‘The Wings of the Spirit’: Exploring Feminine Symbolism in Early Pneumatology
A Reassessment of a Key Metaphor in the Spiritual Teachings of the 'Macarian Homilies' in the Light of Early Syriac Christian Tradition
By (author) J.M. Hopkins
The book explores the rich symbolism of the Holy Spirit as a mother bird with hovering wings within early Syriac sacramental liturgies, proto-monastic rites of initiation, hymnody and teaching on prayer and spiritual states of inspiration and contemplation. The author traces these influences into the Greek writings of the Fourth Century Mesopotamian ascetic teacher and writer of the `Macarian Homilies’. Macarian pneumatology was known to have influenced the Cappadocian brothers, Basil and Gregory, in the period leading up to the addition of the clause on the Holy Spirit to the Nicene Creed. By demonstrating a cultural and religious dialogue between the Cappadocians and Macarian and Syriac teaching on the Holy Spirit, Julie Hopkins challenges the current scholarship which claims that the Cappadocian appropriation of the “wings of the Spirit” metaphor derived from the Platonic “wings of the soul”. In her study, the agency and functions of the Syriac feminine Holy Spirit were appropriated by Gregory of Nyssau in his mystical writings as a powerful verbal ikon, even though the gender was lost in translation.
- By (author) J.M. Hopkins
Other Titles in this Series
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Similar Books
A Companion to Christianity and Sport in Europe and North America (19th-21st centuries)
Volume 1: Western and Eastern Europe
A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean
The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II
Volume 6
Ars Prophetica
Theology in the Poetry of Twentieth-Century Hebrew Poets Avraham Halfi, Shin Shalom, Amir Gilboa, and T. Carmi
As Messianism Turns to Heresy
The Regenstein Chair Lectures On Lurianic Kabbalah and Shabbatai Tzevi at Hebrew Union College - Cincinnati
Creating the Woman in Antiquity
Proceedings of the 16th Melammu Workshop, Innsbruck, 2–3 June 2022
Volume 13
Cultic Kisses
Fruitful Encounters Between Deities and Humans. Festschrift for Angelika Berlejung on the Occasion of Her 65th Birthday
De/colonizing Theologies
Glocal Histories, Contemporary Challenges, Theoretical Reflections
Volume 4
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Éthique, politique, religions
Superstition (XVIIe - XXIe siècles). Sémantique, histoires et cultures
