The feminine aspect of God

Was Deborah the only female judge in all those centuries?

The Feminine

The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women says this:

The only female judge, the only one to be called a prophet, and the only one described as performing a judicial function, Deborah is a decisive figure in the defeat of the Canaanites.

-by Tikva Frymer-Kensky, updated by Caryn Tamber-Rosenau June 23, 2021

One is reminded that perhaps the scriptural record has been translated to exclude much that had been written about the feminine. For instance, one day, when browsing the 1908 Bound Volume (print copy) of The Christian Science Journal in the Reading Room, I came across an excerpt from a book titled The Kabbalah Unveiled* by McGregor Mathews.** 

Here’s a portion:

For some reason best known to themselves, the translators of the Bible have carefully crowded out of existence and smothered up every reference to the fact that the Deity is both masculine and feminine. They have translated a feminine plural by a masculine singular in the case of the word Elohim—they have, however, left an inadvertent admission of their knowledge that it was plural, in Genesis 1: 26, 'And Elohim said, Let us make man.' … The word Elohim is a plural formed from a feminine singular noun Eloh—by adding ... a termination customarily used for the masculine plural. It therefore gives to the word Elohim the sense of a female potency united to a masculine idea …  

-quoted in The Christian Science Journal, Feb. 1908.

I will tell you what happened after that. On the Antiques Road Show I saw a very old Valentine’s Day card where the idea of hope was accompanied by an anchor. I sent the notion to my daughter whose second given-name is Hope, a sort of family tradition. This brought to thought the phrase “the anchor of hope” which I knew from Mrs. Eddy’s work Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, i.e.

The nature of Christianity is peaceful and blessed, but in order to enter into the kingdom, the anchor of hope must be cast beyond the veil of matter into the Shekinah into which Jesus has passed before us; and this advance beyond matter must come through the joys and triumphs of the righteous as well as through their sorrows and afflictions. Like our Master, we must depart from material sense into the spiritual sense of being.
(p. 40:31)

So, I had to look up “anchor of hope” and “Shekinah”, didn’t I?

Anchor of hope

… we … lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast… (abbreviated from Hebrews 6:18, 19)

Shekinah

The following, from a website called My Jewish Learning is note-worthy for the Jewish perspective:

In contemporary Jewish discourse, the term shekhinah most commonly refers to the divine feminine, or to the feminine aspect of God — God as mother, nurturer, protector and compassionate one. Though the term — from the Hebrew root meaning to “dwell” — is found throughout early rabbinic literature, in its early usage it referred generally to God’s presence among the people and had no gender associations. The connection between shekhinah and femininity emerges mainly in Jewish mystical literature. The concept was later embraced by Jewish feminists as a counterbalance to prevailing masculine notions of God as king, father and judge. 

The literal meaning of the word Shekinah is dwelling, where God dwells. ***

The Jewish Encyclopedia has a lengthy piece on Shekinah:

The Shekinah is here identical with Yhwh. Yahwah

In the Apocrypha and New Testament.

Since the Shekinah is light, those passages of the Apocrypha and New Testament which mention radiance, and in which the Greek text reads δόξα, refer to the Shekinah, there being no other Greek equivalent for the word. Thus, according to Luke ii. 9, "the glory of the Lord [δόζα Ḳυρίου] shone round about them" (comp. II Peter i. 17; Eph. i. 6; II Cor. iv. 6); and it is supposed that in John i. 14 and Rev. xxi. 3 the words σκηνοῦν and σκηνή were expressly selected as implying the Shekinah.

Sweet, sacred place

A hymn (words by Roberta B. Lynch) mentions Shekinah:

                        Calm of Shekinah where hope anchors fast,

                        Harbor of refuge till the storm be past;

                        Sweet, sacred place where God and men do meet,

                        Horeb whereon we walk with unshod feet.

(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 297:2)

Joyce Voysey

* Ed.  A Jewish Rabbi explains that “The Kabbalah is a language for discussing spirituality.” – see Christian Science Sentinel May 11, 2009 “A Rabbi Talks about Christian Science”. This beautiful interview includes an account featuring a Christian Science Reading Room. Here’s a snippet:

“Anyway, I sat with the lady in this Reading Room, and told her about my father. I don’t remember the ideas that were expressed as such, but I went home immediately, and told my father, “You’re going to recover completely.”

“When I visited the Reading Room, the people there, wonderful people, were not offering me any kind of intellectual ideas as such. It was the kindness, and the prayerfulness. It was the atmosphere, the gracefulness, the graciousness.”

** Ed. Note that the author's name as it appears in the Journal seems to be incorrect. Research indicates that a book titled The Kabbalah Unveiled was written by Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

*** Ed. The Oxford dictionary says: Shekinah. (Jewish and Christian Theology) the glory of the divine presence, conventionally represented as light or interpreted symbolically (in Kabbalism as a divine feminine aspect).

          --Origin: mid-17^th cent.: from late Hebrew, from šākan ‘dwell, rest’.