There is Mary Magdalene the "Goddess in the Gospels" the Church refused to acknowledge as the wife of Yeshua and probably co-Messiah. "Mary" is a Greek pronunciation of the Hebrew name Miriam or Miriamne. There are many theories about this name, such as Mary might not even be a name, but a title meaning Priestess of Goddess.Many theologians and scholars believe the Holy Spirit written as, Pneuma in Greek everytime it appears in the New Testament, is a feminine being.
Note that Pneuma is a neuter word in Greek, but in Hebrew the word Ruah (Spirit) and in Aramaic the word Shekinah (Presence) are feminine words and imply a feminine divine presence.
The Holy Spirit is possibly a Christian Goddess, not a mysterious invisible member of an all-male Trinity "club." Or more provocatively, maybe there is a Feminine Trinity of God-the-Mother (Sophia and Mary?), God-the-Daughter (Mary Magdalene) and Goddess-the-Spirit-Presence (Shekinah, Ruah). The Holy Spirit appears at Yeshua's baptism in the form of a dove. The dove has long been a symbol of the Goddess in the Ancient Near East, and was never used to symbolize any male Being or God.
We must also look in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and consider the Goddess Sophia. Her name means "Wisdom." She is the Goddess of Wisdom referred to repeatedly in scripture as the wife of God-the-Father. See Proverbs, Song of Songs, (also called Song of Solomon) in the Hebrew Bible, and see the Book of Sirach and the Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha found in the center of any Catholic Bible.
Here is an excerpt from "The Decline of the Feminine and the Cult of Mary at http://eapi.admu.edu.ph/eapr98/kath2.htm
In Greco-Roman Christianity, probably because of the dangers of Gnosticism, the biblical images of God as female were soon suppressed within the doctrine of God. God as Wisdom, Hokmah in Hebrew, or Sophia in Greek, a feminine form, was translated by Christianity into the Logos concept of Philo, which is masculine and was defined as the Son of God. The Shekinah, the theology of God’s mediating presence as female, was de-emphasized; and God’s Spirit Ruah, a feminine noun in Hebrew, took on a neuter form when translated into Greek as Pneuma.The Vulgate translated Ruah into Latin as masculine, Spiritus. God’s Spirit, Ruah, which at the beginning of creation brings forth abundant life in the waters, makes the womb of Mary fruitful. In spite of the reality of the caring, consoling, healing aspects of divine activity, the dominant patriarchal tradition has prevailed, resulting in seeing the female as the passive recipient of God’s creation; and the female is expressed in nature, church, soul, and finally Mary as the prototype of redeemed humanity.
Because God as father has become an over literalized metaphor, the symbol of God as mother is eclipsed. The problem lies not in the fact that male metaphors are used for God, but that they are used exclusively and literally. Because images of God as female have been suppressed in official formulations and teaching, they came to be embodied in the figure of Mary who functioned to reveal the unfailing love of God.
Visit our Hebrew Goddess page for more information on Asherah, Shekinah, and Sophia, goddesses once worshipped by the Children of Israel as the wife of their Creator-god, Yahweh."
Source and More
http://www.northernway.org/goddess.html
Reverend Crystal Cox
Bringing Back Goddess Church
