The Holy Spirit: Jesus’ Divine Mother?

In his commentary on Isaiah, St. Jerome quotes a Gospel attributed to certain Jewish sects that identified the Holy Spirit as a female and thought that the Spirit was Jesus’ mother. This Gospel also claims it was the Holy Spirit who spoke to Christ at the latter’s baptism, where the Spirit testified that Jesus is his firstborn Son. All emphasis is mine.

Moreover, in the Gospel of which we made mention above,²²⁷ we have found this written:

But it came about when the Lord had ascended from the water, the entire font of the Holy Spirit descended, and rested upon him, and said to him, “My Son, in all the prophets I was expecting you, that you would come and I would rest on you; for you are my rest, you are my firstborn Son, you who reign forever.”

²²⁷ I.e., the Gospel of the Nazarenes. (St. Jerome: Commentary on Isaiah, Including St. Jerome’s Translation of Origen’s Homilies 1-9 on Isaiah, translated and with introduction by Thomas P. Scheck [The Newman Press, New York/Mahwah, NJ 2015], p. 190)

And:

The Hebrews claim, and among them there is no doubt about this point, that the Holy Spirit is identified in their language in the feminine gender, that is ruha codsa.

And what is said in the sixty-seventh Psalm, “The Lord shall give the word to them that preach good tidings (evangelizantibus) with great power” [Ps 68:11], they read as follows, “The Lord shall give the word to them that preach good tidings (evangelizatricibus)⁶⁶¹ with great power,” namely to those souls who have attained the Holy Spirit.

And indeed they interpret the “maidservant” in the following passage, “As the eyes of a maidservant in the hands of her mistress” [Ps 123:2], of the soul, and the “mistress” of the Holy Spirit.

Moreover, in the Gospel according to the Hebrews,⁶⁶² which the Nazarenes like to read as Scripture, the Lord says, “My mother, the Holy Spirit, recently bore me.”

Now no one should be scandalized about this, that among the Hebrews “Spirit” is expressed in the feminine gender, though in our language he is addressed in the masculine gender, and in the Greek language in the neuter; for in the deity there is no gender.

And therefore in the three principal languages in which the inscription of the Lord’s passion was written [cf. John 19:20], he is identified by three genders, that we may know that what is diverse has no gender.

⁶⁶¹ This is a feminine form in contrast with the masculine form previously cited.

⁶⁶² Jerome believed that the Gospel according to the Hebrews was essentially the same as the Gospel according to the Nazarenes and the Gospel according to the Apostles. For comparison, see bk. 4, n. 25. (Ibid., p. 445)

For the record, no true Christian who believes in the authority of the Scriptures and holds to the Apostolic deposit of faith preserved in the ancient Churches can ever entertain the notion of Christ being the Son of the Holy Spirit or that the Spirit is feminine and therefore can be identified as Jesus’ mother.

FURTHER READING

JUSTIN, JEWISH CHRISTIANS & THE LAW