [g2222]. The eternal life [g2222] that was with the Father.”  Likewise the HS Wisdom says in Pr.8:35 LXX, “Those who find Me find life [g2222]”.  The HS too is eternal life/zoay!  In Ga.6:8, Paul wrote of those who “from the Spirit reap eternal life [g2222]”.  Re.2:7 the Paradise “tree of life” (g2222).

In Ex.34, Moses’ face shined from being in the presence of God on the mountain.  Ex.34:30 “So when the Israelites saw Moses’ face, they were afraid to come near him.”  1Ki.3:28 “Israel feared the king [Solomon], for they saw the wisdom of God was in him to do justice.”  Solomon wrote in Ec.8:1, “A man’s wisdom makes his face to shine”.  The HS Wisdom enlightens the countenance of man.

Oswald Chambers’ Christian devotional, My Utmost For His Highest, is one of the most popular religious books ever written.  In it he wrote, “I am the Almighty God’ – El-Shaddái, the Father-Mother God. The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real.”  God is both Father and Mother.  El Shaddai (h7706) has been described or defined as the ‘mighty breasted One’.

Again, Jesus indicated His Mother is Wisdom, the HS.  Connecting in order the following seven verses will identify the feminine HS: Jl.2:28a, Pr.1:20, 23, De.34:9a, Nu.27:18, Mt.1:18b, Lk.7:35.

Yet the church in general for much of its history has wrongly suppressed females or considered them inferior.  (Having gone beyond the apostle Paul’s instructions regarding women in church assembly.)

Jewish physicist Albert Einstein said that “Israel wouldn’t experience salvation until it returned to feminine divinity”. (quoted in Patricia Taylor’s The Holy Spirit: The Feminine Nature of God.)  In Jewish thought, the fem Shekinah is the Divine Presence which can be sensed within human souls.  Jewish wisdom theology/sophiálogy in BC times (also in Philo) saw God’s Presence dwelling with Israel via the Shekinah.  ref Ex.40:34-35 the Shekinah glory cloud!

Wisdom/Sophía/Chokmáh wasn’t a fertility goddess, like Inánna in Mesopotamia or Deméter in Greece.  Mariólatry is a later Roman Catholic Church counterfeit as a substitute for Wisdom or Shekinah…the RCC’s Mary is near to goddess status, such as Ísis. (see “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”.)

The Jewish concept of Shekinah, along with Philo’s writings (re the Lógos/Word and Wisdom), pose continuing problems for strict Jewish monotheism!  There are three ‘Persons’ within the one Godkind.

We may say the Father is the Source, Possessor, Director or Planner.  The Son is the Spokesman, the Executor, Mediator, Ruler.  The HS is Wisdom, the Omnipresence, the Comforter…and the Glory!

Jesus Was the Old Testament God

The Bible indicates the Godhead is a tri-unity…Father, Holy Spirit, and Son Jesus.  Many if not most Bible readers think the God who was seen and active in the Old Testament (OT) was the God whom Jesus referred to as His “Father”.  Most readers view this OT God as being strict and more judgmental than their perception of Jesus in the New Testament (NT).  Here we’ll look at scriptures which reveal the identity of the Deity who was seen and heard by humans in the OT.

Jn.1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  v.14 “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  The Word (Lógos in Greek, Mémra in Aramaic), who was also God from the beginning, later became Jesus in the flesh.  Jn.17:5 God the Word had glory with the Father before the world existed.  Jn.17:24 Jesus spoke of, “My glory which You [Father] gave Me”.  What do the scriptures show of God the Word in the OT before He became Jesus in the flesh?

In the Song of Moses, De.32:3-4 “I proclaim the name of YHVH; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock.”  v.18 “You [Israel] neglected the Rock who begot you, the God who gave you birth.” (cf. 2Ki.22:2 Septúagint/LXX.)  The apostle Paul identified their figurative Rock in 1Co.10:4. “That Rock was Christ.”  Continuing, 1Co.10:9 “Neither let us test Christ, as some of them also tested Him, and were destroyed by serpents”.  This incident to which Paul referred was in Nu.21:5-6. “YHVH sent fiery serpents and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.”  The primordial Word of God, who became Jesus the Christ…was YHVH, the OT God/Rock whom His people tested, according to Paul!

Isaiah wrote in Is.6:1, 5 “I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted. My eyes have seen the King, YHVH of hosts.”  Isaiah saw God.  In Jn.12:41-44, John identifies specifically who Isaiah saw. “Isaiah saw His glory, and he spoke of Him. Many even of the rulers believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they weren’t confessing Him lest they be put out of the synagogue. Jesus said, ‘He who believes in Me.”  According to John, Isaiah saw the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Word of God, as King on the throne!  Isaiah didn’t see Father God.  Jesus said, no man other than He has seen Father God….

Jesus declared in Jn.6:46, “No man has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father”.  Jesus said in Jn.1:18, “No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten God [Jesus] has explained Him.”  Only the Word who became Jesus Christ has seen awesome Father God!

Yet God was visibly seen on many occasions in the OT!  Ex.24:1-11 “Moses went up with 70 of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel.”  After Moses wrote down the Old Covenant, which the God of Israel gave them, they saw God.  According to Jesus, the Father was never seen.  Also, YHVH said in Nu.12:7-8, “My servant Moses, with him I speak mouth to mouth, he beholds the form of YHVH”.  Jacob said in Ge.32:30, “I have seen God face to face, yet my life has been preserved”.  This wasn’t the Father who was seen in these OT passages…it was the pre-incarnate Christ, the Rock.

Abraham saw God and two angels in Ge.18:1-ff. “YHVH appeared to him by the oaks of Mamré. He [Abraham] looked, three men were standing opposite him. They did eat.” (v.1-3, 8)  The three even shared a meal with Abraham!  The Lord remained talking with Abraham, while the two angels went on to Sodom (Ge.19:1).

Jesus told the Jews in Jn.8:56-58, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it. Truly I say to you, before Abraham came into being, I AM.”  The Word/Jesus, not Father God, is the I AM who appeared as a human seen by Abraham.  (God also appeared to Abrám in Ge.12:7.)  God said to Moses in Ex.3:14, “You shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you”.  Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and others in the OT saw the pre-incarnate Jesus, who was also YHVH/I AM of ancient Israel.

Joshua was told to remove his sandals in the presence of the Commander of the Lord’s host in Jsh.5:13-15. “For the place you are standing is holy. Joshua did so.”  Jesus/the Word, who commands His host of angels (Mt.13:41, 26:53), was seen there…not the Father.  Compare Ex.3:4-6, 14 where Moses too must remove his sandals in the presence of God/I AM.  (also see the topic, “Michael in the Bible”.)

Prior to the Word Jesus being seen as God in the OT, He and the Holy Spirit (HS) were the Creators (under the overall direction of the Father).  Ps.33:6 “By the Word of YHVH the heavens were made, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their host.”  Jn.1:1-3, 10 “All things came into being by Him [the Word]. He was in the world and the world was made by Him.”  Col.1:16 “All things have been created through Him [the Son/Word] and for Him.” also see He.1:2.  The Word/Jesus/Light was Creator God.

Ge.2:1-3 “By the 7^th day God completed His work which He had done, and He ceased/rested on the 7^th day. Then God blessed the 7^th day and sanctified it.”  It was Jesus who ceased or rested from creating on the 7^th day.  It was Jesus who set apart the 7^th day (not the 1^st day or the 6^th day), ordaining it as holy time.  Therefore Jesus is truly Lord of the sabbath, as He said in Mk.2:27-28. “The sabbath was made for mankind. The Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”  (Jesus never revoked His 7^th day holy time.)

The following two passages are more evidence that Jesus Christ was the Lord God who appeared in the OT.  Quotes are from the Greek LXX/Septuagint; we can compare the same Greek terms in our NT:

Moses told Israel in De.10:17 LXX, “The Lord your God, He is Lord [Strongs g2962] of lords [g2962]”.  The God of Israel was “Lord of lords.”  Re.17:14 “The Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord [g2962] of lords [g2962].”  Jesus the Lamb is “Lord of lords”…same as the OT God of Israel!

God declared in Is.45:21 LXX, “I AM God, and there is not another besides Me; a Savior [g4990], there is none but Me”.  1Jn.4:14 “The Father has sent the Son to be the Savior [g4990] of the world.”  Jesus the Son is the Savior…and He was the God/I AM in the OT, seen by Isaiah!  There’s no other Savior.

1Co.1:1, 5:7 the Jewish Christian Paul (with the Corinth synagogue ruler Sosthénes, Ac.18:17) wrote of “Christ our Passover”.  YHVH told Moses in Ex.12:13, “When I see the blood I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you”.  In mercy, YHVH/“Christ our Passover” passed over the houses of the Israelite firstborns.  And it is this Christ who was the solid Rock of OT Israel, according to Paul.

In Ex.20:6, the Lord God said He is “Showing love to a thousand generations who love Me and keep My commandments”.  Jesus said in Jn.14:21, “He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and I will love him”.  The Word/Jesus is Lord in the OT, and He spoke the Decalogue.

In Jn.1:18, the Son Jesus said that He declares the Father.  Jesus came to reveal His nature.  Jesus said in Jn.17:25-26, “Righteous Father, the world has not known You. I have made Your name known to them”.  OT Israel hadn’t known the Father.  The OT term for “Father”, referring to God, rarely occurs.

Jesus said in Jn.5:37, “The Father who sent Me has borne witness of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.”  Father God was visibly unseen and audibly unheard in the OT.  (Not until Jesus & John the Baptizer heard the Father’s voice bear witness of Jesus at His baptism.)  Yet De.4:33, Israel heard God speaking at Sinai.  Christ the Word, not the Father, was seen & heard in the OT.  (also see the topics, “Tri-unity of God” and “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has a God”.)

Again, according to John, it was the Lord Jesus who Isaiah saw high & lifted up.  Je.1:4-5 LXX “The Word/Logos [g3056] of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the belly I sanctified you.”  v.9 “The Lord stretched out His hand and touched my mouth.”  The word of God came to other prophets, such as Ezekiel & Zechariah, and they delivered the message.  None but Jesus has seen the Father.  It was Christ the Word/Lord who came to Jeremiah, spoke in 1^st Person, and touched his lips!

Ex.19:9-11 Christ the Word came down on Mt. Sinai.  All the Israelites were aware of Him.  v.16 a thick cloud protected them from seeing His glory (ref De.4:12).  Ex.20 Christ spoke His Decalogue or so-called Ten Commandments (including His weekly 7^th day Sabbath command), which He inscribed on tablets (Ex.31:18).  Following in Exodus 21–23, Christ spoke His judgments to Moses.  Then in Ex.24 Moses wrote them down in the book of the covenant (v.4-7)…and he with 70 elders saw God the Word (v.9-11)!  (However, man’s flesh is limited and cannot fully see His glory, e.g. Ex.33:18-23.)

After Exodus, the entire 27 chapters of Leviticus are the instructions of Christ the Word, the God they’d seen!  Christ gave Moses those instructions while they were still at Sinai (Le.27:34).  Including His law in Le.11 (v.46) regarding the clean & unclean creatures He created.  Jesus knows which ones are fit for human consumption!  The gentile Noah also had been aware of God’s distinction (Ge.7:2).

Lk.1:32 Jesus is the Son of the Most High God.  Ac.17:23-31 the Most High Father was an “Unknown God”.  The OT writers were aware a Most High God exists (ref Ge.14:18, Ps.7:17, 110:1), but He was generally unknown to all but a few.  Ac.7:48-49 “The Most High doesn’t dwell in sanctuaries made by hands.”  (The Father’s residence was in heaven, Jn.14:2-3).  It wasn’t the Father who spoke mouth-to-mouth with Moses (Nu.12:7-8) and sat above the cherubim on the ark in Israel’s man-made sanctuary.

Ps.80:1 “O Shepherd of Israel, You who sits between the cherubim.”  That Shepherd who communed with Moses was…Christ the Word!  Jesus said in Jn.10:11, “I Am the good Shepherd”. (ref 2Ki.19:15, Zec.13:7, 1Pe.2:25, Is.37:16.)  Christ was the God of Israel, the Rock and Shepherd.  (Josephus Wars of the Jews 5:5:5 indicated there were no sculptured cherubim in Herod’s temple…the sanctuary was entirely empty!  Jesus was out ministering in the Land; He no longer ‘sat’ between the cherubim then.)

He.13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”  The Word/Jesus said in Mal.3:6, “For I AM YHVH, and change not”.  The Word/Jesus doesn’t change His character; nor did He change the moral principles He gave to ancient Israel.  Re.14:12 speaks of “the perseverance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God”.  They were Jesus’ commandments in Ex.20, His command of the 7^th day sabbath, His commands for ecosystem balance of clean/unclean, in Leviticus, Numbers, etc.  (see the “Sabbath 7^th Day” series, and “Unclean versus Clean Food”.)

But Israel as a whole didn’t like Christ the Rock’s commandments.  Le.26 the Word warned ancient Israel of His punishments for disobedience.  Israel disobeyed anyway.  So Jesus sent them into captivity…the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria, then the southern kingdom of Judah to Babylon in 597 BC.  Later when the Word/Jesus came in the flesh, the leaders of the Jews (of the people He’d loved and rescued from ancient Egypt) even wanted Him killed (e.g. Jn.5:18)!  They set Him up to die!

Some Bible readers and critics consider the God of the OT a cruel God.  Márcion (85–160 AD) was from Póntus, located at the southern coast of the Black Sea (today northeastern Turkey).  He didn’t think YHVH was the same God spoken of by Jesus, so he didn’t accept the YHVH of the OT.  To Marcion, the God active in the OT wasn’t Jesus or Jesus’ Father.  Marcion’s ‘canon’ was only 11 books…10 epistles of Paul plus part of Luke’s gospel.  Marcion ‘picked and choosed’; he was extreme.

It’s a misconception to view the OT God as harsh or cruel.  The Word/Christ was the Executive and Spokesman God seen in the OT.  Christ wasn’t harsh, cruel, impulsive, or changeable.  Christ would have spared ancient Sodom, had only 10 righteous people been found there (Ge.18:32)!

Though Jesus wasn’t harsh, He was just.  Jesus’ justice system for His ancient theocracy perhaps did reflect a measure of tough love.  For example, Jesus acknowledged even in Jn.8:7, “Let him cast the first stone”.  Christ’s penalty for adultery was death (though a ransom may be paid instead).  The laws and morality given to Moses/Israel are Jesus’ laws and morality.  The OT too is Christ-centered.  His morality may seem strict to some.  But His are the laws of the Kingdom of God!

For that matter, the NT book of Revelation has much killing…it’s even been called horrific!  Re.6:16 “Hide us from the presence of the wrath of the Lamb [Christ].”  Yet the Lamb’s love exceeds His wrath.

Ancient Israel was Jesus’ theocracy.  Many or most of His ritualistic prescriptions cannot be done apart from Jerusalem (temple).  In the NT, the Jewish people had come under Roman jurisdiction; they were no longer governed by Jesus’ theocracy.  And the NT writings (e.g. Paul’s) reflect changed living conditions under Roman rule of law.

The pre-incarnate Word of God wasn’t just sitting in heaven judging harp music day after day prior to His becoming Jesus in the flesh!  He was the God active in the OT.  Jesus wasn’t a rebellious son who came to do away with His Father’s commandments.  They are YHVH the Savior’s commandments too.  The Father and Son are of like-mind.  Jesus did and said what His Father taught Him (Jn.8:28).  De.30:10-14 the principles of Christ, the Rock of Ages, are doable.

Have we been deluded by false teaching to think that Jesus came to do away with the morality of laws He gave ancient Israel?  Jesus said in Mt.5:17, “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I didn’t come to abolish but to fulfill [g4137].”  Christ didn’t come to abolish His OT moral laws and principles of living!

Jesus referred to His Mt.5:17 remarks later after His resurrection in Lk.24:44. “My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled [g4137].”  It was the things prophesied and written about Jesus the coming Messiah that must be fulfilled…not His morality/laws which can govern and regulate society and the Kingdom!  As recapped in Ac.13:29 concerning Jesus, “When they had carried out all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the cross”.

Surely, Jesus didn’t think Roman laws or the laws of the nations of this world are superior to the laws He gave His theocracy!  Jesus’ morality & character is the same yesterday, today and forever (He.13:8).

Christ’s OT laws prohibiting blasphemy, murder, adultery, theft, etc. are truly moral and just today.  The holy time of His 7^th day sabbath still comes & goes every week since Creation…man cannot stop time.  Unclean creatures carrying worms & parasites are still unfit for humans to eat…as in Noah’s day.

But all the OT ceremonial jots & tittles regarding the obsolete Levitical priesthood can no longer be done.  He.7:12 “The priesthood being changed, there must be made also a change of the law.”  Jesus said the temple was to be destroyed (e.g. Mk.13:1-2).  After He fulfilled prophecy, dying as the final sacrifice…there’s no more need for animal sacrifices, tithing to a Levitical priesthood, pilgrim feasts with temple rituals.  Attempting to do those ceremonial things elsewhere or on one’s own terms would actually be disobeying Christ’s specific OT statutes!  The Kingdom is now the order of Melchisedek.

Ps.119:142 “Thy righteousness is everlasting, and Thy law is truth.”  v.151 “All Thy commandments are truth.”  v.172 “All Thy commandments are righteousness.”  That’s all the commandments of the Word Jesus…in both the OT and NT.  In the NT, Jesus or the HS reiterated some, but not all, of Christ’s OT commandments.  OT sins such as beastiality, cannibalism, fathers marrying their own daughters, e.g., are still sins for Christians…even though those prohibitions aren’t repeated in the NT.  To only accept Jesus’ NT commands as valid, while ignoring His OT commandments, is short-sighted.

However, it requires a circumcised heart to do His commandments.  Most of ancient Israel didn’t have the HS.  They failed to be a right example to the nations.  The rhetorical question of De.4:8-9, “What great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law? Therefore take heed lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and they depart from your heart.” (see “Two Covenants – Heart of the Matter”.)  No other ancient nation received such grace as did Israel, so blessed with Christ’s righteous laws/justice system!

But they stumbled over the Rock of Israel, who Peter (and Paul) said is Jesus.  1Pe.2:8 “A stone [g3037] of stumbling [g4348] and a Rock [g4073] of falling; for they stumble because they are disobedient.”  In Is.6:5, Isaiah saw Christ the Lord.  Is.8:13-14 LXX “Sanctify the Lord. You shall not come against Him as a stumbling [g4348] stone [g3037], neither as against the falling of a rock [g4073]; but the houses of Jacob are in a snare.” (also Ro.9:32-33.)  Most Jews opposed and rejected their Lord come in the flesh.

Yet for New Covenant Jewish Christians and gentiles grafted-in, God said in Je.31:33 (LXX Je.38:33) and He.8:10, “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts”.  The HS writes Christ’s just laws/morality (Jesus the same yesterday, today and forever) on the hearts & minds of willing Christians.  His laws will thus become our morality, and won’t depart from our hearts.  Thereby we won’t fail, unlike ancient Israel.

Jesus is Lord!  He was “the LORD” active in the OT.  As we repent and keep obeying Christ the Word…we will be those “who keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Re.14:12).  And we’ll be those who have right to the tree of life (Re.22:14)!  Thank You, Lord.

Tri-unity of God

In the English language, the word “God” is customarily used for Deity.  Is.43:10 “Declares YHVH, ‘Before Me there was no God formed, neither will there be after Me.”  Only the true God is Divine.

The true God is a uniplural Being.  Yet the God-kind is one/unified (echád Strongs h259, Hebrew).  De.6:4 “YHVH our God, YHVH is one [echad h259].”  However, Adam & Eve were to be one in Ge.2:24. “A man shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one [echad h259] flesh.”  The two of them were one, echad!  Ezr.2:64 “The whole assembly united as one [echad h259] man was 42,360.”  In this verse, 42,360 souls were as one!  So we see the term echad/one is numerically plural in these verses.

The Hebrew term yachíd (h3173) meant absolute oneness, sole, or the one and only.  In the Old Testament (OT), yachid is never used in reference to God.  Jdg.11:34 “She was his only [yachid] child.”  The LXX Greek equivalent term monogenés (g3439) refers to Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, in Jn.1:14, 18.

God, as the God Family, consists of the Father, Holy Spirit (HS) and Jesus the Son.  The Word/Logos from eternity past later became the human Jesus, Jn.1:1-5, 14.  (see the topic “Godhead in Prehistory”.)  Ge.1:1-3 reflects the Father, HS, and the Word/Light who would become Jesus.  The first “Us” verse in Genesis, where the “Us” refers to the uniplural God, is Ge.1:26-27. “God said, ‘Let Us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness. In the image of God, male and female.” (not in the image of angels.)  Other such “Us” verses in Genesis are Ge.3:22, 11:7, LXX 2:18.  Also Is.6:1, 8 “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Who shall go for Us?”.  And Ge.19:24 reflects plural YHVHs. “YHVH rained on Sodom & Gomorrah fire from YHVH out of heaven.”  YHVH (h3068 Hebrew) is the Lord.

God as a Father in the OT: Moses said in De.32:6, “The Lord, is not He your Father?”  Also see Is.64:8, 63:16.  Mal.2:10 “Do we not all have one Father? Has not one [echad] God created us?”

God the Father is supreme in the Godhead (as we’ll see).  Father God is the Source of all life (even of Jesus, Jn.5:26 & 6:57).  The Father chooses the time of calling His elect, Ep.1:3-5 & Jn.6:44.

Jesus the Son in the OT: Ps.2:7, 12 “YHVH said to Me, You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Do homage to the Son.”  (YHVH isn’t referring to David.  Jesse, not God, begat David.)  Pr.30:4 “Who has ascended up to heaven and descended? What is His name or His Son’s name?”  Jn.6:62 Jesus said, “What if you should see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?”  Jn.1:18 Jesus said no one has seen Father God at any time.  In the OT Péntateuch, the God seen was the Word/Rock/Son/Angel, the Messenger of YHVH. ref Ge.31:11-13, 18:1, Ex.24:10, Is.6:1 & Jn.12:41-44.  De.32:18 & 1Co.10:4 according to the apostle Paul, “That Rock was Christ”.  (see “Jesus Was The Old Testament God”.)

The primordial Word of God, the Messenger of the Lord, took on flesh as Jesus/Yeshúa (Hebrew).  Neither the Father nor the HS took on flesh.  As human, Jesus could bridge the gap between Creator and creation.  1Ti.2:5 “There is one Mediator between God and men, the human Jesus Christ.”  He.4:14-15 Jesus as such is High Priest.  In Je.23:5-6, the Messiah would be both a human descendant of David, and YHVH!  Harvard’s Jacob Neusner Judaisms and Their Messiahs, p.275 “An early Judaism myth portrayed a supernatural God-Man King Messiah as Savior and Redeemer of Israel.”  He is Jesus.

The Holy Spirit in the OT: Is.48:16 “The Lord God and His Spirit have sent Me.”  Job.33:4 “The Spirit of God has made me.”  Pr.1:20-23 “Wisdom lifts her voice, ‘I will pour out My Spirit on you.”

Father God is in heaven.  God has operated through the HS and Jesus.  Ac.2:34 Jesus ascended into heaven and now sits there at Father’s right hand (and Jesus lives mystically in Christians, Jn.17:21-23 & Col.1:27).  The human Jesus wasn’t omnipresent.  The HS is on earth…omnipresent.  David wrote in Ps.139:7-10, “Where can I go from Your Spirit, where can I flee from Your Presence?”  Nowhere.

Although the Godhead is tripartite, a common trinitarian view is partly incorrect.  That is, the Bible doesn’t reflect the three in the Godhead as equal in authority.  Father God has the greatest authority!  Jesus said in Jn.14:28, “The Father is greater than I”.  1Co.15:27-28 Jesus is forever subject to Him.

The Father sends Jesus.  Jn.12:49 Jesus said, “The Father who sent Me has given Me commandment”.  The two are distinct.  The Father also sends the HS.  Jn.14:26 “The Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send.”  Jesus too sends the HS (Jn.16:7).  All three are distinct!  But neither Jesus nor the HS sends the Father!  They differ in order and subordination.  The human Jesus wasn’t omniscient.  Mt.24:36 “Of that day and hour no one knows, not the Son, the Father only.” (see “Jesus Is God…Jesus Has A God”.)

Father God is so very great!  Jn.6:46 & 5:37 no human has ever seen His form.  They hadn’t heard His voice.  Not before Jesus and John the Baptizer heard the voice of Father God formally testify of His Son at Jesus’ baptism.  ref Jn.1:32-34 & Mk.1:9-11.  The (OT) Voice heard by God’s people was that of the Word, the Lord Jesus, e.g. Ge.18:1, 13, Jn.8:56-58.  Jesus said in Jn.10:27, “My sheep hear My voice”.

Ontology is the study of being.  God, angels, humans are called personal beings.  But God’s Being isn’t finite or limited, as we are limited.  Scripture doesn’t define ‘person’ (the term we use in modern English), and doesn’t apply that term to the triune God.  The Latin persona (or Greek prósopon) was a ‘face’ worn by Greek/Roman dramatic actors.  Church fathers applied the Greek term hypostáses (subsistences or entities or individuals) to God.

Several verses in the New Testament (NT) reflect the tripartite Godhead.  First, I should say, 1Jn.5:7 KJV is only in late manuscripts.  And the Mt.28:19 phrase, “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”, wasn’t in the text Eusebius quoted ca 300 AD.  But there are many other verses….

2Co.13:14 “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the HS be with you all.”  2Co.1:21-22 “He who establishes us in Christ and anointed us is God, who also gave us the Spirit.”  Ep.4:4-6 “There is one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.”  (That’s three!)  Ac.7:55 “Being full of the HS, Stephen saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God.”  He.9:14 “Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without blemish to God.”  1Co.12:4-6 “The same Spirit…the same Lord…the same God.”  (Again, that’s three.)  1Pe.1:2 “Elect according to a foreknowledge of God the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ.”  All these verses indicate the three ‘Persons’ of the Godhead, the God Family.

As God, they are identical in essence, fully divine, a tri-unity of subsistences having self-awareness, sinless.  It’s been said as an analogy that the Father is the wall outlet, the HS is the cord, Jesus is the lamp (Re.21:23).  The tripartite Godhead is revealed to us by Jesus the Son’s coming in the flesh and His words in the NT, by other scriptures, and by the HS dwelling within us as Christians.

The terms for God as “Father” and “Holy Spirit” rarely occur as such in the OT.  Very few men had the HS in OT times; and prior to the NT, Jesus hadn’t yet come to reveal the Father.  (see “Life and Death – for Saints”.)  Jesus said in Jn.4:24, “God is Spirit”.  In Mt.10:20, Jesus spoke of Christians having “The Spirit of your Father who speaks in you”.  The HS belongs to and was part of Father God, has personality, but isn’t the totality of God.

Every human has a spirit within.  Jb.32:8 “There is a spirit in man.”  Our human spirit gives biological life to our body of flesh (Ge.2:7).  Ja.2:26 “The body without the spirit is dead.”  Without our human spirit, we’re just a clod.  Our spirit in God’s image imparts self-awareness and intellect to our brain.  It’s a non-physical component which differentiates human mind from animal brain instinct.  Our spirit gives us a moral sense of conscience, based upon the self and cultural customs & laws, not the HS.  Yet the HS will join with our human spirit (1Co.6:17); we become linked to God, able to live God’s morality.

Mt.1:18 “Mary was found to be with Child by the HS.”  The HS as God conceived Jesus in the womb of the surrogate mother Mary.  Kind begets kind.  So even as flesh, the Word/Jesus was of the Godkind.

The HS is very God, distinct from the Father.  Jn.15:26 “The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father.”  Orthodox Bible “The HS receives…eternal existence only from the Father.”  1Co.3:16 “Don’t you know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God lives in you?”  The Father and Jesus are in heaven…Christians wouldn’t be God’s temple if God the HS didn’t dwell within.  Lk.3:21-22 “Jesus was baptized. The HS descended upon Him in bodily form as a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, ‘You are My beloved Son, in Thee I Am well-pleased.”  The Father sent the HS as a dove upon Jesus the Son, then the Father’s voice spoke to Him from heaven.  That’s three!  Father God didn’t appear as the bird.  And Jesus isn’t an angel’s son.  1Jn.5:10 “God [not an angel] has testified about His Son.”

The HS is a Who, not a what, not an impersonal power such as magnetism or centripetal force.  The following verses reflect HS personality:  Peter said to Ananias in Ac.5:3-4, “You lied to the HS. You weren’t lying to men but to God.”  The person of the HS can be lied to and is God!  1Co.2:10-11 “Who knows the inner thoughts of a man, except the spirit of the man. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.”  The HS has an intellect and knowledge, as does our human spirit.  Ro.8:26-27 “The Spirit intercedes for us with deep groanings. And He who searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit.”  The HS has a mind and prays for the saints, unlike an impersonal ‘force’, so-called.  (see “Holy Spirit Personification”.)

The HS speaks in 1^st Person as “Me” and “I” in Ac.13:2. “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them to.”  Also ref Ac.11:12, Jn.16:13, Mk.13:11, which indicate the HS is personal and speaks.  2Sm.23:2-3 “The Spirit of YHVH spoke by me. The God of Israel.”  Again, the HS is YHVH/God.

Ro.15:30 “By our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit.”  The HS is a ‘Person’ who can love!  (1Jn.4:8 God is love.)  1Co.12:11 and Ac 20:28 the Person of the HS has a will and appoints overseers in the church.  The Person of Jesus also has a will.  Mt.11:27 “The Father, who the Son wills to reveal.”

The church is the metaphorical bride of Christ (e.g. Re.19:7-9).  Christians (the “bride”) are persons.  Re.22:17 “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.”  The Spirit and the bride speak, as persons.  Jesus is symbolically the Lion, Lamb, Word, arm (of the Lord, Is.53:1)…yet Jesus is a distinct person!  Jesus is also referred to as, “The power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Co.1:24).  Yet Jesus is clearly personal, as the four gospels reveal.  The HS isn’t just the power (or force) of God.

Is.63:10 “They rebelled and vexed His HS.”  Ep.4:30 “Don’t grieve God’s HS, by whom you are sealed.”  The HS seals believers…and can be vexed or provoked, and grieved or made sorrowful.  He.10:29 “Sorer punishment to he who has insulted the Spirit of grace.”  The HS can be insulted.  To think that an emotionless ‘force’ can be vexed, grieved and feel insulted…seems absurd!  Jn.15:26 the HS testifies of Jesus.  Any spirit who denies Jesus is false!  Yet…Mt.12:31-32 “Blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven.”

Forces such as magnetism and centripetal force don’t: have a mind, speak, pray, love, or hear and comprehend lies.  Whereas the Bible says the HS does: have a mind, speak, pray, love, hear and comprehend lies.  The HS can be vexed, grieved, insulted, blasphemed!  To repeat, the HS is personal…not just a powerful but emotionless ‘force’ from God!  (also see “Holy Spirit’s Identity”.)

Benny Hinn Welcome Holy Spirit, p.29 “There’s glory in grasping the Personhood of the Holy Spirit….your life will never be the same.”  ibid, p.199 “The Spirit is the Author of the Book.”

A church denomination I won’t name published an article about the Holy Spirit.  Their position is, “The HS is not God. It is the most powerful force in the universe. The HS can be poured out, an impersonal characteristic.”  But we read verses above, such as Ac.5:3-4 and 1Co.3:16, which indicate the HS is God.  Their article went on to say, “Only God can change hearts” (as if the HS isn’t God).

But the HS is God and does change hearts.  Ro.5:5 “The love of God is poured out in our hearts by the HS.”  2Co.1:22 “He gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.”  Ro.15:30 it’s by “The love of the Spirit.”  God’s love is “poured out” or shed abroad through the Person of the HS.  The Holy Spirit personally loves as God.  (And the HS is symbolically “poured out” as living water, Jn.7:38-39.)

Is.53:12 prophesied of Jesus, “He poured out Himself to death”.  Jesus the “Person” also “poured out” Himself or His soul.  1Sm.1:15 Samuel’s wife Hannah describes her supplication to God. “I have poured out my soul before the Lord.”  Jb.30:16 Job’s sore complaint, “My soul is poured out within me”.  David said in Ps.62:8, “Pour out your heart before God”.  In the Bible, the soul and even the heart of a person can be “poured out”!  Hannah, Job, and David are persons.  Jesus and the HS are divine Persons, in a manner “poured out”, so to speak.

Angels are also spirits, “ministering spirits” in He.1:14 (they aren’t the Holy Spirit).  An angel is a spirit who, likewise, isn’t just an impersonal force (e.g. the angel Gabriel, Lk.1:19).

Ministering spirits (angels), the Holy Spirit, our human spirits…aren’t an impersonal Star Wars type force!  Our human spirit is me, is you, within our flesh ‘suit’.  Again, the HS is changing our hearts!  We, as God’s temple of the HS, connect with God…the HS joined with our human spirit (1Co.6:17).  God will be all-in-all, Ep.4:6!

Finally, the triune God is thrice holy.  One Spirit…one Lord…one Father (Ep.4:4-6).  Is.6:3 “Holy, Holy, Holy is YHVH of hosts.”  A three-in-one Godhead.  The heavenly worshipers in Re.4:8 “Do not cease to say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God, the Almighty”.  Yea, and Amen.

Godhead in Prehistory

God is a uniplural Being, a compound unity…yet the Creator God-kind is One.  De.6:4 “Hear O Israel, YHVH our God is one [echád Strongs h259, Hebrew].”  But this term doesn’t mean numerically or solely ‘one’.  Ge.2:7, 24 Adam & Eve were echad/“one”, unified in togetherness…the two of them.  Ezr.2:64 the whole assemblage together was echad, as one, although it numbered 42,360 people!

The intertestamental Bible books were included in most canons until 200 years ago.  These apocryphal or deuterocanonical books were in the Septúagint/LXX, in the early KJV, and remain in the canons of the Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), and others.  Since the early Christians used these books, the Jews dropped them.  Because the books were used by the RCC, in 1534 AD Martin Luther placed the books after the canon, rather than keeping them interspersed within it.  (He began the Protestant Reformation.)  Around 200 years ago, Protestants dropped them from the Bible.

However, these intertestamental books were quoted or referenced by Jesus in the New Testament!  Compare: Mt.27:43 & Wisdom of Solomon (WSol) 2:13, 18; Lk.11:31 & WSol.8:1; Mt.6:14 & Wisdom of Sirach (WSir) 28:2.  WSol (written circa/c 20 BC) and WSir (written c 180 BC in Hebrew) will be quoted as we proceed with this topic.

In Ro.1:18-30, the apostle Paul paraphrased WSol.  Compare: Ro.1.21-22 & WSol.14:22; Ro.1:23-29 & WSol.14:29-30, 24-26.  In WSol.13:5, 8 & Ro.1:19-20 KJV, “The invisible things of Him from the creation are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made…even His Godhead.”

The Creation evidences and reflects the Godhead, especially the family generative order of humans and animals.  Ep.3:14-15 Father God is the great prototype of all family relationships.  Orthodox Study Bible “God the Father is the ultimate Source of every living being.”

However, the expression ‘eternal Father’ doesn’t appear in scripture.  Although the Godhead is echad, one, uniplural…scripture indicates the Godhead wasn’t uniplural originally! 

Before God became the Father, God alone was the Self-Existent Being, Ancient of Days.  Not yet the Most High, since no one was below at that ‘time’.  The Being existed alone for an incalculable duration.

This great Omnipotent, Omniscient Being alone was the androgynous prototype or image of human male and female attributes & characteristics.  Were the theory of left-brain right-brain hemisphere dominance correct, the Being would’ve been both sides equally dominant.

But the great Being won’t remain alone!  As if to say (analogous to the later Ge.2:18)…‘It is not good for the androgynous Self-Existent Being to be alone (forever); I will make a Helper for The Being!’

Prehistory doesn’t begin with Ge.1:1!  Prior to Ge.1:1…Pr.8:1-2, 22-30 has a 1^st Person quote from Wisdom. “Does not wisdom call. She stands in the top of high places. ‘YHVH possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works. From everlasting I was established, from the earliest times. When there were no depths I was brought forth. When He established the heavens, I was there. I was beside Him, and I was daily His delight.”  Wisdom, at the Being’s side…She has a beginning!

WSir, also called Ecclesiásticus, supports and expands Proverbs.  WSir.1:4, 7 “Wisdom was created before all things….The Lord Himself created wisdom. He poured her out on all His works.”  The Being brought forth Wisdom before all else, pouring her out.

WSir.24:3-6 is a 1^st Person quote by Wisdom. “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High. My throne is in the pillar of a cloud.”  The Shekínah glory of YHVH is in the pillar of a cloud, and later led ancient Israel.  Ex.13:21 “YHVH went before them in the pillar of a cloud.”  cf. Ex.40:34-35.

He (now the Most High) and She (Wisdom) are both YHVH.  They are echad, one, uniplural.

WSol.7:22, 25 “In herself, wisdom is a spirit that is understanding, Holy. She is the breath of the power of God, and the emanation of the pure glory of the Almighty.”  Wisdom is the Holy Spirit, split-off or spirated or emanated through the Being’s breath/mouth.  WSol.8:3-4 “She glorifies her noble birth by living with God, and the Master of all loves her.”

WSol and WSir reflect how Jews believed and interpreted Proverbs & Wisdom in latter BC times.  Wisdom is sophía (g4678) in Greek, and chokmáh (h2451) in Hebrew.  Orthodox Bible “The Holy Spirit receives eternal existence only from the Father.”  Wisdom says in Pr.8:25 LXX, “He begets [gennáo g1080] Me”.  Philo On Flight and Finding, p.325 “Wisdom, even if it be most ancient of all other things, still has only second place to that Omnipotent Being.”  He is the Most High.

Another 1^st Person quote from Wisdom is Pr.1:20-23. “Wisdom shouts/sings in the street. ‘Turn to my reproof, Behold I will pour out my spirit upon you.”  She is poured out, wisdom the Spirit.  Note the word of YHVH that came to Joel in 2:28-29. “I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind.”  Wisdom is the Holy Spirit!  Compare Nu.27:18, “Joshua, a man in whom is the Spirit.”…with De.34:9, “Joshua was filled with the spirit of wisdom”.  The spirit of Wisdom in Joshua is the Holy Spirit!

Solomon’s prayer of WSol.9:4, 10, 17. “Give me the wisdom that sits by Your throne…Send her forth from Your holy heavens…Your Holy Spirit from on high.”  Wisdom the Holy Spirit sat beside God’s throne in the heavens, as a Queen beside the King’s throne.  The real “Queen of Heaven” (Je.44:17) isn’t Ashtóreth (e.g. 1Ki.11:5), other pagan goddesses, or Mary…rather, She’s the Holy Spirit (HS).

Returning to prehistory…The Being emanated the HS.  The Being is now become He, no longer an androgyne…the HS, She is with Him.  A later figure of this masculine and feminine is Is.42:13-14. “YHVH will go forth like a warrior. Like a woman in labor I will groan.”  YHVH is as warrior and pregnant woman both!  And Ps.123:2 “As servants look to their master, and a maid to her mistress, so our eyes look to YHVH.”  YHVH is both Master and Mistress!  He and She.  Yet they are one/echad.

Since the Godhead is divine ‘Persons’, we most often use personal pronouns to refer to Their reality.  In English, personal pronouns are masculine or feminine.  In the next scriptural revelation of prehistory, He will become Father too (but not Mother).  She will become Mother.

God made the family (father, mother, offspring) the foundational unit (Ro.1:19-20)!  The church ideal for children is two–parent families.  Yet are God’s born-again children, adopted into a single–parent family?  Can there be a Son of God without a Father God and a Mother God?  Was the Word or Logos begotten into a one-parent family?  Again, YHVH reflects both masculine and feminine (Ps.123:2)!

The Works of Philo, p.85, 331, 405 “The Word [Lógos g3056, Greek] has received wholly pure parents…God being the Father and husband of wisdom, the mother of the Word….the Divine Logos flows forth from Wisdom as a spring.”  (A spring of Living water poured-out, Jn.4:14.)  Creation of man/mammals reflects & teaches us that it’s impossible to have a father without having a mother!

When did the Word/Logos, the One who later became Jesus in the flesh, originate?

At Creation in Ge.1:1-2, “The Spirit of God was hovering [h7363]….”  JFB Commentary “The Holy Spirit was hovering as a mother bird, when hatching eggs.”  The Holy Spirit is the real Mother Nature, so to speak!  De.32:11 a mother eagle hovers (h7363) over her young.  Re.12:14 the Holy Spirit-filled church is metaphorically given the wings of a great she-eagle, “that she might fly”.

Jn.1:1-5, 14, 18 “In the beginning, the Word [Logos] was with God and the Word was God. All things came into being through Him. In Him was life and the life was the Light of men….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us….the only-begotten God.”  The Word/Logos/Light became Jesus.  He.1:2-3 Jesus the Son is the radiance of God’s glory.

Ge.1:2-4 “God said, ‘Light…Be!”  A great cosmic Light was brought forth on the 1^st day of Creation.  But no sun, moon, or stars luminaries appeared until the 4^th day (v.14-19).  2Co.4:6 Jesus is a great primordial Light!  Jesus Himself said in Jn.8:12, “I AM the Light of the world”.  Jesus was begotten or emanated from His Father and Mother (who “hovers”).  And Jesus said in Jn.12:46, “I have come as Light”.  1Jn.1:5 “God is Light.”  This first Light has been described as ‘the ongoing and working reflection of His [the Father’s] Intelligence.’

Thus God became a Family.  (Other closely related topics are: “Tri-unity of God”, “Holy Spirit Personification”, “Holy Spirit’s Identity”, “Jesus Is God…Jesus has A God”.)

Jesus said of Himself in Lk.7:35, “Wisdom is justified by her children”.  Jesus acknowledged His Mother God, Wisdom!

Orthodox Study Bible “The Son is begotten before all time and ages from the essence of the Father. The Son…has the Father as His Source from eternity.”  The oldest manuscript of Jn.1:18 refers to Jesus as the “only begotten God”.  The Word (Jesus) was begotten or generated, “made” in that sense.  He.3:1-2 says Jesus “was faithful to Him who made [poiéo g4160] Him”.  Jn.17:24 the Father gave Jesus His glory.  Jn.6:57 the Word/Jesus’ very life is because of the Father!

Theophilus, the 6^th bishop of Antioch (born approximately 20 years after the apostle John died), was the first to use the term trinity/triad.  In 175 AD he wrote To Autólycus, 2:10. “God, having His own Word internal within His own bosom, begat Him, emitting Him along with His own Wisdom before all things.”  2:15 Theophilus’ triad was, “The Trinity of [Father] God, His Word, and His Wisdom”.  To Autolycus is “the earliest extant Christian work to use the word ‘Trinity’ [trías Greek, triad].”

Christian historian Robert Grant’s Greek Apologists of the 2^nd Century, p.169. “Theophilus and almost every early Christian theologian agreed the Logos (like Sophia/Wisdom) was originally in God.”

Irenaeus (130-200 AD) of Lyons, France wrote Against Heresies. “The Son is rightly and properly called Word, while the Spirit is called the Wisdom [Sophia] of God.”  Ibid 4.7.4 “The Son and the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom [Sophia], whom all the angels serve.”

The Father, Holy Spirit (Wisdom), and Son comprise YHVH…the Godhead.  In those early writings, the Christian belief wasn’t the same tri-unity/trinity the RCC later promulgated.  As the RCC changed from the belief of the early church, in ensuing centuries much of Christianity has also adopted the position of the RCC.  (Additionally the RCC began to emphasize Mary…see the topic “Holy Spirit versus Mariolatry”.)

{Sidelight: Although the feminine HS was present (Ge.1:2, Pr.8:22) before the Word or Light (Ge.1:3), She isn’t a Son.  Only sons are firstborns in scripture (e.g. Ex.13:13-15 LXX, g4416 firstborn).  Therefore the Word/Christ the Son, not the HS, is “the firstborn [g4416] of all creation” in Col.1:15.}

Next, after the Word (who became Jesus) was begotten, came other days of Creation…see Ge.1:6-25.

Ps.33:6 “By the Word of YHVH the heavens were made, and by the Spirit of His mouth [cf. WSir.24:3] all their host.”  Creation was by the Word/Jesus and the HS.  WSol.9:1-2 “God, who made all things by Your Word and in Your Wisdom built a man.”  Col.1:16 “Through Him [Jesus the Word, the Son, v.13] were all things created.”  Ps.104:24, 30 “You send forth Thy Spirit, they are created.”  Pr.3:19 “The Lord by Wisdom founded the earth.”  Job.33:4 “The Spirit of God has made me.”

The above verses all reflect the Spirit/Wisdom and the Word active at Creation.  Also, Philo The Special Laws 1, p.541 “Now the image of God is the Word [Logos], by which all the world was made.”  Written in Aramaic pre-200 AD, the Targum Neofití Ge.1:1, “In the beginning, with Wisdom, the Memra of the Lord created and perfected the heavens and the earth”.  The Memra is the Aramaic equivalent of the Word (English) and Logos (Greek).  Wisdom/HS and the Word were Creator(s).

Theophilus also wrote in Autolycus 1:3, 7, 2:10, 22 that God made all things (he quotes Ps.33:6) by the Logos/Son and Wisdom, His two offspring/hands (2:18).  They are the “Us” in Ge.1:26 (below).  1Clement 15:7-8 “He with His holy and pure hands formed man…‘Let Us make man in Our image.”

Ge.1:26-27 “Let Us make mankind [adám h120] in Our image, according to Our likeness…in the image of God.” (not in the image of non-reproductive angel-kind spirits).  The human (adam h120) was created by the Word and Wisdom/HS, the Us…who are God.  Humans, both male and female, are made in God’s image/pattern/attributes.  (cf. a later reference for “image” is Nebuchadnézzar’s statue, also an image.)  And humans are made in God’s likeness/shape/form.  The Hebrew term for image (h6754) is masculine, and the term for likeness (h1823) is feminine.  How did we imagine God, and what does God appear like?  ref the Ezk.1:26-28 vision, when God appeared in the likeness (h1823) of mankind!

In Jewish thought, the first human possibly was created androgynous, or a two-sided being, with male and female attributes.  Ge.5:1-2 “In the day when God created mankind [h120] in the likeness of God, He created them male and female.”  “Them” is a plural.  Dual gender indwelling the human, on the 6^th day!?  Eve was then brought forth from Adam’s side (h6763).  Ge.2:21-23 “She shall be called woman [isháh h802], because she was taken out of man [ish h376].”  The human/adam (h120) wasn’t called ‘male human’ (ish h376) until Ge.2:23…when Eve is drawn out of Adam!  Not before then was the adam termed ish…male human.  1Co.11:12 “The woman came from the man.” (not from the ground.)

Within man was wo(mb)man, his ‘other half’.  John H. Walton Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament, p.208 “All men and women are to be viewed as two sides of an original whole.”  The first human (adam h120), formed from the ground (adamáh h127, Ge.2:7) in The Being’s image, was perhaps a ‘quasi-androgynous’ (for lack of a better term) image of what God originally had been.  God then fashioned that human into two, Adam and Eve…as The Being had brought forth the feminine HS Wisdom from the “mouth” of The Being’s sole essence!  Husband and wife are to cling together as one/echad (flesh), Ge.2:24; as an androgynous first human was solely one flesh prior to the ish/male and ishah/female Eve.  And the Godhead is unified as One (De.6:4).

It takes both male and female humans, ish and ishah, to fully express the image and likeness of God!  Man and woman must both exist, or there would be no complete image and likeness of God (after The Being emanated the HS)!  Note: Though Paul did address female roles in the assembly, and the husband is the head of the wife (Ep.5:23), women were wrongly considered inferior by the institutional church.

In our various languages, we use terms which correspond to the ancient Hebrew & Greek terms chosen by the Bible writers to identify and describe the ‘Persons’ of the Godhead.  Jewish and Christian theology usually refers to God in male language and images, yet agrees it doesn’t adequately express all that the Divine is.  The Godhead possesses all the masculine and feminine attributes.  Words just cannot express how great God is!