could the holy spirit be a female entity?

[Pleroma]

God is androgynous, but this was never meant to be taken too literally, its a metaphor, it represents something.

 

[seth phoenix]

the pentecostal movement says the holy spirit is the restrainer of iniquity and when he is taken away in the rapture, all hell breaks loose. now the holy spirit (restrainer) is seen as operating through the church, eclessia. ecclessia is the bride of christ, and christ is God... therefore the holy spirit must be female...

 

[kylixguru]

God is androgynous, but this was never meant to be taken too literally, its a metaphor, it represents something.

It represents the situation where Adam says of His Wife Eve, "You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh".

Remember, these bodies are bodies of flesh and bone, not bodies of flesh and blood.
There is a very important difference.

I am a member of both Adam's body and of Eve's body.

 

[SageTree]

So ill ask you for a straight answer [again]

the gods of judaism started clearly as having genders in a family of deities. this is a fact is it not????

at what date were they, redefined exactly ??? as genderless ?? or female not feminine?

You tell me Broseph.

You are clearly the expert here.

I could say anything and I'm sure I'd get a hurumph out of you,
and I don't wish to further upset you with my differing or similar opinion.

 

[outhouse]

You tell me Broseph.

You are clearly the expert here.

I could say anything and I'm sure I'd get a hurumph out of you,
and I don't wish to further upset you with my differing or similar opinion.

you have never bothered me in the least

nor have you upset me, nor do I care what you believe.


Nor am I a expert, but im fortunate enough to have a job that I can learn and read to my fill.



with that said, we are talking about a male dominated culture, and evolving concepts. I dont think im out of line asking for clarifications and wanting more then faith or opinions.

peace brother

 

[outhouse]

But is this male in the literal sense (has a penis) or metaphorical form (masculine in personality)? I think the latter, which is why I think that Shekinah would just be the female aspect of this masculine force.

fair assessment, other then a mans spirit, would be a mans spirit. not change into a female spirit once OTB

Although then it points to: which is the authentic? The old one, or the newer? I don't think it can be done like that. Kind of makes the discussion a bit moot

not really, their both mans descriptions, and if we look at the god concept, he was always evolving constantly mirroring the culture that was doing the describing, and is some cases, by the author doing the writing. the supossed sons of abraham, each gave a different description of El mirroring their own plight and lives.

the view of god and the sprit has only been recently static for the last 1600 years, after evolving for 1600 years.

people describing differently something unseen and for the most part unknown, some claim as mythology is not really supprising.

key here as I stated from the beginning faith or no faith, is to try and discover the true evolutionary path by by taking into context the author doing the describing, beacuase as we see different attributes of the sprirt, I guarantee you the different authors viewed something different from previopus authors as well.



key point, were talking about two different religions belief on the same concept

Really? That's not been my experience at all.

judaism did not have a dualality with god and the spirit.

it was never viewed like christians view the trinity as a seperate persona.

It was god taking a spirit form and traveling to earth to do his bidding, there was never a speperation of god sending down his spirit.

why do you think jews look at christianity as perverting their god?

Not quite true: the Syriac Orthodox church, it's considered feminine

again, ase we talking about grammatical femmininity? thats how I read it, I could be wrong.

because there is not a description here of that at all. thats a pretty strong claim I think they would find offensive.

Syriac Orthodox Church - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Then again, if you keep opening up enough cans, you may find a can of um... peaches.

you have me chuckling

 

[fallingblood]

am only a hard wired human, its hard for me to think beyond gender..would not make sense to me..
i even assign genders to cars. like pick-up trucks are male and the sedans are female..

I agree, it is hard to think beyond gender. Especially when are language really only has two pronouns, so we often have to categorize things as female or male. In the 70's though, it there was a move (a serious one) to create a third, genderless, pronoun. However, we can see that failed.

 

[outhouse]

elohim has some female and plural connotations, i believe. and its a name attributed to yahweh, so how do they suddenly evolve into a single deity...the levitical teachings probably originated from the egyptians considering how long moses stayed there..am simply trying to establish a connection between the holy spirit and the feminine goddesses of other cultures..

hey bud glad you could join.

first, there is no evidence anywhere that Israelites were ever in Egypt, Moses and the exodus historically is viewed as mythology by most scholars.

It is well known and not disputed that Israelites formed slowly from displaced Canaanites who moved to the highlands from 1200 BC and over a few hundred years formed the Israelite culture, we first start seeing them with their own writing around 1000 BC.

your question deserves about 5 pages for you to understand this history, sorry but your getting the condensed version.

Elohim is a tough word that can mean quite a few different things. Plural gods, it can mean El, it can be a desriptive term for Yahweh, a court of gods, and angels.

the evolving deities isnt tough but to get a clear picture of something that took hundreds and hundreds of years through countless cultural changes isnt easy properly done in a few paragraphs, but here goes.

Israelietes did worshipp a family of gods El the father, Yahweh the son, and Baal the son, and Asherah the consort/wife of El.

You had different tribes that migrated from different areas, and what we see by the collection of early scripture is a division of north and south each having their own primary deities, nort had El often redacted as Elohim, and Yahweh in the south.

In times of war, the people would rally around Yahweh the warrior deity, in peaceful times El and Baal would be worshipped more, while what we will call yahwist would shrink.

After 622 BC king Josiah who was a strict Yahwist took over around the period of second Isaiah, and forced Yahweh on all the people, and it didnt go over well, but monotheism was born. some claim this didnt take complete hold until 200 BC.

What we see early on before 800 BC is that some tribes who were Yahwist, gave all Els attributes to Yahweh, so Yahweh took on Asherah as his wife and as the father figure, this was not the Isrealite culture as a whole though. After 622 BC yahweh was redacted in the bible and took on all Els previous legends in scripture, that is, the bible was edited so that it seemed to always have one god. The term Elohim was now used as more of a descriptive term for Yahweh


the femminine goddess of other cultures was Asherah. and if you look deep enough parts of her would have been redacted in the OT as well and limited attributes given to Yahweh.

 

[Breathe]

fair assessment, other then a mans spirit, would be a mans spirit. not change into a female spirit once OTB

OTB?

key here as I stated from the beginning faith or no faith, is to try and discover the true evolutionary path by by taking into context the author doing the describing, beacuase as we see different attributes of the sprirt, I guarantee you the different authors viewed something different from previopus authors as well.

That's part of the beauty of mythology I guess: people can take different things from it.

It's also one of the ugly things about it as well, sometimes.

judaism did not have a dualality with god and the spirit.

it was never viewed like christians view the trinity as a seperate persona.

True, but I don't think that necessarily invalidates a feminine spirit.

again, ase we talking about grammatical femmininity? thats how I read it, I could be wrong.

Grammatically feminine, that's a fact.
Feminine in ways besides God actually being female, or literally female, such as having feminine aspects (a "nurturer", and so on)? Possible.

because there is not a description here of that at all. thats a pretty strong claim I think they would find offensive.

Really? I don't think they (whoever they are) would find it offensive. So long as they were aware I didn't mean feminine in a literal sense.

 

[outhouse]

OTB?

out of the body

 

[Breathe]

out of the body

Ah.

 

[SageTree]

you have never bothered me in the least

nor have you upset me, nor do I care what you believe.


Nor am I a expert, but im fortunate enough to have a job that I can learn and read to my fill.



with that said, we are talking about a male dominated culture, and evolving concepts. I dont think im out of line asking for clarifications and wanting more then faith or opinions.

peace brother

Alrighty. Cheers man

I'll chew on the question and see if I have anything worth saying.

My apologies for being somewhat short in my post earlier.

 

[outhouse]

Alrighty. Cheers man

I'll chew on the question and see if I have anything worth saying.

My apologies for being somewhat short in my post earlier.

you have always been alright in my book.

and I know I come off rough sometimes, it is accidental as I get overly zealous in my opinions

 

[KeeperofSecrets]

OTB?


That's part of the beauty of mythology I guess: people can take different things from it.

It's also one of the ugly things about it as well, sometimes.



True, but I don't think that necessarily invalidates a feminine spirit.


Grammatically feminine, that's a fact.
Feminine in ways besides God actually being female, or literally female, such as having feminine aspects (a "nurturer", and so on)? Possible.


Really? I don't think they (whoever they are) would find it offensive. So long as they were aware I didn't mean feminine in a literal sense.

If god is all, and you have a femine or female in existence, than it would only come to a whole that god is female, as well as male, and transgender, ect. Than in my view it would have to be taken in the literal sense.

 

[Breathe]

If god is all, and you have a femine or female in existence, than it would only come to a whole that god is female, as well as male, and transgender, ect.

That's fine by me.

Than in my view it would have to be taken in the literal sense.

What do you mean?

 

[sojourner]

It represents the situation where Adam says of His Wife Eve, "You are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh".

Remember, these bodies are bodies of flesh and bone, not bodies of flesh and blood.
There is a very important difference.

I am a member of both Adam's body and of Eve's body.

Your analysis is is worthless. This is ancient myth, not metaphysics.

 

[sojourner]

King James Version (17th century)Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth:
for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak:
and he will shew you things to come

.when the Holy Spirit is referred to by the grammatically masculine word Parakletos (Counsellor, Comforter), the pronoun is masculine, as in John 16:7-8

That's only because the H.S. is associated with God, who is usually also referred to as masculine. Doesn't mean we believe God actually has gender.

 

[kylixguru]

Your analysis is is worthless. This is ancient myth, not metaphysics.

My analysis is correct.
God doesn't appreciate you calling the seals upon His Word ancient myth.

 

[sojourner]

My analysis is correct.
God doesn't appreciate you calling the seals upon His Word ancient myth.

:biglaugh:

Oooh! God's gonna send me to my room without my num-num!
Bad Sojourner! Bad! [hangs head, tucks tail]

I don't think God spends too much time on human nomenclature.

edit: [BTW: My assessment of your "analysis" stands as is]

 

[outhouse]

That's only because the H.S. is associated with God, who is usually also referred to as masculine. Doesn't mean we believe God actually has gender.

I think if the total world of christianity was polled, male would come out on top

which would be worthless, as compared to how he was originally written in as male