Sophia, the Greek translation of the Hebrew "Hochmah" is the feminine personification of Wisdom in the Pentateuch. She is neither a goddess nor a new age creation of feminist theologians. She was a real biblical person with more material on her in the OT (with Apocrypha) than anyone in the scriptures, except God, Job, Moses and David.

      Susan Cady, Marian Ronan and Hal Taussig's book Sophia (Harper and Row; 1986) seeks to uncover the Biblical tradition of Sophia and her ultimate identification with Jesus in the Christian tradition.

      One reason we little consider Sophia, even in readings of the Old Testament, is that English translations usually translate the feminine "Sophia" into the abstract "Wisdom". Although the Greek and Hebrew words were fully feminine, the English is not. The fullest development of her is in the so-called "Wisdom Books" of the apocryphia in the Greek Pentateuch that were canonized into Christian Scripture and are still used by theRC and EO churches. Sophia dominates the first nine chapters of Proverbs and is found in both the Old and New Testaments.

      In the Hebrew tradition, Sophia was considered to have been with God from the beginning of Creation. In Proverbs 8:27-31, Sophia says:

When God set the heavens in place, I was present,
When God drew a ring on the surface of the deep,
When God fixed the clouds above,
When God fixed fast the wells of the deep,
when God assigned the sea its limits-
and the waters will not invade the land,
when God established the foundations of the earth,
I was by God's side, a master craftswoman,
delighting God day after day,
ever at play by God's side,
at play everywhere in God's domain,
delighting to be with the children of humanity.

She is the breath of God's power and a stream of pure glory of the Almighty.
This is why nothing polluted enters her.
For she mirrors God's energy completely, and she images God's goodness.

      The identification of Jesus with Sophia, and the adaptation of Sophia characteristics into the Messiah definition, lies at the heart of almost all of the various New Testament Christologies. To quote the authors:

Almost every major New Testament portrait of Jesus depends upon the implicit combination of the Messiah and Sophia figures.... Jesus's crucifixion fits into the picture of Sophia calling vainly to humanity, and then going back to God without having visibly changed things. If one saw Jesus as Sophia, Jesus's lack of kingly success was no longer a problem but a confirmation of his divine calling....When a New Testament author such as [John]...concentrates on Jesus as Messiah, the Messiah figure is changed to incorporate some of the crucial Sophia characteristics [such as] pre-existent creative activity and foreknowledge of God. (p41)

      John more directly incorporates Sophia scriptures into his description of Jesus. Sophia's statement (Ecc. 24:8) "Then the creator of all things instructed me...'Pitch your tent in Jacob, and make Israel your inheritance'"becomes John 1:14, "The Word was made flesh, and pitched his tent among us." Extensive references in Paul, John and the Synoptic Gospels are given.

      So why do we not use the term "Sophia" often today? Thank Gnosticism, which rejected Jesus's humanity and crucifixion while boldly proclaiming his identification with Sophia. The writers of the Gospels had no wish to identify with the Gnostic heresy and often muted the connection while they explored it. Further, thank the church fathers of the Patristic Age who preferred the male "Logos" when describing Christ in order to avoid gender confusion. Philo, who at first equated Sophia with Logos, "substituted Logos for Sophia, until the masculine person of the Logos has taken over most of Sophia's divine roles including the firstborn image of God, the principle of order and the intermediary between God and humanity. Sophia's powers are restricted and she is limited to Heaven..."(p11)

      Attempts have been made to push the divine person of Sophia to the sidelines in both Christian and Jewish theology. In Judaism, the medieval writers of the Kaballah concentrated on the masculine aspects of the sefiroth (the 13 aspects of God) and relegated Sophia to an inferior sphere than that she had heretofore occupied. Roman Catholicism explicitly associated Old Testament Sophia texts with Mary or the Mother Church. In the Eastern Church, Sophia survives and is often associated liturgically with the Holy Spirit and sometimes with Christ, himself.

      The book concludes with a discussion of Sophia in modern theology and the need for an explicitly female figure in God's image. The New Testament authors saw little problem with associating a female divinity with the male body of Jesus in the Resurrected Christ. But the mystery has presented problems as Christianity has been translated into a more rationalized western religion. And the female figure was denigrated as Christianity after Christ was shaped by a gentile culture that was, if anything, more partriarchical than the culture of first century Jerusalem.

      The authors believe that modern feminist theology has veered into "Sophiaolatry", seeing Sophia as the exclusive symbol within feminist spirituality. They fear a co-optation of Sophia, as has happened in times past. The discussion is somewhat discordant, possibly due to differences of opinion of the 3 authors, whose work is not separately identified, and at least one of whom seems to believe that divine persons are merely metaphorical. Nonetheless, the book cogently identifies the mythic importance of divine feminine imagery within God in the Judeo- Christian tradition.

Karen Vaughan

KarenSVaughan@juno.com

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