SOPHIA is a Greek word that means "wisdom." In the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament), the name Sophia is given as a translation of Ḥokhmah (also meaning "wisdom"), the name of a figure with feminine features. In the Greek version of the apocryphal book the Wisdom of Solomon (written in Alexandria at the beginning of the common era), Sophia is said to be the emanation of God's glory, the Holy Spirit, the immaculate mirror of his energy, nay, even the spouse of the Lord (Septuagint 8:3). In the Greek rendering of Ben Sira, or Sirach, she is depicted as a woman: To the wise man she is both a tender mother, who spoils him as if he were her favorite child, and his young mistress, who surprises him with unexpected wildness (15:2). In Proverbs (c. 300), Wisdom "standeth at the top of high places and cries at the gates" (8:2–3; what Oriental woman would thus expose herself?) to proclaim that the Lord had brought her forth (not "created") before he began the creation. After he had created the world, she stood before him as his daily delight (8:30). This image was inspired by the pagan belief, represented on many excavated objects, that a goddess (either the Egyptian Maat or a Canaanite figure) stands before the godhead to please and entertain him.
In The Thunder, Whole Mind, one of the writings found at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and written probably during the first pre-Christian century by an Alexandrian Jew, Sophia manifests herself through a series of impressive paradoxes: as both the wisdom of the Greeks and the gnōsis of the barbarians, as both the saint and the whore, as the "All-Mother."
The ideas that God is female or that he has a feminine spouse lie further back still. Recently, in the Israeli Negev and near Hebron, Hebrew inscriptions have been found dating back to the eighth century that speak about "the Lord and his Asherah" (Asherah, or Athirat, was a Canaanite goddess of love, war, and fertility). On one jar bearing such an inscription, YHVH seems to be represented by the Egyptian god Bes (possessing an enormous phallus) together with a feminine figure (Athirat?). In Elephantine (near Aswan, Egypt) the Jews venerated Anat Jahu, another Canaanite deity, possibly as the spouse of the Lord. Ḥokhmah (Sophia) is the positive offprint of this photographic negative, the great goddess of the pre-Greek and pre-Hebrew Mediterranean, who, variously called Anat, Athirat, or Astarte (comparable to the later Greek Aphrodite), was considered to be a sacred prostitute, as were her devotees, and was still venerated as dea meretrix (goddess/whore) during classical times in the Near East.
Gnosticism integrated this Jewish myth. Simon the Magician, a first-century Samaritan (i. e., heterodox Jew), taught that the spouse of the Lord, called Sophia or the Holy Spirit, was actually "the first Idea of God" and had descended in order to produce the angels and powers that created the world. These tyrannical powers then overwhelmed her and forced her reincarnation again and again. (A contemporary version of this story is She by Rider Haggard.) At last she became one Helena, a prostitute in a brothel at Tyre (Phoenicia), whence Simon redeemed her. Here the cosmogonic Sophia of Hebrew lore has been combined with the Neo-Pythagorean concept of Helena as a symbol of the fallen and reascending heavenly soul.
In another Gnostic text, the Apocryphon of John (Alexandria, first century), Sophia is the last of the spiritual entities to come into existence. She falls into the cosmos because of her wantonness, but there she fights against the demiurge in her struggle to make man spiritually conscious. The same theme is Christianized by the greatest Gnostic, Valentinus, according to whom Sophia desires to penetrate the mystery of ultimate being, then falls through hubris (tolma) but is saved by Christ.
In the modern gnōsis, initiated around 1600 by Jakob Boehme, a similar mythology has developed. In addition to Christ, the German pietists discern the feminine Sophia, a goddess (the Holy Spirit?) and bride to the wise man. To become like Adam before the birth of Eve from his side, man must unite with his inner Sophia and become androgynous. English representatives of this tradition were John Pordage (1607–1681) and Jane Leade (1623–1704). Franz von Baader (1764–1841), a Bohemian philosopher, regarded androgyny and Sophianology as the aim and purpose of marriage. At the time of the Holy Alliance, these ideas were exported to Russia, where they were accepted by the Freemasons and such brilliant Orthodox theologians as Vladimir Solovʾev and Sergei Bulgakov.
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Bulgakov, Sergei. The Wisdom of God. New York, 1937.
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New Sources
Casadio, Giovanni. "Donna e simboli femminili nella gnosi del secondo secolo." In La donna nel pensiero cristiano antico, pp. 305–329. Genoa, 1992.
Orbe, Antonio S.J., "Sophia Soror: apuntes para la teología del Espíritu Santo." In Mélanges d'histoire des religions offerts à Henri-Charles Puech, pp. 355–363. Paris, 1974.
Stead, G. C. "The Valentinian Myth of Sophia." Journal of Theological Studies 20 (1969): 75–104 (reprinted in Substance and Illusion in the Christian Fathers, London 1985).
Sfameni Gasparro, Giulia. "Il personaggio di Sophia nel Vangelo secondo Filippo." Vigiliae Christianae 31 (1977): 244–281 (reprinted in Gnostica et Hermetica. Saggi sullo gnosticismo e sull'ermetismo, Rome, 1982, pp. 73–119).
Tommasi Moreschini, Chiara O. "L'androginia di Cristo-Logos: Mario Vittorino tra platonismo e gnosi." Cassiodorus 4 (1998): 11–46.
Zandee, Jan. "Die Person der Sophia in der Vierten Schrift des Codex Jung." In Le Origini dello, Gnosticismo, edited by Ugo Bianchi, pp. 203–214. Leiden, 1967.
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