The Book of Proverbs particularly Chapter 8, Matthew 11:19 and Luke 7:35 are the primary Biblical Basis for the concept of a Divine Personified Wisdom. Both the Hebrew Chokmah and the Greek Sophia are grammatically Feminine hence personified Wisdom being often depicted as a Feminine Human.
Proverbs 7:4 tells us to call Wisdom our Sister. The two Jesus quotes refer to Believers as children of Wisdom which some use to instead make Sophia a Mother figure. But the word for Children used there is not the standard Greek word for Son or Daughter or the word for Offspring used in Acts 17, it’s much more vague about the actual familial relationship being implied and often doesn’t inherently imply one at al being just the basic Greek word for child, but it does here due to the possessive pronouns. It would not be inappropriate in my view for referring to the younger siblings of an older sister.
Chie is a grammatically Feminine Japanese word for Wisdom and Oneesama is the most prestigious of words one would use to address an older sister. In Anime it’s most often used in a Class S context, as in not a biological relative but a term of endearment for a Senpai you particularly admire. Hence my Weebified title for this post.
The main internal debate within Christianity about Wisdom is if this title refers to The Holy Spirit or Jesus, Jesus eventually became the mainstream assumption hence bad Septuagint translations of certain Proverbs 8 verses being used to justify a Pre-Incarnate begetting of The Logos before the Creation of the Cosmos. But one of the first Extra-Biblical expressions of The Trinity was Theophilus of Antioch defining it as The Father, The Logos and Sophia. Also both Theophilus and Irenaeus seme to identify the Holy Spirit with Sophia in how they interpret Psalm 33:6.
Previously on this Blog I strongly favored The Holy Spirit view, but I don’t think it actually matters that much and Theophilus of Antioch is someone I have mixed opinions on. So I want to look into it deeper.
First I want make clear that The Holy Spirit has a Feminine aspect whether they’re Wisdom or not The Hebrew word for Spirit is also Grammatically Feminine, the Greek word is technically Gender Neutral but by ending with an A sound it leans towards sounding Feminine especially to Semitic Language trained ears.
The Holy Spirit's Feminine references are so well known that some some think she's only ever Feminine but the title of Parakletos is Masculine.
Jesus also has a Feminine side whether He is Wisdom or not. He is the Desire of Nations of Haggai 2:7 which is Feminine in the Hebrew. Isaiah 53:7 confirmed to be about Jesus in Acts 8:32 also uses Grammatically Feminine language (in fact one of the words for Lamb/Sheep is identical to the name of Rachel). The Sun of Righteousness of Malachi 4:2 is also a grammatically feminine title in The Hebrew. Also Jesus is called The Image of God which Genesis 1:27 and 5:1-2 define as both Male and Female. Also a prominent Hebrew word for Salvation is the Feminine form of the name Yeshua. Luke 2:21 does clearly tell us Jesus’s Incarnate Body (Which He still has) was Assigned Male at Birth, but his Identity is both Male and Female. And I have argued Shulamith is a type of Jesus not The Church in the Song of Songs.
The main argument against Jesus being Wisdom would be those quotes I mentioned at the start where He refers to Wisdom in the third person. But there are other times where He refers to a Title or Aspect of Himself in the Third Person, like all the Son of Man verses.
The verses cited to prove Jesus is Wisdom are 1 Corinthians 1:24 and 30 and 1 Corinthians 2:7 (or the entirety of 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:13) and Colossians 2:3, from what I've found so far at least. However I don’t get that sense that the Proverbs 8 Personified Wisdom is the point of any of those, in Context Paul is using the word Wisdom explicitly in relation to Greek Philosophy, which it may surprise you to learn didn’t really have a Divine Personified Wisdom concept yet, not in Platonism or Stoicism and certainly not Epicureanism, the Gnostics got that from their Judeo-Christian sources.
It’s also important to remember that the Incarnate Jesus was the Vessel of The Holy Spirit while he walked the Earth and is who sent the Comforter which Proceeds from The Father to us at Pentecost. So aspects of The Holy Spirit can be said to come from Jesus or be manifested in Jesus.
A lot of my past argument for supporting the Holy Spirit view was verses from The Pentateuch and Isaiah 11:2 that speaks of there being a Spirit of Wisdom and making the Spirit of YHWH the source of Wisdom. The Pentateuch verses are Exodus 28:3, 31:3, 35:31 and Deuteronomy 34:9.
However it’s important to remember that God as a whole is Spirit (Spirit in 1st Century Greek and Biblical Hebrew did not mean Immaterial) as shown by John 4:24. In fact Isaiah 11:2 can be interpreted as a Trinitarian Formula calling each person of The Trinity a Spirit of YHWH.
But I do think the Spirit of YHWH with a Definite Article typically refers to the Third Person of the Trinity and Revelation 1:4 and 4:5 seem to imply The Holy Spirit has a further Sevenfold division only three of which were singled out in Isaiah. And Isaiah 11:2 listed the Spirit of Wisdom and Understanding first rather than second or third.
So that leads me to still favoring the Holy Spirit view, but it is ultimately unclear.
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