Feminine images cluster around the Spirit, as the Syriac word for spirit, ruha, is itself feminine.”

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" An early stream of Aramaic-Syriac Christian tradition portrayed the

Spirit as feminine… In the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Holy Spirit is

seen as Christ's mother and also the power that transports him to the

mountain of his transfiguration. In this gospel, Christ says, " Even

so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and

carry me away unto the great Mountain, Tabor. "

 

The most lush development of female images for the Spirit is found in

the second-century Syriac hymns the Odes of Solomon. The language of

these hymns is poetic, non philosophical, and explains a plurality of

images for the believer's transformed life through communion with the

divine. Feminine images cluster around the Spirit, as the Syriac word

for spirit, ruha, is itself feminine. "

 

Goddesses and the Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History

By Rosemary Radford Ruether, University of California Press; 2006,

page 132

 

The Qur'an uses two terms " Ruh-Allah " and " Ar-Ruh-Al-Qudus " for the

Spirit of God. Such is the case in the following references: " We gave

unto Jesus, son of Mary, clear proofs [of Allah's sovereignty], and

we supported him with the Holy Spirit [ar-Ruh-al Qudus], " (Surah 2,

Al-Baqarah, The Cow: 87).

 

" When Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My favour unto thee

and unto thy mother; how I strengthened thee with the Holy Spirit [al-

Ruh al-Qudus], so that the Scripture and Wisdom and the Torah and the

Gospel . . . and thou didst heal him who was born blind and the leper

by My permission; and how thou didst raise the dead, by My

permission " (Surah 5 Al-Ma'idah, The Table Spread: 110).

 

" Go, O my sons, and ascertain concerning Joseph and his brother, and

despair not the Spirit of Allah [Ruh-Allah] " (Surah 12, Joseph: 87).

 

" Say (O Muhammad): The Holy Spirit hath revealed it (the Quran) from

thy Lord with Truth, that it may confirm the faith of those who

believe and as a guidance and Good Tidings (gospels) for those who

have Surrendered (to Allah). " 16:102

 

" And thus have We inspired in thee (Muhammad) a Spirit of Our

Command. Thou knowest not what the Scripture was nor what the Faith.

But We have made it a light whereby We guide whom We will of Our

bondmen. And lo! Thou verily dost guide unto a right path., the path

of Allah, unto whom belongs whatsoever is in the heavens and

whatsoever is in the earth. Do not all things reach Allah at last? "

42:52-53

 

" And lo! It (the Quran) is a revelation of the Lord of the Worlds

which the True Spirit hath brought down upon thy heart, that thou

mayest be one of the warners in plain Arabic speech. " 26:192-195

 

Note that the above quotations from the Qur'an make reference to God,

to His Word, and to His Spirit. Ruh is Allah's own attribute given to

human beings. The Quran doesn't say the ruh of man but Ruh of Allah.

 

Syriac language

 

" Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across

much of the Fertile Crescent. Classical Syriac became a major

literary language throughout the Middle East from the 4th to the 8th

centuries.[1] It was the classical language of Edessa, preserved in a

large body of Syriac literature.

 

It became the vehicle of Eastern Christianity and culture, spreading

throughout Asia as far as Malabar and Eastern China and was the

medium of communication and cultural dissemination for Arabs and, to

a lesser extent, Persians. Primarily a Christian medium of

expression, Syriac had a fundamental cultural and literary influence

on the development of Arabic which replaced it towards the end of the

eighth century. Syriac remains the liturgical language of Syriac

Christianity.

 

Syriac is a Middle Aramaic language, and as such a language of the

Western branch of the Semitic family.

 

Syriac is written in the Syriac alphabet, a derivation of the Aramaic

alphabet. "

 

www.en.wikipedia.org/

 

 

Aramaic language

 

" Aramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history.[2] It has

been the language of administration of empires and the language of

divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the

Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), the original language of

large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, likely to

have been the mother tongue of Jesus of Nazareth and is the main

language of the Talmud.[3]

 

Aramaic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family. Within that

diverse family, it belongs to the Semitic subfamily. Aramaic is a

part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes

the Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. Aramaic script

was widely adopted for other languages, and is ancestral to the

Arabic and Hebrew alphabets.

 

Aramaic's long history and diverse and widespread use has led to the

development of many divergent varieties which are sometimes treated

as dialects. Thus, there is no one Aramaic language, but each time

and place has had its own variety. Aramaic is retained as a

liturgical language by certain Eastern Christian sects, in the form

of Syriac, the Aramaic variety by which Eastern Christianity was

diffused, whether or not those communities once spoke it or another

form of Aramaic as their vernacular, but have since shifted to

another language as their primary community language.

 

Modern Aramaic is spoken today as a first language by many scattered,

predominantly small, and largely isolated communities of differing

Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups of the Middle East[4]—most

numerously by the Assyrians in the form of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic—that

have all retained use of the once dominant lingua franca despite

subsequent language shifts experienced throughout the Middle East.

The Aramaic languages are considered to be endangered.[5]…

 

Old Aramaic

 

The term `Old Aramaic' is used to describe the varieties of the

language from its first known use until the point roughly marked by

the rise of the Sasanian Empire (224 CE), dominating the influential,

eastern dialect region. As such, the term covers over thirteen

centuries of the development of Aramaic. This vast time span includes

all Aramaic that is now effectively extinct. "

 

www.en.wikipedia.org/

 

1. Beyer, Klaus; John F. Healey (trans.) (1986). The Aramaic

Language: its distribution and subdivisions. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck

und Ruprecht. pp. 44. ISBN 3-525-53573-2.

2. Aramaic appears somewhere between 11th and 9th centuries BCE.

Beyer (1986: 11) suggests that written Aramaic probably dates from

the eleventh century BCE, as it is established by the tenth century,

to which he dates the oldest inscriptions of northern Syria.

Heinrichs (1990: x) uses the less controversial date of ninth

century, for which there is clear and widespread attestation.

3. Beyer 1986: 38–43; Casey 1998: 83–6, 88, 89–93; Eerdmans 1975: 72.

4. Heinrichs 1990: xi–xv; Beyer 1986: 53.

5.Naby, Eden. From Lingua Franca to Endangered Language. Assyrian

International News Agency.